# Why is Franz Liszt considered as Hungarian?



## ManuelMozart95 (Sep 29, 2018)

He didn't even speak the language, he wasn't even born in today's Hungary (Raiding lies in Austria now), his mother tongue was German and he was more involved in the Austro-German tradition being a key figure in the German School of Weimar.

Yes, I know that Burgenland used to belong to the Hungarian part of the Empire back then but we don't seem to apply the same logic for other composers. For instance Georg Nepomuk Hummel is considered Austrian despite having been born in Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia) which was also on the Hungarian side of the Empire.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Did he consider himself to be Hungarian?


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## Templeton (Dec 20, 2014)

It's a very interesting question and presumably is to do with the changing borders of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Franz Schmidt was also born in Bratislava but nobody refers to him as a Slovakian composer, only as an Austrian one. Unfortunately I am no historian, much as I enjoy the subject, so hopefully somebody will be along shortly to explain in more detail.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A very controversial issue! Some people get excited about this -- see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Franz_Liszt#Hungarian_composer?

Regarding what Liszt himself thought (or claimed to have thought):



> When he returned to his native Pest for a concert in 1840 after a lengthy absence, he addressed some remarks to his audience by declaring: "Je suis hongrois" ("I am Hungarian"), in French." "This ambiguity between his earnest nationalism and a fervently practiced internationalism is perhaps best summed up by Liszt himself, in a letter to a friend in 1873: "Man darf mir wohl gestatten, dass ungeachtet meiner beklagenwerthen Unkentniss der ungarischen Sprache, ich von Geburt bis zum Grabe, im Herzen und Sinne, Magyar verbleibe." ("It must surely be conceded that, regardless of my lamentable ignorance of the Hungarian language, I remain from birth to grave, in heart and mind, Magyar.")


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I think the diversity of cultures and languages within the Austrian empire made for some interesting self-evaluations as regards what nation a composer considered himself to be from. As mentioned above, Franz Schmidt was born in a city which is now part of Slovakia. He was also three-quarters Hungarian by blood, but despite this he considered himself Austrian. Liszt was of predominantly Austrian background yet considered himself Hungarian. Mahler was born on the Moravian/Bohemian border but (presumably) considered himself Austrian. Janáček was born in Moravia but always considered himself a Czech.

Perhaps in the case of the 19th century Austrian empire the old adage can often apply: a man can be born in a stable but that doesn't necessarily make him a horse.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)




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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Minestrone soup?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

eugeneonagain said:


> Minestrone soup?


No, it's goulash, which is the perfect symbol of all things Hungarian. Perhaps this will provide some insight.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I myself was overthinking - I thought it represented a melting pot!


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## adrien (Sep 12, 2016)

bother, now I'm hungry


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Liszt may have spoken French but his soul was overwhelmingly Hungarian (Horowitz banging the hell out of it):






His father worked worked for Nicholas II, Prince Esterházy, a wealthy Hungarian prince, the same Esterházy family that Haydn had work for.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Considering his skills, he may have been Targaryen.


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Well, he achieved a thing or two in introducing Hungarian folk music into the European cultural mainstream.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Ferenc Ritter von Liszt: A composer of Austro-German extraction advertising himself as Hungarian to increase his marketability. There. Just want to liven things up around here. :lol:


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

I wouldn't say he's considered Hungarian. He's considered Hungarian with a lot of buts. Presumed that you have read a biography or two.

So the pinch of salt is already more or less there. And with "there" I mean the collective conscience of the TC-community, which we all know, is the moral conscience watching over western musical history :lol:


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

I am not sure about Liszt, but in the Austrian-Hungary empire, the nationalities were mixed. There were large minorities of Germans and Austrian living in Czech Republic, and many Czech were living in Vienna etc. If the family had Austrian roots and spoke German and self-identified as Austrian, the person is considered an Austrian although he was born in Czech Republic/Hungary etc. There are many examples. Franz Kafka was born in Prague to Jewish/German family, hence he is considered an Austrian. Kurt Gödel was born in Brno, but his family spoke German, so he is tradionally considered an Austrian and not Czech. Other examples are Sigmund Freud (born in Příbor, Czech Republic), Mahler (born in Kaliště, Czech Republic) etc. Before the WW2, Hitler used the German speaking minorities to subvert Czechoslovakia. After the WW2, the German speaking people were forcefully moved out of the country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland


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## Templeton (Dec 20, 2014)

Jacck said:


> Franz Kafka was born in Prague to Jewish/German family, hence he is considered an Austrian.


Interesting. I am from the UK and have never previously heard Kafka referred to as an Austrian writer, always as a Czech. When I first visited what was then Czechoslovakia, in the early 1980s, I am sure that the Czechs considered Kafka to be one of their own, to the extent that there was a Kafka museum, in Prague, which is presumably still there. Have things changed since then?


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Yeah Kafka the Austrian is news to me too. A German-language writer, of course, but specifically Austrian?


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## ManuelMozart95 (Sep 29, 2018)

Kafka is reivindicated by the Czech because even though he wrote in German he also spoke Czech because half of his family was czech and becuase of the fact that he was born and lived in Prague which was always a majority czech speaking city and of course is not part of the Sudetenland.
So his nationality is debatable and he is revindicated as a Czech by his people.

In the case of Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Heinrich Ignaz Von Biber, Oskar Schindler and many others they are considered clearly Austrian or German and are not reivindicated by the Czech people either, many of them don't even know they were all born in what is now Czech Republic.


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Mahler, Freud etc are closely linked to Vienna, which is really the important thing if we're talking about Austrian identity. With Kafka that was never the case.


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

Ultimately, it all comes down to the question of identity, the subject that has been much in vogue in recent cultural history discussion. In the last analysis, what the person actually describes himself as must be the most important factor, but some have pointed out, consistency is not a universal phenomenon. Most of us have more than one identity; which one is the more important depends on whom you are addressing at the time, and indeed the circumstances that are operating then. This is something particularly felt by European Jews, especially in times of persecution such as the later 19th century in Russia, and in Eastern and Central Europe generally in the 20th century.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

As has already been pointed out, Liszt felt Hungarian. This was also one of the most ethnically mixed parts of Europe, being at the crossroads between East and West. Various invasions from Turks, Germans and Russians occurred. There where large Jewish and Gypsy populations.

I think his benefit concerts for the city of Szeged, wiped out by a disastrous flood, demonstrate his patriotism. It’s similar to Chopin’s concerts for veterans of the Polish war of independence. True patriots tend to put their money where their mouth is.

Hungarian elements in his music do also, despite them being based more on music played by gypsy bands than sung by peasants (which Bartok and Kodaly where to research).

After his retirement, he set up homes in three cities: Budapest, Rome and Paris. In Budapest, he founded the music academy which still bears his name. 

In Liszts time, Hungarian intellectuals saw themselves as guardians and promoters of a culture which was under threat of being Germanised. This was in the wake of the failure of the Europe wide revolutions of 1848. Hungary, along with other countries, was denied her independence. Thereafter, much effort was put into building of educational and cultural institutions. It was a way of dealing with political and economic restrictions imposed by the foreign rulers.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

European nationalities … Prior to the end of World War I several empires ruled much of Europe and nationality was not what it later became. My maternal grandmother, who emigrated with her husband in 1918, spoke broken English, was named Fabry, and always told us she came from Czechoslovakia. 

My daughter later looked up my family lineage and viewed my grandparents' entrance papers to Ellis Island. It said they came from the Austro-Hungarian empire. I don't know their point of exit or former hometown and always assumed their were either Slovak or Magyar, the latter normally being considered Hungarian. My aunt later told me they were "assigned" to Chicago upon arrival, a place where Poles and most Eastern Europeans were sent. 

It was no easier on the other side of our family. We are named VanDeSande which everyone always thought Dutch. My grandfather's second wife then told everyone, about 1980, that we came from Belgium. A very distant relative from that country came over here (USA) to see everyone with our name about 1990 and said our name in their phone books is like Smith or Jones in USA. To complicate matters, he lived next to France and considered himself more French than Belgian.

And this was all in the 20th century, years after Liszt's time, so you can imagine the complications in nationality in the 19th century when empires ruled and most countries had at least one revolution.


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## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

elgars ghost said:


> I myself was overthinking - I thought it represented a melting pot!


My first thought too!


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

adrien said:


> bother, now I'm hungry


Funny you should say that as Liszt is the Hungarian word for flour.

I've just been to a concert at the Liszt Academy tonight, and tomorrow I fly out of Liszt Ferenc airport (i.e. Budapest). They're pretty proud of this guy!


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## Arent (Mar 27, 2017)

Liszt's epoch was a time of the clash of nationalism and internationalism. I speculate that he himself was torn, but Hungarian nationalism was a heady brew and he enjoyed that identification, it was his way as a cosmopolitan to feel "authentic" and a "son of the soil", etc. 
More simply, the Hungarian nation and government has since done its utmost to claim him as a quintessential Hungarian, so there's a lot of propaganda there to this day.


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## Schoenberg (Oct 15, 2018)

As a large majority of the composers at the time were Austrian or German, there was no point in calling one an Austrian or German.
Therefore as Liszt was at least to some extent Hungarian, that is what we consider him.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

So i must listen to the Austrian Rhapsodies, now?:scold:


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