Helena History Press

About Helena History Press LLC

Mission

Helena History Press LLC was founded in 2012. A privately funded publishing house, based in the United States, the firm was established to showcase scholarship about and from Central and East Europe in English. The founders felt that scholarship about the region was underrepresented in the Anglophone world and by establishing an independent publishing house with strong ties to established but also emerging scholars they in could, in a modest way, make a contribution to the larger world of English language scholarship about Central and East Europe. 

History

In this, our tenth year, Helena History Press published a fascinating historical account of the Béla Bartok archives titled A Thorn in the Rosebush, written by Carl Leafstedt, professor and eminent musicologist. We have also released the two-volume account of a significant conference on anti-Semitism in Hungary hosted and organized in June of 2021 by Jeffrey Kaplan of the Danube Institute and his team. The volumes are titled Anti-Semitism in Hungary: Myth or Reality, the contributors to the volumes included the top religious scholars, diplomats and religious leaders in the field of Jewish religious studies. 

Following these works, in the fall of 2022 we are releasing the last book written by professor of political science and member of European Parliament György Schöpflin titled A Contested Europe. 

We also have chosen to re-issue three out of print books that are classics of scholarship published originally by East European Monographs so that they become  accessible to scholars of Hungarian history.  The first, released in early 2022 is Thomas Sakmyster’s distinguished biography of Admiral Horthy. Admiral on Horseback .Upcoming will be Balazs Abloncsy’s biography of Pal Teleki, followed by Ignac Romsics’ biography of Istvan Bethlen.  

Also upcoming is political scientist András Ludanyi’s memoir – an eagerly awaited English edition of his well received autobiography,  already released in Hungarian.

To date, Helena History Press published the first comprehensive scholarly work on the non-radio aspects of the US funded National Committee for a Free Europe, (NCFE) or Free Europe Committee, “The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare” edited by Katalin Kádár Lynn. Contributors to the compendium include scholars from Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and the USA.  A volume on 21^st Century Hungarian Language Survival in Transylvania edited by Judith Késserű Némethy along with two very important scholarly works on the internal deportations within Hungary and Transylvania during the Stalinist era, Stigmatized by Kinga Széchenyi and Comrade Baron by Jaap Scholten. Comrade Baron was released as a trade publication and has been favorably reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement (London), the New Criterion (USA), Literary Review (UK), giving voice to the little known atrocities of the communist government of Romania against its Hungarian minority. 

Three important works by scholars from outside of Hungary have been released Sławomir Łukasiewicz’s volume titled Third Europe: Polish Federalist Thought in the United States and Joanna Wojdon’s work on the history of the Polish American Congress, White and Red Umbrella. A biography of Tamas Masaryk written by distinguished historian Zdenek David of the Wilson Institute in Washington DC was also released.

Helena History Press is also focusing on publishing works of importance to Central European history that have never appeared in English. HHP feels it vital that major works that clarify the history of the recent past be made available to a larger readership. We translated the memoirs of General Vilmos Nagybaczoni Nagy, titled The Fateful Years. Nagy was one of the wartime ministers of defense of Hungary and the first Hungarian named “Of the Righteous” by Yad Vashem of Jerusalem. We also had translated by his son the historian Mario Fenyő the real time diary of Miksa Fenyő, the Hungarian publisher and intellectual (founding editor of Nyugat) who survived the ten month occupation of Hungary by Nazi Germany and the Hungarian Holocaust. From this period of 1944-1945 HHP has already released the memoir of the Hungarian diplomat Antal Ullein Reviczky – “German War – Russian Peace”  translated from the original French by his daughter Lovice Ullein Reviczky.

Helena History Press’ mission also includes commissioning books on important and controversial periods of Hungarian history.  “July 1944: Deportation of the Jews of Budapest Foiled”, edited by the distinguished diplomat and historian Géza Jeszenszky is such a book. Under the thoughtful and scholarly guidance of Professor Jeszenszky, a compendium of essays by eminent scholars serves to shed light on this controversial period and the facts related to the much-debated Koszorus Action.  In addition to the essays, the volume includes English translations of official diplomatic correspondence between the Third Reich and Hungary that provide insight into the conditions prevailing in Hungary and Central Europe in 1944. 

A second volume on Hungary’s political transition leading to the Treaty of Trianon written by  Géza Jeszenszky, is titled Lost Prestige in this work by Sir Bryan Cartledge the distinguished historian and diplomat says that Prof. Jeszenszky has “crafted a gem of historical scholarship.”

We are grateful to our authors and our partners who understand the role an independent press can play in scholarship of our time and who provide us with the opportunity for collaboration. We are particularly appreciative of the support President John O’Sullivan and the Danube Institute have provided us in our efforts in the past few years. 

Dr. Katalin Kádár Lynn PhD