An institution can be family-friendly when its director is as well. Bethesda is one of the most family-friendly hospitals in Hungary. You have five siblings, five children and soon five grandchildren. What does family mean in your life?
“Family for us is an extremely important, living institution. My ancestors going back many generations were large and cohesive families. In different historical situations, only family represented a fixed point, this is how we survived communism.

“We are six siblings in all – I am second in line – and there are 37 cousins. Our small – to some, big – family fits in to this multi-generational great family.

“I consider my parents, my two grandfathers and several uncles to be my role models. They were marvellous characters, they lived in natural faith in God, practically, ready to act and in sustaining love. They had no suffering religiosity, no glazed kindness. They were true to life, humorous, genuine. They underwent countless trials yet they always stood by their principles and faith.” 

Is there anything to do with your family that means you became a paediatrician and then director?
“Partly socialization, and partly character may be the reason that I have a qualification as a paediatrician and anaesthesiologist-intensive therapy specialist. When I started university, intellectually speaking I was most attracted to psychiatry. But I was always involved with young children; I learnt about and got to love the world of children thanks to my own siblings and my many cousins. My specialist medical work demands the ability to reach decisions very quickly and concentrated action, this suits my character. I became a manager early on – I think largely as a result of my extremely intensive acquisition of professional experience, my strong sense of purpose and the social routine deriving from coming from a large family. In our wider family, the most popular profession is teaching, but there are many doctors and nearly all of them are paediatricians, one of my own sons included. Not only do I work in a managerial position, but my siblings are largely in this area, too, and as I see it, the potential for this is in my children as well.”

Not forgetting your wife, who is a deputy head of department...
“I was a classmate of Anikó. She comes from the world of kulaks, a child of a family from the settlement of Túrkeve, contrary to our urban, middle class, large family background. We came from very different environments, to this day we are still shaping our own little world, which from several angles resembles ours, yet she also brought along countless elements. Her grandparents were hard-working peasants, and her parents – similarly to my ancestors – were badly damaged by communism. As thrifty people, they were able to provide solid financial security in comparison with our more easygoing attitude to life. In the end, the two different cultures tended to complement one another. My wife is a quiet Kun girl with a determined opinion. She is a highly intelligent, well-read, thoughtful person. I am quick to reach decisions and prefer action; she is slower, and more hesitant, but a persistent type. We have much to learn from one another and it was not always easy that our reflexes were different. At one time we often quarrelled, and we occasionally still do because of this, but on the whole, I reckon this has a good impact on the family because it opens up lines of communication.”

You became a manager early on so I suppose the raising of your five children fell more to your wife, despite which she did not give up working. On top of this, she has been your subordinate for years…
“The drive of the profession caught me very early on, I worked a massive amount and indeed I became a manager quite soon. However, given her character and in line with her role as a mother, she became a children’s radiologist, which is a far more closely bound and closed world, more monotonous and rational work, and easier to harmonize with family life. It was a good compromise. Anikó has enormous energy and is able to bear stress on both fronts. Even so, I played my part in family tasks. Our parents, primarily her mother, helped a great deal, but my parents were always on hand to help out.

“In other words, the extended family provided the background for both raising children and work, and there was no situation in which we didn't have immediate help..

“As far as the boss-subordinate relation goes, we studied together as university students and later on we worked together. I was not yet director when she returned to work. It was better that it worked out this way. I think we can handle this situation perfectly. We rarely talk about work at home, we look on it as different tasks and not a hierarchical question. After the initial surprise, everyone in the hospital accepts it as natural and nobody lobbies via my wife. Instead, I had to make sure that her department did not suffer a disadvantage because initially my reflex was not to make any exceptions for her. By now, I reckon I have got the proportion right. She likewise takes part in meetings like all the others; if she has to, she’ll use arguments, not infrequently even going against me, but this is right and proper. I weigh up her personal feedback. She has a critical nature, she mainly notes what she doesn’t like, which of course sometimes I remark on.”

Still, five young children for two very busy doctors who love their profession cannot have been easy...
“Children liberate me! I adore being with my children and now my grandchildren, they represent rest and recuperation. But it is a fact that we lived in a heightened state, both of us put in massive amounts of duty time and I was on call 24-7 for decades. This meant that I would dash into the hospital at any time and from anywhere. Our children got used to us not having a typical lifestyle, but one with a lot of flexibility and adaptation. They didn’t complain at the time but since then it turned out that they didn’t necessarily enjoy it. I sense that they are now compensating for this: in their lives they make greater effort to ensure secure and peaceful situations. But I am still convinced that overall, their extremely lively childhood had a good impact on them: they are all flexible people ready to act.”

Has your lifestyle changed as grandparents?
“These days it is frequently just the two of us since the children are not at home on weekdays. Anikó continues to work hard, she has several jobs, she is frequently on call and duty. I also work 10-14 hours a day but in a more flexible schedule. Our children count on us, we have a quite intense relationship. If everything works out, I spend an afternoon with my grandchildren each week, and my wife is with them for a day after her on-duty. They ask for help when it is necessary but they have their own world so we are in the right place as grandparents. In fact, the centre of family life has shifted to the Balaton, where we have managed to build a large ‘Hosting house’. If I go back three generations, there was always such a spacious house serving as the meeting point for the family, located in various parts of the country. Our children spend a lot of time there and we rush down there, too, when we can.”

Have you any time for a hobby or voluntary work?
“I love my work but a lot of other things as well. For example, running. We have a team made up of colleagues, I was the slowest but I want to improve through a regime of consistent exercise. I enjoy playing tennis, we go every week with one of my sons and my nephews; this is the only sport that I am still competitive in. I would also mention skiing and tarot card games – we regularly do both with friends and family. The arts are of fundamental importance so each week we go at least once to the theatre or a concert, sometimes the cinema, and we read a lot (I mainly read poetry). We really love travelling and when she can, my wife accompanies me on business trips. Last year, for example, we packed a lot in, we travelled to Japan and America, but besides that each spring we go with one or two couples we know to some exciting destination, this year, for example, we went to the Basque Country. Wherever we are, galleries are my most important target. We have many friends, both within and outside the hospital, but we also get on very well with my siblings and we spend a lot of time together.

“I consider the Hungarians beyond the border to be very important, I frequently take part in various events, health screenings, lectures, courses – most frequently in the sub-Carpathian region and Transylvania.”

You espouse your faith as a professional and a manager but we don’t know much how you experience that as a private person.

“Just as my ancestors, we too concentrate on our everyday life and not on solemnity and formalities, living our faith in strong, Christian communities. However, we have all had to go through that ‘crisis situation’ when the faith received from home and lived in communities becomes a personal, God experience. Thank God, our parents also inspired us for this and we, siblings, also inspired each other. This freedom is very important for us, we received that attitude towards life in which it is worth living, but there was no obligatory system of form.

“It is a special gift that we grew into three churches: my father was Catholic, my mother was Reformed, my grandmother on my father’s side was Lutheran. Authentic lives lived in different framework systems had a strong impact on us. Today, I feel at home in all the churches.

“My religious life is today more solitary and individual than it used to be: in the morning, we leave home with the Reformed daily prayer, I live a contemplative, meditative life of prayer, and every year I attend a retreat. Sometimes we attend Catholic mass and sometimes the Reformed, or not infrequently Evangelical service.”

Anna Dévény, ‘Aunt Panni’, spent nearly 40 years perfecting her method. She devoted her entire life to this and refused to give up when she found herself working in the midst of attacks on her professional standing. Right to the end she believed that the Creator had entrusted her with a special task. She was proven correct, the results of her method are indisputable, as proved by a series of professional acknowledgements today. But following the death of Aunt Panni, has it been possible to preserve the purity of her method and carry on her legacy? I spoke with DSGM specialist physiotherapist Zsuzsanna Mézám at the headquarters of the Foundation in Széll Kálmán Square.

Zsuzsanna: “It is two years almost to the day that Aunt Panni is no longer with us physically, yet while we are working we ‘sense’ her, it is as though her spirit still resides within the walls of the building. We all miss her a great deal.”

Who and in what way does the Dévény method help?

Zsuzsanna: “I would divide the children who come to us into two main groups: one includes premature babies and children who have more serious neurological or orthopaedic injuries. The second group, they are in the majority, experience minor abnormalities or disorders. The parents, district nurse and paediatrician see these but trust that they will grow out of the problem since every child develops in a different way. Unfortunately, it is our experience that these minor faults do not go away.

“If a child’s musculature is tight or loose, his or her body posture is asymmetric, there are tensions and contractions in the musculoskeletal and connective tissue system, the motor development of the child can diverge and this may cause serious problems later on in life. 

“The fact is, motor development is closely associated with the development of cognitive abilities. The ‘minor faults’ may be disguised but they remain within the child and then later, at school, they really become apparent. The children concerned find it difficult to sit in one place, they are constantly fidgeting, they find it a problem to copy from the blackboard to the exercise book, many are dyslexic, dysgraphic or struggle with other learning difficulties. They may well be highly intelligent, it is just that they are unable to perform to the best of their abilities. We bear a huge responsibility to notice whether besides the movement aspect a given child also requires, for example, optical or audio development therapy.”

On entering the treatment room, we are met by Nikolett, a smiling mother, who is cradling her beautiful one-year-old daughter. I was informed before the meeting that Zsófika was born well ahead of term, which was very tough for the family. Nikolett felt it important that, by talking about her own story, she could help other parents in a similar situation.

How did you come into contact with the Dévény Anna Foundation?

Nikolett: “Zsófi was born in the 25th week and we spent three and a half months in various hospitals. She weighed 770 grams at birth and was about 30 cm. Already in Péterfy Hospital one of the doctors suggested that as soon as we left we should definitely get in touch with the Foundation, but luckily my mother had also heard and read a huge amount about the achievements of Anna Dévény. After they released us from hospital, we felt that we had been left to look after ourselves.

“It would have been a huge help, particularly given the emotional state we were in then, had somebody given us even a few telephone numbers and informed us about exactly what sort of help our premature baby girl needed. 

“In November we contacted the Foundation and we received an appointment for an examination in January.”

What state was Zsófika in at that time?

Nikolett: “When we contacted the Foundation, we could already see on Zsófi that she didn’t move in the same way as her sibling at that age. It was only with great difficultly, indeed with increasing difficulty that she moved her head, she didn’t support herself on her forearms and we couldn’t even bend her limbs. We look at the corrected age of premature babies, she should have been born in the middle of October but she arrived in early July. In other words, she is one year old but one has to look on her as being an eight-and-a-half-month-old baby, she should move, pay attention and have verbal skills for this level. Wherever we took her for check-ups they always told us that given her corrected age everything was fine but in this regard we were far from being reassured.”

Zsuzsanna, what did you find on your first examination?

Zsuzsanna: “When Zsófika arrived for an examination it was love at first sight as far as I am concerned. I saw a tiny, poorly child.

“She could really only turn her head to the left, which is no surprise because she was probably put down on her tummy in the incubator since this was the only way for her to breathe. 

“I really wanted to help them. I have my own children so I was able to understand the desperate situation when it is a child, a person’s most precious treasure, at stake.”

Nikolett: “Trust was immediately established and we also secretly hoped that we would get Zsuzsi. A massive weight fell from my shoulders when she called and said that she would treat Zsófi once a week.”

Zsuzsanna: “Zsófika’s corrected age was three months when we started the therapy. It is our experience that we can reach better results with treatment that starts early. The regenerative capacity of the nervous system is greater in early childhood. Then in the following months it gradually declines.”

Six months has passed since January. Where are you with Zsófi now?

Nikolett: “She was able to turn her head even after the first two therapy sessions. Zsuzsi have great advice for home as well. One was that when lying on her tummy, we should put a rolled-up towel under her armpit. We didn’t really know how we could help her, we had no idea whether her back, shoulders or arms were tense, or all at once. Thanks to Zsuzsi’s advice, we came to the next session with Zsófika being able to support herself – even though not for long – on her forearms. We really needed these rapid results for us to calm down a bit.”

What was the next milestone?

Nikolett: “Zsófi does something new two days after virtually every treatment. It was spectacular when she started reaching out for things, when she held her head steady when lying prone. A difficult movement became a joy to move. Today, she loves to kick and move about, she is smart and strong. She loves coming here, she never cries, she has a great relationship with Zsuzsi. She only tends to make a fuss if I go to the bathroom. She didn’t do this before. It sounds strange but I’m delighted by this because this level of separation anxiety and attachment is another sign of development.”

Not all babies bear treatment so well. If they cry, what is the reason?

Zsuzsanna: “We treat the children very carefully but the excessive muscle tension and contraction must be resolved. Obviously this causes some unpleasantness for the children. We always try to work with the minimum level of effort necessary for the therapy to be effective yet not causing unnecessary pain. The stimulation of the nervous system that Zsófika is undergoing is certainly painless.”

Nikolett: “We also do a lot at home with the homework Zsuzsi gives us. Thank God Zsófi is no longer lagging behind, she is more or less where she should be based on her corrected age. She’s been crawling for a week.”

How long is treatment expected to last?  

Zsuzsanna: “Until she has learnt to move independently and correctly. When she starts to climb nicely, then she gets a longer break of a few weeks. 

“At the major motor development milestones we like to give time for the baby to practice and perfect the given movement form.

“Motor development does not have to be rushed, the important thing is quality of movement, but we always have to be on guard: if a form of movement is delayed or appears in an irregular form, then we must help.”

How can parents, adrift in the ‘sea’ of treatments and various therapies, be sure that it is the Dévény method that will be most effective for their child?

Zsuzsanna: “The Dévény method can be used successfully in all areas of locomotor rehabilitation, but we can achieve the best results in motor development of infants. Parents share between themselves amazing stories they have heard, besides which an increasing number of neurologists, orthopaedic specialists, paediatricians and district nurses are recommending the method.  

“80% of children treated by the Foundation become fully functioning children. 

“Children falling into the other 20% require further development or they are children born with serious orthopaedic lesions or damage to the nervous system, and we are able to effect only minor improvements in their condition or prevent muscle wastage.”

Is the waiting list long? 

Zsuzsanna: “It takes about one month to six weeks from the time parents phone up to having their children examined, but after that we can put the child into therapy immediately, assuming he/she requires it.”

How much does the treatment cost? 

Zsuzsanna: “Treatment is supported by the National Health Insurance Fund of Hungary (NEAK), and the Foundation is maintained by the Ministry of Human Resources (EMMI). 

“In addition, we tender, companies and private individuals support the Foundation, but we also need the donations of parents to keep the operation going. We ask for a contribution of HUF 4000 per session from those who can afford it, but this can be reduced. This is the same not only in our Budapest centre but at 13 clinics around the country as well.”

Has the method been copied? How can one avoid tricksters?

Zsuzsanna: “Unfortunately, we frequently receive negative feedback from parents about ‘therapists’ who are not listed with the Foundation, in other words, they are not trained DSGM physiotherapists. We can only accept responsibility for colleagues we know. Anybody can phone our central call line and we are happy to provide information about experts who belong to us. There is massive oversubscription for the DSGM physiotherapist training course and we are capable of training only 26 therapists every two years. Applicants have to pass a rigorous selection procedure and those physiotherapists are preferred who make the application from settlements where there are either no DSGM therapists, or only a few.” 

Anna Dévény, Aunt Panni, frequently said that she hoped there would be others who would carry on the good work, and who would be capable of preserving the purity of the method. Is this guaranteed, in your view?

Zsuzsanna: “I can answer this with an unequivocal yes. Anna Dévény devoted particular attention to gathering around her those dedicated professionals humble to the method who were capable of carrying on her work. Here I would first like to mention Margit Klein Hubikné, the current professional manager of the Foundation, who was the first physiotherapist to work alongside Anna Dévény. We, her successors, bear a huge responsibility not only to preserve the purity of the method but also that we scientifically underpin the insights of Anna Dévény, which are far ahead of their time. I thank God that I had the chance to know her!”

Fate redirected you from the Nyíregyháza pathology department towards kindergartens. How did this come about?
“I had three siblings and we grew up in Hajdúszoboszló. I left school in 1953, at the worst moment of the Rákosi era, and prepared to be a doctor. However, I wasn’t taken on to the medical university because my father had been found guilty in a show trial: the charge was that he had agitated at an assembly, although he was not even there. I moved to Nyíregyháza with my husband and there I was able to find work in the pathology laboratory of a hospital. My boss, professor Ferenc Gerlei, was renowned internationally. He had written the following classical Latin quote on the wall in block letters: ‘Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae’, that is, ‘This is the place where death has pleasure in hastening to the aid of life’. The fact is, pathology helps cure the living. I was delighted to read in Képmás that the very same thought is reflected in the approach of neurosurgeon András Csókay: he first tried out brain surgery techniques on corpses.

“Although I loved my work, I had to leave because of my allergy to benzol and xylol. There are no coincidences, only God’s logic at work. I had to switch careers and because I really love children, and my mother worked in a home for kindergarten-aged children, I thought that I would become a kindergarten teacher.”

How did you feel when you moved from the peace and quiet of a laboratory to the buzzing life of a kindergarten?
“I completed the correspondence course of the nursery school training college in Szarvas and six months before the state exam I was sent for practice. At that time there were large children’s groups with 40 or so children in kindergartens. When somebody has no experience and they cannot keep discipline, then they don’t know the small tricks that can get children to stop doing something naughty voluntarily.

“I always kept a small doll in my pocket that proved to be an excellent way of diverting attention.

“But I came across more difficult cases as well: psychological problems when, for example, the child would self-punish by banging his or her head against the wall. When this happened I had to dig right down to the psychological fundamentals of my profession so that I was able to perform according to my own expectations. In 1963 I graduated as a kindergarten teacher. Five years later I became qualified to teach kindergarten methodology and students came to me for practical classes. I have a folder in my computer with the title ‘I was always a happy kindergarten teacher’. This is where I keep all my photos connected with schools.”

It would seem that you consider your work a success.
“I soon became a director and in 1972 I was awarded the Honourable Order of Labour in Parliament. From 1968 to 1971 I conducted trials in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county prior to the introduction of the new kindergarten training programme. You have to imagine that earlier, kindergarten teaching was based on demonstrations: the children were all seated in a semi-circle and we demonstrated to them standing, from a central point. You can imagine how hard it was to get three-year-olds to sit down in a semi-circle and pay attention to the illustrative picture or involve them in questions and answers… It took absolutely no account of the children’s capabilities. In the later, new educational programme we only initiated activities in small groups and if the children were interested, then they joined in. We set up a book corner for telling stories and initiated singing and music, only physical education was obligatory.”

To what do you attribute the fact that you were able to deal with kindergarten-age children happily and not end up burnt-out mentally?
“It depended, and still depends, on how a person ‘approaches children’ so that in the meantime he/she lifts them up, and educates them joyfully, with humour and not primarily discipline.

“Discipline is the result of education, not the means of education.

“Of course, there are some children with whom it is very difficult to get along, but it is also our duty to see that everyone feels happy in school. I had an overactive pupil who was brought up with beatings by his father, so this child also beat the other children. Unfortunately, I made the error of reporting this to the parents, so that the child got it even worse at home. Then I said to the child: ‘Let’s make a pact. I’ll never again tell your parents that you were naughty here, but I ask you to stop fighting.’ I always tried to tie up energy and attention with something else. On the very day that I retired, one of my colleagues went to the doctor because she had to extend her driving licence. She asked if she could be seen first because she had to go back for the farewell party of her head teacher. ‘Who is the head kindergarten teacher?’ the doctor enquired. ‘Harcsa Tiborné’ was the reply. ‘Aunt Kati? She was my kindergarten teacher!’ The doctor asked where I lived. I was just about to set off for the kindergarten when the doorbell rang. A fine looking, tall man was at the door with a single Gerbera stem. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he asked, and smiled. And then I recognized him as my one-time naughty kindergarten pupil. Later on, he came again and we had a great chat.”

You made the kids your allies...
“One girl in the kindergarten always acted like a little saint. She only ever did good things, she played nicely, sang, she was always around me. However, her mother complained that she was impossible at home. Then it came to us that in the kindergarten she had a great wish to conform and that is why she held herself back, but once she got home all hell broke loose.

“In other words, it is not always best when somebody behaves like a little angel in kindergarten, they can be a bit naughty, too.”

Did you ever come into conflict with a parent?
“One father put life’s simplest and most difficult question to me at a parent-teacher meeting when we were talking about how aggressive the children were: ‘Please tell me, then, are we bringing up sheep or wolves?’ I could hardly answer and stuttered something to the effect that: ‘We have to raise people who are able to empathize with others, while not allowing them to do harm.’ But the truth is that even today I do not know the appropriate answer, and in fact the question remains relevant. Where is the middle way? There isn’t, or it is tricky to locate.”

We all have both the sheep and the wolf inside us, whether we like it or not, we have to make something of it.

“Many psychologists consider that love is an inherent characteristic we are born with, but it is not true.

“The capacity for aggression, for example, is with us when we are born because it is a part of the instinct for life. In the best case, love is something we feel, experience, it feels good and we reciprocate. We learn to love, just as emotional intelligence and behavioural culture are characteristics we are not born with.  One should never say to a child ‘you are bad’ because he/she will believe this and identify with it – one can only say that what a child did was bad. That is why I send a child into the corner to think through why they cannot do this again. One should always give a reason for what the consequence will be of doing something.”

It would appear that your knowledge of child rearing psychology was ahead of its time.
“We were taught psychology on the kindergarten training course, whereas elsewhere, according to scientific socialist theory, they taught that the psyche does not exist. What a duality! They got rid of all religious education. One of the reasons I found it so difficult to collect relics of Hungarian kindergarten teaching later on was that during the Rákosi era it was decreed that all notes and vestiges of the past had to be burnt in the courtyards of kindergartens; or in the bigger towns and cities, for example, in Nyíregyháza, old visual aids, fairy tale and poetry books were taken by truck to the pulping plants. I only found documents from that time in the attics of kindergartens or at the bottom of cupboards of elderly kindergarten teachers because they wanted to preserve memories of their youth.

“I set up a local history-type kindergarten collection in Nyíregyháza, it was registered as a museum in 1992, furthermore it was given national scope because this was the only way to guarantee the widespread collection of material. In 1995 the Kindergarten Museum was relocated to Martonvásár, the favourite town of founder of Hungarian kindergartens, Therese Brunsvik.”

Why did you start collecting documents and artifacts on the history of kindergartens? Where did the idea come from?
“At that time I was head of the kindergarten on Körte Street in Nyíregyháza. The building was a century old, the ancient roof tiles were cracked and the roof leaked. I went up into the attic to look around with the roofing contractor and hidden under the rafters I came across a brown sack. In it were ten old kindergarten illustrative images and children’s poems of a Christian and patriotic nature written on flimsy paper. This drew my attention to the fact that we, too, had a history.

“The newspaper Kelet-Magyarország published a report that I was collecting artefacts of kindergarten history.

“What an astonishing apparent coincidence that a kindergarten teacher living in Buda saw my notice in the paper the cobbler had used to wrap up a pair of shoes the lady had sent to be repaired!

“She read it and then wrote to me offering her mother’s kindergarten-teaching and teacher’s diploma dating from 1879. Unfortunately, she had fixed the old document together with sticky tape, which was a big mistake. This is why I had to take it to the paper restoration department of the National Széchényi Library to have it repaired.”

Please tell us about a special moment in your collecting trips!
“A kindergarten teacher living in a small village close to Szeged had retired and she remembered that there were some Fröbel building blocks in a box in her woodshed. Anxiously, I travelled out there, told her why I had come, and the old lady brought out the box which was in fact full of Fröbel building blocks – she didn’t have the heart to burn those small cubes of wood. I took them home on the train in two huge bags. There are no coincidences, only God’s logic at work – I can only repeat this.”

Yours has been a very fertile woman’s life because fertility can be not only biological but spiritual as well.
“Many of my kindergarten pupils became my children, emotionally speaking. A few parents have noted that ‘our child gesticulates and articulates words in exactly the same way as Aunt Kati’. I look at it like God having given me many kindergarten children instead of my own.

How did your husband back you up?
“Tibor was an empathic person who radiated love and was deserving of being loved.

“I won’t say that we didn’t have differences of opinion but he always stood alongside and behind me, like a column to which one could hold steady.

“He joined me in painting 300 pumpkin seeds designed to help in counting, one side blue, the other red. When he saw how important my museum collecting work had become, he suggested that I spend my managerial supplement and bonuses on this project. He came out with me to Kisvárda when we had to bring back a huge tableau for the museum, it stuck out of the boot of the car and we had to tie a rag to the end. He also said that nobody else could have talked him into doing this...”

Did the fact that you are a practising Catholic ever cause you difficulties during socialism?
“They were not particularly happy about it. I went to the church in Nyíregyháza but I avoided attracting attention, hiding away in a dark corner close to the main entrance. One day, one of my kindergarten pupils was leaving the church with her mother and shouted out: ‘Hello, Aunt Kati!’ – thus my presence was immediately revealed.

“I was called into the office of the head of the education department and he said to me: ‘Comrade, decide whether you want to go to church or you want to be a kindergarten teacher!’

“I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher but I also wanted to remain true to my faith, which is why together with my husband we went to celebrate mass in neighbouring villages, Újfehértó and Rakamaz. They always wanted to get me, as director of the kindergarten, to join the party, but I was never a member of the party, neither then nor after the change of regime.”

I am very interested to know what your favourite fairy tale book is.
“In 1968 I read in instalments Éva Fésűs’s story book ‘All Ears’ to my senior groups. It has a nice morality, love and playfulness. My favourite book of poetry is Erzsi Gazdag’s ‘Fairy Tale Shop’. It is important that kindergarten pedagogues and teachers speak to a high standard because after the simple sentences of early childhood, children learn their first compound sentences and adjectival constructions in kindergarten.

“We shouldn’t lower ourselves to the ‘really brill’ level, rather we must be able to give the children at least five synonyms: marvellous, wonderful, excellent, fantastic, superb.”

Do you really think this stage of life is so critical?
“Kindergarten teaching provides the ‘raw ingredients’ for knowledge. Don’t shush children up when they ask questions, but answer them. I wrote a summary at the end of my 43-year-long professional career. In it I advise parents not to ‘give’ or ‘sacrifice’ time for their children, because there is something akin to martyrdom in this, but rather to ‘devote’ time to them. I asked parents to spend three full hours a day together with their children. This can include time spent carrying out work in the kitchen and having the children alongside so that it is possible to chat. And if from this, parents can spend just 20 minutes holding and stroking young children, paying attention only to them, talking only to them, then this will do much for the development of their personality. If they get used to this daily 20 minutes, half an hour conversation, then later on the child will not respond to the question ‘what happened today in school?’ with the reply ‘nothing’.”

What human attribute helped you most in your career?
“Empathy and humour. My parents brought me up so that I should not be ‘fiddler of the grey ones’ in any of my workplaces – I should always be looking for more, for better, that’s what I should aspire to.”

You are a mother of seven children. How did you go about explaining what happened at the EU climate summit to your children?
“Although we often talk about environmental protection and climate change, we don’t deal with current political issues at the dining table, thus this subject has not yet been aired. Our oldest child is 20, the youngest is five: two of the older ones are actively engaged with environmental protection as volunteers.”

You arrived for the interview after competing in an orienteering race. While you are running, do you at least think about those invasive, climate-dependent species such as the tiger mosquito and tick?
“For sure! The problem is that not only are ticks spreading, but the diseases they transmit as well. I’ve pursued this sport for decades, I’ve had countless tick bites, although last year was the first time I contracted Lyme disease, and my son as well. Nowadays, every second tick is infectious. A very great fellow athlete of mine nearly died from West Nile fever, even though as one of the best orienteerers in Hungary, his immune system is very strong.

“By 2025, Hungary will be the second most infected country in the EU in terms of West Nile fever – this is one of the prognoses of the European Environment Agency, which I knew well but never would have thought that this would concern me so closely!

“And this is just a foretaste of what is to come.”

Today, we are at warming of one degree. Why does a single degree matter?
“Measured against the age of the Industrial Revolution, globally this one degree is correct. In Hungary, currently we are looking at an average warming of 1.6 degrees compared to 1980.”

At exactly what level would we like to bring warming to a halt?
“At one and a half degrees – in terms of global warming, since the rise in the thermometer is not shared equally. The centres of continents, where Hungary is located, warm one and half to two times more than in coastal areas. In other words, in the long term we are worse off, even though luckily we have not yet experienced truly extreme weather phenomena.

“Many say: we’re going crazy over just one degree?! We are not even going to notice it! However, in Budapest over the past 15 years the number of heatwave days adds up to an entire month. Last year it was a real sensation if somebody swatted a tiger mosquito somewhere, and now they are in our gardens.

“Invasions of stink bugs and harlequin ladybirds were just unpleasant, but image if we have a plague of a species that destroys our entire year’s crops, or that is hazardous to our health. It is not a question of the human species being driven to extinction but rather that our civilization is in danger, because it is finely attuned to climate and even a small upset can spark a major disaster. Just remember that the supply of domestic potatoes had run out in January. Many were paying HUF 400 per kilo for cabbages, carrots, onions, but what will happen if we are absolutely incapable of growing those plants on which our entire diet and nutritional culture is based?”

In the meantime, the waiter has brought the lemonade, complete with drinking straw because we were not on the ball. Is it actually worth paying attention to such trivialities when the serious environment pollution is caused by flying?

“If everyone were to throw out just one plastic cup a day in Hungary, one could build out of these every single day a tower thirty times the height of the Mátra Mountains. People don’t even grasp that ‘many a little makes a mickle’. At the same time, undoubtedly there are also more serious issues when it comes to climate change.”

Many were shocked that at the most recent EU summit the Visegrád countries vetoed the net-zero emissions climate target for 2050, saying that the compensation conditions on commitments had not been properly worked out. Many view this decision as meaning that there is money for everything, just not for the protection of the future. How much room for manoeuvre do you think small countries have?
“I hope that this is not the final act. I am really confident that Hungary can stand at the head of climate protection in certain respects. Positioning within the EU may have played a role in our not undertaking net-zero emissions by 2050 this time. This is politics, so it is not in my remit. But the fact that the Hungarian electorate does not expect its politicians to take radical steps in the matter of climate change may also have played its part.

“Another reason may be that we didn’t tie our economy in the best direction when we committed ourselves to the auto industry, since those countries for which the traditional vehicle industry is important can easily become a hindrance for net-zero emissions, as Germany sometimes is. Europe lags behind China, Japan, South Korea, indeed it is also behind the USA in terms of electric car manufacturing, and we are not going to be able to make up for this shortfall.”

Would this be the reason that net-zero emissions by 2050 appear, as a target, impractical?
“It is not an easily fulfillable target, that’s certain. In Hungary, there are none of the necessary impact studies to show how this could be achieved, nor are there in most other parts of Europe. The IPCC has already drafted the relevant analyses. A large number of research centres have shown the many different ways it is possible to reach these targets, yet these studies remain at the global level and are not broken down to individual country level.

“Those countries that said yes to net-zero carbon emissions in all likelihood reached those decisions as a political ‘yes’ and not as a worked out, scientifically-based ‘yes’ underpinned with an economic plan. However, the entire Paris Accord is like this: the one and a half degrees as a limit that found its way into the final document was done when science didn’t even dare give this cut-off level. If any colleague of mine had stated such a thing at the time, he or she would have been branded a dreamer.”

So are you saying that this limit was added to the text of the accord by accident?
“No, it became a political goal because those small island nations who may find themselves submerged with warming of two degrees forced the world to face a moral decision. But at that time, we didn’t know whether it was worth fighting for one and a half degrees and what the different between one and a half and two degrees would be. This is why the climate summit asked the IPCC to draft the scientific report that was published last October and answer the following questions: is the target achievable or not, and if so, how can it be achieved and how much will it cost? Is it worth busting ourselves over half a degree?”

Please sum up what they concluded.
“The first and most important assertion is that it is worth making the effort, the train has still not left the station, global warming can be brought to a halt at around one and a half degrees. And there is a huge difference between one and a half and two degrees: for example, this half a degree doubles the number of those suffering from water shortages.

“Dozens of models have shown that warming can still be halted, and what is more, in many different ways so that in the meantime we don’t all have to return to the cave.

“Although every path assumes huge change, it transpires that we won’t be crippled even economically speaking. According to researchers, maintaining the one and a half degrees will cost seven percent of growth in consumption until the middle of the century. Until then, we expect global GDP growth of 300%, from which we would have had to devote this seven percent – we wouldn’t even notice it! Climate catastrophes take a lot more than this because, for example, the 2017 hurricane season cost four percent of the US’s GDP.”

At the end of May, there was a preparatory conference in Szeged for the ongoing Hungarian national climate report, which you were also involved in. The consultation was established under the aegis of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology headed by László Palkovics. What is the significance of this?
“Changes are so rapid that science is barely able to keep up with them. Research labs function in such isolation that there are enormous benefits and huge opportunities to be gained from connecting their work: a philosopher, an axiologist, an expert on drought and a climate physicist finally all sat down together at the same table. This allows us to be a little bit more scientific in establishing, on the one hand, what can be expected, and on the other hand, what we can do because there is still much to discover in this field. For example, there has not been any real research on what will happen in cities and how we can defend ourselves, but principally, how will we be able to shape the economy so that we even come out winners from the transformation.”

How could we be winners in the struggle against climate change?
“Nowhere in Europe is there such a boom in the building industry as here, and there are even more opportunities inherent in building restoration than in new builds. The whole of Europe suffers from having an outdated, energy-inefficient building stock. Upgrading buildings one by one is expensive and tricky. In the Netherlands they have already started getting organized in this area, but it is not too late to brainstorm about how it would be possible to categorize buildings, and come up with solutions, so that zero energy renewal could be resolved without the need to move residents out. From this point of view, upgrading tower blocks is easier. The only trouble is that a good many of them have already been renewed so as to achieve 20-30%, maximum 40% energy savings, which is problematic.

“Today, we know that when redeveloping pre-fabricated buildings it is possible to attain energy savings of 85%, indeed, a tower block can even become energy positive, that is, a sort of power station that generates more energy than it consumes.

“We were world beaters with the redevelopment of the Solanova housing estate in Dunaújváros. We showed that an ordinary prefabricated building is also capable of making energy savings of 85%, and to achieve this requires neither super-technologies nor does it cost gazillions. In Budapest’s XIII district, several energy efficient local government tenements have been built where the energy bills are just a couple of thousand forints a month. Where is the reduced utilities bill programme that could compete with this? The fact is that it is precisely those on the lowest incomes who find it most important to live in a passive house! I know of a company in Miskolc that markets zero energy semi-detached houses that are far from being luxurious. They are being snapped up while still on the drawing board.”

Let’s come back to the national report which is planned to be finalized by 2020: if this had been ready now, is it possible that we would have voted differently at the climate summit?
“I have great faith in science but even so I don’t think that it would have had such a big impact. We would have had to give up our dependency on oil, gas, coal by 2050. I’m not surprised that politicians are scared by this. But perhaps, if we work out at the level of Hungary how exactly this could be achieved, and perhaps show where the opportunities, the economic breakthroughs could be for Hungary, in which areas we could even play a leading role, for example, we are global leaders in certain water-related technological sectors, in other words,

if there was just such a report on the government’s desk, it is possible that it would be easier to take such a decision than to blindly sign off on such a commitment.

“At present, there is still not the scientific evidence on which to base such a decision at national level.”

Plenty of countries signed without any kind of scientific substantiation. After all, there won’t be any consequences if they are unable to meet their commitments – however, it sounds good that they committed themselves to climate protection.
“I reckon that elsewhere, too, they have started thinking in terms of national scenarios, but I believe we can consider as more a political declaration of intent that steps have to be taken towards a carbon neutral position. The migration that has already been observed is merely the precursor to that which will happen when entire countries are afflicted by desertification. In Syria between 2006 and 2010, 60% of arable land became infertile due to drought, as a consequence of which one and a half million people migrated to already overcrowded cities. This is obviously just adding oil to the fire.

“Unfortunately, there are plenty of other politically unstable regions where a climate change-related catastrophe can trigger other problems.”

We could also have made such a declaration bringing popularity and without any consequences – or perhaps not?
“These governments are not the ones implementing the commitment. The countries who now undertook to be carbon neutral by 2050 are those where, on the basis of European Parliament elections and in their preparatory work, the electorates made it crystal clear that for them, climate change is one of the most important questions. These governments know that their electorates expect them to take action on this issue. Here in Hungary, this was not a significant aspect in the course of elections and the campaign, so it would be tantamount to political suicide to have taken on such a massive undertaking that the electorate not only do not expect but perhaps are even scared of its consequences. The climate summit reflected what voters had asked of their elected politicians at the European Parliamentary election. Nor is it possible to say that there is no consequence from such an undertaking because if we do it, then it will be necessary to slightly adjust short-term energy plans to these new targets. I reckon that we don’t have to deduce far-reaching consequences from the fact that, fearing such radical change, we did not commit ourselves at this time.

“It is also important to recognize that those who are in a position to reach decisions today are, on the whole, older, and they believe that they are wealthy enough to protect themselves from those impacts that will come about within their lifetime.

“However, we are beginning to hear the voices of those young people who reckon that we are burning up their future.

“It is easy to make governments responsible for everything but industrialist decision-makers also have to calculate that sooner or later, the upcoming generation will vote with their wallets.”

“When I was a junior doctor, it had become accepted practice for parents to remain with their children in the hospital. Our former head of department, Dr. Magda Neuwirth, had been pressing for this much earlier, at a time when doors were closed in the face of relations with the message that their child’s spirit should not be disturbed with their presence. She soon overstepped the old, strictly observed visiting hours. In addition, she was enormously empathetic towards families in trouble, and we succeeded in learning this approach from her.

“Similarly to the oncology department, there are also chronically sick patients in paediatric neurology, so we are in constant contact with families. The leading illness is epilepsy, second place is taken by developmental disorders, while headaches are most common in the outpatient department.

“I don’t necessarily strive for friendly, but certainly empathic relations with families. All my fellow physicians and nurses think likewise. After all, paediatric neurology is a difficult field because in comparison with other departments, here the cure ratio is lower. Still, there are seven specialists at Bethesda and I can say we are all on really good terms with each other.”

I was struck by the thought that maybe the spirit of the child is somehow disturbed by the presence of the parents. And not by their absence?

“This is not so clear. In itself, the fact that a parent is in the hospital with his/her child is no problem. However, this presence can have negative effects as well. For example, there are relatives who try to interfere in the various stages of treatment, and I think it is understandable that this is disturbing for a doctor. But let’s look at this from a different perspective. If the doctors do something that is painful for a three-year-old child while the mother is present, the child can view this as the parent not doing anything to protect him/her.

“So, the parent’s presence is not always a blessing, yet we make every effort to encourage it, indeed these days we couldn’t even conceive of a children’s hospital without parents.

“It is a fact that there are difficult parents. But let’s not blame them, let’s rather say that there are difficult communication situations. The example set by Magda helps to this day. She was always able to enhance the positive qualities of parents whereas in a given stressful situation we are sometimes liable to think the worst of the given mother or father. After all, we are only human, too.”

If it transpires that the child has epilepsy, then in all likelihood the parents also need treatment emotionally. The broad range of reactions seems understandable.

“In the majority of cases this does not come out of the blue but is the conclusion of a lengthy process. It takes a long time before there is certainty from conjecture. I always try to emphasize the positive in what is otherwise bad news. For instance, if the newly diagnosed epilepsy is benign, because in all likelihood the child will grow out of it. If the news is not so good, then in general this is not apparent immediately. We try one drug, then another, if that does not have any outcome, we try a third... We experience the bad news in parallel with the parents. Much patience is required not only for the treatment but in communication as well.

“I have often seen how much the parents’ comprehension changes if they receive bad news. They cannot absorb the words.

“I say what epilepsy is, what mental disability is, but only a tenth of this is taken in. This becomes evident when, although I have said everything without using any Latin, in a clearly comprehensible way, still they ask eight questions about everything they have already heard. I look on this as a challenge: how can I talk to parents in a way that they understand and accept what they are hearing? Communication is a difficult yet wonderful part of the treatment.”

Is this taught at university?

“It is difficult to get across in the framework of lectures, rather it is possible to acquire experience in practice. At the beginning of my medical career, more than 20 years ago, I was able to take part in a three-month spiritual counselling course in America. Lectures in the morning, practical sessions in the afternoon. We visited patients, we sat with the dying, we spoke with families. It happened that once they brought in a critically injured person from a car accident. In just three minutes the traumatologist filled us in on what had happened and then left us to deal further with the relatives... In another case, relatives of a dying patient, who had not spoken to each other in ten years because of mutual disagreements, suddenly turned up. We knew they had just one or two hours and it was important to spend the time wisely. We worked with simple but effective methods.

“We stood in a circle, took each other’s hands and said a prayer, or we asked that everyone should recall a favourite memory about the dying family member. This was fantastic practice that I still utilize to this day.

“Although many of my colleagues have never participated in such practice, still they exhibit exemplary humanity towards their patients. I am eternally grateful that I can work with such people.”

How does empathy manifest itself in everyday situations?

“Let’s say we have a very sick patient whose mother or father is neurotic and difficult to handle. I could, in a completely understandable way, look at it like just another unbearable, hysterical parent whose outbursts are particularly difficult to react to in a good way. But I can also see it from the angle of how I would react if it happened to be one of my children who was so ill.

“In our department, the majority of visits are not the classical hospital visits when a group of white-coated doctors formally proceed from ward to ward, rather we sit down around a table and talk about the patients. Everyone goes to see their own patients daily, but there are only two ward visits a week. The roundtable discussions are extremely significant. On the one hand, we make a conscious effort to reinforce empathy in each other, that is, we talk over what we would do in such a situation, and on the other hand we analyse the cases professionally. But what is perhaps even more important than this is that everyone can freely state their opinion. We can ask each other to reconsider cases without causing friction. I prefer it if we colleagues are equal in status. Give or take a doctorate, I am well aware that I have far more experienced colleagues than myself. To a certain extent this is our mission, too, that resident doctors who come to us see an example of collegial relations, because we know that this is the way to work together.”

What sense of achievement is there in the department?

“Obviously, the real sense of success comes with a complete cure, but every small step brings joy. If instead of 20 seizures a day we see only three, then this is a great thing. Another success story is if I can establish that there is no real problem with a child. Furthermore, that a half of young patients grow out of epilepsy. But there can also be beauty in those stories where we have not been able to cure somebody. We know of one family with seven children, where the sixth is seriously disabled due to a genetic disease. I have seen how this child is surrounded by boundless love. It is not difficult to love a sick child. But to see how this small being brings the entire family together is an important source of inspiration for me.

“A sick child is a catalyser: if the family is fractured, then it speeds up the fracturing, if it is harmonic, then it brings them together even more.

“I have seen this as well, I look on this as a success, too. The death of a child is unimaginably difficult to process, and yet I feel that the greatest trial of strength is when a family has to care for a seriously ill child 24 hours a day for decades, and in a way that, rationally speaking, the parents wake up every single day to a hopeless situation. There are different degrees of handicap. I see cases where, through a normal human eye, there is nothing attractive in a young patient, and yet the parents can love him/her very much. This gives strength and engenders respect. At the end of a working day I go home to my healthy family, but they have to remain with their sick children 24/7.”

At home as well, you and your family have taken on a big task because you adopted a child.

“Ten years ago we had five children, and God planted the desire in us for another, although things worked out slightly differently. Niki came to us when she was ten, as our sixth child. She had lost her parents in a fire. She came to us for rehabilitation, although she herself had not been injured in the fire, just that at that time there was nowhere for her to go. Nobody visited her, she had no relatives. I told my wife, Virág, a lot about her. We knew that at ten years of age, nobody would be fighting to adopt her, and that she would go into a state home. One day, we just looked at each other and said: why don’t we adopt her? After this, during hospital voluntary charitable service our children also got to know her. Finally, it worked out so that our children also agreed that we should adopt her.

“It was tough for Niki to begin with, but after six months she was calling us mum and dad. She had never gone to school up to the age of ten, she had never been read a fairy tale, she had lived in insecurity and now she is good at basketball, she goes skiing and she takes her school-leaving exams this academic year.

“At the beginning, fantastically warm-hearted teachers at a run-down church primary school agreed to get her up to speed, and they did such a great job that we took our three youngest out of an elite dual language grammar school and moved them there. Smaller classes, more attention – that worked. Niki is our truly dependable child who has fully integrated into the family.” 

– Is a good art dealer fond of searching for clues?
– Absolutely! For us, art dealing business is not just work, it is rather a profession and a hobby, at the same time. As a result, our whole life is permeated by the idea that objects have stories.

– And so do houses! How did the old villa on the Naphegy ('Sun Hill') become a home for a family of art dealers?
– One day I got a call from one of my nice clients from abroad. He was looking for a French-style mansion near Lake Balaton. After months of searching, my long-time friend, a real estate agent recommended us a lovely villa – not in Somogy county near Lake Balaton, but on Naphegy (Sun Hill in Budapest). Although we always longed for living on Naphegy we never thought of ever having an opportunity to buy a flat there, let alone a house. When we went to see the villa, it was so overgrown with weeds that it couldn't be seen from the street. It was like Sleeping Beauty – almost unnoticeable. We wondered what story this house would tell us if it could speak.

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Korani Eleni

– And suddenly, there was the clue you were searching for, right?
– Yes. The house turned out to be a locally protected monument. Such a monument always has a plaque with the architect's name, the construction year and the name of the client. The plaque on the wall said that the villa was built by a certain Tibor Kocsis for Lady Sidy Gell in 1942. We checked all these data but, strangely, we didn't find anything about them. There was this posh residence but it seemed that these people didn't even exist!

– But art dealers don't give up searching so easily, do they?
– No! The mystery made us even more curious! We looked through all relevant architecture books in our library and in museums but we had found no architect called Tibor Kocsis. However, we found out about a certain TIVADAR Kocsis who was one of the popular architects of the Horthy-era. He built countless villas in the neighbourhood and around Vérhalom tér. We have learned from the documents we found that the request for the building permit was submitted by Szidónia Gell in 1941.

Immediately my husband and I asked: who was the optimist person to start building a residence in the middle of the war?

We contacted a historian who found out, after a year, that Sidy had been a nearly 70-year-old lady who had neither a husband, nor children. It seemed strange for a single woman to have such a large house built at that time so we had extended the research to the family members, too. We learned that Szidónia had a sister, about 50 years old, who had also lived on Naphegy with her husband. After the war ended all three of them left Hungary together. First they went to Zurich, then they sailed from Poland to New York on first class, then, half a year later, they went to Brazil. In parallel, we also researched the history of the house and we found a note from 1945 saying that the villa had been hit by a bomb and had become uninhabitable. This cannot be true because we had the house demolished to bricks and not a single bullet mark was explored.

We have found only misspelling, mistakes and strange coincidences while searching in the past of the family and the villa. But objects don't lie!

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Photo: Façade drawing of the villa – The Picture is owned by the Wastl-Korani family

‒ Is it another strange coincidence that you had discovered Raoul Wallenberg's name while searching the story of the villa?
‒ Actually, yes! Usually we don't use the internet to search after works of art because information on the world wide web is not reliable. Yet, one day my husband entered our own address in the search engine at random. He found a document on a Swedish homepage with nothing less than our address with the note next to it: 'R. W. hiding place'. That is, the place where Wallenberg used to hide people.

‒  But this does not necessarily mean that Wallenberg did really hide Jews in this place.
‒  As we went on searching we found more evidence. The first book I could buy provided a stupendous suprise. It is a comprehensive autobiography novel published a few years ago in which I found the unquestionable evidence: In 1989 Russia agreed with Sweden about the clarification of Wallenberg's fate and Russia handed over his valuables, passport and diary confiscated when he had been imprisoned.

The book contained a photocopy of the admission form to the Lubyanka KGB prison in Moscow on 19 January 1945 . The form states clearly that Wallenberg gave the villa on Naphegy as his address at that time.

The other evidence is a book written after the war. After it became clear in 1945 that Wallenberg had gone missing and no one knew what had happened to him, journalist Jenő Lévai wanted to record all that Wallenberg did for Jews in Budapest . He interviewed those in direct relationship with him. Ever since, this book has served as  the source for every research about Raoul Wallenberg. Being a samizdat edition it was really difficult to get. There are just a few copies of it. Lévai mentions our house in the book several times.   

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Photo: The film 'Evergreen in black and white' from 1974 contains a long scene showing both the exterior and the interior of the house

‒ What did he write about the villa?
‒ There is a very touching story described accurately. The wife of a Jewish official working for the embassy gave birth to her baby in this house 'amid terrible cannon fire' at 7 o'clock in the morning on 4 November 1944. The head of the obstetrics of János Hospital, dr. Béla Kende, himself a persecuted Jew, was about to deliver the baby - where else? On an office table in the Swedish consulate in Tigris street. Hearing this, Wallenberg immediately offered his own house in the neighbouring street.

The little girl was born upstairs in the villa. Wallenberg was the godfather and she was baptized Maria after two close female relatives.

After the childbirth, Wallenberg offered the exhausted doctor his own room for the night. The doctor recalled that morning as follows:

'I stayed in the room next to the mother who had given birth for the night at her request. The next morning the father turned to me asking for some warm water for his wife... I went down the stairs into the kitchen, through the hall... I saw Wallenberg sleeping on a sofa in the cold hall, dressed up completely, wrapped in his overcoat, while we were comfortably settled in his suite.'

The layout of the house is just like it was then.

– Nowadays high-tech homes are fashionable. They are status symbols of the 21st century. Didn't you remodel the villa according to this trend?
– We are not interested in spectacular and trendy status symbols but real values. We have received a special house from life with a special story. A story whose threads have been disarranged, perhaps intentionally. The villa was nationalized in 1955 and it housed an organization close to the political system of the time. But, having survived the stormy decades, it stands here, 'waiting' perhaps just for us to give it back its old splendor. It is not without importance, either, that it is inhabited by a family again. This is a gift, and that's exactly why we feel obliged to explore everything in connection with the villa.

– Do you mean the building where Wallenberg once saved Jews has not changed practically at all and that and anyone who enters will feels like in a museum?
– Definiely not! And we are proud of this! We moved in with our 21st-century equipment and shaped everything to be fit for a modern family.

At the same time we can live together with the past of the house. We don't change its character.

For example, modern technology would have enabled us to install LED display switches and remote control shades. Some people have swimming pools built downstairs next to their garages just because it is fashionable. In contrast, we prefer to switch on the lights from floor to floor separately and we don't have a swimming pool either. This is our way of showing our respect for the house.

Photo: The film 'Evergreen in black and white' from 1974 contains a long scene showing both the exterior and the interior of the house

– In addition to respect I feel a strong love in your voice when you speak about the house. I guess the villa speaks not only about the past of Raoul Wallenberg, but also about the present of the Wastl-Korani family?
– This villa is our home and our business card at the same time. It is a work of art that perfectly presents what we art dealers and experts can achieve.

Anyone who enters can immediately see how we think about the world and what type of people we are. And the house represents the whole 20th century perfectly.

Just think about how many times the mirror on the wall for decades was broken. Yet, there was always someone who took the trouble to repair it again and again. We will not break this continuity, we will not throw the mirror out.

– Am I correct in assuming that the exploration and restoration of the house is just a small segment of a greater mission?
– Yes, you are! With my husband Ernst we have always been trying to set a good example. We believe that nothing disappears forever. You have to reconstruct values and live by them, too!

– You mentioned setting a good example. You have two little children. After my little daughter just tried to draw her first Kandinsky-reproduction on the wall in crayon, the question arises in me: how do little children and works of art get on in a house of such historic importance?
‒ Oh, the future generation can get on very well with the objects of the past. Our children haven't scribbled or broken anything. This house is important for them too, which makes us extremely proud. When my daughter was fourteen years old she was shown round by our friends in San Francisco. While driving around she saw a school named after Wallenberg. She stopped the others and spoke proudly to the American students who Wallenberg was, how he was rescuing Jews in Hungary and why all this is important to our family. Our friends' kids were also listening to the story. This is fantastic because I believe that information is like a seed: if you take the effort to plant it, later on an idea will grow from it like a flower. This is why it is so important to research the past, talk a lot about the discovered values and pass them on to future generations.

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman and diplomat. As a foreign trade delegate he had also established Hungarian connections. He first came to Hungary in 1942. As the mass deportations of Jews began from Hungary he immediately responded to the request of the Swedish government and the American War Refugee Board. As secretary at the Swedish embassy he took part in countless rescue actions. Several times he defended the persecuted personally, not once risking even his own life. He wrote reports about the deportations. In January 1945 he left for Debrecen and from then on there was no track of him. His fate after 1945 is unknown. According to the official Soviet position he had died in a Moscow prison in 1947. He was claimed to have been seen later on in various camps of Gulag.

“I really need the 90 minutes driving between Almádi, or more precisely Vörösberény, and Budapest. There’s no bustle around me, I have time to consider the day and my important matters,” says Mónika in the car while driving from the railway station to their home. We move from the spacious living room into the back garden where we settle in the comfy terrace tucked away from the street. Miklós starts their shared story, which begins at the JATE club on a sociology course in Szeged.

Miklós: “She was humanities, I was law. Later, professor Katona romantically put it like this: love started as they bent over the notes. Of course, life is not only about romance; if a person wants to achieve something, the task must be determined precisely. When I met my wife I saw: this woman is absolutely great, she looks attractive, she is reliable and very smart. I began to believe that she could be the mother of my children, I began to weigh up what God could ask of me, we defined the framework in which our common mission could be realized. Of course, a person thinks through decisions rationally but does not necessarily finalize them rationally.”

When you were planning, did you have in mind a large family?

Mónika: “Right from the first moment we knew we wanted four children.”

Miklós: “I had two siblings, but Mónika was an only child.”

So you needed courage for this…

Miklós: “My wife is an extremely courageous woman.”

Mónika: “When a person lives in a family as a well brought-up little girl all by herself, everything is predictable, organized, perhaps a little boring. This also means that if one has to go somewhere at 5 o’clock, then at five there is no need to be chasing two other family members around the house. At the beginning I didn’t understand this, I was highly inflexible. Today, I accept that Udvarhelyi timekeeping must be interpreted with a little slippage. But for a long time I had a sense of shame that we were late for everything.”

How did the plans for four children impact on Mónika’s professional concepts? In fact, how did you even go into science?

Mónika: I graduated in the communication class that started before the passage of the first media law. We hadn’t yet envisaged our future in tabloid media. In the happiness of the years after the change of regime we were thinking in terms of public service investigative journalism, a BBC-type model. It is no coincidence that of those couple of years very few of us stayed in the profession since I, too, was unable to identify with the opportunities outlined by the commercial channels. We prepared for a classic, gatekeeper role watching over authority – of course, looking back there was something naïve in this, but we had just come out of a dictatorial system.

“When I started my career, I also saw that it was not possible to do this profession with a big family, and I preferred to have a big family rather than a career in journalism or TV. In the meantime, I saw how much more there was in media and communication science than what we had learned with regard to journalism. When I graduated, this was exactly when Özséb Horányi launched the doctoral course, which is how I could continue at Pécs without missing a year.”

Did you plan to do your scientific work at home as well, for example at night when the children slept?

Mónika: “No. It is an interesting biological problem that I have an iron deficiency so I go to bed latest at 9.30 pm.”

Miklós: “On the other hand, I don’t have iron deficiency…”

Mónika: “He can stay up until two in the morning. This is why it is difficult for us to organize evening programmes. I think most parents with young children will be disappointed when they plan that they will work when the children are sleeping because they will also be exhausted by then. Once, while I was washing and hanging up curtains, when the older children were two or three years old, it came to me that I would never have more time. Either I manage what I can from the time available or my dreams must be let go. Very many women, as I am, too, are mother hen-type mothers…”

Miklós: “But that’s why I married you!” (laughs)

Mónika: “Miklós had to virtually prise me out of the mother role in which I lived and enjoyed in order to start on a career.”

Miklós: “We had plans but we didn’t plan everything ahead although we never wanted to subordinate the concepts of the other to our own dream. I studied abroad doing half-terms.”

It cannot have been easy to stay at home with young children.

Mónika: “It’s not so easy. The whole rearing of children is not easy. At the university, I got used to writing a paper and then I had the result and feedback. At the beginning, it was shocking that with bringing up children the feedback comes 5-10 years later. My girlfriend said that at the beginning one is simply pleased to keep just their metabolism in order.

“Naturally I had moments of despair. There was very little age difference between the first two children, I couldn’t imagine what the older one was doing while I bathed the smaller one. However, this feeling of ‘how bad, how difficult this is for me now’ very easily becomes a spiral that pulls one down. Miklós is very good at sensing all this from non-verbal signals and he can immediately drag me back. Because, of course, just like the majority of women, I also sulked and wouldn’t say what my problem was, I was waiting for him to find out. He taught me to name these and it is very important that he never swept these aside as minor annoyances not worth dealing with.”

Did you always trust each other when you were parted?

Mónika: “Before we got married, Miklós lived in Finland and once a woman from Finland turned up. Then I understood why, although he travelled a lot and took me to several places, he didn’t take me there. Or for example, he was walking through the streets in Italy sighing Marietta, Marietta… But we talked this over with a good deal of humour. Obviously, in women there is always this little devil on the shoulder whispering that while I am here in the evening putting the children to bed, who knows what he was doing… Of course, if you are unsettled you can ask, but we never went beyond the critical level of suspicion.”

Miklós: “We have a friend who travelled to London on business but came back suspiciously tanned. In our relationships there is a good degree of freedom, there is no constant control, we don’t call each other every hour checking up.”

Mónika: “It is also worth watching how a man reacts to attractive women in the immediate environment because that says a lot about a relationship. For us, it helps a lot that we are genuinely pleased for each other’s success, even if that means a lot of travel. Miklós gives me impetus, which needs…”

Miklós: “…a lot of iron…”

Mónika: “…yes, that too, and that he should know me and see my objectives because he can assess situations, chances better from outside. Sometimes a person is not satisfied with him/herself and women are anyway more critical of themselves.”

Isn’t this the courage of a kibitzer?

Mónika: “He is not a kibitzer in my life but rather a manager who gives impetus at the right time because he always helps. When, for example, before flying I imagine the airport at Kuala Lumpur and, as I wander about, that I will be dragged into a sheik’s harem – if not as a wife because I’m not that young any more, but as a nanny – all he said was that I should know that these days many girls depart, for example to Dubai, and they all arrive safely. When the children are young it is obvious that the husband can travel and work more, but there is an unspoken vow that the wife’s moment will also come. That we will create the opportunity for the wife’s vocation and success as well, but many marriages cannot wait for that time.”

Miklós: “If we are alone, we worry, if we are not alone, we do not worry, then frequently we worry if we are not alone, but still the range of tasks is the same and the frames do not change. If one bears all this in mind, then one cannot go far wrong.”

You have worked all this out as a relationship between two contracting partners.

Miklós: “I knew that if we had a joint task in life, it was my obligation to constantly pay attention to my partner’s happiness. To the fact that she is happy today and tomorrow as well, even if something different is needed tomorrow than today.”

Mónika: “It is true, Miklós asks me every other day whether I am happy, if not always using these words. When he does, I can tell him even the smallest problems, for example, that the coffee machine has broken down and it needs repairing, and I also speak of anything that makes me deeply anxious.”

Miklós: “It was clear from the first minute that one has to step up to the plate first and not wait for the other. One has to take into account one’s own responsibilities first.”

Is there room for romance in all this?

Mónika: “We are both extremely busy so sometimes we meet in hotels and restaurants. When I say that my husband is also arriving, a shadow of a smile flits across the face of the receptionist. These little winks bring the vigour of youth back into our relationship.”

With the Balaton so close, are you on holiday all summer?

Mónika: Rather we have people who come for holidays. My girlfriend often jokes that ‘we popped in for a glass of water because we are so hungry that we don’t even know where we’ll sleep.’ But we do it with enormous pleasure. Friends of the kids also spend a lot of time with us.”

Miklós: “Let’s add that we had a comfortable and good life in the past 10-11 years and we enjoy a relatively high degree of freedom in our work. I don’t know how all this would work under pressure, with compromises and serious emotional stress.”

Head of department and attorney-entrepreneurial work involves a significant degree of stress. Is there some other secret to this?

Mónika: “I am very grateful that I have been able to go to all my male bosses telling them that I am pregnant and never once did I fear I would lose my job because of it. Women are able to judge the level in a career that can be sustained only in such a way that not only is work taken home, but tension as well. I know exactly what I am not prepared to accept because it would be to the detriment of the family.

“Taking responsibility is very strongly apparent in Miklós’s character. When he was 35, I selected a quotation for him that Márai had written to his father. His soul held the family together like a tree with lush foliage holds birds. Despite his absences, Miklós is very much apparent in the life of the children, sometimes even too much because he is the stricter, more accountable parent of the two of us.”

Miklós: “It is important to know when I am too much and then I have to stop and leave.”

Mónika: “Just as we conclude our arguments very quickly emotionally and we can talk about problems rationally. Our aim is not to overcome, hurt the other, but to solve the problem.”

Miklós: “I learnt this in business life.”

Mónika: “At the same time, if one of the partners is very business oriented and learns successful, but slightly aggressive business communication, it has to be left at the door and must not be brought into the family. In this, Miklós is very good.”

Miklós: “We can take off all armour, protective equipment in the family, and we don’t have to fear anything. The greatest magician also needs this; family must be made so that trust has fertile ground in which to grow. And another important thing we have not yet spoken about: the solution of a single relationship task requires a person to look deep into him/herself and pray for help alongside the intention.”

Mónika: “What else derives from our faith and can be very progressive in relationships: in our relationship, it cannot happen that we blame somebody for something over many years. We do not hold grudges. We also learnt that we must apologize as soon as possible, we don’t drag the other partner into mind games. We have been married for 20 years, life places new problems in front of us all the time, but we are not even half way through, at least we hope so.”

It’s Friday and the whole city is buzzing. Everyone is rushing somewhere – from work to home, shopping, cooking dinner, turning on the TV, relaxing and kicking back. The tram is packed, a faceless mass. I scrutinize the people, conceitedly supposing that I can read from their eyes what their concerns are.  

There are at least 800,000 alcoholics living in the country, so statistically speaking there is a significant chance that the person sitting opposite me on the No. 4-6 tram is a drinker, or at least one of his/her relations is alcohol dependent.

I arrive just before six. A steep flight of steps leads downwards. It can’t be easy going in, to ourselves, either. We greet each other with smiles, a few are chatting quietly, a new arrival gets a massive hug. Chairs are in a circle, there are a few flowers on the table, a candle, brochures and literature in the cabinet. ‘This is how you should love an alcoholic’ I read on a leaflet pressed into my hand. I’ve come to a meeting of Al-Anon Family Group. Here it doesn’t matter, and nobody asks, who you are in the big city that has been left outside. If somebody speaks, they use only a Christian name and say that they are a family member of an alcoholic.

Anonymity is only one of the rules. The other is no judgement, no advice, no comments, no likes. Just sharing and listening.

About 20 of us are sitting in a circle, the majority women. There are young and old alike. Some just listen, staring straight ahead – this is OK as well. Others talk. “When I am able to express what is wrong with me, it goes away…” says one young woman, who is pregnant with her partner’s child. The man is an alcoholic but has not touched drink in a while. “When I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t know what to tell the others. I hid myself under baggy sweaters. Then that week I went shopping. I bought myself a red top, and red is not even my colour! I realized that I wanted to show myself. And the baby, too….” – Several smile and a few congratulate her.

Then silence. Then another story. About somebody who says that they don’t have any childhood memories. The father and the grandfather drank. “I was never to blame for what I got. There was nobody there to protect me.”

If the world works in a way that the big and strong do not take care of the small and weak, then we have nothing left but forgetting. Which is dangerous, because the past never truly disappears, it is always there.

One member of the group has fought hard with these memories that constantly keep bursting to the surface. A drunken, aggressive father and a mother who couldn’t protect the child. Frames of a film without a happy end, nobody would buy tickets for this feature, yet they are played over and over again for this individual. If they were walking towards me in the street, I would never suspect anything – of course, I don’t know anything. I have no idea what it is like growing up with an alcoholic in the family. Checking through the pantry for hidden bottles and then emptying the contents down the sink. Putting up with the shame. Quarrelling, tolerating the aggression, or just shutting up as your partner, blind drunk, snores in the bedroom. Hoping. Believing. Bringing up children with someone whose life is organized not around the family but the bottle. Loving the parent who ruined my childhood. The reason I never invited friends across. The reason the police regularly visited the house. Forgiving the parent who did not save me from all this. Accepting that this is all that can be done.

Anybody who goes to Al-Anon meetings week after week is working on loving life despite all this. “It is a good thing that I can come here, this group has helped a lot, I used to be totally broken,” says somebody. Alongside this person is a young man sitting in frozen silence. This is his first time.

This evening’s topic is shame. An elderly woman, whose adult son is an alcoholic, says that she has never felt shame, after all, she is not the one drinking but her child. Somebody else says that she is ashamed that her mother would drink herself into oblivion, she locked the family out of the flat so that they had to call the police and ambulance, and in the end she was angry as well because she wanted to know why her mother did all this to them. Somebody else had rid themselves of this sense of shame, even though her father, husband and two of her four siblings were drinkers.

Everyone is at a different stage on this journey and helping each other by sharing where they stand at a particular moment. They give hope to somebody sitting there, a person who is more vulnerable and desperate.

“Is it possible to love somebody unconditionally even though I cannot bear one of his habits?” one woman asks in connection with her husband’s boozing. It transpires from her story that this is her dilemma not of today but of the past several decades.

Time’s up. Ninety minutes on each occasion. They stand up, hold each other’s hands and form a circle. “Lord, please give me peace of mind to accept what I cannot change. Courage to change what I can, and wisdom to recognize the difference.” Such is the closing prayer, each according to his or her own faith.

The meeting is officially over. However, quite a few hang back for a while. They chat, encouraging each other. Then we slowly pack up and in the meantime I glance around. There are many troubled faces but on a few one can see a measure of relief. Coats are put on and then a few minutes later it is off into the crowd. Hurrying home, just like the others in the street.

Speaking about the father wound, you said that it is a “serious life-skill, life-sense and identity problem” caused by men suffering from a loss of “their male strength, their connection with their father and grandfather.” How does mother wound develop and what causes it?

“Mother wound also derives from absence: an absence of maternal, unconditional love for the child’s existence in itself.

“It can also grow out of not having a mother and nobody replaces her, or that her love is unpredictable, her behaviour is erratic, or that her acknowledgment is inaccessible, or she is perhaps aggressive, abusive or neglectful.

“In the best case, we all recognize, in the mother’s embrace and from breastfeeding, what kind of world awaits us ‘out there’. What maternal care gives is life itself, which, depending on the experiences of early relationships, can be perceived as safety, lovingly receiving, a good place where we can be loved for ourselves.

“Unconditional maternal love provides a fundamental feeling lasting for a lifetime: the experience of existence worthy of love and dignity and trust that goes back to the earliest times.

“The tiny being developing out of symbiosis sees itself in the mirror of his/her mother’s eye as a person worthy of love, and as a consequence this way he/she will be able to accept and love him/herself later on. The mother reflects whatever he/she should be and the relationship programme and pattern of the secure, or insecure, ambivalent, anxious connection grows out of the reciprocity of attachment. And this in turn grows into adulthood together with us, where we can then attach to our partner according to the early pattern. There is huge responsibility about what sort of pattern is instilled in the child.

“This means the mother wound is the biggest thing that a maturing person, that is a child, can be impacted by emotionally.

“Even serious physical disorders are tolerable in the presence of a loving mother. But nothing works, whether physical or emotional, with an unreachable or non-existent, unpredictable or abusive mother. The world becomes a frigid, wartime battlefield. For this reason, there is no physical-mental disorder in the psychosomatic context of which we would not experience dysfunction with the mother to some extent.”

Is there a difference between the mother wound of girls and boys?

“The formation of gender identity is affected in some way in both biological sexes. If a girl does not have a maternal role model, or this is not acceptable to the child, then there will be dysfunction in identification and pattern imprinting: then she will not know, or will know incorrectly, how to establish a natural loving relationship with a man and function as a woman.

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Photo: Designed by Kireyonok_Yuliya / Freepik

“If a boy does not have a maternal role model, he will grow into a man lacking in self-confidence, he will not know what a woman expects of a man and how to meet the woman’s needs. Frequently he does not dare to love with abandon because he is full of inhibitions. If he tries to follow the macho, pseudo-male role, that similarly won’t bring success, extremes result in flight and fear of the world of women. Men who are uncertain in the ability and extent of the expression of love are either infantile or they are longing for love while in the guise of violent decisiveness, but they are love-illiterate.”

While the father wound and the mother wound frequently result in aggression in men, the consequence in women is the feeling of ‘I’m not good enough’, inferiority and shouldering of the victim role. How does this mental (and social) process happen?

“The mother wound mostly disturbs or incapacitates the natural process of receiving and giving love and emotions.

“If there is no true mother, then the influence of the fantasy and the seen-heard, idealized mother phantoms determine the relationship of boys and girls to the opposite gender and to people.

“A mother wound can also make a man desperately vulnerable because of an unquenchable and dissatisfied desire for love. He can seek what he lost in every woman, idealizing, deifying the ‘Madonna’, but having an attitude to the flesh-and-blood woman as a helpless man or a violent subjugator. So as an outcome of mother wound, heavenly and earthly love in men become separated: the saint cannot be made profane, only rejected by being taken off the pedestal, or overrun with instinctive power. This emotional cleavage can lead to sexuality with despised, promiscuous women, but also to sexual behavioural disorders with the ‘saint’.

“The mother wound can force a woman into an ‘eternal orphan’ state of mind that may lead to anxiety prepared to seek love at any cost. She can be inconstant in relationships because of the continuity of searching, the insatiable hunger for love. In the interest of being loved by a man, she is prepared to surrender herself and give him everything he wants. It can happen that she also views her own being as a woman merely as a role accessory. As to how severe this condition is depends largely on the depth of the mother wound: the absence or inadequate presence of a mother suggests the consequences of the loss.”

The presence of a grandfather can heal father wound. Is the role of grandmothers the same for mother wound?

“The significance of grandparents is great indeed, they are the core pattern of unconditional acceptance and love. A benevolent grandmother represents an eternal ‘emotional nest’ and security for both sexes. In the early stages, mother wound can be significantly healed by a surrogate individual capable of giving love, including a grandmother. In himself, a grandfather is less therapeutic, but as grandparents they can be extremely significant for both boys and girls.”

How can mother wound be healed?

“Above all else, prevention is the best cure. Raising awareness, educating and preparing the expectant mother so that she understands the enormous significance of her role and the dangers of a never-healing wound that will develop with her absence. The mother is the primary source of love, she loves, nurtures, cares for, protects, she is the repository of physical ‘joys’.

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Photo: Unsplash

“The person who has already been injured must be ‘re-educated’ in a unique, personalized way, providing emotional security and stable love, in which he/she can be assured that his/her existence is important and worth loving.

“All love is good. All love heals. It gives strength, support and security. I have heard of women’s communities organizing on church foundations that also serve as self-help spiritual groups. At the same time, each fate has its own particular story. Individual life stories require individual attention and help. Frequently, professional expertise is needed if someone is suffering from a deep mother wound.”

Whereas we require medical attention for our bodies, we must place our mental disorders in skilled hands!

Is mother wound related to experiencing gender identity?

“Mother wound is as old as humanity itself. In earlier times it also happened that the family lost their mother, for example, she died in childbirth or from disease. There were also cases where she had to give up her child because it was born out of wedlock or because she was unable to raise it. These all cause and caused mother wound. Even today there are reasons for mothers to place their newborns into state care. The loss of a mother is a lifelong emotional trauma that does not heal spontaneously: it has to be treated. It can be cured by a good relative, surrogate mother, foster mother or older sister.

There are several reasons for social gender identity disorders, of which the mother wound is only one.

“The life of relationships and attachments is definitely injured in the case of a mother wound, but this does not necessarily lead to the rejection or neutralization of the biological sex. It can, however, result in extreme sexual behaviour, an insatiable life of relationships unable to form bonds.

“Divergences in sexual preference are not diseases although they rarely go together with a happy life that is also socially balanced. The majority of my homosexual patients suffer from their attachment problems, promiscuous desires and an absence of a long-term partner. Transgenders are not dissatisfied with their gender due to their sexual desires. Quite frequently they don’t even desire to have a partner, they only feel that their personality is in the wrong body. And this is such a powerful experience that defines all senses of life that can be clearly reinforced by psychological examinations, so in their case the demand for gender transition may be justified.

“What is often called metrosexuality today is a collective term, not a diagnosis. There is in it an age and a phenomenon. An age in which the full family, the presence of the father and mother in socialization, the cohesive and retaining power of small communities are rare, whereas traumas, emotional neglect, the absence of a psychological culture, the siren song of consumer society (buy, eat, spend…) are common.”

Where do we stand with this in Hungary?

“There are the same disorders in Hungary as in Europe and in the world but it is difficult to get treatment because of the low level of, and lack of access to, psychological culture. Private therapy is expensive, provision financed by the National Health Insurance Fund (OEP) is minimal. Psychotherapy is ‘credited’ at such a low level in the state funding system that it is ‘not worthwhile’ for outpatient clinics and hospitals to employ a psychologist. For the past several decades we have been lobbying succeeding governments to have this practice changed.

“Unfortunately, we are at the vanguard as concerns indicators for depression, fatal diseases associated with psychosomatic disorders (for example, cardiovascular diseases and cancer), alcoholism and suicide, all of which stand in close correlation to mother and father wounds as well as gender identity and relationship disorders. If today, not only the approximately 300 out of the 15,000 psychologists ready for work provided health insurance-based psychotherapy, and others didn’t quit the profession, then the situation could be greatly improved.”

Why would men have to fight for that which was given to them? 
“Because the social role (the patriarchal, male-dominated system) that men – certainly up until the Industrial Revolution – filled does not mean that men would necessarily have understood what they could bear and what they wanted. When a totally male-dominated world still existed, they couldn’t get the best out of it because they lacked consciousness, the awareness of what forces and possibilities are inherent in the socialization of man.

“With the Industrial Revolution, that is, when men left the land and families, unfortunately fathers were removed from the family.

“If the man is removed from the family, the child cannot discover the paternal energy. According to Richard Rohr, Franciscan friar, founder of a movement and author of the two-volume work ‘Wild Man’s Journey’, the father principium or energy is an ancient heritage and not merely a socialization role.

“Being a man is partly a biological fact and partly a socialization gender issue (that is, who they are brought up as), and the outcome of a lot of epigenetic factors (the boy will receive those desired biological and social influences as a foetus and later, from which they finally become a man and father).

“But let’s leave epigenetics out of this and concentrate on what happens in the family when the man leaves his home, does not keep in contact with his parents or wife, does not see his children, only at the weekend or more rarely. Or the modern father who buries himself in his work or his mobile phone, and although physically present is not actively participating in the life of the family or child, and even avoiding eye contact.” 

What does this mean as regards the children?

“It means that the child only sees the man’s world through the eyes of the mother. But that does not have anything to do with masculine reality.

“It is like reading about something in the newspaper that we have never come across in life. If we come face to face with a large silverback male gorilla in the zoo, it will have a totally different impact on us than if we saw it only on TV or somebody only talked about the animal. Not to mention the situation when there is no protective barrier whatsoever and we are standing in the wild and actually facing this huge primitive force.

“We can come across mainly heavy-handed father images in the Old Testament, but there is a loving father image in the New Testament because the male ideal embodied in Jesus is vulnerable and shows solidarity: He cures, He turns towards one, and from this aspect we could even consider Him feminine. But if necessary, He uses his influence: He drives the merchants and money-lenders out of the church and fulfils his destiny on the Cross.

“This duality is already evident in the Book of Creation: ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them’.

“There is no mention that man would be closer to God than woman. There is absolutely no gender discrimination in this very first core principle.

“That is, God is neither masculine nor feminine but the two combined. Men require feminine energies just as much as the other way around. If these are not received, then we have distortions, male societies that sometimes urge their members towards extreme behaviour.”

How is this connected with the so-called ‘father wound’? 
“In that father image we have been nurturing in our souls for millennia, on the one hand there is the creative, constructive, strong, responsible being, and on the other hand the loving, gentle, retaining, caring being. And the boy whose father is absent from the family never sees anything of this. Instead, he hears of a father that the mother uses to scare him: ‘don’t do that because when your father comes home you will be told off and punished’. He will be brought up fatherless, and on top of it, with an image of a punitive father. This is what we call father wound. Because this is a deficit.

“The self-esteem of a man becomes healthy when he is watched over by his father’s proud eye, his father reinforces him: on the one hand, he expects, and on the other, he praises. The father who cannot be proud of his son profoundly and sincerely, who cannot tell his son off because of a lack of responsibility, when duties are not fulfilled, who cannot be a father expecting with love in the good sense, and warmly restraining, will find his son left hanging in perpetual uncertainty. Because the son does not believe that he can be loved, that he has a value in himself, which is why he always wants to enhance his value with something external, living for the future: ‘If I have a house, and then a wife...’.

“The father wound is a serious life-skill, life-sense and identity problem which men suffer from today – even though they are not aware of it – because they lost their male strength, their connection with their father and grandfather.”

Can the absence of a grandfather also cause father wound? Or to put it the other way round: can the presence of a grandfather compensate for the father?
“The grandfather is important because he is the symbol of the will to live. Because however paradoxical it may appear, the proximity of death brings one closer to the values of life. That is why the grandfather who is present in his grandchild’s life and who was before a father and man himself, can love his grandchild in a way that the child grows up in the knowledge that he represents a sense of life for somebody. Then the child will not seek other goals because he will know that he is on this earth for himself, in his own right, with entitlement to love.”

How else is the father wound manifested?
“A person who has the father wound does not know how to handle, for example, authority. We have to fear God, fear our father not because our mother uses him to intimidate us, but because we deeply respect him and that is why we would like to become like him. Whosoever lives, whosoever ‘downloads’ the model of loving authority, won’t ever be aggressive.

“Since the difference between aggression and deeply experienced dominance, that is between authority and violence, is huge.” 

Is the aggressive, misogynistic man frightened of women?
“Yes. In acts carried out against women we frequently find that it is not sexuality but fear behind them. These men do not believe that a woman can love them for themselves, which is why they would rather subjugate the other. Anger, pain, aggression due to absence of fathers, the devaluation of their own masculinity and its counterweighted unhealthy compensation are what men suffer from today. That is why they dare not reach decisions, accept responsibility and risk, commit themselves, acknowledge the woman as a partner of equal status, to marry and have children. Women have fought for all this while the men have not even started the struggle.”

How would it be possible to help them, and should they even be helped?
“Relatively early mortality, high blood pressure, stress, alcoholism all indicate that men need help. There is a need for movements where men receive help in the same way that women had earlier. This is a psychological process, which is why it would be necessary to work out professional help for them using psychology, theology and sociology combined – for instance, life-skill coaching – which leads them to the liberating men’s movements.”

Why is a professional grounding important?
“Because otherwise the movements form into the abovementioned men’s clubs or they will be like that from the outset. For example, we have to be careful that these initiatives do not become movements that follow a charismatic father figure, when somebody standing at the head of the group strengthens his own self-confidence by expecting respect before he states in which direction to continue.

“Men’s groups are full of men suffering from father wound, men who are searching for self-justification from what, or from those, who confirm that they, too, are men. But because this confirmation is not based on an authentic, true, twin-imaged father, but rather on merely a single facet (and even on that only indirectly), in these types of men’s societies the fact is that the blind are leading the blind. Put another way, the father wound can be reconstructed, replaced and settled exclusively through a genuine father-child relationship.”

A last question: what does the absentee father do to girls? That is also a father wound, isn’t it?
“Yes, but its development is totally different. In the identification process, the girl identifies with the mother, as a consequence of which she has to ‘steal’ the father’s heart from the mother. If there is no father present, or she would have to steal the heart of an aggressive father, we get the classical configuration of a (future) lover situation.

“The reason so many women humiliate themselves is because they cannot conceive of themselves in an equal role, because they have never felt that for a father or for a man they are the most important in their own right. After all, the first man that we adore is our father.

“Over the long term and at a social level, it has the same result as father wounds in boys: the gradual destruction of the institution of marriage, the decay of the family and a decline in the population.”