Private archives and public lives: the migrations of Alexander Weissberg and the Polanyi archives

Abstract

The archives of the Polanyis, a distinguished family of intellectuals of Hungarian-Jewish origins, are today divided between two continents and three countries. The article traces the history of the family’s archives, highlighting the way in which the multiple – and in their respective contents distinct – collections of documents testify to the family’s history since the late nineteenth century and the intellectual refugee experience at large. Documents of the family’s flight from Hitler’s Europe, preserved in the Eva Zeisel Papers, shed light on the details of a little-known episode of the intellectual migration from Nazi-ruled Europe to the United States and help integrate the international network of physics and the Ukrainian Physico-Technological Institute in the Soviet Union in the networks of émigré artists and intellectuals. The article also considers the constructed nature of family archives and the shifting perception of what families consider private or public in their own history and legacy.