Csilla Markója

Postscript to the four-tome Wilde edition¹

 

 

The four-volume source edition that appeared as numbers 83-86 of Enigma, the Hungarian periodical of the theory and history of art and is now accessible on the online repository of the Hungarian Academy of Science may lay claim to considerable international attention. The publication comprising diverse letters, writings and other documents of art historian János (Johannes) Wilde offers an insight into the everyday life of the Vienna School of Art History (Wiener Schule) and into the Hungarian-Austrian scholarly interactions. It also sheds light on the so-far little known connections between the post-World War I wave of emigration and the art patronizing Austrian aristocrats on the one hand and the so-far almost overlooked profound professional and personal relationship between Wilde and Max Dvořák to which – on Wilde’s part – we owe nothing less than the edition, publication and interpretation of Dvořák’s estate in terms of the history of ideas. That is, without Wilde posterity would have no knowledge of the historian of ideas Dvořák as a “configuration” of the history of science. Later world-famous as a Michelangelo scholar, János Wilde, who spent the greater part of his life abroad, cherished a particularly intimate relationship with his two unmarried siblings Ferenc and Margit, who remained in Hungary and after the death of their mother lived together. The three siblings corresponded on a weekly basis; some of their invaluable correspondence is preserved in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies², the greater part is kept in the Archive of the Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery. From this correspondence of several running meters, the first three volumes of Enigma include the letters relevant to the Vienna School and Dvořák, complemented with letters by Wilde’s friends, art historians, philosophers etc. – among others László Éber, Béla Fogarasi, Edith Hoffmann, Karl Maria Swoboda, Simon Meller, Elek Petrovics, József Balogh, Károly Tolnai – written to János Wilde. The fourth volume of Enigma is a unique document from 1944: the record of the Budapest siege written in the form of epistolary diaries by the Wilde siblings back in Hungary, reporting on the German occupation of Budapest, the situation of the Jews and the days of the siege literally from air raid to air raid. As István Bardoly writes: “János Wilde lived in Vienna until 1938, but after the Anschluss he was dismissed from his employment in the Kunsthistorisches Museum on account of his wife’s Jewish origin³. They went to the Netherlands first and then to England, where they arrived in 1939 upon the invitation of the National Gallery. In 1940-41 they were first interned to Scotland then to Canada as enemy aliens – Wilde was an Austrian citizen from 1927; then they lived in Aberystwyth, Wales, where the stock of several museums had been rescued. Their contact with Wilde’s brother and sister was interrupted from mid-1940 to November 1945, though the siblings at home had to consider several, often adventurous possibilities of «mailing letters». The relatives in Hungary were informed on 25 October 1940 that they should not expect replies from their brother in Canada because the interned were not delivered their mail. (…) What motivated the Wilde siblings was not the intention to register the cold facts for posterity but the stubborn insistence on the preservation under all circumstances of possibly the most important meaning of their lives, family unity, even if it could only be virtual. To tell always, even in those times, in thousands of letters, what life was like, what their lives consisted in.⁴”

János Wilde, or Johannes Wilde as he was later known, the world-famous Michelangelo researcher, deputy director of the Courtauld Institute in London, who was among the first scholars to introduce the X-ray to the examination of art objects, was only 23 years old in the summer of 1914, a fresh graduate of the faculty of humanities. He was extremely happy as he had received a scholarship of 1200 crowns from the Ministry of Religion and Public Education for studies in Rome. The war, however, foiled his journey, and his superior at the Museum of Fine Arts, Elek Petrovics deemed it more prudent to send the promising young man to Vienna, to Professor Max Dvořák. In his memorandum he wrote the following: “Under the present conditions, Mr. Wilde would then supplement and complete his studies at Vienna University, in particular by attending the art history lectures and seminars of Professor Max Dvořák in the coming academic year, before his doctoral examination. He turned to me with the request of acquiring Your Excellency’s kind support to this end. Mr. János Wilde, who was a top student of Budapest University has given evidence of his serious and unquestionable commitment to the art historical profession during his museum employment over the past year, which substantiates Your Excellency’s trust consenting to his travel grant and proves him worthy of further support. It can rightly be expected that the aforenamed will put the opportunity of visiting Vienna University to good use under the guidance of Professor Dvořák, an outstanding educator of the students of art history by virtue of the excellence of his theory and the inspiring and fertilizing effect of his lectures, and he will become a highly valuable expert capable of performing useful services.”⁵ He was personally introduced to Dvořák by another prominent colleague at the museum, Simon Meller, who had been the curator of the Department of Prints and Drawings – an acknowledged professional workshop – of the Museum of Fine Arts since 1910. Here is a report of a playful tone to his family by Wilde: “Dearest Ones at Home, I’m coming again from Schönbrunn a bit earlier, it’s the finest summer vacations, because I want to go to the Apparat [as the department was called, Cs.M.] to submit to Zimm[ermann] the manuscript and letter Meller sent. I was there in the morning, after enrolment, and the assistant received me kindly.  He knew about me, he had been informed by Dvořák, who had to leave for a few days. It was funny how in the next moment of our conversation we both turned upon Strzygowski.”⁶ The last clause clearly reveals how things were going on at the Vienna department. The assistant was none other than Karl Maria Swoboda; a mere six years would pass before he – together with Wilde in emigration – would be preparing for print the enormous posthumous estate of Dvořák, who died an untimely death, terminating as it were the most radiant period of the Vienna School. And something else came to grief, too: that which Paul Stirton termed as the potential of a Budapest School of Art History. The Enigma source publication divulges something personal about these miraculous and sad years marked by war, revolution and retaliations, and carries an ample selection of János Wilde’s official and private correspondence, beside diverse other documents. These primary sources conjure up the everyday life at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and at the famous Vienna School, the world of the cultured Austrian aristocrats whom later Wilde befriended, and life in wartime Vienna in general which was soon to receive a multitude of Hungarian emigrants. Having finished his dissertation about the beginnings of Italian copperplate etching, Wilde did not really plan to return to Vienna – but he was forced to do so because of his role during the Republic of Soviets in Budapest. Throughout his second sojourn in Vienna he was cherishing the hope of returning, although Elek Petrovics, who had encouraged him to study in Vienna earlier, was compelled to write a wholly different letter to him. In it he informed him of the minister’s decision taken after the interrogations “by the committee in charge of examining the behavior of the officials of the Museum of Fine Arts during the Government of Soviets”: “Since the Minister does not deem your stay in the employment of the institute under my direction desirable, he is going to provide for your transfer from the museum soon. Please find attached the rescript pertaining to your case. Yours truly, Elek Petrovics. Budapest, 20 Sept. 1920.”⁷ The transfer was actually protracted for years, thus Wilde’s second stay in the Austrian capital was no emigration but an unpaid leave from the Museum of Fine Arts still as its employee. Eventually he was discharged with pecuniary compensation in 1922; it was generally believed that he got off lightly, which greatly owed to his colleagues who took up the cudgels on his behalf, emphasizing his honesty, apolitical nature, professional correctness.  At first, Wilde could only be interrogated at Moravcsik’s neurological clinic. His doctor, Gyula Schuster had treated him earlier, too, so probably he was not merely hiding in the institution but he was really brought down by the calamities during and after the Republic of Councils. Though Max Dvořák welcomed him warmly in Vienna, he would not have left the professional community at home on his own will – and thus began his lifelong and far from voluntary emigration.

On 9 February 1921 he put to paper the following lines in the Grusbach mansion of Count Khuen-Belasi: “I must tell you an extremely sad piece of news. Professor Dvořák, my dearest tutor, died suddenly last night of a stroke. I can’t describe now how terrible this reality is, my dear Family at home will know anyway, but I briefly touch on the circumstances. I will write exhaustively as soon as possible. We arrived here together on Sunday evening. It was his request that I should accompany him on his one-week holiday which he was looking forward to with excitement. Khuen came with us cherishing the happy thought that he could spend a whole week at home undisturbed for the first time in so many years. – It is very hard to continue. We only spent 24 hours together. Monday night we went to bed after one in the morning, after a long day spent in the finest mood. The professor had a good time, was kind and sagacious with everyone – and yesterday morning, when the butler entered to wake him up, he found him unconscious on the floor by the bed. The doctor arrived in a quarter of an hour, tried everything, made every preterhuman effort, but he could not succeed. The blood spill in the brain was too powerful, there was total paralysis immediately, and all that remained to us was hold his chin lest the tongue falling back might prevent breathing. We did not leave him to the end. (…) God be with you, dearest ones at Home. The garden is beautiful under the window, the dark pines packed with freshly fallen snow and the sun is shining peacefully. They are mourning the poor professor so beautifully. Kisses, Bundsi.”⁸

Although this and a few other letters already appeared in print in 2010 translated into German, and in the most adequate place, too, the Wiener Jahrbuch,⁹ their contents have drawn no response so much so that in the biographic part of the 200-page introduction to the latest Dvořák text publication¹⁰ neither Count Khuen nor János Wilde are discussed on their merit, whereas it was far from being accidental that these two were at his death bed. Nothing can be learnt about the network of personal relations that tied the world-famous Viennese art historian to the progressive aristocrats of the Monarchy (including Count Lanckoroński active in the Austrian organization of monument protection, the Zentral-Kommission), on the one hand, and to the group of Hungarian art historians who were working at the Museum of Fine Arts at that time, on the other hand. This web of relations was notably more than a simple inspiration for Dvořák: it was the token of the survival of his life’s work. Dvořák the historian of ideas was constructed by János Wilde for posterity in the five-volume edition of the Dvořák writings and in the introductions to the volumes. The great role played by the posthumous oeuvre in the Dvořák reception is confirmed by the words of his colleague at the Museum of Fine Arts, Edith Hoffmann, who had also attended Dvořák’s courses in Vienna but only came under his influence years later when she had read this corpus: “It was only years after my university studies that I came under the influence of Max Dvořák, the professor of art history at Vienna University. At the beginning it was the person only who exerted a great influence, and it took years before I was captured by the novelty of his writings in the history of ideas, which then changed my entire thinking.”¹¹

This is how Wilde continued his description of the circumstances of Dvořák’s death: “When we arranged all necessary things, I and the count took the first train from Grusbach at daybreak yesterday for the funeral service, so that from the railway station we just made it to the Jesuit church – Dvořák’s most beloved Viennese church – to attend the death mass at 11 o’clock. That means I had to get up at 3 in the night and ride a coach for two hours in the dark; the afternoon was spent at the widow’s until dinner, in the evening I was with Swob[oda] until 1 – I was very tired and had no time for writing. Anyway, I could not even put it down for myself what had happened to me in the past 10 days, Dearest Ones at Home, so when I go home in a month’s time, I will tell you everything. It was a miraculous time – God willed that such things should happen to me. I am in Vienna now for a day or two to arrange the most urgent things, but at the weekend, or on Monday the latest I will return to Emmahof. Guby, too, is only coming back from Germany tonight, and I have very important business to do with him. Today I was invited to lunch at Count Lanckorońksi’s, the former lord chamberlain, Dv[ořák]’s old paternal friend to whom I had to report about a lot of things. Schlosser’s obituary was held at the university in the morning. My time is scheduled accurately now because there is much to do. The widow put into Swoboda’s and my care (exclusively) the editing and publication of the enormous estate, Khuen became the children’s guardian. Then there is the question of succession – it is very painful to deal with personal problems now, but we must be concerned with them so as to avoid later remorse that we had left something undone. The question is impossibly difficult, almost impossible to solve more or less satisfactorily.”¹²

Wilde and his colleagues failed to see to the question of succession at the Vienna department as they had hoped – the post was eventually won by Julius von Schlosser, about whom the Dvořák disciples had a devastating opinion. The Hungarian press carried the following report on the events: “To succeed professor Dvořák, who died tragically at such an early age, the philosophical faculty of the University of Vienna invited Professor Wilhelm Pinder, a renowned art historian of Leipzig University. Pinder’s negative response arrived in Vienna just now. It is probably the weak Austrian currency that causes his, or other German scholars’, hesitation to come to Vienna where just a little while ago it was the greatest glory and joy to be offered a teaching post.”¹³ Wilde and his colleagues nominated Wilhelm Köhler: “I think I wrote earlier that Köhler accepted the invitation, or more precisely, said yes in theory and would come here soon to negotiate. That would at least bring a former pupil of Dvořák (Dvořák’s first assistant) to us, if we must put up with Schlosser, anyway. There is no important news otherwise. The Dvořák Verein’s Generalsammlung is held on 9 March where we are going to read out an unpublished manuscript.”¹⁴ But hopes were soon to vanish in thin air: “The count and countess and Köhler have been here since Tuesday, there is some event every day, usually more than one meeting, dinner, etc. On Tuesday at Swob[oda]’s, on Wednesday at the Sacher and then at countess Schönborn’s (with music).[…] What is left for tonight is the send-off gathering for Köhler at the Frau Professor’s [Dvořák’s widow – Cs.M.] where we shall be all together again. […] Köhler’s presence was a joy in every regard. He is clever, honest, likeable who looks upon the work as a sacred duty, so it won’t be his fault if he does not remain here. For now the situation is far more entangled than it was last year, the number of factors on which a lucky solution depends has been multiplied,”¹⁵ Wilde wrote to Budapest on 17 March 1922, and a bit later he resignedly informed his family: “The case of the Lehrkanzel is under a cloud, probably Schlózi will alone be professor (Köhler will be out) – but even this solution is to be happy about because the chaos going on for one and a half years has been intolerable. In the autumn I will move to my old room designated for me by Dvořák where I will be alone and can work un­dis­turbed.”¹⁶ As the now presented Wilde letters reveal, the publication of the Dvořák corpus possibly owed more to Count Khuen and other aristocratic patrons (e.g. the mentioned Count Lanckoroński, whose obituary written by Wilde is also included in Enigma no.85) than to Dvořák’s assistant Karl Maria Swoboda, who took a smaller share of the philological work and whose contribution to the jointly signed preface – at least the so-far elaborated sources suggest – is negligible. “Ernesto, Mikula and the count [Ernst von Garger art historian and his wife, and Count Khuen-Belasi] all take good care of me, I can’t have any problems with them around me. In Swoboda I have found a true friend” – Wilde wrote on 15 February 1921¹⁷, and on 12 March he described the beginning of the work in the following: “I am preparing for press Dvořák’s last great work, the Bruegel, and on Monday I and Swob[oda] begin the first perusal and cataloguing of the estate. By our first estimate the literary estate consists of 200,000 (!) pages. Add to that the enormous correspondence and a library of some 6000 volumes. Enough work.”¹⁸ The forth­coming letters, however, inform that while Wilde works several hours a day on the estate at the Vienna department, “Swob” is either writing his habilitation disser­tation or is away travelling. The first draft of the preface, whose style also clearly bespeaks Wilde and was completed by him alone in Padua on 1 October 1923, was sent by him to Swoboda for approval: “I have just mailed the Vorwort express to Swob[oda].”¹⁹ Count Khuen concerned himself so deeply about the fate of Dvořák’s estate that he even wrote an intercessory letter to the Hungarian Minister of Religion and Public Education trying to obtain another unpaid leave for Wilde. His petition includes revealing details about the division of work: “Doctor János Wilde, assistant researcher of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, was not only the student but also a close friend of Professor Dvořák, who died last year. He was immediately prepared to process the estate with dr. Swoboda, Dvořák’s assistant out of filial loyalty and gratitude to the beloved tutor and master, and out of compassion for his children. I was pleased to see this friendly and touching un­selfishness (for he was not willing to accept any fee) not only because Wilde, just like Swoboda, does this work free of charge, out of love for their late professor, but also because none of his students were closer to the poor professor – both personally and in terms of the profession – than dr. Wilde in the last times of his life. Together with my sister he was at the side of the notable scholar until he breathed his last in my Emmahof mansion. Still in Dvořák’s lifetime dr. Wilde and I corrected the recently published outstanding book on Pieter Breughel the Elder. Dr. Wilde was Dvořák’s confident on all matters and outside the professor’s assistant Swoboda I know of nobody who would be as well suited for the elabo­ration of the estate as Wilde. What is more, it is my opinion that on certain issues Wilde would be irreplaceable for us. […] Both of them [are absorbed in their work] on the verge of endangering their health, which has made me usher dr. Wilde toward the path of recovery twice but even [during convalescence] he immersed in his work. Wilde has familiarized himself so much with the material (learning to decipher the handwriting also took a lot of time), particularly with a certain part of the work that he undertook, that if we were to put this work to someone else’s care, the whole year’s achievements would surely be lost.”²⁰

The letter (whose full text is available in Enigma no. 84) reveals that it was Wilde who effectively deciphered Dvořák’s manuscripts and prepared them for printing, that Count Khuen, his time permitting, was also involved in working out the con­ception of different publications, and that in the last years of Dvořák’s life Wilde and he were among the closest collaborators, and perhaps the only intellectual partners of the professor. The establishment of the Dvořák-Verein was also a sign of the relative isolation of Dvořák, of the need to defend the Riegl-initiated traditions of the Vienna School already at that time when the impressive great theory – the historization of the concept of art – which is registered today as the product of the geisgeschichtliche period of the Vienna School but which only took shape in Dvořák’s last few years and posthumously, in the conception of the oeuvre edition by his disciples, still only existed in an embryonic form.

The author of the mentioned Dvořák preface, Sandro Scarrocchia only names Khuen once, as a disciple who – when Dvořák suffered attacks of a nationalistic hue for his Czech origin – supported him, also financially. This support was mainly realized as regular invitations to Grusbach, but no more detail is revealed about this peculiar count, who also had Hungarian relatives through the Khuen-Héderváry family. As regards attacks of a nationalistic hue, contemporaneous information can be had e.g. from the Pesti Napló, 20 November 1920: “The Czechs have been kicked out of Vienna University. Our correspondent in Vienna reported on the phone what a great stir was made this morning when before the start of the lectures at the eastern trade academy the students sang »Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles« in response to the Prague demonstrations. When a Czech student did not stand up during the song, he was hurled out and beaten. All Czechs were expelled from the universities and academies of Vienna and in the coming days a great demonstration against Czechs are to be held to which the Hungarians in Vienna are going to join collectively.”²¹

Count Khuen-Belasi was the central figure in the highly erudite and enlightened circle of aristocrats with surprisingly radical political views, who supported Dvořák and through him Wilde. This support was not only elicited by political or personal attractions, but also by certain institutions of Austrian art history, too. For instance, the mentioned Dvořák-Verein set up in 1920 to finance the Vienna School of Art History was a foundation of Count Khuen which he later directed as well. The instrument of incorporation, a printed copy of which survives in Wilde’s estate and the text of which is carried by Enigma no. 84,²² also confutes the conjecturing that the “Wiener Schule” as a concept was only a posterior construction. Wilde was eagerly looking forward to the constituent meeting of the association, for one thing, because of his new important relationship with Count Khuen: “I will probably see him at the weekend when the first sitting of the Dvořák Verein is to be held (with Dvořák’s lecture on Dürer’s Apocalypse) – Khuen must simply be there.”²³ This is how he described their first meeting: “I have been here for the third week now as a guest and art history tutor of Dr. Karl Graf Khuen-Belasi (nephew of the former Hungarian prime minister, unmarried, about 40 years of age) and I must say I have an excellent time. I stay at a marvellous country house with a park (in the woods), among friendly and refined gentlemen and women who readily observe one’s need for independence. All my obligation is to read with the count and talk about art history in the evenings when he is at home, that is the dilettante hobby of the count who is otherwise surprisingly cultured and clever, a pupil and the greatest admirer of Dvořák. (Dvořák was invited here for two weeks in February with his whole family.) He professes to be a monarchist Bolshevik, which means that despite his enormous fortune he is against capitalism. And in culture, he is ultramodern. For example, I have found two copies of the Theorie des Romans in his library – 8,000 books! I expose my ideas with perfect liberty to him in all regards and he is always deeply interested in what I say. In art he is an enthusiastic admirer of Kokoschka, which means much more than being an admirer of Ady in Hungary. I already wrote to you how I made his acquaintance. Around New Year Dvořák had asked him to intervene at home on my behalf. Having learnt through the English mission in Vienna that I was bedridden at no.26 Hor[ánszky] street, he made every effort for months with a persistency that is astounding. His secretary showed me the replies to his letters by e.g. Kövess, Dani, Adolf Ullmann, etc. And he did so by sending them in the extremely complicated way of messengers; once he was also fined for smuggling a letter. Whenever he got some news, he immediately informed Dvořák. It cannot be put into words how kindly he received me. Blessed be the two revolutions, he said, because they caused my return to him.”²⁴

The allusion to György Lukács’s work without mentioning the name indicates that the passionate support of Dvořák and his friends won by Wilde was thanks not only to his captivating intellect and personal appeal but also to the intricate web of intellectual relations which mediated the ideas of the Sunday Circle, a philosophically active Budapest society of thinkers, artists and scholars, to Dvořák, who – born a Czech – experienced refined and less sophisticated forms of neglect, and to the Vienna School and vice versa, both before the Republic of Soviets and after it when the Viennese intellectuals and a part of the aristocracy received the Hungarian exiles in Vienna with relief societies and aristocratic patronage. In this flow and exchange of ideas Wilde was a sort of “hub” to borrow a term from the network researcher physicist Albert-László Barabási²⁵, linking the Vienna School to a group of Hungarian art historians who were in some way or other connected to the circle of Lukács. These relations were on an everyday basis on the one hand, and on the other, they were stronger and more ramifying than thought earlier. Wilde’s correspondence is a real sensation of the history of science in an inter­national perspective, for it helps to enlarge, sometimes supersede our knowledge of the history of the Vienna School. Besides, for Khuen-Belasi, who thought in pan-monarchic terms and was about to marry a former wife of a Count Draskovich, and for Count Lanckoroński, who issued from a Polish historical family and was in charge of the monuments in Galicia before 1919, the Hungarian Wilde became a worthy representative – also in a political sense – of the Czech-Austrian Dvořák legacy and the token of its survival in an apparently hostile context; complemented with Count Wilczek, “the secret Wilde relief-fund” as Wilde called it was im­me­diately activated after the professor’s death in the interest of Dvořák’s oeuvre and its interpretation, providing Wilde with accommodations, professional work in the systematization of the Harrach picture collection, and well-paying private students in Vienna, Karl Wilczek junior and Karla Lanckorońska.

 

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Notes:

 

1 The author is a fellow of the Institute of Art History, the Research Centre of the Humanities, HAS, as the leader of the Research Group of the History of Science. She herewith also expresses her gratitude to Professor Ernő Marosi, Árpád Tímár and István Bardoly for the revision of her text.

2 János Wilde’s estate is found in two collections in London: 1) Courtauld Institute of Art (mainly the manuscripts and art historical legacy, e.g. a few Béni Ferenczy drawings), 2) School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) Library, 11 boxes of the Wilde collection. The now published material is: WID/8: Detailed account, in personal diary format of events in Budapest between June 1942 and October 1945 by Margit Wilde and personal and official correspondence (1942–1957). The catalogue can be seen at: http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/archives/widitem.htm

3 Art historian Júlia Gyárfás was of Jewish descent on both parental lines. The father and their children received the permission of the inner minister in 1903 to change their name from Guttmann to Gyárfás (Budapesti Közlöny, 21 Oct. 1903. 1). She and János Wilde got married in Vienna on 6 February 1930.

4 István Bardoly: „Éppen ezekből állott akkor az életünk.” Wilde Margit és Ferenc 1944-es feljegyzései elé [That’s what our lives consisted in at that time. Prefacing the notes of Margit and Ferenc Wilde written in 1944.] Enigma, 2016. 86.

5 Mus. of Fine Arts Archive, 1914/1051 and 1915/580. – Cf.: Wilde János családjának írt levelei 1915–1917. Wilde és a bécsi iskola 1. [J. Wilde’s letters to his family 1915-1917. Wilde and the Vienna School] Eds. Csilla Markója, István Bardoly, Ágnes Körber. Enigma, 21, 2015. no. 83. 92.: note 4, and: István Bardoly: Adalékok Wilde János életéhez és tevékenységéhez (1918–1922). Wilde és a bécsi iskola 2. [Addenda to the life and work of J. Wilde (1918-1922)] Eds. Csilla Markója, István Bardoly, Ágnes Körber. Enigma, 21, 2015. no. 84. 103.

6 Ibid., 99–100.

7 Bardoly 2015.op.cit. 116-117.

8 Enigma, 21.2015. no.84. 169-170.

9 Kókai, Károly: Briefe von Johannes Wilde aus Wien, Juni 1920 bis Februar 1920. Wiener Jahrbuchfür Kunstgeschichte, 59. 2010. 219–234. The edition of letters prepared by Kókai unfortunately appeared with some minor errors, e. g. in place of Ernesta the Italian nickname of Ernst von Garger: Ernesto is correct. Nearly all the persons mentioned in several hundreds of letters published in some issues of the periodical Enigma with the title Wilde János és a bécsi iskola [János Wilde and the Vienna School] have been identified, cf.: J. Wilde’s letters to his family 1915–1917, Enigma, 21. 2015. no. 83. 92–135; J. Wilde’s letters to his family 1920–1921. Enigma, 21. 2015. no. 84. 125–174; J. Wilde’s letters to his family 1922–1923. Enigma, 21. 2015. no. 85. 11–75. Editors of the letters: Csilla Markója, István Bardoly. [hereafter: Enigma, no. 83, 84, 85.]

10 Max Dvořák: Schriften zur Denkmalpflege. Gesammelt und kommentiert von Sandro Scarrocchia. Wien – Köln – Weimar, 2012. 848 p.

11 Új könyvek könyve. [Book of new books] Ed. and introd. Béla Kőhalmi. Budapest, 1937. 156.

12 Enigma, no. 84. 170–171.

13 The question of Dvořák’s successor at Vienna University. A Műbarát, 1, 1921, 18. 323.

14 Enigma, no. 85. 19.

15 Ibid. 22: note 57.

16 Ibid. 37: note 97.

17 Enigma, no. 84. 172.

18 Mus. of Fine Arts, Archive, 20151/1979/32/12.

19 Enigma, no. 85.67.

20 Enigma, no. 84. 124.

21 Pesti Napló, 20 November 1920. 4.

22 Enigma, no. 84. 24-26.

23 Ibid. 24: note 1.

24 Ibid. 130-131.

25 Albert-László Barabási: Behálózva – a hálózatok új tudománya [Linked: The New Science of Networks]. Budapest, 2013.