A tribute to Ferenc Fehér
Arato, Andrew
My friend Ferenc Feller was a remarkably learned, eloquent, brilliant man. But he did not live a happy life, and suffered more than his share of injustice in three worlds. The Nazis murdered his...
...As his father was being taken away to those infamous trains, he told his fourteen-year-old son: "Hold your head up as long as you've got it...
...He was always on to the next project, which always had to be better, much better...
...He was one of the last Europeans whose learning was in the grand style...
...Whether his subject was a theoretically informed historical study, or aesthetics, or literary criticism, or philosophy, or contemporary events, he applied the same refined, cultured intellect...
...He knew how much his work was appreciated by those who counted most to him—Lukács, Agnes Heller, his peers and younger friends, readers in two dozen countries...
...It seemed that he was finally to receive his due—status, honor, recognition...
...His students, from some twenty lands, learned from him what they could never have learned from others...
...He amazed us, but the only question for him was: which project is next...
...His wife and son were exactly the wife and son he wanted...
...Then they tortured and almost killed young Ferenc as well...
...Although he may not have valued his own work as much as others did, he must have known that he had attained the highest levels of professional excellence...
...He had excellent knowledge of at least six languages and wrote brilliantly in four of them...
...It took place on a spring day in the Jewish section of a Budapest cemetery...
...Ferenc always did...
...He had tender affection and admiration for them, and they stood by him in trying times...
...In death, at least, Ferenc received his due...
...If his intellectual work was incomplete, despite his many achievements, that is a thinker's fate today—so he, rightly, believed...
...his study of Jacobinism (The Frozen Revolution) ranks with the very best literature on the subject...
...he faced adversity with courage and was willing to reconstruct his life over and again...
...The best of Hungary's intellectual life was there...
...his skills were great as a public speaker and lecturer...
...The Nazis murdered his father when he was still a boy...
...He used his great gifts as long as he could...
...He was a valued 110 • DISSENT In Memoriam member of the Dissent editorial board since 1990...
...here Ferenc grew up and became one of Hungary's best minds—only to have the regime destroy his career and force him into exile...
...His essays on Lukács were perhaps the most penetrating of Ferenc's writings...
...His book on Dostoyevsky (Poet of Antinomies) was among the finest achievements of the famous Budapest School that developed around Georg Lukács...
...Like Lukács, his master, Ferenc Fehr quickly left behind what he had just written...
...Next came communism...
...It was a quick death, as he wanted, but it was an injustice that brought an end to his life twenty years too soon...
...The rabbi was sensitive and well spoken...
...Finally, for his last sixteen years, he was in the West, where he never received the intellectual recognition that he deserved so well...
...His gifts were prodigious, as were his achievements...
...When he finally returned to Budapest, amid the changes and reconstruction of the postcommunist era, young Hungarian intellectuals recognized him as the important philosopher that he was, and even as a historical figure...
...His funeral was the most beautiful I have experienced...
...Though his life was tragic and often unhappy, it was not unsuccessful...
...he had a thorough knowledge of philosophy, art, music, literature, history, social and political theory, and world politics...
...WINTER • 1995 • 111...
...Still, nothing could diminish his pride, his sense of honor...
...he was loved by many and capable of great love...
...Then, suddenly, he was gone...
...his critique of Soviet-style societies (Dictatorship Over Needs, written with his wife, Agnes Heller), was among the most sophisticated works of "Western Marxism...
...Ferenc never measured intellectual achievement-his own or anyone else's—by the criteria of the market, or networking, or bureaucratic adaptability...
...Those of us who knew him knew how unique he was—surely, he knew too...
...George Konrad was moving and eloquent...
...It was a tasteful, a just sufficiently emotional testimony to and sorrowful celebration of him, appropriate to the special culture of assimilated Jewry he so eminently represented...
Vol. 42 • January 1995 • No. 1
