Georg Lukács

Georg (György) Lukács was born Georg Löwinger in Budapest on April 13, 1885, into an assimilated Jewish family of the upper middle class. His father, József Löwinger, was a bank director of the English-Austrian Bank. A lover of culture himself, he encouraged young artists and scientists. It was not until the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy in 1867 that Jews in Hungary enjoyed legal and political equality. In the preceding decades, the Jewish population in Budapest had increased, and by 1900 they accounted for 165,000, or about one-fifth of the city's population. Georg Lukács's mother, Adele (née Wertheimer), was Austrian by birth and was described by her son as strict and wise. She spoke German with her children-Georg, older brother János, and younger sister Mici (Maria)-which was the colloquial language and expression of Habsburg supremacy at the time. Many of the Budapest Jews began to assimilate within the Hungarian majority at the end of the 19th century, which was particularly evident linguistically in an assimilation to the Hungarian language. In the family of Georg Lukács, the surname was aligned with the Hungarian Magyar norm through the nobility grant in 1901 with the title "von Lukács", which was an expression of a hope of many Jewish women_Jews.

Also the family's decision in 1907 to convert to the Evangelical Lutheran religion and Georg Lukács' presumably subsequent baptism can be interpreted, according to Hungarian sociologist Zoltán Tarr, as a desire to be accepted as a part of society through integration.

Georg Lukács's father was characterized by a secular Jewish self-image, and he harbored sympathy for the establishment of a Jewish state. But according to literary scholar Stephan Braese, the young Lukács also had at least a certain closeness to his Jewish origins in his youth, which may also have affected his philosophical inclinations. In protest against his father's wish to become a banker as well, the young Lukács had placed on his desk "the photograph of an uncle [...] who had withdrawn from the activities of everyday life and devoted his life to meditation and the exposition of the Talmud."

His father supported his scientific career financially and expressed in writing to his son in 1909: "I will make all sacrifices to see you become great, recognized, famous, it will be my greatest happiness if it is said about me that I am the father of Georg Lukács."

Because of his good reputation, Georg Lukács attended a Protestant grammar school. There the student met conservative teachers, whom he not infrequently upset with his "spirit of opposition." Even as a high school student, he read a lot and wrote dramas. In his father's library he found the book "Degeneracy" by the early Zionist Max Nordau, which was abhorrent to him. Instead, he became enthusiastic about the writers Leo Tolstoy and Henrik Ibsen, who were frowned upon in the family, as well as the ancient heroic epic "Iliad" and historical novels such as "The Last of the Mohicans." He recalled afterwards how reading shaped him. As a bank director, his father "held the world view that success is the criterion for doing the right thing. Well, I learned from those two books that success is not the main criterion. One can act right even if the thing is not crowned with success...".

Even in these years Georg Lukács moved in a circle of friends with whom he discussed theory, theater and politics. One of them was Marcell Benedek, with whom he shared a passion for literature and who described Lukács' influence as follows: "Strange that I, the son of a poor writer who came from peasant backgrounds, [...] learn from the son of the general director of the English-Austrian Bank that there is also a social question in the world, that in Hungary three million agrarian proletarians live in miserable conditions, and that the social question is not only kept on the agenda by certain 'heartless agitators.'"

After graduating from school in 1902, Georg Lukács first studied law and national economics. After receiving his doctorate in 1909, he continued his studies in literature and philosophy in Budapest, Berlin and Heidelberg. At Berlin University, he attended lectures by the philosopher Georg Simmel, who had a great influence on him. Lukács, who also attended private seminars in his Charlottenburg apartment, was in turn supported by Simmel in his academic work.

In 1918 he married the Russian painter and revolutionary Jelena (Lena) Grabenko, whom he had met in 1913 while on vacation in Italy with the Balázs couple, who were friends. Lukács also developed close, friendly relationships with intellectuals and cultural figures he admired during these years of wandering. Among them were the Hungarian film critic and director Béla Balázs, the poet and playwright Paul Ernst, and the philosopher Ernst Bloch, whom he met in 1910 through the circles around Simmel. Together with Bloch, whose personality and way of thinking Lukács appreciated at this time, Lukács moved to Heidelberg in 1912, where he hoped for a favorable environment for his work and took lodgings with the family of a former lover.

In Heidelberg, he worked on his theory of aesthetics, which aroused "benevolent critical interest" from Ernst Bloch, the philosopher Emil Lask, and the sociologists Max Weber. Beginning in 1914, the then 31-year-old wrote "The Theory of the Novel" (1916), a book on the genre of the historical novel. For Lukács, the novel is a "representative form of the age." To this day, it is considered one of his central works as well as a classic of 20th-century cultural theory.

Numerous journals but also scientific-cultural meetings with contemporaries in so-called societies (e.g. Galilei Society, which offered educational courses for workers*) served parallel to his studies to further develop his thoughts. In the years of the First World War, when Lukács was exempted from military service by the help of an acquaintance, he participated in the program of the Budapest Sunday Circle by giving lectures on literature and topics such as "ethics". This was a group of intellectuals (including women such as the poet Anna Lesznai) who held discussions on Sundays until late at night in the Baláczs family home. Here he also met again his later partner Gertrud Bortstieber, known since 1906 through family circles, with whom he experienced a new kind of bond for the first time.

With the beginning of World War I, Lukács was shaken by the "reaction of German intellectual life [...]" and moved from Germany back to Budapest. As in many other countries in Europe, the situation in Hungary toward the end of World War I was characterized by a revolutionary mood. Social and political conflicts came to a head in the Hungarian half of the Habsburg Dual Monarchy, as the starving majority of the population wanted peace and political participation. Quite a few began to organize themselves in trade unions or left-wing political groups such as the aforementioned "Sunday Circle" around Lukács and Balász.

Lukács also became radicalized. Looking back, he wrote: "The outbreak and course of the war of 1914 intensified in me as never before the aspiration that philosophy should be directed toward changing the world." Now Lukács also engaged more intensively with the writings of Karl Marx and increasingly evolved from a theorist of literature to a politician of practice, turning to the workers* movement.

A newspaper clipping from November 1918 illustrates his turn to socialism: "All of us who are supporters of the present transformation must be clear why we want the republic. Because when we demand the republic, we want land reform and tax reform, new social policies and new schools, in a word, the internal economic and social rebirth of Hungary...With the achievement of the republic, the revolution has only begun and is not over."

At the end of October 1918, the revolution occurred. After the suppression of the monarchy and as a result of a bourgeois-democratic revolution parallel to a bourgeois-social-democratic government, self-organized workers' and soldiers' councils emerged. These, or rather a central representation in Budapest, advocated more profound improvements - comparable to the representations and mobilizations in Vienna or Munich. With the newly founded Communist Party of Hungary (KPU), which Lukács also joined at the end of the year, the self-governing bodies shared the will to push the revolution further. Many of their demands for social justice were implemented with the soviet government that had been formed in March.

As "People's Commissar for Education" in the soviet government, Georg Lukács made possible, among other things, compulsory schooling, scholarships for artists* and writers*, and free access to art or museums and university studies. In this way, he created "conditions for a hitherto unprecedented upswing in culture and art."

However, the soviet republic lasted only until August 1919, because it was opposed by external and internal political forces. After the invasion of Romanian troops in August 1919, Hungary was ruled by landowner and officer Miklós Horthy, who led an authoritarian anti-Semitic government until 1940 and also collaborated with Nazi Germany. After the suppression of the soviet republic, Lukács was politically persecuted like many other communists. He initially hid on the IV. floor of the house at this address, where there was a studio.

From 1919, Georg Lukács lived in Vienna. Once there, the political fugitive was arrested on September 2 due to an extradition request by the Hungarian government. His large circle of supporters, including writers and friends such as Ernst Bloch and Heinrich and Thomas Mann, with whom he became acquainted in Vienna, prevented the extradition by calling for a protest. Austria then granted him political asylum until 1930. However, he often returned illegally to Budapest.

In 1920, Lukács and (widowed) Getrud Bortstieber married. Together they lived from spring with their children in the house of her sister in Vienna-Hütteldorf.

In Austria, Lukács wrote a collection of essays that appeared in 1923 and is still considered a "foundational text of Western Marxism and Critical Theory": "History and Class Consciousness." In the tradition of Marx, he undertakes an "attempt to explain why the proletariat was always ready to fight for its own oppression" after its own revolutionary experience. Lukács tries to trace the consciousness of the working class and tries to trace the alienation towards labor, which had degenerated into a commodity. This alienation can only be overcome by the working class itself in the form of a social revolution. For this he introduces this phenomenon term of "reification", which was later taken up by the Frankfurt School/Critical Theory. It was probably these considerations that led Theodor W. Adorno to visit Lukács in Vienna in 1925. The book was criticized at the time by both Social Democratic and Communist party theorists. Lukács felt compelled to withdraw the collection of essays in 1925.

In 1929, Lukács was sent by the Communist Party leadership first to Budapest to organize the illegal movement there. After the Viennese authorities revoked his residence permit, Lukács emigrated to Moscow in 1930. There he worked in various editorial offices and scientific institutes - including the Marx-Engel Institute - and, on behalf of the party in exile, wrote the "Blum Theses," in which he set out tasks for the Hungarian Communist Party that he believed had arisen as a consequence of the failure of the revolution. But the party, with its dogmatic attitude, acted with criticism on Lukács's goal of freeing Marxism from its theoretical impasse and pushed Lukács out of the Central Committee.

In the summer of 1931, Lukács and his family moved to Berlin on behalf of the Bund Proletarisch-Revolutionärer Schriftsteller (BPRS). He tried to apply Marxist theory to art and literature during this period. He directed the organization, founded in October 1928, and collaborated on its journal, the "Linkskurve." After the transfer of power to Hitler in 1933, he was expelled from Germany and emigrated to Soviet Moscow. There he and his family were evacuated to Tashkent.

On Aug. 28, 1943, Lukács received the title of Doctor of Philosophical Sciences from the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union on the basis of his work on the young Hegel. On 8/28/1945 he left the Soviet Union to return to Hungary.

Lukács survived - for reasons that are not entirely clear - the anti-Semitic Stalinist purges beginning in the late 1950s, which were directed against real or perceived critics* within the Soviet leadership. Although his political stance may have been in line with the party line at the time, Lukács, like many of the victims, came from Western communist circles. Like many other exiles, he adopted prevailing illusions about Stalin and the assessment of the Soviet Union as the only state fighting for socialism and combating Nazism. After Stalin's death, a political shift in Soviet policy began to emerge. In a secret speech at the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU in 1956, the new chairman Nikita Khrushchev named and condemned Stalinist crimes, which caused many communists* to question and reevaluate the Soviet Union. Lukács was thus forced to "wage a kind of partisan struggle for my scientific ideas" and repeatedly received a "commandment of silence." For this reason, he was forced to be self-critical and subsequently revised the statements in "History and Class Consciousness" with which he deviated from the party line. He also withdrew from direct political activity. Later, encouraged by the political change, he dealt with Stalinism in his late work. Only since the archives in Moscow have been open is it known that Lukács was imprisoned and interrogated by the NKVD in Lubyanka for two months in the summer of 1941.

As early as December 1944, Georg Lukács went to Budapest, where he received a professorship in aesthetics and cultural philosophy at the University of Budapest. His students founded the so-called Budapest School - a separate current of Hungarian Marxism that had broken with actually existing socialism and saw itself committed to a "radical humanism" as an answer to Stalinism. Among them was the world-renowned philosopher Ágnes Heller.

Internationally, Lukács also became known for his writings on the emergence of fascism from 19th century German philosophy. Especially in the GDR, "[Lukács's] writings [...] advanced to become a kind of manual for the proto-fascist contamination of German intellectual history," thus influencing the reception of some texts and authors*. One of these texts is "Die Zerstörung der Vernunft" (GDR: 1954, FRG: 1962), in which he criticized Nietzsche. It was received very differently by readers. In it, Lukács dealt with the emergence of fascism from 19th-century German philosophy and accused it of "irrationalism," which inevitably led to National Socialism.

In the years 1949 to 1955, Lukács was a member of the Hungarian Parliament and became politically active in the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. As a member of the CPU from 1953, he supported the reform communist government led by Imre Nagy, who advocated "national and human socialism" and thus met with suspicion from the leadership of the Soviet Union and politicians* close to the USSR. When Nagy was removed from the post of prime minister by the leadership of the Communist Party (MDP), inner-party resistance arose in the form of the "Petöfi Circle," which first met in March 1956. In the summer, Lukács led the Petöfi Circle's debate on philosophy. The Petöfi Circle was a heterogeneous discussion forum that became "the most important intellectual stimulus for political change in Hungary." It "contributed significantly to the establishment of a political climate of awakening and change in Hungarian society," sums up historian Sabine Schön.

In the fall of 1956, Georg Lukács became part of the Central Committee and eventually Minister of National Education under Nagy's government. But when the latter declared that Hungary was leaving the Warsaw Pact, Lukács sided with the Soviet Union and left the government in protest. In October 1956, the initial student protests in Budapest turned into a nationwide uprising. In this, the totalitarian ruling Communist Party demanded a resumption of the reform course. But the Soviet Union intervened and crushed the protests.

After the uprising ended, many Hungarians* fled the country. Under the new Soviet-friendly prime minister, János Kádár, a wave of persecution (trials, death sentences) began against participants in the uprising, which also affected Georg Lukács: he was exiled to Romania for several years, lost his chair and his party membership, and was banned from teaching and publishing. In 1957 he returned. While he was initially considered "revisionist" and a "deviant," Lukács was able to publish again in the course of the 1960s and was finally also readmitted to the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party in 1969.

Lukács died of cancer in Budapest on June 4, 1971.

In order to reappraise and preserve his life's work, an archive was created after his death in his apartment on the banks of the Danube in Budapest. But what remains of Georg Lukács today?

After his death, Georg Lukács' thoughts and texts continued to be read and discussed. In 1968 at the latest, his works were rediscovered by the student movement of the Federal Republic. Lukács also influenced with his thinking - above all his volume of essays "History and Class Consciousness," the so-called Frankfurt School - a school of theory that developed at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main around Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer and referred to Marx and Freud.

In the first years after the end of World War II, he also had a central importance in the GDR as the founder of a Marxist aesthetics as nowhere else. While his literary-theoretical writings were also leaned on in GDR as deviationism after the Hungarian uprising, an intensive examination of their content began after his death in the 1970s in the context of literature.

In the present, however, the memory of the multifaceted intellectual is also in danger of being erased. At the latest since a right-wing nationalist government led by Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party came to power in Hungary in 2010, the discussion of Lukács in Hungary has become highly political and his memory is in danger of being erased. In 2012, the librarians of the Lukács Archive were dismissed. The estate was transferred to the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences under the pretext that the archive's apartment was in need of renovation. Despite a wave of international protest, the Lukács statue in Budapest's Szent Istvan Park was removed in March 2017 at the instigation of the far-right and anti-Semitic Jobbik party. A monument to Bálint Hóman, who was an ideologue of the fascist Horthy regime and was partly responsible for anti-Semitic laws during the Shoah as minister of religion and education, was erected in its place in May 2018. In 2018, the archive was closed for (presumably) political motives and its staff was dismissed. With the establishment of the "International Lukács Archive Foundation" (LANA), university professors and former employees, among others, have been campaigning since 2016 for the archive to return to its premises.

What about Lukács' Jewish self-image? One answer to this question can be sought in the relationship between Judaism and the labor movement. Jews formed a disproportionately large part of socialist movements from the late 19th century onward. Their Jewish origin played a subordinate or no role for them, because they saw themselves as "citizens of the world. Why so many Jews sympathized with socialist ideas or took leading positions in leftist movements cannot be definitively explained here. One explanation can probably be found in the fact that they themselves were affected by oppression - both general and specific anti-Semitic - which is why the desire for emancipation was also stronger.

In an interview, Georg Lukács said that he had always known "that I was Jewish." His Jewishness showed itself - if at all - subtly. Literary scholar Stephan Braese describes how expressions Lukács used in texts and interviews refer to the Jewish tradition. One example is the description by many contemporaries that Lukács turned to Jewish messianism and associated it with the idea of social upheaval after the First World War. In this context, he intensively studied Martin Buber's Hasidic story "The Legend of Baal Shem" (1908) and communicated his admiration to the Jewish philosopher in a letter in 1911. Sociologist Michael Löwy describes how in Lukács's work "History and Class Consciousness" the leitmotifs of his earlier messianism "secularize[d] and transform[ed] into profane Marxist terms."