Screening Europe in Australasia

This book challenges the historical myopia that treats Hollywood films as always having dominated global film culture through a detailed study of the circulation of European silent film in Australasia in the early twentieth century. Before World War I, European silent feature films were ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, teaching Antipodean audiences about Continental cultures and familiarizing them with glamorous European stars, from Asta Nielsen to Emil Jannings. After the rise of Hollywood and then the shift to sound film, this history—and its implications for cross-cultural exchange—was lost. Julie K. Allen recovers that history, with its flamboyant participants, transnational currents, innovative genres, and geopolitical complications, and brings it vividly to life. She reveals the complexity and competitiveness of the early cinema market, in a region with high consumer demand and low domestic production, and frames the dramatic shift to almost exclusively American cinema programming during World War I, contextualizing the rise of the art film in the 1920s in competition with mainstream Hollywood productions.

Between history and politics: the image of Mykhailo Hrushevsky in German Slavic studies of the first third of the 20th century

The article is dedicated to the reception of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s academic achievements in German science and journalism during the first third of the 20th century, in the years of World War I and the interwar period. The authors emphasize that German scientists were generally honest about the achievements and activity of the Ukrainian historian. Despite their scepticism towards M. Hrushevsky’s Anti-Normanism ideology, they followed closely the emergence of his major scientific works. In the reception of the Ukrainian historian’s work, the academic motivation definitely dominated over the political one, although the latter indirectly appeared in many statements devoted to him. The authors prove the vivid presence of Hrushevsky’s thought in the German Slavic discourse of the period.

John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck’s life was framed by global conflict. Born on 27 February 1902, in Salinas, California, he was twelve years old when World War I began and sixteen when Germany and the Allies signed an armistice bringing to cessation the “War to End All Wars.” Unfortunately, World War II began in 1939. Echoes of the rise of Adolf Hitler and threats of war occur throughout his early works, as in the journals accompanying The Grapes of Wrath (1939), in which he writes of the angst of his times, fearing the inevitably approaching conflict. When World War II came, he became involved in the wartime efforts, working as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and experiencing the London Blitz, with sixty-six of his eighty-five dispatches gathered in Once There Was a War (1958). Recognizing Steinbeck’s expertise as a writer and desiring to enlist public support, the government commissioned him to write Bombs Away (1942), an account of a bomber team and its specially equipped plane. Hence, he observed American airmen as they trained and went into battle, flying on forays with them. Similarly, during the Vietnam War Newsday hired him as a war correspondent, and again he went to the front and into battle with the enlisted men, with his accounts collected in Letters to Alicia (1965). On the home front, the San Francisco News commissioned him to report on Dust Bowl migrants working as harvesters in California. Incensed by what he witnessed—the specter of starvation, babies and children dying, and malnutrition taking a toll on the very humanity of the migrants—he wrote The Harvest Gypsies (1936), background for The Grapes of Wrath. An early ecologist, Steinbeck loved the land, depicting the earth as a living, sensate character in The Grapes of Wrath—an elegiac mourning over its the desecration. Later, his nonfiction America and Americans (1966) decried pollution and the felling of redwood trees. Looking into the future with some hope but much trepidation, this work also addressed ethnic and racial prejudices, questionable politics, ageism and sexism, loss of ethical moorings. Believing his country to be infested with a deadly immorality, he warned Americans to root out this cancerous growth in order to survive. His last work of fiction, The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), carried these same concerns, with protagonist Ethan Allen Hawley portrayed as an Every American, who must rise above his failings. John Steinbeck died 20 December 1968, of congestive heart failure.

The Economy of the Transylvanian Roman Catholic Status Between the World Wars

The purpose of the study. To examine how the 20th century’s political changes affected the Roman Catholic Church structurally, and it’s specific institution, the Roman Catholic Status by the agrarian reforms which were part of the modernization process and nation-building in Greater Romania; and more importantly in Transylvania, the area of the four Roman Catholic dioceses of Nagyárad, Gyulafehérvár, Temesvár and Szatmár, and what alternatives were created for economical surviving. Applied methods. Literature review including the history of World War I and the consequences of the upcoming treaties of Versailles. We involved sources from church literature, agrarian estates records and data from researches of the Status archives from Transylvania. The research framework is the history of the Roman Catholic Status. We introduced four ecclesiastical counties whose economically changes influenced the administration of several institutions and funds belonging to the Status. We made a structural analysis examining the new economic system of the Roman Catholic Status situated in the middle of the modernization development of Greater Romania. Outcomes. Due to the annexation of Transylvania to Romania, the Roman Catholic Church went from a privileged position to a marginal position, since the majority of the Romanian population was Orthodox Christian. Many problems of the process of modernization and nationbuilding in Greater Romania were felt by all sections of the population, but it was the ethnic minorities and their institutions - especially the churches - which were to be integrated into the new nation-state that were most affected. The four Roman Catholic dioceses Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia), Nagyvárad (Oradea), Temesvár (Timișoara) and Szatmár (Satu Mare)) expropriated 277,513 acres of a total of 290,570 acres of land, which represented 98% of the land holdings. The agrarian reform of 1919-1920 brought major changes in the management of the Status funds and the estates belonging to them.

Changes in the Financial System of Vas County at the Beginning of the 20th Century

The purpose of the study. To showcase the growth of the region’s savings banks network during the period of Hungary’s capitalist development between the turn of the century and the World War I. Applied methods. Primarily data published in the financial almanac ‘Magyar Compass’ and newspaper articles of the time were sourced for the purposes of the study. Of financial indicators, balance sheet total and aggregate cash turnover figures were used. The study presents the accessible data of all the savings banks in operation at the time. Outcomes. By the end of 1912, various types of financial services had already been available in 28 Vas County settlements with 53 savings banks operating in the county. Their number was augmented by five branches and two affiliates. The savings banks furthermore established 17 disbursement points. This network of financial institutions was complemented by the Austro-Hungarian Bank (Osztrák-Magyar Bank, OMB) and two discount houses operating in Szombathely. The market district of Szombathely covered the whole county. While several larger microregional money markets were created, significant amounts were repatriated by Hungarians emigrating to America. Amidst all these changes, two banks’ bankruptcies made it known nationwide that the development of the local financial network was not without its failures.

Działania wojenne gen. Żeligowskiego wobec Litwy. Próby rozstrzygnięcia konfliktu przez ligę narodów

The situation after World War I was far from stabilizing, and the area of the Vilnius region became the subject of a conflict that for many years cast a shadow on Polish-Lithuanian relations. One should look at this conflict from the perspective of one hundred years, remembering that it turned into an antagonism so sharp and fierce that it even aroused the amazement of bystanders. The taken up topic has been presented in many aspects: events in August and September 1920 preceding the occupation of Vilnius, the position of General Lucjan Żeligowski to this situation, warfare (called "rebellion"), the establishment of Central Lithuania and an attempt to sanction the situation in the League of Nations forum. This paper is about a military and political activities of occupation of Vilnius and its neighboring areas by the Poland in October 1920. The originator of this undertaking was Józef Piłsudski. He admitted to it after years, exactly on the 24th and 25th of August 1923 during the lectures in the hall of the Grand Theater in Vilnius. Polish-Lithuanian relations in the analyzed years should be considered far from accepted international standards. Both Poles and Lithuanians can be held responsible in point of above facts. Awareness of these events is extremely important for both nations for mutual understanding and agreement.