Publications [#318235] of Adam Mestyan

Journal Articles

1. Mestyan, A, Materials for a history of Hungarian academic orientalism: The case of Gyula Germanus, Welt des Islams, vol. 54 no. 1 (January, 2014), pp. 4-33, BRILL [doi]
   (last updated on 2025/06/15)

   Abstract:
   This article provides materials for an institutional history of academic Hungarian Orientalism through the life of Gyula Germanus (1884-1979). Using hitherto unexploited archives, this text explores his education, integration into academia, and career up to 1939. I argue that Germanus was an assimilated Hungarian of Jewish origin with a strong loyalty to the state. His two conversions - to Calvinism in 1909 and to Islam in 1930 - also transformed him from a minor Turkologist into a popularly acclaimed Arabist. This study demonstrates that academic Orientalism as a national science was a contested vehicle of social mobility in the Hungarian transition from an imperial to a nation-state setting.© 2014 koninklijke brill nv, leiden.