The Mentor: Andor Németh
The Mentor: Andor Németh

Summary/Abstract: Andor Németh, poet, novelist, critic and essayist (1891–1953), was, despite his meagre output, a central and highly regarded figure in the literary life of Budapest in the interwar period, as editor, reviewer, friend, man of letters at large and a “character”. He had hardly made his mark on the literary scene in Budapest when he found himself stranded in France at the outbreak of the First World War and was duly interned as an enemy alien, spending the war years in camps along with a number of other Hungarian writers. (Strangely enough, this seemed to be happening all over again during the Second World War, which Németh again lived through in France. Given his Jewish ancestry, this time his luck was in since French internment was infinitely preferable to a German concentration camp.) Released from France after the First World War, he travelled to Vienna, where, although anything but a Communist, he took up an offer from a friend and worked for the diplomatic mission of the short-lived Hungarian Republic of Councils in Vienna. The consequence was that he remained in exile in Vienna for the next few years. This is where he and Arthur Koestler first met. The episode, alongside many others, is described in detail in Koestler’s memoirs.[...]

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