The tie and the kaftan. The Hungarian Jews between emancipation, assimilation and Zionism (1848-1918)

In the second half of the 19th Century, Southeastern Europe was home to a vast and heterogeneous constellation of Jewish communities. They were subjects to a variety of post-Imperial governments, which shared a powerful nationalist and modernizing drive. The relations between Jews and the nation-states' governments led to a series of issues relating to the enjoyment of civil rights, public and private education, political participation. In the Hungarian case the main focus is on the question of assimilation after legal emancipation, which deeply involved the local Jewish communities. In the second half of 19th Century Hungarian liberal elites however failed in undermining and destroying antisemitism, widely spread among the masses.