Chapter 5 "Men from Mars" Summary

Budapest, Hungary, thrives during the early 1900's. It has the first European subway, connecting Budapest with its suburbs. The city of Pest is a center of banking, brokering, and lucrative trading in grain, fruit, wine, beef, leather, timber, and industrial production. Jews make up five per cent of the Hungarian population in 1910. They create Hungary's capitalization and industrialization boom. Jewish families own 37.5 of Hungary's arable land. By 1920, Jews make up 50.6 per cent of Hungary's lawyers, 53 percent of its commercial businessman, 59.9 of its doctors, and 80 percent of its financiers. The only other significant middle class is the bureaucracy of poor Hungarian gentry that vies with the Jews for political power. The Jewish commercial elite allies with the old nobility and the monarchy, creating a large class of ennobled Jews.

George de Hevesy's prosperous maternal grandfather, S...