On Monday night, Marina Gera won an International Emmy Award in the best actress category for her portrayal in the TV film ‘Eternal Winter’. We caught up with her a day and a half later in the Hungarian Consulate in New York.

First of all, we would like to congratulate you on this beautiful Emmy Award! How are you feeling now? 

“It’s a little bit like being drunk but I haven’t drunk anything. The past two months were very difficult, I had to process the fact of the nomination and prepare myself for these four days, I really didn’t know whether I should start campaigning or even if this had any sense because after all, how would I by myself be able to compete against the big international production companies. I worried a lot about whether invitations would arrive because of the nomination or I would disappear from the scene if I didn’t win. Luckily, all these bad feelings dissipated when I arrived in New York and I felt that people here were interested in me and that I was enveloped in love. Fundamentally, I did not travel out here for the awards ceremony but for the four-day Emmy festival, where the nominees take part in events, get to know each other and are constantly in the limelight. From this aspect, too, it is very different to the Oscars. This year, by chance the organizers selected the Consulate General of Hungary as the venue for the opening ceremony and it was a really good feeling that I, as a Hungarian, was a guest of honour here, and when I walked up the red carpet and the members of the academy and festival directors called me by my name. The second and third days were very intense, I gave countless interviews, took part in roundtable discussions and meanwhile I tried to get to know my colleagues and co-workers in the profession.” 

Was the possibility of you winning ‘in the air’?

“If I were to say now ‘very much so’ then I would certainly be seen as boastful, but this is how it was, I felt this from the academy members. It was already highly ‘suspicious’ that the festival director invited me to the lunch with academy members prior to the awards ceremony, which included the writers of the ‘Game of Thrones’ and one of the main actors, Peter Hayden Dinklage, gave a speech about what the Emmy means for him. At the awards ceremony in the evening, for the first time in my life, there were 60 photographers on the red carpet all constantly calling ‘Marina! Marina!!!’.

“I must have given at least 15 interviews there and in nearly all of them I said that on this exact day in Hungary we were remembering the victims of forced labour camps, and that it wasn’t possible to conceive of something more fitting than that precisely on this day a film about the horrors of the Gulag should be in the limelight.

“I was greatly affected when, after the nomination, it transpired on what day the prize would be awarded, and that this day coincided exactly with the commemoration day of those deported to the Soviet Union. This was even more pressure on me: not to ruin this fine moment by not winning the prize.” 

But towards the end of the evening they called your name and this really crowned the day!

“Thanks to the positive signs I was not so anxious but when they opened the envelope I was looking down all the time and gave a huge sigh. Perhaps my legs were shaking even more at the medal-giving ceremony, because that is when I happened to find myself in all this, but in a few days I grew into this ‘new role’ and so I collected the prize with a measure of self-confidence.

“I’m really pleased that I managed to have all these great experiences and I did not sense that people felt sorry for this Eastern European actress.”

Are you constantly receiving international offers and has your phone been ringing non-stop since the day before yesterday? 

“Luckily this all started a bit earlier but even so I sometimes feel that I have boarded some strange train that is taking me towards new and exciting adventures. Six months ago, a British producer contacted me saying he would like to entrust the lead role of an international film to me and he was looking for a story specifically for me. I was really pleased but my life didn’t come to a halt because of this, I thought he would get back in touch, I didn’t even check to see who he was, although of course I knew he worked as a senior producer for the BBC. Flirting with an international career aroused mixed feelings in me because obviously I have such disadvantages that I cannot totally resolve, only improve. I’ll always have an accent, but luckily I actually love performing in English and we have a performance in English at home. Academy members tried to persuade me to think about making an international career but for the moment I am being very cautious about even considering this.

“A few weeks later, the abovementioned BBC producer sent me the first screenplay draft and that is when I started doing a background check and found that he is a double Emmy Award winner. Suddenly I was delighted thinking that maybe I, too, had a chance to make it into this apparently unattainable realm, I got so excited I could hardly sleep. In the meantime, an Oscar producer teamed up with him, I would have met them now but they said I should come out first because I was a sure-fire winner and then we would talk afterwards. Who would have thought that this could really happen?

“The BBC and Netflix were behind my rivals, and the Hungarian Gulag Memorial Committee behind me, which obviously was unable to get into promoting the film in America with large sums. It is really amazing that even so they took so much notice of me. The festival director told me that in fact there had not been any question about whether I should win or not. 

“Of course, the fact that I have an Emmy Award does not make me a better actress.” 

You first thanked your foster father for the prize. Why are you grateful to him?

“My dream was to be a film actress since I was two years old. Together, we worked for at least 20 years to make this dream come true and for me to be who I am today. We really did do something for this every day starting from when I was very young. In fact, he is not an actor and yet he was able to help and I will always be grateful to him for this.” 

Thanks to Zoli, I was able to get an insight into those notes that document your life together. Just flicking through the events for the year 1997, it is enough to make one’s head spin seeing the endless number of appearances, trips and meetings. How could you handle this mad rush?

Éva: “Only with Zoli! It is certain that without him, I would not be the person I became (here she points out the numerous awards and diplomas on the walls), he is the fixed point in my life, the mainstay.”

Zoli: “My role was primarily logistics, I always had upcoming programmes for the next five years in my diary, I didn’t leave anything to chance and I supported Éva in everything in order that she could perform to her best ability on the stage. Although I never studied such matters, I was her impresario and secretary in addition to my surgical work, and I made sure that the children never suffered from our frenetic rhythm of life. I slept 4-5 hours a day for 30 years…”

How common is it in the artist world to find that somebody becomes a famous singer using the name of their husband and that a couple are so closely intertwined?

Éva: “It is absolutely unusual.

“We were considered oddballs because instability in relationships and changing partners is far more typical in this environment. However, I always said: why get into a Trabant when a Rolls Royce awaits me at home? For us, it was precisely our relationship that was a firm rock in the midst of every upset and every success.”

What sort of family did you come from when you married?

Éva: “I come from a simple family, my father worked as a chef in Bristol, my mother was a housewife. There were three children in the family; my brother died and my sister is still alive, thank God. Nobody studied music or singing. My singing teacher at school, Magdolna Raksányi, graduated from the music academy, she was a trained musician. She was the first to notice that I had a good voice and I should go to solfège and learn the piano. I was seven or eight when I enrolled myself to study music at No. 19 Mester Street.”

You were just eight when you arranged your own enrolment?

Éva: “That’s right, I knocked on the door of director Kató Bíró’s office by myself, saying that I would like to learn to play the piano. I already had my entrance exam but out of sheer stubbornness I said that my teacher had sent me. She must have seen something in the gap-toothed, pig-tailed little girl who I was because she surrendered and admitted me. The director was one of Béla Bartók’s last students, I have a lot to thank her for. From her I learnt that if anybody comes to you, give help, give them your honest opinion, and embrace them if they are talented!

“I played piano twice a week and went to solfège. In the meantime I began to sing, Kató Gödri was my teacher and I have much to thank her for as well. I had a crystal-clear pitch with an F of three ledger lines above the staff. I only found out later what talent was when I had the basis for comparison. I loved performing, I never had any inhibitions. Then my voice broke and so I threw myself into volleyball. This was yet another thing I couldn’t do half-heartedly and I was selected for the national youth squad.

“After a year my voice came back, but not the high notes that I had earlier, I was restricted to one octave and from here I had to recover after much hard practice.

“Meanwhile I didn’t give up playing sports and I was devouring books, each week I would carry home nine volumes from the library. After finishing school I was not taken on to the Liszt Academy. They said I was immature. I dealt with nuts and bolts for eight months and then I succeeded at the second entrance exam. At that time I was 19 but the big changes didn’t stop there because soon after I met Zoli.”

How did your husband reach this decisive moment?

Zoli: “I was born in 1938, my father was a doctor and my mother was a housewife. I had two brothers, unfortunately one is no longer alive. In the summer of 1944, together with my mother we fled the impending Soviet siege of Budapest to Szombathely. My father, who was in military service, came home from the Ukraine and then found himself in charge of a German hospital in Szombathely. When the Germans withdrew, we could have gone with them but my parents loved their homeland and turned down the offer. Then my father was charged because of his friendliness towards the Germans and only received the possibility of working as a doctor in Kemenessömjén for three years. From here we moved to Győr where my father became a district GP and then director of Győr hospital. We lived in the apartment of his famous predecessor, Dr. Aladár Petz. The cleaners sometimes reported him if he brought up the matter that the institute was not sufficiently hygienic and then he would be taken away and released a couple of days later. This is what the mindset was at the time… Then he became the senior works doctor at the wagon factory and at that time I started playing football and tennis with the ETO juniors. From here, he was appointed head of the Healthcare Department of the Office of Statistics, we were given a flat in Budapest and we could enrol in the Eötvös József Grammar School that was considered an elite institution.

“I passed my final exams in 1956 and went on to the medical school. In October we organized the association of university students, MEFESZ, and after the outbreak of the uprising we also set up the unit guarding pharmacies. On 2 November we flipped a coin to decide who would do the 36-hour medical shift – another boy ‘won’ and we never saw him again. Our house was shot at and the Russians set fire to the shop that was in the building. The fire brigade that happened to be passing managed to extinguish the blaze. Together with a doctor living in the same house, we organized a night-time fire watch. Once, a tank stuck its barrel through the window in the cellar where we were. We faced it there. We survived. Interestingly, the granddaughter of this doctor became Pavarotti’s secretary later on, which is why Luciano knew so much about us Hungarians. It’s a small world! Our house needed renovation and while this was going on, we lived in Kilián Barracks for eight months, five of us in one room; we slept on mattresses on the floor.

“In the meantime I played football in Statistics but I didn’t go to the first division of the national championship because I wanted to be a doctor. My father was on night duty in the VIII district and I started helping him out, I attended patients at home even before completing my finals. I let him sleep because he had heart problems.”

Where and how did you meet? 

Zoli: “The express arrived at half past three in the early hours of Monday morning on 7 July 1963. I was knocked flat. It arrived in the form of a red-haired amazon!

“A short, green skirt and hair down to her back. I said to myself, ‘now, Marton, have courage!’ There on the patient examination table, in a bikini, lay a beautiful, 20-year-old woman, Éva.

“I examined her, she certainly didn’t have appendicitis, and the stomach complaint, the reason for her coming in, had passed by the time of treatment. There were no patients and we chatted for an hour and a half as though we had known each other for years.”

Éva: “And at that time I had absolutely no idea that I was such a pretty woman! It’s true, we really did chat during that dawn as though we had known each other forever. He was the first man in my life, I really liked him, his self-confidence was most impressive, and that he could always get along with everyone. He larked about a lot but there was always a depth to what he had to say. Later on, he was able to wrap up even the most complex matters, problems connected with family or work, so that it never hurt me.

“If something did not work out, he always used to say, we don’t know what we managed to avoid. This attitude has helped a lot in the course of our life.

“Zoli always smiled, always laughed: when he came into my life he was like a sunbeam. The next day he came to the house to ask how the patient was and to remind me about the rendezvous we had agreed on, the Kati Café in Szentkirályi Street, where we also made a blood pact. Literally! Two weeks later, he stood in front of my father and said he wanted to marry me. So it started.”

How did a young doctor become mentor to an opera singer, where did your understanding of music come from?

Zoli: “I like music and yet I have no idea where my sense for it came, perhaps it is a gift. I never sang yet I have a good ear. In 1968, while sitting at the dinner table with the family, I announced: by 1981, I’ll make a world star out of Éva. My parents looked at me incredulously, yet Éva believed in me. It was also clear for me that in order to achieve this we had to go abroad because the standard that was here in Hungary would not be sufficient.

“It took ten years for Éva to make a name for herself. This may appear to be too much time but it always happens that anyone who rises too fast is unable to mature sufficiently and becomes a falling star.”

Éva: “After getting my diploma I was not immediately taken on to the Opera in Hungary, only later, and yet I felt that they were not interested in me. Primarily Zoli was the person who saw something in me, even my own mother and father did not believe in me as much. It needed those ten years to learn the repertoire. I gradually built up step by step, Zoli refused to allow me to be sold cheap, we consciously maintained the quality. Contrary to many others, I valued not the recording companies but successes in front of audiences, and only afterwards did I start doing recordings. I fought honourably for success, not sleeping with people or riding on the coattails of record labels. In all this, Zoli’s help, foresight and perfectionism were worth as much as I did on stage. We truly are two in one, and in our successes we are as inseparable, we are so mixed together, as our blood was at that time in Kati Café...”

When did you marry and how did your life continue?

Zoli: “We took our vows in 1965 and a year later our son, Zoli, was born. We lived in a 5x4-metre room on József Boulevard, in my father’s surgery together with the baby. Éva graduated in 1968 and it took another three years before she could sing the role of the Countess from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at the invitation of Christoph von Dohnányi in Frankfurt. That was our first trip abroad, they would already have contracted her in the intermission and this is when the niggles with the Hungarian ministry started...”

Éva: “They wouldn’t allow Zoli to travel for the next production, Verdi’s Falstaff. Then we received an invitation to Florence and they didn’t want to let him go there, either. We agreed that I would not go alone and I cancelled the performances. The then world-famous conductor Riccardo Muti, with the involvement of the Italian foreign ministry, must have put the Hungarian culture portfolio in an embarrassing position because at the very last minute Zoli did actually get his visa. We have a photo of us standing next to our Skoda as we were about to leave…”

Zoli: “We left in the pouring rain. Just before Klagenfurt the windscreen wipers broke down in the storm. Éva had to manually turn a component all the way through the downpour. It was an adventure and when we finally arrived in the evening, the Skoda gave up the ghost. But on the right was the theatre, on the left the pension, and when, totally exhausted, we occupied the room, I poured a beer for myself, sat down, and the chair collapsed underneath me. Éva and I laughed so much in our torment that I can still hear us today… This was symbolic because this is how our international life got off the ground: Éva weary from the constant studying, but winning massive applause every evening, me still lying flat on my back, although I refused to spill a drop of my drink – and our cheerfulness never deserted us although things weren’t easy.

“In 1972, Éva and little Zoli received a visa to Germany and yet again they didn’t want to issue one for me, yet in the end things worked out. We arranged a ‘One-way ticket’, everything we had fitted in two bags. 50 marks, two suitcases and a child, this is how we left.

“In 1975, Éva sang in New York’s St. Patrick Cathedral with such etherealness and with such beautiful melismas that she received an invitation to the MET…”

How did you feel about leaving Hungary?

Éva: “We had to go, driven by the need to prove ourselves. Besides which, when for the first and last time in my life I dared ask for a few minutes with opera director Miklós Lukács in order to find out what their plans for me were, he took out a small lined booklet and I immediately saw the page was completely blank next to my name. It didn’t matter that I had sung minor and major, indeed some very hard roles, they didn’t take me seriously. A long line of sopranos stood in front of me and due to the ranking, this did not bode well for me.”

Zoli: “We knew what our goal was and we were together. Nothing else mattered. At that time, the homeland was our family and it was with the feeling that from now on we were living for ourselves that we disembarked at Frankfurt airport. In the first month, Juli Hamari helped us to live with 400 marks because the theatre didn’t pay in advance.

“In the early days we lived extraordinarily frugally, but we were nice and slim and Éva was constantly studying.”

Éva: “Even then Zoli had his eye on the goal. I remember that we received invitations to smaller theatres but he wouldn’t allow it. I told him: we have 20 marks and they are paying several hundred! Zoli just replied: the path to the Metropolitan is long indeed, Frankfurt is your level.”

Did either of you speak any German?

Éva: “No, I learnt Russian and I spoke a little Latin and Italian, I learnt that at the Liszt Academy.”

Zoli: “I didn’t either, but it was possible to learn in a few months. Later on, I heard an anecdote about myself, this one about how fast my English had improved: ‘Because Zoli asks not for ten thousand dollars for one evening, but twenty thousand!’”

And how did you manage this career arriving as you had from the other side of the Iron Curtain?

Éva: “I never negotiated with anyone, Zoli kept that side away, I had just one task which was to go onto the stage and sing to the best of my ability. I always behaved as a guest in all theatres of the world, the hosts could visit me at rehearsals and, if they wanted, welcome me, but I never sought them out, I never begged a single director. And there was never a single instance when, having sung a given series, there was not the next contract already in the bag.”

So Zoli, where does this managerial brilliance come from?

Zoli: “I don’t know where I got the sense for this, at that time there were no schools for managers, but somehow it was in my blood and the truth is that I successfully negotiated with even the smartest agents and directors. True, I did have an ‘ace up my sleeve’!”

And was it easy to find work?

Zoli: “I had to have my qualifications accredited, later on I completed the specialist surgical exam in Germany. It wasn’t easy. I applied for a job from the chairman of the German society of surgeons but he needed an accident & emergency surgeon and I am an abdominal surgeon. Then I was offered a post in Offenbach close to Frankfurt working alongside a strict Prussian professor.

“I was taken on but because I still barely spoke any German, I was put into the outpatient department where I worked three shifts and got a grasp of the language. I did everything. I was awarded a specialist surgical qualification after an hour of discussion and then I could become a senior doctor.”

Is there any similarity between singing and healing?

Zoli:

“Surgery starts, the curtain goes up – surgery finishes, the curtain goes down. Yes, as far as this goes.”

Éva: “Well, the difference is far greater! I could die on the stage then stand up and everything would go on as before, whereas if Zoli were to make a mistake, human lives would have been at stake. And a doctor is always on call: how many times did he help people feeling indisposed on our many trips! Once, exactly on my birthday, we were flying in a small aircraft one morning from Hamburg to Vienna when a gentleman became ill and then lost consciousness. Zoli resuscitated him and as a result he took command, the pilot made an emergency landing in Nürnberg and the patient was collected by ambulance. Later on we found out he survived and I sang Turandot in the Staatsoper that evening. It was an unforgettable birthday present from Zoli.”

Zoli: “But there was a case of abdominal bleeding where I helped my professor find the cause of the bleed. The female patient survived and it turned out later that she was Éva’s wardrobe lady at the Frankfurt Opera, where after all this our status rose even further.”

How was it possible to raise children in this packed life?

Zoli: “Our daughter Diána was born in 1974, eight weeks before the presentation of The Woman Without a Shadow. Three weeks after the birth I jogged with Éva in the forest to regenerate. I tended to deal with the children. When I wasn’t working I played football with Zoli and we went swimming. The family always came first with us, even if Éva happened to be working on another continent we talked several times a day and if there was a school break, I would fly to her with the children, if needs be to Manila or New York.

“It is a fundamental rule even to this day that we keep in daily contact with all members of the dispersed family.”

Did you make genuine friendships in the arts world?

Éva: “In Zoli I found everything I needed in a person. Husband, good friend, buddy. He provided humour and encouragement, he helped me memorize parts – oh Lord, how many cues! – he is the father of my children, an excellent doctor, a person I look up to. As far as I was concerned, besides my family I had neither the time nor the inclination to chat with others. When I returned to one or two familiar places, to New York, Houston, Barcelona, there were always a few lovely people I could talk with but I only ever saw them again when my career took me that way once more. Zoli is my intellectual partner as well, we went to exhibitions together, he can draw very well, we played sports together, we did so many great things! We were in absolute harmony! Our friends tended to be doctors, a singer is always on the road, it is a different life. I had no need of chatter, either: even today I am unwilling to go anywhere with others because Zoli doesn’t like going out.”

What was it like resettling in Hungary?

Zoli: “We regularly returned from the early 1980s, Éva made many recordings and occasionally she appeared at the Opera House or gave a concert. We always wanted to come back, in the middle of the 1990s we started coming to Hungary and finding out about the situation from Hungarian singers – and we started building. We have lived in this house since 2000, we are on the ground floor, our son’s family is on the first floor with our two grandchildren, Zoltán (29) who works in a Berlin bank, and Péter (26), who is in the auto industry. On the second floor, our daughter lives with her husband and our two granddaughters (12 and 9 years). My daughter and her husband design costumes for films.”

Éva: “There must be a fire burning in every person, if this is not burning within you, you are not worth anything. Zoli feeds this sacred flame in me, every day. And this fire also burns for our homeland, for our being Hungarian!”

Next year you will have been married for 55 years, so you are past even your golden wedding anniversary…

Zoli: “Plus two years of the training camp, that was quite something, too!”

Éva: “It was great being together!”

“I don’t know what else God has in mind for us but it is still very good being together. Sometimes I would like to strangle him, you can see that we are still interrupting each other even now. We were always passionate and being ourselves.

“Once my daughter said, on seeing how energetic we are, that if we are buried in the same place, the earth will still be moving in 30 years!”

Dramatic soprano Éva Marton has performed at the greatest opera houses of the world, from the New York Metropolitan to Milan’s Scala, for three decades. She has sung with partners such as Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta and Solti György, Götz Friedrich, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Harry Kupfer. Her diary is still packed even now: sitting on juries of singing competitions and holding courses. As former head of the singing department she is professor emerita at the Liszt Academy, senior consultant at the Hungarian State Opera, and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. She is holder of many awards, including the Kossuth Prize and Artist of the Nation, the Corvin Chain and the highest state award, the Hungarian Order of St. Stephen. She is a life member of the Vienna State Opera House, Chamber Singer of the Austrian State, and in 2019 the Kennedy Center in Washington brought their gold medal to Budapest for her. In autumn 2020, the international singing competition named after her and chaired by her is being organized for the fourth occasion at the Liszt Academy.

So, in your case, it was not a one-night stand.

Gergő: “Even if I had had such intentions as a young, independent man, still I stumbled across one of the world’s most moral, most pure-hearted people. We chatted for hours and in the end we parted without arranging the next meeting.”

Ancsa: “I saw that this boy really wanted something from me but I was not the sort of girl that could be picked up at a party for one night. I liked him, but I studied in Eger, my family lived in Kecskemét, this was also where I played water polo, and I felt that a Budapest ‘detour’ just wouldn’t fit into my life. I told Gergő this as well but even so, when it came to say goodbye, I gave him a kiss. However, he didn’t get my phone number. Even so, a week later I sent him the halls of residence number and my father’s, saying that if he was still interested, I would be pleased to get to know him better.

“Since at that time there was just one telephone on each floor of the halls of residence, if Gergő called other people couldn’t reach the residence – which is why I was soon spending a large part of my evenings in a public phone booth. When I was down in Kecskemét, he could contact me on my father’s phone because I didn’t have my own then.”

Gergő: “A landline phone was the only way of keeping in touch and I quickly took over paying my parents’ phone bill: their costs were a few hundred forints, mine were three thousand.”

Ancsa: “After meeting for the first time in September, it was weeks before we could meet again in person. This happened when I was able to go from Kecskemét back to Eger via Budapest. There was one time when I played in Budapest with Kecskemét but Gergő was in the countryside with Fradi. Finally, an accident brought us together: in December, Gergő’s eardrum was damaged and it became infected because he played another three matches with a damaged ear. He became feverish, he couldn’t get out of bed for weeks he was so frail. In January I had my exams and I was able to schedule my time with a degree of freedom so that in effect we moved in together at a time of necessity and unnoticed.”

Gergő: “Right from the start we both thought of our relationship very seriously; I reckon that just a few weeks later we were having really serious discussions like many who have been ‘going out’ for years.”

Just one year after you met, Gergő received a massive opportunity from one of the best water polo teams in the world. Was it difficult to reach a decision when you were 20?

Gergő: “It was a huge decision. I grew up by myself, my mother worked from home and she spent a lot of time with me; my career playing water polo was developing, I was invited to join the world’s best team and in the meantime I wanted to go to university. Ancsa was going to college, she wanted to get a diploma and she received a very good job offer. So things were hectic…”

Ancsa: “When Gergő was invited to Naples he took me with him and introduced me to the Italians as his fiancée. They were very surprised when during talks he asked for a brief break and came out to me in order to talk over the offer.

“They didn’t understand the situation but once I gave my backing – what else could I do – they turned to me with great respect as well. He got the offer in September and we had six months to prepare: I took my half-year exams and then asked for a year’s postponement.”

Ancsa comes from the countryside and has five siblings, Gergő is a single child from the city, and your natures are somewhat different. Was it easy to get along? How did you manage to agree on the number of children, for example?

Ancsa: “In my teens we moved to a farm but before that we had lived in Kecskemét and Szentes so I grew up in a small town environment. The move to Budapest was not easy, I was horrified by the smog.”

Gergő: “It was a big challenge to meet and accept Ancsa’s big family. But I am a team player so it was OK. It was interesting and exciting to get to know close up everybody from tots to students finishing school.”

Ancsa: “My youngest sibling was five months old when we first met. This was strange for me, not to speak of Gergő. We agreed on two children. Gergő would have been happy with one but I don’t think it is a good thing for a single child being alone. We stayed with two for a long time but the children grew up so fast that I started to say to Gergő: I’d like another. Thus our third daughter was born.”

What do you have in common? Gergő once said to me: “Together, Ancsa and I make a great team. It is a pleasure to do everything with her – watch a film, go walking, partying, playing sports and travelling”.

Ancsa: “We have a love of water polo in common, for example. I loved every second of what Gergő has spent a large part of his life doing. Even when he was physically distant. When he took part in Olympics, I didn’t go with him – firstly out of superstition, then because of the children – but in any case, team captain Dénes Kemény didn’t back the idea because he felt family members diverted the attention of players.

“But I closely followed and lived through the excitement of the preparations and matches because Gergő regularly called and told me everything: exactly what had happened to him, how he was, how he felt – all the sorts of things that you don’t share with others.”

Gergő: “Love of the homeland is also something we share, in the sense that we love travelling, we are always longing for the sea and the Mediterranean lifestyle, yet we always come home because we want to live here. We have the same principles as far as bringing up the children is concerned: we try to develop their personalities so that they not only receive but we can expect from them. We believe that wherever they live, they have to maintain certain standards towards their families and their wider communities. And we try to avoid the biggest pitfall, when the child sets the parents against each other, which is why we always ask them: ‘What did Mum (or Dad) say about this?’”

Ancsa: “We share our musical experiences, our interest in culture and history. Similarly, we are both open towards meeting new people. Naturally we enjoy ourselves in the company of water polo players but as it happens, of those we go out with on a regular basis none play water polo.”

Gergő: “I can always count on my fellow water polo players but I have always had another life: school, university, neighbours… I’ve always stayed a dual resident: Budapest and the VII district has the same place in my heart as Szada, where we have lived for more than 18 years.

“Since we have known each other, we have moved countless times, we have lived here in Hungary and abroad, we have experienced everything from being jobless to luxury; we have had successes and failures in teaching and careers, divorce and deaths among friends and our relatives. After all this, resolving an everyday situation appears pretty straightforward.”

Ancsa: “The two of us together are very good at sorting out problems; we have much in common, yet in many things our differences also work out. I explode easily, Gergő resembles a slow volcano. Our kids reckon it is better if Mum goes mad than when they hear roaring from the 2-metre-tall Dad…”

Gergő: “She is practical, I am more theoretical. She is the other half of my personality, the person who puts together the details. She hates putting off things, conflicts or tasks. Sometimes I ask for five seconds to react but generally I don’t get it. I would like to help her but by the time I am thinking of starting she is already doing it.”

Ancsa: “I don’t like waiting… Gergő has been at home for seven years but in the first 15 years he wasn’t here much; I couldn’t really wait for anybody. As a first-born, my father brought me up as a boy, probably that is why I like doing DIY and gardening so much. And of course, doing the housework and dealing with our children. For many years, Gergő disappeared for weeks and when finally he came home I didn’t want him to be the more strict parent. I, however, am consistently strict with them.”

Ancsa, wasn’t it tough being alone for so long? Gergő, wasn’t temptation too strong for you being far from Ancsa?

Ancsa: “When I was 20, I decided I would be the hinterland for my husband. It wasn’t difficult to resign my career playing water polo; I loved it but I was never as enthusiastic about it as he was. I did my things accordingly and I could always agree with the children: if there is training or a match, Daddy’s job always comes first.”

Gergő: “We have often talked through what would happen if Ancsa worked in an office for 8-10 hours a day. She would get home late in the evening, our children would be taken here and there and brought up by a babysitter, and we would give her a good proportion of our income. But this way she can be with them a lot and meanwhile she is always doing something: in Naples, for example, she taught children aquafitness and swimming, she was a guide and she also worked as a language teacher. She helps me a lot in my administrative matters and in our joint company; she provides motivation to many women at @Familymanager7 Instagram page, where she has more than 11,000 followers. As far as the other question goes…”

Ancsa: “A smart woman finds the way so that there is no temptation. We talk over everything, we play our cards face up. Honesty is sometimes painful but it pays off in the long run. And of course, this is the foundation of trust as well.”

Gergő: “What a man can love in a woman my wife has it all. And I greatly love everything in her, but mostly her purity of soul and sincerity. I consider her bad characteristics to be ‘part of the package’. I have seen many beautiful women but it never once crossed my mind that things could be better with another woman.”

“My principal topic is Hungary in the 20th century. I am particularly interested in events that cannot be ranked in major political trends, that are to do with everyday life and private lives. Periodicals, memoirs, diaries and personal reminiscences have become important sources for me. True, part of the profession does not accept these as full-right documents but even so there are ever more of us dealing with history from the ‘micro-angle’, from the viewpoint of individuals.”

In historical works dating from the Kádár period and even after the change of system, the Horthy era was portrayed as one of stagnation or rather reversal from the aspect of women’s emancipation. Your book ‘Modern, diplomás nő a Horthy-korban’ (Modern, educated women in the Horthy era) written with your co-author historian Balázs Sipos makes this image more nuanced and authentic.
“When we started research from primary sources, for example, statistics, periodicals writing about the situation of women, parliamentary speeches, acts, we were surprised to see how inaccurate earlier assessments had been.”

What picture did you get of women’s movements in the Horthy era? What sort of main trends were asserted in the period?
“The liberal Feminist Association, associated with the name Róza Bédy-Schwimmer, played a defining role before the First World War. However, after the war they lost their social opportunities, they withdrew and two of their leaders actually moved abroad. Their endeavours were only partly progressed by the similarly liberal associations of Bródy Ernőné and their journal, Dolgozó Asszonyok Lapja (Journal of Working Ladies).

“The social structure in the interwar period allowed room for manoeuvre primarily for conservative women’s movements, which professed not the internationalist and, to a certain extent, ‘manly’ trend of the earlier feminist movement but instead they represented feminine, motherly and national-based emancipation ambitions.

“They considered it important that the work of women be valued on an equal basis to that of men, that all university studies should be available to women and that they should receive suffrage. For example, those women graduates of universities and colleges who belonged to the inner circle of intellectuals of the public journal Magyar Női Szemle (Hungarian Women’s Review) wanted to show society that a woman’s intellectual professional career was not in contradiction with being a mother. Their organization rallied around Margit Techert Magyaryné.

“The most conservative women’s umbrella organization with the biggest membership of the time, The National Alliance of Hungarian Ladies (MANSZ) hallmarked by the name of Cécile Tormay, was partly with them but largely opposed. MANSZ’s journal was called A Magyar Asszony (The Hungarian Lady). Its member organizations supported the government’s revisionist policies and representation, and on the whole uniformly represented the principle of ‘ladies remaining at home’, which was justified first and foremost as protection of the nation. Of course, aside from these there were very many other smaller women’s associations. Non-lobbying, for example, charitable groups and press material directed at women communicated the image of active women interested in doing something for society.”

Several historians only apply the label ‘feminist’ to liberal or social democratic female activists, saying that they represented women’s genuine efforts at full equality of rights. They reckon that conservative women’s activism just fought for a ‘minimal programme’, partial results, in the meantime accepting the traditional roles of women. Do you think this is the actual situation?
“I consider this differentiation to be artificial since conservative women activists also called themselves feminists, although it is true that they distanced themselves from the combative suffragette branch of feminism considered to be ‘damaging to the nation’. The goal of their efforts at improving society was raising up disadvantaged women and children, but they also supported men in difficulty and they were very troubled by the fate of the country dismembered in the wake of the Trianon Treaty. I wouldn’t call, for example, a ‘minimal programme’ the fact that they were demanding universities be fully opened for women, or that the educated woman could continue her profession and vocation after marriage. We can use the term feminist for them as well, respecting their work and the fact that they also considered themselves like that.

“In many cases, I consider it unnecessary to differentiate between left wing and conservative feminists because the majority of their endeavours were identical. However, their style – rhetoric and use of words – was different.

“A revolutionary, harsh, aggressive stance stood far from conservative women at the level of word usage. The justifications for their emancipation ambitions also differed: they used biological arguments, but they also brought in principles of Christian creation when proving the equality of men and women, and they placed great emphasis on improving the country, furthering the prosperity of the nation, as well as healing war and Trianon traumas as being among the tasks of women.”

In their book, they call conservative women’s endeavours mother-based feminism, because they considered family and motherhood to be an outstanding positive value, and they wanted to reach the point where the role of working women should be compatible with their role as mothers.
“In the interwar period, many graduate women achieved this very thing. An increasing number had jobs while married and even after having children. It is true that they related to their work, their colleagues and factory workers with caring responsibility; social democratic women did the same thing with a slightly comradely disposition.”

Can one state that the development of the fate of women was significantly shaped by conservative feminism between the two world wars?
“Yes. The Association of Hungarian Women Graduates of University and College (established: 1925), or more accurately, those involved with their journal, Hungarian Women’s Review, who rallied around Margit Techert Magyaryné, formed one of the most significant groupings of women’s interest representation of the Horthy era.

“They were most effective at defending themselves against those strong views formulated most sharply by educational politician Gyula Kornis in his article from 1925: women are unsuitable for intellectual careers, their exclusive vocation is the family and motherhood, and this does not require higher education and a diploma.”

In the late 19th century, a huge social debate erupted over whether women’s physical condition and brain capacity made them at all suitable to fill intellectual positions bearing responsibility. Doctors, scientists, politicians voted for one side or the other.
“This dispute spilled into the first third of the 20th century, although the mass base of those professing women’s unsuitability gradually declined. Years later, Gyula Kornis himself also participated in the university private docent exam of philosopher Margit Techert Magyaryné and spoke highly of her.”

Who were the defining, influential female personalities of this period?
“It is difficult to pick out just a few. Margit Techert was a doctor of philosophy and a university professor, she edited a journal and she was the wife of Zoltán Magyary, an important scientist and statesman. I must mention from the conservative feminist circle, without covering everybody, Emma Ritoók, writer and aesthete, Mária Vendl, expert in minerology, Margit Prahács, musicologist, Edit Fél, ethnographer, Marianne Czeke, the first librarian – but they did not attempt to raise the profile of themselves, the association was characterized by sisterhood, they appeared to the outside world as a unified female camp. They had a separate room at the Budapest university, they held lectures and career advisory sessions, and they represented themselves in the leadership of the universities in Pécs and Debrecen.

“Their example and attitude had a great impact on women who wanted to study.

“Cécile Tormay represented the other end of the spectrum. In 1919, she founded the abovementioned MANSZ, which numbered several hundred thousand members by the second half of the 1930s. Her novels proved incredibly popular both in Hungary and abroad, she was editor in chief of the literary periodical Napkelet, and she became a celebrity.

“And of course we must not forget those special promoters of emancipation, the highly influential actresses of the day, for example, Lili Muráti, Mária Mezei and Katalin Karády. They projected the image of a self-aware, funny, liberated, erotically seductive woman interested in enjoying life. Films even reached women in the villages thus the divas of the period created fashion and became role models. It happened on more than one occasion that graduate women considered their influence to be a caricature of emancipation and they felt they actually harmed the cause.”

Did the association of graduate women have social campaigns?
“They tried very hard to remain politically neutral; in the journal they gave British, German and Soviet examples of ‘women’s achievements’. In practice, too, they wanted to show an example and exercise influence more through gentle persuasion and by pursuing careers in science.

“They regarded all their published studies and books as sowing seeds so that others would follow suit.

“But they also did charity work, they travelled out to the villages, organized female caretaker positions in factories and supported midwives and district nurses. They assisted middle schools operating on modest budgets with scholarships and donated furnishings for halls of residence. Their charitable activities were also ‘motherly’ in nature and primarily directed towards recruiting women for scientific careers.

“During the period preceding the war, the pace of modernization increased in all areas. Living conditions changed so that it no longer required a certain ideology for the transformation of social relations and roles.

“It is sufficient to consider the move away from wearing folk costume, the modernization of households, the reduction in the size of city dwellers’ apartments, and so on. All these changes in themselves meant that women’s roles and work had to be rethought.”

I find it surprising that even high-ranking statesmen supported the cause of women’s emancipation, work and higher education. For example, Kunó Klebelsberg, who declared that the more educated a woman was, the more she became aware of her inner value.
“We are the first to point this out in our book. Earlier, history works drummed into people that the Horthy era resulted in regression from the aspect of women’s emancipation, and there was absolutely no legislative programme that served their interests.

“Contrary to this, we actually see that during the Horthy era an ever-increasing number of women graduated from higher education, ever more were able to pursue salaried work besides caring for their families, and their cause found supporters in the highest circles.

“Although it is a fact that up until the Second World War total equality was not achieved in learning and employment, this was not exclusively a Hungarian phenomenon.”

What was the role of religious denominations in the women’s emancipation movements?
“Nuns who maintained their communities through work and were relatively independent of men have long been a role model for the working woman. Furthermore, it was a tradition among the Christian denominations for girls – at least girls from middle class families – to be educated. Indeed, at that time one could frequently hear that it was a battle to make a living, not every girl could expect to get a husband, so it was important to learn a profession in order to be able to keep oneself. For example, the books of higher elementary school teacher Jolán Gerely on career choices and self-help were printed by an ecclesiastical publisher and proved to be bestsellers. She recommended acceptable professions that paid a living wage for girls from a business point of view as well. The world in which women were seen as only capable of carrying out auxiliary work or jobs that meant they kept their hands clean had come to an end. They had to choose that profession where there was demand. Of course, she expressed the view that if at all possible, once the woman had married she should rather stay at home. But a woman could still live a complete life even if she did not find a husband, instead finding a vocation that allowed her to nurture her ambitions.”

The Christian feminist movement of Margit Slachta, the first female member of parliament in Hungary, was also significant. Members of the monastic community took part in social and political campaigns designed to raise women and families.
“The Catholic movement Society of Social Brethren extended throughout wide circles although their opponents threw the accusation at them that what they were doing was as irrelevant as scratching away at the tip of an iceberg. All church denominations had women’s movement groups, the Reformed, Evangelical and Israelite congregations also operated charitable associations undertaking social missions within their own areas.”

Charity and ‘feminine’ care are also social acts. We frequently undervalue social assistance campaigns from a movement point of view, even though they have a society-shaping influence.
“I also think like this. Even more so because undervaluing social work and its society-shaping influence can be observed even today.

“Naturally, we can say that the conservative women’s movement did not change all of society, it did not achieve all its goals, but if we look at individuals, for example, how many of them could go on to further education thanks to association scholarships, then in a year even ten people count because the possibilities for those ten improved significantly. Not to speak of the fact that there were some who, thanks to this, escaped from prostitution.”

The Second World War marked a sharp break in the history of women’s movements. What was successfully preserved and further developed under socialism?
“This was a sharp caesura in the life of major personalities as well, many died in the course of fighting or deportations. For example, Margit Techert and her husband committed suicide because of the brutalities of Soviet soldiers. In the case of a profoundly religious Catholic couple, this is an especially harrowing act. In the new post-war society, everything that was considered traditional and civil became an object of suspicion, so it is no surprise that in just a few years all civil and church organizations disbanded. Although universities were opened to women, the earlier gender-based discrimination was replaced with discrimination based on origin. Workplaces could not be chosen, they were allocated.

“The so-called period of socialism created a contradictory situation for women. It opened up many opportunities but at the same time it created specific exploitation. The traditional model of the man-woman relationship continued to function in social conditioning and in private life. Women became and were in one person wage-earners, wives, mothers, and domestic ‘workers’. Only a narrow social segment was interested in women’s inequalities.”

This is how we got to the change of system, 30 years ago, in 1989, when a new chapter opened, but that is the topic of another conversation.

 

Fortuitously, during the clear-out a Faludy researcher just happened to be on hand: József Gál, third year doctoral student of the Szeged humanities faculty, who is writing his dissertation on the works of the poet known by many simply as Uncle Gyuri. Although it is not possible to say with 100% certainty, still it is highly likely (based on calligraphy and his biography) that the script was indeed written by Faludy himself.

The inscription may have found its way onto the piece of furniture when György Faludy held (full house) lectures at the university in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

József Gál didn’t hesitate and he set about bargaining for the table with Zsófia Szilágyi, head of the Hungarian Literature Department. His persistence paid off (he offered six chairs and a table in return) and he finally became the proud owner of the relic, which he was unable to keep in one piece. He had the part containing the signature glazed and a photo of the original state of the table can be seen in the head office of Forrás periodical in Kecskemét.

However, György Faludy is not only currently playing tricks on his colleagues at Szeged University, but on the literature canon, too. Mainly by his being unable to find his place in it. According to József Gál, the reason for this neglect is that the poet who spent many years in emigration and returned to Hungary in 1988, and who then got mixed up in a series of frivolous situations in his life and depicted these in his works, “always positioned himself outside ‘grand  politics’ while he always had an opinion about nearly all political changes”. This may go some way to explaining why nobody is lobbying for the popularization and publishing of Faludy’s works that have stirred up today’s literary scene just a little. Although the researcher notes that he reckons Faludy is currently not on the periphery but instead “in purgatory, awaiting a decision on whether he is to be moved up or down”.

It is well worth paying a visit to this poetic purgatory because with the help of poems one gets a better sense of and feels closer to historical situations, which have become dry facts to learn in the pages of textbooks.

Anyone interested in having an overview of the Rákosi era from the viewpoint of those imprisoned, or would like to better understand why Hungarians took up arms in 1956, would be well advised to bury themselves in his work Prison Poems 1950–53. It is sufficient to mention, from among the many sufferings, his internment in Kistarcsa, the underground cells of the state security police (ÁVH) and the labour camp at Recsk, where György Faludy conceived one of his most important poems in 1952: Monologue on Life and Death. Gál reckons that in terms of quality, this poem on Hungarianhood can easily stand alongside Miklós Radnóti’s work I Cannot Know. Whereas the verse by Radnóti took its final shape prior to forced labour at Lager Heidenau, Faludy’s, according to his own statement, was born in his head in an ÁVH cell and, lacking a pen, the author shared it verbally with his own cellmates. Monologue on Life and Death recited by Faludy himself can be seen on YouTube by clicking here, and as they say on social media, if you only listen to one poem today, make sure it is this one.

The PhD student reveals that these days, legacy research is no easy matter. The main reason for this is that it is difficult to access existing memorabilia due to complex inheritance ownership rights. József Gál is working on the collection of the poet’s correspondence between 1956 and 1963, in addition to which he is gathering data primarily in the State Security Services Historical Archives where a dossier containing a significant number of documents was kept.

He is trying to reconstruct what was probably the most productive and significant period in the life of the poet (between 1945 and 1963) largely based on reports by ÁVH informers.

The fact that it is possible to examine the life of a significant literary figure from the point of view of state bodies exercising power may bring about new results, says the researcher.

Since the quantity of Faludy correspondence is not far off that of the diaries of Márai, József Gál is in no easy position and unfortunately he does not have much competition. The poems of Uncle Gyuri are starting to drop out of the secondary school curriculum and his other important patriotic poem, Ode to the Hungarian Language, is heard increasingly rarely at recital competitions. Ever fewer people know what the dedication that turned up just a few weeks ago means: ‘György Faludy was here’. An important oeuvre is beginning to fade from memory.

My daughter was 11 months old when she was diagnosed as being fructose intolerant, 13 months old when lactose intolerance was registered, and nearly three years old when they discovered a milk protein allergy. This is because she produced atypical symptoms: she did not have eczema, rashes, and she was developing properly. In vain did I tell the doctor at the monthly check-up that the child had considerable stomach pains and cried a lot (virtually all day), because she ticked all the boxes for development given her age (and I didn’t slam my fist on the table sobbing that the days were simply intolerable), they just waved me off saying ‘this is the three-month colic’, and then later ‘there are some who go until six months’.

When she was 11 months, the doctors accused me saying, why did I want to take her to a gastroenterologist, after all, only stick-thin children were taken there, or those with blood in their stool, while she was in good physical condition.

This much was true, she really had developed nicely. Only that with us, right from the beginning, the days were solely about trying to calm our baby because she was always crying. I constantly rocked her and of course tried all the other ways of easing the pain, from massage and antispasmodic products through homeopathy right up to the wrap-her-in-swaddling-and-hold-her-close therapy – of course, as far as was sensible. Unhappily, nothing helped.

Now I know that she was having spasms and her stomach was extremely painful. Then, however, all we could see was that she cried and was fussy, and when she had got a bit bigger it appeared that she was slightly hysterical. We never had the first smile...

When guests came, she watched them for a time and then the spasms started again and everything would begin over again (crying, rocking until she went to sleep again). Based on the questions asked by the district nurse and doctor, I began to suspect that my baby was autistic, but there were very many other factors that went against this and my husband always reassured me.

When finally at the age of 13 months it transpired that the baby had fructose malabsorption and lactose intolerance, one or two months after the diet started the doctor admitted that he had begun to suspect behavioural disorder and would never have considered that some sort of stomach/intestinal/dietary problem could be behind the serious, introverted, sometimes tearful mood of a baby.

A month after we started the diet (dairy and fructose free), the change was already noticeable to those around her.

She slept better from the start (something we were even more pleased about), she smiled more often, became happier and more at ease. Of course, in company she still remained the slow-to-relax child who she had been earlier, and this characteristic carried over into the creche. When she started kindergarten she was more open and interested, but she remained basically a contemplative type. Just a few months later, however, I noticed that she was once again turning inwards, she frequently had headaches, sometimes stomach aches, she didn’t play much with her brother and anyway was very enervated and bad tempered. By complete chance it turned out that there had been a change of caterer.

It appeared incredible that the food would have such an effect on a child, but after much discussion, experimenting and trials we reached the point where I started cooking her kindergarten menu for the whole day. A month or two later, a miracle happened.

My daughter opened up in the kindergarten, she no longer played alone on the carpet or in the sandpit, but with her classmates. She made friends. One day the teacher told me that she had been in a fight (she had been protecting herself and justice). Good God! I reckon no other parent would have been as happy as I was on hearing such news. Another month went by and they came to tell me how cute and mischievous my baby was! These reports warmed my heart no end.

Then as things worked out, we had another go at canteen catering because on top of eight hours work, housekeeping and the children it was a terrible strain cooking the kindergarten menu every day (free from everything). After just two weeks the teacher asked how long we would be trying this way because even now she also had seen a change in the child. In the end we managed six weeks. By then my daughter was coming out of kindergarten in a bad mood every day, once again we were starting every morning battling the I-don’t-want-to-go-to-kindergarten hysteria, and one morning she even started shouting with her father in front of the teacher. Every afternoon my nerves were in a mess because of her behaviour and perhaps it will come as no surprise to anyone that after a month and a half I was back cooking. One or two weeks later, she was back to normal, loving kindergarten and forming friendships.

Even though we have a mass of experience, I am also frequently surprised by things.

It may be that there is no scientific research on the connection between diet, nutritional allergy/sensitivity and behaviour, but what we experienced in this regard over the past few years is a fact.

The food intolerance of my daughter resulted in the Babakonyha fructose and lactose free diet blog, where I rarely spoke about personal matters, instead sharing fructose-, lactose-, milk- and egg-free recipes with mothers in a similar situation. But sometimes I found that I was also fed up (approximately once every two years) and freaked out on the Facebook page linked to the blog. On one such occasion the mother of a young girl woke up to the realization that her daughter could be fructose intolerant as well. Luckily their doctor was open to the idea and the examination, the mother moved quickly and it turned out that she was right. Since then, if her child keeps to a low fructose diet, she is good tempered, funny and obedient, as far as any child can be.

Thanks to the blog, I receive many letters from people sharing their experiences with me, making enquiries and asking questions. From these letters it is apparent that eczema is not the only typical symptom for a milk allergy, but for example constant upper respiratory illnesses, asthma-like bronchitis, while with fructose it is constant stomach aches, fussiness and introverted behaviour. It is important never to generalize. Just because your baby’s tummy is hurting, he/she is picky with food or breaks out in hysterics, this does not necessarily mean he/she certainly has a food intolerance. No, definitely not. It really can be a weather front, teething, a bad day and I could go on (I know them all, we went through every single one of them).

Since the baby was the first in the family, we only slowly came around to the realization that we could have been right all along, and the developmental path that our child went down was not usual. One thing is certain: if this is a long drawn-out state, and the mother is on the brink of what she can bear, then it is well worth seeking out a doctor one can trust and who is ready to check out all the possibilities.

It is possible to refute any connection between behavioural disorder and dietary intolerance or food allergy, and I admit that in part the doctors are right because one cannot immediately rush off to the gastroenterologist with every child showing behavioural disorder symptoms. Instead, it is worth examining carefully the environment, background etc. However, if one thinks about how we, adults, feel if after eating something our stomach starts hurting or gets spasms, how as a result we don’t want to do anything, how little we feel like smiling, laughing, how enervated we become, and are happiest just lying on the bed until it goes away, then this is worthy of consideration. And more so with a child, an infant, who is unable to express all these feelings. This is why I would recommend that we pay attention to our children intelligently, listen to our mothering instincts, because as my experience shows, it only rarely deceives.

You can invent the wheel now, but in fact, it has already been invented.

OK, that was our childhood, a long time ago, forty or more years – but as adults, we were also following the same pattern, this was natural. When we built our house, we invested considerable energy and labour into digging out a space for a large rainwater cistern, which we have used ever since to water the garden. (They used the tank for something else before, it would have been thrown out and we asked for it.) Our house is the sort that has been built for centuries: brick walls, tiled roof, wood windows and doors; it breathes, it works, it is no bigger than it needs to be, it is not hyper-insulated, there is no air-conditioning. Later on, we swapped gas heating for wood-burning to reduce our energy dependency. Not only was there never 23 degrees warmth in the winter, but 20 degrees was rare enough.

We planted fruit trees in the empty plot that had once been arable land, and virtually not a year has gone by that we didn’t plant more and more. Every year we make jam from the fruit of these trees – sometimes there is a bounteous crop, sometimes not, this the risk in agriculture – and then eat it throughout the year. The poorer quality produce goes for pálinka (fruit brandy). We slaughter pigs and this provides the year’s sausages and ham; we buy cold cuts only rarely. We are able to differentiate good mushrooms from bad, and each year we pick a lot of mushrooms which are preserved and last until the winter. (Of course, a mushroom expert also double-checks them.) We’ve always had a vegetable garden – I have already written about what is so good in this. To this day we do not drink bottled soft drinks or mineral water. We do, however, have reusable soda siphons. We put empty jam jars aside for jams and preserved produce, paper goes to recycling or burning in the winter, and all the other waste (there is not much) is collected selectively. And we compost just as we saw at home. We have always spent a lot of time outdoors, as children, too, and we went on many excursions with our children. We learnt, and we have taught, the basic rules of behaviour when in the countryside, one of the principal ones being that all trash is always brought home. We have never been under the spell of brands, not in terms of clothes, cars or anything else.

But these are not vows, they are not resolutions, nor are they great achievements to be shouted about – they are the natural way of living.

With some differences or other, this is how things are with others who grew up in a tradition-respecting, conservative, frequently rural environment. The sort who did not first read the expression protection of creation a month ago, but who heard it in their childhood at scripture lessons, in the scout camp and in their own small communities. Or rather not heard it, but lived it.

In this inherited knowledge, the emphasis has always been on human life. Only by man we never meant ourselves, but the human community.  We look after the values of nature and do not consume excessively for the good of the human community here on Earth. And that's why we are looking after it now.

Cliché as it is again, the point is that we don't say it, we do it.

And, naturally, we also seek how we can do things even better. But that’s the reason why campaign-like climate protection conducted on Facebook sometimes appears to be straining, bringing a smile to the face.

Of course, this does not mean that there is no sense in banning drinking straws. Let’s just say, however, that here, in the Carpathian Basin, I am somewhat sceptical about the matter of bamboo-handled toothbrushes.

Apples for trash

There was a Subcarpathian Hungarian folk tale in my textbook at primary school, in which the son of a rich man loaded up two wagons with apples and set off on a journey to find his wife-to-be. He didn’t stop until he had reached the seventh village, where he started to sell his produce in the middle of the market. However, he asked not for money but rubbish for his apples. All the rich girls took him tons of trash and in return received delicious apples, but the boy didn’t like any of them so he continued on his way.

Finally, just one apple remained, the finest and the reddest. This is when the poor girl appeared, with barely any rubbish in the bottom of her basket. The boy was looking for exactly such a wife, they married and lived happily ever after.

However much I wracked my brains, I simply couldn’t work this story out. I was puzzled. As the daughter of a ten-sibling family living in a hamlet in Baranya county, and later on in a farm in Kiskunság without conveniences or rubbish collection, it was strange that what for us was natural was for others of such value. Of course, at that time there was not even a whisper of such things as the ecological footprint, the zero waste movement, and we similarly had not an inkling of the holy trinity of reduce-reuse-recycle. My parents moved from the Budapest downtown to the countryside in order to get back to nature and produce what was needed. My mother learnt all about growing vegetables, kneading bread and the secrets of making preserves and jams from Swabian housewives, my father took care of the animals, while we turned over their fresh hay in the summer heatwaves and in return they gave us fresh milk which we made into cottage cheese, sour cream and cheese. Our life was an exciting adventure but sometimes I longed for the shop which was an unreachable distance by foot from our farm, because there one could get fresh yeast which gave a totally different (and for me much better) tasting bread than the sourdough matured in the summer sun.

Why was there such a high price to pay for paper-wrapped yeast, or the petrol used to get to the shop?

Although we never spoke about it, we received a truly environmentally-conscious upbringing, yet as an adult it still appeared totally natural that the needs of my little family and our convenience should be at the centre of my attention. I personally experienced how easy it is for a person to get swept away by the individualistic social orientation, and how aware one must be in order not constantly to chase after the latest, the biggest, the most modern and the most beautiful.

Proximity and illustration

Despite being aware of the incredible degree to which our lifestyle is polluting our environment, and that change cannot be delayed any more, we still make every effort – with the help of various self-protective mechanisms – to sweep the facts under the carpet. Through denial, we don’t have to face up to the burdensome realization, which also plays into our hands, that the truly serious problems are happening far from us (the melting of the polar icecaps and glaciers, rising sea levels, ever more frequent storms and tornadoes, the extinction of flora and fauna) and, for the moment at least, they do not have a direct impact on us. According to psychology, the fact of proximity basically determines how much the given case moves us emotionally or spurs us into action. As long as the problem is not evident in our immediate environment, then we won’t even lift a finger to help.

Nobody escapes? Does the much talked-about mid-life crisis get everyone sooner or later?
“Developmental psychology categorizes the life of a person into approximately eight major stages. The role in life of a teenager is different to someone in their forties. The joys and troubles are different. The current of human life cannot be stemmed, it cannot be arrested by violence or ideologically, therefore the great changes in mid-life cannot be avoided either.

“Unfortunately, this is often called a ‘crisis’. It is necessary to see that this is in fact a ‘normal’ change. The end of every stage of our life is a crisis because we grow out of the lifestyle we have enjoyed so far and we have not yet grown into the new, but this is not bad: growth, maturity are the natural paths of development.

“The maturation crisis should be used for good: quit certain things from an earlier stage of life, mourn, and open towards the new with interest. ‘Crisis’ can be used for purification, forgiveness, sorting out, but also for discovering new energy, openness, learning. So a good ‘crisis’ can be a springboard and this is particularly true since the crucifixion of Christ.”

Is there always some great loss – partnership, financial, health etc. – in the background, or on coming into their forties do people instinctively draw up some kind of reckoning?
“Jung says that the first half of life is about collecting: when young, we ‘acquire’ a profession, qualifications, a household, children, cultural elements and money – in the second half of life it is not possible to live according to the same ‘collecting’ programme. Then comes the profundity. It often happens that somebody doesn’t want to, or simply cannot, step onto this narrower pathway, but instead wants to return to his/her twenty-year-old self and restart the ‘collecting’ programme. New companion, different religion, cosmopolitan lifestyle, untried things… Of course, these things can anaesthetize for a time but the deep-seated ball-bearings of our life will not allow us to lie to ourselves forever.

“You cannot run away from the big questions of mid-life: rather, you should embrace them boldly, and especially go after those who have moved on well.

“I don’t like using the expression ‘instinctively’ for spiritual matters. Instinct operates at the physical, biological, animal plane. The Soul rather ‘inspires’ one to the great questions, insights, profundity. We can be confident that the Soul leads everyone in every stage of life to the true happiness of the given age – but this never happens instinctively, mechanically, but instead in free, prayerful cooperation.”

The intensity and duration of the mid-life crisis differs according to the individual. What is it that determines how long it lasts and how we get through it?
“It depends on many factors. Firstly, we don’t drop into mid-life ‘innocent as a new-born lamb’: the big question is what we did earlier. To what extent did we resolve our earlier tasks in life, how many unfinished important matters did we put off, and even how much burden and sin did we amass, something that is not so easy to settle? Good models are very important: don’t chase after false prophets but seek out the true ‘elite’ who have gone ahead correctly. Man is a social being: good friends, long-lasting relationships, family are precious for us. Whoever possesses these has a bulwark in times of crisis. Spiritual maturity is essential: for Christians, prayer, the Bible, services, a spiritual leader, theology, ethical learning. According to Jung, an unsettled relationship to God always lies behind states of disorder cropping up in the second half of life. It may be that the problems appear in the guise of family, profession, psychology, culture, but Jung was of the belief that the root of these was frequently to be found in neglect of one’s relationship to God and insufficient spiritual life.

“Someone is smart who is smart in progress, that is, they experience the joy of every stage of life, they are capable of bidding farewell to a past stage of life and are open to the next.”

The false life-ideal whispered by advertisements and social media only amplifies this but fundamentally, why are we so afraid of the passage of time?
“One of the components of the mid-life crisis is the passage of time. It is like when you reach the top of a peak and there is no more going up, just down. You can see that you will not live as much as you have already. You see roughly what opportunities there are left to establish a family. You suspect what levels you can still reach in your career and what will be unattainable. You start to be dumbfounded at all those things you’ve never seen, never experienced, never tried, places never reached. And you’ll begin to glimpse the likely health difficulties, too. The passage of time is a hard press indeed.

“According to a German moralist, Klaus Demmer, the person who has not come to good decisions (good companions, educators, common sense, religion, ethics, culture etc.) will be forced by the press of time to make major decisions. The passing of time must be taken seriously. The great opportunity for Christians is that Christ revealed the entirety of time, the way in which history, and in it my life, moves on. This way, we can live all stages of life according to these eternal perspectives, we can handle opportunities and lack of fulfilment. We have to realize that the Christian faith is protective: it helps one to live in a true way in every stage of life and it represents a protection factor at times of crises, during the mid-life ‘crisis’.”

In the optimal case, a well-functioning domestic relationship can be a refuge. But what is the situation if the mid-life crisis crashes on the husband and wife at the same time and they both feel that the other is to blame for their unhappiness?
“In the optimal case, we marry for better or worse, that is, we can be companions in times of crisis as well. It may be burdensome if the ‘stars are misaligned’ at the same time but the opportunities in this must also be recognized. One can be more empathetic in understanding how the other feels. Joint steps can be sought out which will help both sides. Common friends can be mobilized. New habits can be taken up together, the partners can immerse themselves spiritually, they can also attend a learning course together.

“Blaming each other is a massive trap.

“On the one hand, there will certainly be some truth in it; when we marry, we do not take a god as our partner but a person with all their faults – however marvellous a being they are. Through one-sidedness, we caused a lack of fulfilment in our spouse: because of me, he/she did not become what he/she wanted, never managed to get where he/she wanted, his/her life didn’t become what he/she wanted, and this must be humbly acknowledged. The person who has not become reconciled in the course of life can truly accumulate a lot of dissatisfaction and this may reach boiling point at mid-life. So my advice is: humbly acknowledge that we have contributed to the lack of fulfilment of the other. Although we shouldn’t just look at this, we have to see how we developed each other, how much joy we had, how we took each other towards salvation – but it is good to reflect on the lack of fulfilment. A part must be let go, but maybe there is something that was a long-held dream of the other, and it would be great to fulfil that. This is how I took my wife to Venice after promising her we’d go for 20 years.”

It is a sad fact that nearly a half of all marriages end in divorce. When it appears that it is all over, why is it still worth carrying on?
“I would say just two things about the high number of divorces and the degradability of relationships. On the one hand, there is a dreadful lack of placing theology more at the centre of our lives. Theological truths cannot be footnotes at major moments of crisis in our lives; instead, they have to be the engine, the leading force, the inspiration. It is sad when we reach major decisions on the basis of instincts, desires, fears, or even merely at ‘humanist level’, on the basis of psychological or sociological aspects. Theological truths offer strengths, perspectives, alternatives, models of coping. They help one live.

“Of course, one is tired by the middle of one’s life if one wants to run only with human strength! A friend of mine who runs marathon distances said once: in order to run the marathon, one only needs enough muscle strength to do half the distance. Spiritual strength is needed for the other half. The same is true of life: it’s not easy to run to the end just using human strength.

“Theology is able to bring in certain aspects that purely secular sciences cannot, thus it is capable of answering the question ‘why is it worth persevering?’ in wider frames. Those for whom this horizon opens can take wing and fly. The other important aspect is that we talked ourselves into major decisions: that is, there is no such thing as an atomized ‘me’ who enters into a decision and then can step out of it without losses. If I talk ‘myself’ into a major decision, I identify with it, then by reneging on the decision I give up on myself, too. I must say that you should stick to your major decisions because they are who you are. I consider the expression ‘dynamic loyalty’ to be important: loyalty cannot be static (we keep doing the same things we did 20 years ago…), it must be dynamic. Decisions reached at one time must be increasingly allowed to unfold: from a mustard seed one can grow a large tree with a fine crop. The question of God comes up particularly keenly especially around mid-life; responses to questions of the passage of time, the meaning of life, life after death cannot be avoided. It is important for everybody to look into the eyes of God in a matured state: having shed the childish-youthful devoutness and non-devoutness, and relate to God as a mature adult.”

It is half past nine in the morning and the day has started with a group skill development class in the 17th district Völgyzugolyház. Nothing in the house is as I had imagined it.  In the house ‘furnished’ with tents, musical instruments, hammocks, wall bars and a variety of toys, the first thing I see is a hair dryer – one of the therapy teachers is using it to keep a few colourful crepe paperchains floating in front of the children seated around her. “The application of basal stimulation is extremely important, but Petra, our therapy teacher, will tell you more about this,” Zsuzsanna, one of the founders of Völgyzugolyház, starts our conversation. “These children require 24-hour-a-day supervision. They have to struggle with many things and are helped in this not only by their families but the teaching team who have a variety of professional backgrounds,” says Zsuzsanna.

Zsuzsanna Somlai and Katalin Borbély Horváthné established Völgyzugolyház Foundation in 2017 with the objective of creating a space, family programmes and a new educational format for seriously handicapped children. It is no secret that they, too, are affected: both are bringing up severely and multiply handicapped children.

“We come from the same place as the parents who come to us: earlier, we also went with the kids from one development centre to the next.”

“Having been unable to find a suitable and inclusive school, we set up Völgyzugolyház. At the moment, four development specialists, one therapy teacher assistant and a manual therapist, who all work different hours, join the four children. We plan to extend the enrolment of children as we find more specialists,” says Katalin Borbély Horváthné.

“In the case of severely handicapped children, quite often just one person is not enough when it comes to development and caring, taking into account the child’s weight, the level of mobility handicap, unexpected epileptic seizures or orthopaedic problems demanding great care,” adds Zsuzsanna.

Whereas in state institutions one carer has to look after several children, in Völgyzugolyház there is one expert to each child.

Zsuzsanna and her team bit off almost more than they could chew when they set about realizing their own special educational concept, which they believe is capable of offering an alternative to the existing system for looking after seriously and multiply disabled children. The ‘prototype’ of their concepts can be found in Vanília Street in Budapest’s 17th district. “It is important to make it clear, this is an experimental model. Family development day-care (CSAFNA) is not designed to perfect the existing institutional formats but to offer an alternative alongside existing educational and care institutions. Our aim is that severely, multiply handicapped children are also able to fulfil their schooling attendance requirements of a minimum 20 hours a week as set down in the act on public education. Unfortunately, across the country as a whole two-thirds of concerned children do not meet this standard. Another of our goals is to offer afternoon day-care facilities for children. All this is organized at local, community level, thereby guaranteeing that we are truly reacting to the needs of families,” says Zsuzsanna.

The Foundation intends to have CSAFNA officially recognized, and to do this they have reached out to the Ministry of Human Capacities. Zsuzsanna and her team would like to have professional and content frameworks laid down that would regulate and assist in making their work fully efficient. But they also want to make sure that any implemented system is not overregulated and that the finalized structure could be realized within other districts of the capital or even in the countryside.

But let’s get back to Völgyzugoly! At the moment, there are 20 classes a week in the house on loan from the local government, made up of child developmental care and individual and group activities over a total of three days – currently, this is how the founders see their abovementioned concepts realizable. “We are receiving a considerable amount of attention from specialists, institutions, parental NGOs and families because we are providing a much-needed service. Those people who work here – who, by the way, are employees of Standardized Special Education Methodological Institute (EGYMI) – can travel with us not along well-worn pathways but totally new routes, they can develop their own concepts, which demands far more independent and creative thinking.”

“It is a great pleasure to be taking part in the sort of initiative that perhaps others will pursue after us,” says Petra Bircsák, therapy teacher, following one of the group intellectual development classes.

In the course of their day-to-day activities, special needs experts try to create situations where the children feel they can actively influence the day’s activities. “Everyone has their own song that they use to identify themselves at the beginning of the day. This is the communicator, they use this to say hello,” says Petra showing me the device. “If, let’s say, I stop the blowing, I ask my class, who would like me to continue. Then one of the children gives a sign. This method is useful because it makes them feel that they have free choice.”

Each week the children deal with a different topic in individual and group classes. When I was there it was the turn of spring weather, so the day was all about the wind, sunshine and rain. “Because they have less developed sensory organs, we use the practical sessions to give them experience that will help in understanding. They learn to pay attention and of course we invest particular emphasis in communication,” says Petra about the basal stimulations mentioned earlier.

“This is the yes-no tool,” the therapy teacher says showing me another device. “If, for instance, I see that somebody does not want to complete the given task, by using this device I can find out what he/she really would like to do.”

Every object gives a different sound, is a different shape or colour. But while working, special needs teachers also use body language and gestures. “We can establish a connection with them even by lifting a hand. We also have motional equipment that is necessary, for instance, in developing balance,” notes Petra.

In the meantime, Zsuzsa, a mother of one of the children, joins the conversation. “Every time we step in through the door, my son is smiling from ear to ear. He goes home from here exhausted because he has done so many things; some are the sorts of things that I cannot give him at home,” the mother relates. When I ask her how she found out about the work of the foundation, she tells me that several people told her about this place while she was in the street and even on the bus. “I like it a lot that there is a teacher for every child. My seven-year-old son has not been bored for a single second since he started coming here. You can also see how happy he is.

“Of course, it was also important to have a family-like atmosphere and being here is just like being at home. Until now I had to be with my son around the clock, but now I have time for other things, for example, my partner and I can plan joint programmes…” 

Völgyzugolyház is a ‘work in progress’, it is not an institution where the parents can just drop off their children. Here, everyone mutually collaborates in the interests of the children. “We started off from a single children’s room in 2016, after which we had to wait for a year to get our own building. We renovated the house where we are today over the course of an entire year, but luckily we are all surrounded by a supportive environment. We received huge outside help in the building work and the families concerned also did their bit in the renovation. One of the fathers undertook to do the parquet flooring, another plumbed in the dishwasher and did the tiling,” says Zsuzsanna in winding up the chat. The foundation’s next project will be doing up the garden, part of the funding for which has already been earmarked in a tender supporting local communities. As I travel home from Völgyzugolyház, it passes through my mind that I would be happy to do my own bit in this joint effort.