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Biographical Notes and Snippets…

When he was 14 Joseph broke a leg while playing soccer for his home team. During the ensuing hospital stay he wrote his first short story for a contest in a juvenile magazine and won the prize. This was the start of his literary career: "If it had not been for that story I might have become a railway official like my father and spent the rest of my days saluting the chief of the railroads."^[2] Instead, he published his first book at nineteen and became a reporter.

He studied in Budapest and Vienna. Some sources say he also studied at the Franz Josef Royal University in Szeged Hungary; another source says he received a Ph.D. from this University in 1934 [?].

He worked for several European newspapers before emigrating to the U.S.A. in 1914 to work for the Hungarian Legation in Philadelphia.

Certificate of Arrival--For Naturalization Purposes

US Dept of Labor, Immigration Service
Ellis Island, NY, Mar 17, 1920

This is to certify that the following-named alien arrived at the port indicated, on the date and in manner described below, viz:

Name of alien: Remenyi, Josef
Port of entry: New York, NY
Date of arrival: May 11, 1914
Name of vessel: Carpathia Cunard Line

He probably met Margaret Papaloczy, who he married in 1918, while in Philadelphia, as her family is mentioned as living there. His niece remembers:

He was married to Margit [americanised: Margaret] (whom I never liked very much, she never had any time for us kids). They had no children. I do remember him visiting several times during our summer holidays in the Salzkammergut. He was a wonderful storyteller.

Although an american citizen, he still visited family and friends in Europe. Records of some of his travels (re-entering U.S.A.) can be seen in the Ellis Island Records at www.ellisislandrecords.org.


She also recalls:

"He finished up as Prof. of Philosophy at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. There was a statue of him, (perhaps just a head ?) somewhere in the University. which was knocked down and ruined during riots in the sixties...."

In 1929 he began teaching at the Western Reserve University in Cleveland, "where his lectures on European writers often earned spontaneous applause from his classes"^[1], rising to the rank of Professor in 1949.

When he died, in 1952, the Magyar Club of Cleveland donated a plaque to commemorate his work. This was dedicated at a ceremony organised by The Hungarian Cultural Garden Association. The plaque was later damaged and ruined during the student riots.

The program from the dedication ceremony:

The site of the Hungarian Garden was dedicated on October 21, 1934, upon the occasion of the 123rd anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt, with the unveiling of the bas-relief of the Hungarian composer. [...] Speakers at the dedication included: ... Hungarian Consul Joseph Remenyi, ... www.clevelandmemory.org/ebooks/tpap/pg61.html

According to another source^[2], he worked for the Hungarian Legation in 1914, but I haven't seen any mention anywhere that he was the Hungarian Consul.

On July 23, 1950, at the conclusion of the annual One World Day celebration, marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Cultural Gardens, a bronze statue of Imre Madach, philosophical dramatist and author of "The Tragedy of Man" was dedicated in the Hungarian Garden. Dr. Joseph Remenyi delivered the principal address on the works of Madach. www.clevelandmemory.org/ebooks/tpap/pg61.html

More about the Hungarian Cultural Gardens here:

www.culturalgardens.org/gardenDetail.aspx?gardenID=14
www.clevelandmemory.org/ebooks/tpap/pg61.html

The U.S. Census

A RootsChatter found a Joseph Remenyi in the 1920 Census in Cuyahoga, Ohio...

Joseph Remenyi, age 28, B Hungary, parents born Hungary, to USA 1898,
Naturalized in 1915. Newspaper Writer.

Marguerite, 27, emigrated same year, born Hungary, parents born Hungary,

Another RootsChatter found this (mis-spelt ?) Joseph Remenyi in the 1920 Census in Cuyahoga, Ohio...

Name: Joseph Reminge
Age: 28 years
Estimated birth year: abt 1892
Birthplace: Hungary
Race: White
Home in 1920: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio
writer - news paper
immigrated 1898

387 E118 St. U.S. Census 1920 United States Federal Census
Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio
District 385 Ward 19 sheet 14 B
Roll: T625_1370

Also mentioned at this address are Julius & Rose Lokosy, his wife's parents.

Some details don't look right, for instance

• "immigrated in 1898" ? - Joseph came to USA in 1914; for Margaret I don't know.
• "Naturalized in 1915" ? - Joseph applied for Naturalisation in 1917, and this was granted in 1920; When she returned to the USA in 1923 on the SS Orduna, Margaret's USA citizenship was declared, "By father's papers" and not by her husband's. So perhaps she was automatically naturalised through her father's naturalisation.

And here they are, mis-transcribed, in the 1930 Census:

Name: Joseph Remenyr
Age: 38
Estimated birth year: abt 1892
Birthplace: Hungary
Relation to head-of-house: Head
Spouse's Name: Margaret Remenyr
Race: White
Home in 1930: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio
Year: 1930; Census Place: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio;
Roll: 1776; Page: 10B; Enumeration District: 457

An Internet-Search for "joseph remenyi" turned up the following literary references:

• In an article "An Introductory Bibliography to the Study of Hungarian Literature", published in
  October 1964, Albert Tezla has this to say:
  "I have, however, included numerous journal articles by the late Joseph Remenyi, most of which are concerned with individual authors, not merely because they are in English and easily available or because they deal mainly with more recent authors, but because each of them contains biographical materials and critical comments and often places the author in relation to the movement of which he is a part and to the European tradition which he reflects. A collection of Remenyi's articles, edited and with an introduction by August J. Molnar, was recently published: Hungarian writers and literature: modern novelists, critics, and poets (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1964; 912 p.).
  (Complete article at: www.mek.iif.hu/porta/szint/egyeb/katalog/hunlit/html )
  
  
• "Joseph Remenyi, a Hungarian professor at Cleveland University, set himself the task of acquainting Hungarians with the American novel. In his American Decameron, Professor Remenyi endeavored to acquaint the Hungarian public with such American authors as Sherwood Andersen, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. Furthermore, Sinclair Lewis, Theodor Dreiser, Pearl S. Buck, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Mitchell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, Jack London, and, to a lesser degree, Upton Sinclair attained the greatest popularity in Hungarian literary circles. Their works, like Anderson's Dark Laughter, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, and many others, were translated into Hungarian soon after their English publication and were read by sophisticated Hungarians. Perhaps every Hungarian junior high and high-school student read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi. With his The Innocents Abroad, Twain probably influenced such great Hungarian novelists as Geza Gardonyi and Kalman Mikszath.
  
  Professor Remenyi also made an attempt to introduce America's scholars to some of Hungary's most influential writers, especially Endre Ady who is considered Hungary's greatest poet in the twentieth ccntury. He also tried to create a Hungarian-American literature. He published a collection of stories dealing with the life of the Hungarian immigrant in the United States. His best known work Emberek ne Sirjatok (Thou Shalt Not Cry) had four editions, his Elni Kell (You Must Live) two. "
  (Mark Imre Major: In "American Hungarian Relations 1918-1944")

Some Links and Sources:

1. REMENYI, JOSEPH - Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=RJ
Dr. Joseph Remenyi, http://academic.csuohio.edu/clevelandhistory/culturalgardens/...../DrJoseph%20Remenyi.htm

2. George J. Maciuszko: In Memoriam Joseph Remeny
   Books Abroad, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Spring, 1957), pp. 135-137, http://www.jstor.org/pss/40097381
3. Rebuilding Cleveland: The Cleveland Foundation and Its Evolving Urban Strategy, Google Books
4. The Hungarian-language newspaper SZABADSAG ('Liberty'), http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=S28
5. Hungarian Cultural Garden : http://www.clevelandmemory.org/ebooks/tpap/pg61.html

Picture Gallery…

• 
• ca. 1893

• 
• ca. 1920
  

• 
• ca. 1925/1926
  

• 
• ca. 1925/1926
  

• 
• Cleveland 1926
  

Many thanks to all the RootsChatters, who added various missing "bits" to this story.