Vortrag
An American in Budapest: James Pedlow and His Transatlantic Child Relief in the 1920s

In the aftermath of the First World War the American Captain James Pedlow turned into a “humanitarian celebrity” in Budapest. From March 1, 1921, he served as the representative of the American Red Cross (ARC) in Hungary. The proposed talk will engage with Pedlow’s everyday child relief activism in the early 1920s and the political agenda behind. While embodying U.S. economic, military, and political power, Pedlow was most dedicated to the plight of Budapest’s starving children. Exploring the discourse around this famous American relief work and his massive visual representation in contemporaneous Hungarian print media, the talk aims to uncover Pedlow’s social and political function in Budapest at the time. As the capital’s appreciation was even literally “carved into stone,” when a bust of Pedlow was erected in Budapest City Park, a study of his person and activism seems to offer clues about the transatlantic connection in postwar Budapest. At the same time, so the argument, an examination of the city’s and the government’s public demonstration of thankfulness towards Pedlow uncovers how humanitarianism can both mirror and deepen unequal relationships between donor and recipient countries.

Diese Maßnahme wird mitfinanziert mit Steuermitteln auf Grundlage des vom Sächsischen Landtag beschlossenen Haushalts.