Budapest's Children

An original contribution to the history of humanitarian relief, child-welfare work, and the social impact of the First World War in Central Europe. Richly detailed and deeply researched, Budapest's Children traces the dire effects of war and demise of Hapsburg rule on conditions in Hungary's capital city and examines the diversity and interaction of organizations and actors, foreign and domestic, concerned with aiding children and mothers. An insightful analysis of social conditions, relief work, and their representation, Budapest's Children elucidates the evolution and dynamics of interwar humanitarianism as well as the politics informing it.

~Heide Fehrenbach, Board of Trustees Professor, Northern Illinois University

Contemporaries referred to Budapest in the immediate postwar years as the 'capital of human misery.' Friederike Kind-Kovács's meticulously researched and original study provides a compelling, and tragically topical, analysis of the impact of war and social disintegration on children. It also examines the ways in which suffering was instrumentalized in humanitarian aid programs, and the relationship between philanthropy and national prestige. It is an important contribution both to the history of childhood, and to the social and cultural history of imperial collapse in the interwar decades.

~Catriona Kelly, Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK

Budapest's Children is a compelling, deeply researched, and all too timely account of the dire humanitarian crisis that gripped Budapest after World War I and of the valiant efforts of local and international aid workers to care for refugee children displaced by the collapse of the Habsburg empire. Rich with insights about the interaction of nationalist and internationalist politics and about the power that images of children's suffering have to move consciences and inspire action, this book is a magnificent contribution to the growing literature on war and its aftermath in East-Central Europe.

~Paul Hanebrink, Rutgers University

Historians of childhood will benefit from this book just as much as scholars interested in the history of humanitarianism. On a more general level, it provides valuable insights into a European region otherwise neglected: Hungary.

~Martina Winkler, H-Soz-Kult

In Budapest's Children: Humanitarian Relief in the Aftermath of the Great War, Friederike Kind-Kovács deftly describes the dynamics between local Hungarian organizations and foreign humanitarian donors and explains how the suffering of Budapest's children was used to mobilize Americans (and Europeans).

~Emmanuel Destenay, Modern American History

The familiar western and celebratory perspective of humanitarian history has left gaps in our understanding of the relationship between relief and welfare, which Budapest's Children offers an opportunity to explore.

~Sara Silverstein, CEU Review of Books