Short description:

? The author (located in Weimar, Germany) is a senior researcher and this is her second monograph. Her first monograph earned the University of Southern California Book Prize in Cultural and Literary Studies in 2015. ? The Indiana University Worlds in Crisis series is a newly established series at IU Press and will be a hub for groundbreaking work on the causes of, experiences within, and responses to forced migration. Focusing on refugees, internally displaced people, asylum seekers and the aid system that surrounds them, the series will move beyond mere pathos to investigate the complexity of lived experiences of displacement. ? As the first title planned for the series, this work will help define the list in its sweeping and thorough historical survey of the humanitarian response to the destruction of World War I, in its clear-eyed analysis of the ways in which those in need both benefitted and were exploited, and in its focus on the everyday lives of Budapest's neediest children and those who worked to save them. ? The audience will be scholars of forced migration and refugee studies, scholars of the history of humanitarian aid and relief works, scholars working on World War I, the history of Hungary and Eastern Europe, and scholars who work on the history of childhood and child agency.

Long description:

In the aftermath of World War I, international organizations descended upon the destitute children living in the rubble of Budapest and the city became a testing ground for how the West would handle the most vulnerable residents of a former enemy state.

Budapest's Children reconstructs how Budapest turned into a laboratory of transnational humanitarian intervention. Friederike Kind-Kovács explores the ways in which migration, hunger, and destitution affected children's lives, casting light on children's particular vulnerability in times of distress. Drawing on extensive archival research, Kind-Kovács reveals how Budapest's children, as iconic victims of the war's aftermath, were used to mobilize humanitarian sentiments and practices throughout Europe and the United States. With this research, Budapest's Children investigates the dynamic interplay between local Hungarian organizations, international humanitarian donors, and the child relief recipients.

In tracing transnational relief encounters, Budapest's Children reveals how intertwined postwar internationalism and nationalism were and how child relief reinforced revisionist claims and global inequalities that still reverberate today.

An original contribution to the history of humanitarian relief, child-welfare work, and the social impact of the First World War in Central Europe. Richly detailed and deeply researched, Budapest's Children traces the dire effects of war and demise of Hapsburg rule on conditions in Hungary's capital city and examines the diversity and interaction of organizations and actors, foreign and domestic, concerned with aiding children and mothers. An insightful analysis of social conditions, relief work, and their representation, Budapest's Children elucidates the evolution and dynamics of interwar humanitarianism as well as the politics informing it.