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HUNGARIAN-ÁMERICAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES
there are only local Hungarian radio stations*“*. However, with the prevalent
use of the internet, more Hungarian-Americans have access to Hungarian
language media.
In spite of the gradually narrowing scope of Hungarian-American
communal activities, there are still regular events relating more or less closely
to Hungarian culture, such as the annual Hungarian balls in the Kennedy
Center in Baltimore every year with the symphonic orchestra of Washington
playing Strauss Waltzes, the “Radetzky” Marching song?*. The Los Angeles
Hungarian-American community regularly organizes “Szechenyi” tea events to
raise money for Hungarians, and they also chant Hungarian poems by Babits,
Petőfi, and sing Strauss, Schubert songs regarded to be part of the shared
cultural heritage of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy"". When celebrating,
Hungarian-Americans like indulging in Hungarian culinary rarities such as
Pick salami, Easter ham, beigli, and Tibi chocolate?””.
It shows that the most time-resistant Hungarian ethnic core values are the
mixture of residual culinary and dance folk traditions, the popular cultural
elements ofthe common Austro-Hungarian heritage, as well as some literary
traditions. These tendencies seem to reinforce Fej6s’s observation on the
present American-Hungarian communities, which can be characterized
by “the occasional, situational, and conscious affiliations to their symbolic
ethnicity”.
In one of the oldest Hungarian settlements, in New Brunswick, New Jersey,
though, there is a vigorous intellectual Hungarian community. The Hungarian
Institute of Rutgers University has been helping learners of Hungarian and
researchers of Hungarian culture since 1991. The American-Hungarian
Foundation moved here in 1959, and the Hungarian Heritage Center has been
organizing exhibits, and other cultural activities ?*.
Despite the prominent case of New Brunswick, it can be concluded
that the traditional Hungarian-American ethnic — religious and secular —
institutions have been declining in terms of their numbers and in terms of
their significance in fostering Hungarian-American cultural traditions and
the Hungarian language.
According to Smolicz’s Core Values Theory””°, language maintenance efforts
are more successful if language is regarded to be a fundamental component of
a group’s culture. If Hungarian constitutes a core value in Hungarian culture,
244 Fenyvesi, Hungarian in the USA, 278
245 Amerikai Magyar Értesítő, 2 (1994), 17
246 Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, March (1999), 5
247 Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, March (1999), 6
248 Fejős, Diaszpóra, 21
249 https://www.ahfoundation.org/
250 Jerzy Smolicz, Core values and cultural identity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4 (1981), 75-90
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