This paper recovers the “Magyar face debate” raging among ethnographers, anthropologists and public figures in the long decade between 1890 and 1903, a period which began with the preparation for the 1896 Millennium Exhibition and ended in the aftermath of the 1900 Paris World Exhibition (accompanied by various international scientific congresses). These events were of great national importance and provided scientists and politicians with unique possibilities to contribute to the nation’s self-definition and representation. The Magyar face debate also constituted an important episode in a long series of cross-disciplinary attempts to define race and ethnicity and to reflect on multiethnic nationhood. By discussing relevant aspects of the histories of ethnography and anthropology in the Dualist era, the paper studies the potential political role of these disciplines in nation building and explores what kind of racial thinking they gave rise to. Affected by the specific socio-political conditions of the ethnically most diverse country of contemporary Europe, the disciplinary trajectories of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology seem to have diverged from the models offered by the historiography in the British, French, and German contexts. The paper argues that the pluralistic, predominantly cultural and strongly integrative ethnographic tradition that prevailed in Hungary in the last decades of the nineteenth century did not notable wane and shift towards a biological, hierarchical and racialist thinking before the First World War.

An 1894 Case and the Mental Geography of Science – recovers the story of a curious and fatal hypnotic séance in a provincial Hungarian castle and reconstructs the waves of influence it exerted throughout Europe. The case allows Lafferton to outline a map of scientific and social exchanges in order to recover how hypnosis was embedded in intricate social relations. By sensationalising it, the media propelled the story across national and social boundaries within a few days. European psychiatric and medical mandarins and social commentators were compelled to respond, demonstrating the social ramifications of the issues related to hypnotic practice. The study shows how the provincial hypnotic séance was connected to medical legislation in the Budapest government (which immediately passed a resolution that greatly limited the practice of hypnosis in the country), to experimental research by psychiatric and medical gurus in prestigious institutes all over Europe, to lay hypnosis as well as to the courtroom from where forensic cases invaded private homes with the help of the media. The discussion of Hungarian and European expert opinions and the local court investigation enables Lafferton to shed new light on questions of the locality and status of medico-legal expertise, and to reconsider more general themes of centre and periphery in 19th century Europe.