Hungarian Soviet Republic

The Hungarian Soviet Republic affected von Neumann and Teller far more severely. They were not admirers like young Koestler nor yet members of the intellectual elite like de Hevesy and von Kdrmdn. They were children of businessmen—Max Teller was a prosperous attorney. Max von Neumann took his family and fled to Vienna. We left Hungary, his son testified many years later, very soon after the Commimists seized power. We left essentially as soon as it was feasible, which was about 30 or 40 days later, and we returned about 2 months after the Communists had been put down. In Vienna the elder von Neumann joined the group of Hungarian financiers working with the conservative nobility to overthrow the Commune. 

Hevesy became professor of the University of Budapest in 1919. (In fact, he was proposed in 1918, only the appointment occurred in May, 1919.) After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in autumn that year the appointment was not recognized, and as a punishment, Hevesy s right to lecture as privatdozent was withdrawn. He decided that it was better for him to leave the country which suffered from the so-called white terror and anti-Semitism. We know his motivation from the letters that he wrote in October, 1919 to Niels Bohr Politics entered also the University, in my absence this summer two of my assistants absolutely honest and able have been deprived fi om their posts only because they are Jews and I understand that the same thing happened in nearly all Institutes, hardly anybody who is a Jew or a radical or is suspected to be a radical could retain his post, and to Rutherford ... political feeUngs are running extremely high and University affairs have been mixed with politics in a way fully unknown to Western countries. [One of his coworker mentioned by Hevesy was Erzsebet Rona (Budapest, 1890-Oak... 

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