The Passport as Home
This is the story of an illustrious Romanian-born, Hungarian-speaking, Vienna-schooled, Columbia-educated and Harvard-formed middle-class Jewish professor of politics and other subjects. Markovits revels in a rootlessness that offers him comfort, succor, and the inspiration for his life’s work. As we follow his quest to find a home, we encounter his engagement with the important political, social and cultural developments of five decades on two continents. We also learn about his musical preferences, from classical to rock; his love of team sports such as soccer, baseball, basketball, and American football; and his devotion to dogs and their rescue. Above all, the book analyzes the travails of emigration the author experienced twice, moving from Romania to Vienna and then from Vienna to New York.
Markovits’s Candide-like travels through the ups and downs of post-1945 Europe and America offer a panoramic view of key currents that shaped the second half of the 20th century. By shedding light on the cultural similarities and differences between both continents, the book shows why America fascinated Europeans like Markovits and offered them a home that Europe never did: academic excellence, intellectual openness, cultural diversity, and religious tolerance. America for Markovits was indeed the “beacon on the hill,” despite the ugliness of its racism, the prominence of its everyday bigotry, the severity of its growing economic inequality, and the presence of other aspects that mar this worthy experiment’s daily existence.
Foreword by Michael Ignatieff
Preface and Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Origins: The Virtues of Rootlessness
Chapter Two
A Paean to Tante Trude (Who Might or Might Not Have Been a Nazi)
Chapter Three
Four Friendships: Discovering America in Vienna
Chapter Four
Daphne Scheer, Real Madrid and Internazionale Milano (Inter Milan): The Personal Meets the Political
Chapter Five
The Rolling Stones Play Vienna (Resulting in Bodily Harm to the City’s Jews)
Chapter Six
Arrival in New York: The Dream Meets the Reality
Chapter Seven
Columbia 1968: How the World – and Andy – Changed in a Single Year
Chapter Eight
Kiki: Big Politics and Little Andy
Chapter Nine
The Grateful Dead: My American Family
Chapter Ten
Harvard’s Center for European Studies: The Interloper Finds a Home
Chapter Eleven
Dogs: The Rescuer Rescues Himself
Chapter Twelve
Germany: Admiration for the Bundesrepublik, Discomfort with Deutschland
Epilogue