The background of Henrik Marczali’s How was the Great War prepared? study

Abstract

My study deals with one of the lesser-known works of Henrik Marczali, which in 1923 undertook no less a task than the „presentation of the real perpetrators” of the „Great War”. During World War I, Hungarian university professors – similarly to the intellectuals of other belligerent countries – took an active part in war propaganda, but after 1918, few undertook this. Not so Marczali, who, while reconstructing the events that led to the outbreak of the war, essentially repeated almost all of his narratives and war topos from 1914–1918. In addition to presenting the history of the creation of the work, my paper presents the most important claims of the study with a critical edge and also pulls back the veil on the motivations of the historian.