John Lukacs
John Adalbert Lukacs (/ˈluːkəs/;[1] Hungarian: Lukács János Albert; 31 January 1924 – 6 May 2019) was a Hungarian-born American historian and author of more than thirty books. Lukacs described himself as a reactionary.[2]
This article is about the historian. For the anthropologist, see John R. Lukacs. For other persons of a similar name, see John Lucas (disambiguation).
John Lukacs
May 6, 2019 (aged 95)
Historian
Life and career[edit]
Lukacs was born in Budapest, Hungary, the son of Magdaléna Glück and Pál Lukács (born Löwinger), a physician.[3] His parents, Jewish converts to Roman Catholicism,[4][5] were divorced before World War II. Lukacs attended a classical gymnasium, had an English language tutor, and spent two summers at a private school in England. He studied history at the University of Budapest.[6]
During the Second World War, when German troops occupied Hungary in 1944, Lukacs was forced to serve in a Hungarian labour battalion for Jews. By the end of 1944, he had deserted from the battalion and was hiding in a cellar until the end of the war, evading deportation to death camps and surviving the siege of Budapest. According to his son, Lukacs never saw his parents again.[7]
After the war, Lukacs worked as the Secretary of the Hungarian-American Society.[8][9] In 1946, he received his doctorate from the University of Budapest.[7][10]
On 22 July 1946, as it was becoming clear that Hungary would become a Communist state, he fled to the United States. He found employment as a part-time assistant lecturer at Columbia University in New York City. He then relocated to Philadelphia, where in 1947 he began work as a history professor at Chestnut Hill College, a women's college at the time.[7]
He was a professor of history at Chestnut Hill College until 1994 and chaired the history department from 1947 to 1974. He served as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, Princeton University, La Salle University, Regent College in British Columbia and the University of Budapest and Hanover College.
He was a president of the American Catholic Historical Association and member of both the Royal Historical Society and the American Philosophical Society.[11]
Private life[edit]
In 1953, he married Helen Elizabeth Schofield, the daughter of a Philadelphia lawyer; the couple had two children. His wife died in 1971.[7] He married his second wife, Stephanie Harvey, in 1974.[27] From this marriage, Lukacs had step-children; his second wife died in 2003. He married for a third time, but his marriage to Pamela Hall ended in divorce.[7]
After his retirement in 1994, Lukacs concentrated on writing. He resided in Schuylkill Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania and retained nearly 18,000 books in his home library.[6]
Lukacs died from congestive heart failure on May 6, 2019, at his home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.[7]