On 26 February, close to her 91th birthday, we lost Marianna D. Birnbaum, a former Visiting Professor, benefactor and close friend of the Department of Medieval Studies at CEU, Professor Emerita at the Department of European Languages and Cultural Studies at UCLA.
She was born in Budapest, on 28 April 1934, as Daisy László. She survived the Holocaust in the flat of her uncle, walled in for six weeks. Although her parents also survived, she lost almost everybody in her broader family. Subsequently, she studied Hungarian literature and English philology at the University of Budapest, and in 1956 she emigrated with her entire family to America. In Los Angeles, she became a student again and, with a degree in Library Studies, she began her academic career. She married there the prominent Slavist Henrik Birnbaum, she took his name, and soon she found a teaching position in UCLA. Their beautiful home in Pacific Palisades became a frequented intellectual center of local colleagues and visiting Hungarian friends – this is how I got acquainted with them in 1986. A few years later it happened that I had the first decisive discussion on the foundation of the Medieval Studies Department with János M. Bak, then Professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in the home of Marianna and Henrik Birnbaum. They were, so to say, the godparents of this department, which existed with considerable success for 31 years, from 1993 to 2024. Subsequently, Henrik Birnbaum became a member of our Academic Board, and Marianna a Visiting Professor, frequently returning to Budapest to teach Renaissance literature and culture.
Let us remember here the scholarly achievement of Marianna Birnbaum as well. Her first book, in 1969, was dedicated to a Hungarian-Jewish literary critic, Artúr Elek (d. 1944). In 1983, she also wrote a biography of the great Hungarian-Jewish poet, Miklós Radnóti (d. 1944), who was killed by the Hungarian fascists. At the same time, her scholarly interest turned to the Hungarian Renaissance. Her most substantial monograph is about Janus Pannonius, Poet and Politician (1981). Another related monograph by her is Humanists in a Shattered World: Croatian and Hungarian Latinity in the Sixteenth Century (1986). She also dedicated two imaginative essay collections to this period: The Orb and the Pen. Janus Pannonius, Matthias Corvinus and the Buda Court (1996), and Behind the Image another Text. Six Essays on Art and Literature (2008) Her cooperation with the Department of Medieval Studies started along these themes: since 1998 she regularly gave courses on Renaissance culture. In 2003, she published a fascinating biography with CEU Press on The Long Journey of Gracia Mendes, a true Jewish heroine in her day, born in 1510 in Portugal, emigrating to Antwerp, then to Venice, Ferrara, and ending up in the Ottoman Empire where she became one of the richest merchants and bankers of her time. Marianna Birnbaum also wrote the biography of another famous woman, Fromet Mendelssohn, wife of Moses Mendelssohn, the famous Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment. Yet, historical studies and books were only a part of her literary oeuvre. She became most well-known in Hungary because of her essays and her Guide on the works of the great Hungarian writer, Péter Esterházy.
Marianna Birnbaum was not only a remarkable intellectual and an experienced professor, but also a charming, lively, energizing presence, we regarded her almost as an external member of our department. She also became a close family friend of many members of the CEU Medieval Studies faculty and staff. After the death of her husband, Henrik, in 2002, Marianna instituted at the Medieval Studies Department a Birnbaum Fund named after him, providing scholarships to support CEU students researching South Slavic Middle Ages and also beyond (this fund still exists).
Having become a widow and Emerita Professor at UCLA, she decided to engage in a new life, a third new start in her life after the liberation from the Holocaust and the emigration from Hungary to the USA after the crush of the 1956 revolution. She married again and has been living in happiness with Csaba Gaál for two decades. She adopted a course of life of yearly commuting between LA and Pécs, the home of Csaba. This made her presence at the Medieval Studies Department more regular. She co-edited a collection of studies at CEU Press, titled Practices of Coexistence (2017), with our colleague Marcell Sebők, and she participated regularly in panels adjudicating the MA theses of our students.
The regular return to Hungary also made her presence in the Hungarian literary life more intensive. Besides new books and interviews with Péter Esterházy, she became a writer herself, with fascinating books on her mother and her father, and moving short stories on her relatives, friends and acquaintances who disappeared during the Holocaust. For many years, many people admired her inspiring comments, seasoned with irony and humor, her youthful beauty and undestroyable vitality.
Living and being active, being in shape until the age of 91 seems to be an enviable course of life. Yet, the passing of Marianna Birnbaum was surrounded by, and certainly also influenced by a tragic event: the devastating Los Angeles wildfire in January 2025 did not spare her beautiful family home in Pacific Palisades. With all her belongings, all her books, all her manuscripts, all her personal relics, it was burnt completely to the ground. (She used to say: my homeland is this house). Early February, broken and shattered, she moved back to Hungary, to her second home in Pécs, unsure, whether she was able make a fourth new start in her life. Her health problems exploded, and two weeks later she passed away.
We are struck down by this tragic news, this is a great loss to our community.
Written by Gábor Klaniczay