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Alabaster Village: Our Years in Transylvania
Book by Morgan, Christine Frederiksen Balazs, Welsh, Anne
136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 199
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March 30, 2013The 2nd edition (2007) published by the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council contains additional text and photos as well as page-by-page Hungarian and English versions. It is available directly from the UUPCC at http://www.uupcc.org/secure/store.php
October 8, 2012
BIOGRAPHY/AUTOBIOGRAPHY: based on fascinating writings and letters of Christine Frederiksen Balazs Morgan about her life in Romania in the 1930s, published shortly after her death in 1996 -- publication delayed for decades intentionally for fear of retaliation upon individuals still in Transylvania.
.........
Imagine it is the late 1920s. A courageous, young American-Danish woman is studying in Berkeley where she meets and falls desperately in love with a remarkable, idealistic, international theology student of Hungarian Unitarian background named Feri Balazs.
Feri passionately desires to return to his homeland in Transylvania, a region which, not many years earlier, as an aftermath of WW I, had been politically severed from one country, Hungary, and attached to another -- Romania, resulting in his ethnic Hungarian Transylvanian peoples becoming a minority group. (His own family, shortly after the map was redrawn, had chosen a disruptive move, leaving Transylvania in order to remain living in Hungary.)
Will Feri and Christine's love survive if Christine forsakes the comforts of her own world and joins Feri in a challenging agrarian peasant lifestyle as he undertakes his dream of moving to Romania as a minister and community educator/activist in order to help the Transylvanian-Hungarian peasants build a better life physically, spiritually, and educationally?
The courageous, outspoken, driven man, Feri Balazs, already afflicted with the tuberculosis that will eventually wear down his body, optimistically answers a call to an out-of-the-way village called Meszko, where impoverished, poorly educated villagers are seeking the hope and help he deeply desires to provide.
Christine hesitates, but decides to join him. They soon marry. This is more than a story of a particular time and place -- though it is that;
the book also offers a very personal view into a woman's thoughts and emotions inside a marriage, including her struggles with pregnancy and childbearing in an unfamiliar peasant lifestyle --amid poverty and disease -- among peoples whose languages she has not fully mastered.
The book brims with day to day details, revealing reactions, and tough choices Christine must face.
For instance, when, if ever, does her obligation to an unborn child or her own health and self --or child (she eventually has a daughter with Feri) surpass her obligations to her husband's wishes and needs-- does that change when her husband's health begins to fail seriously? Sometimes two individuals who love each other can arrive at very different decisions about important matters.
This is an unusual book set in a part of the world where Christian Europe's first edict of religious tolerance occurred in the 1500s thanks to the first and only Unitarian king in history: King John Sigismund (1540 - 1571) of Hungary/Transylvania -- and his mother Isabella (of Poland.)
The photos are a welcome addition to the book -- which was later translated from English into Hungarian.
.........
Imagine it is the late 1920s. A courageous, young American-Danish woman is studying in Berkeley where she meets and falls desperately in love with a remarkable, idealistic, international theology student of Hungarian Unitarian background named Feri Balazs.
Feri passionately desires to return to his homeland in Transylvania, a region which, not many years earlier, as an aftermath of WW I, had been politically severed from one country, Hungary, and attached to another -- Romania, resulting in his ethnic Hungarian Transylvanian peoples becoming a minority group. (His own family, shortly after the map was redrawn, had chosen a disruptive move, leaving Transylvania in order to remain living in Hungary.)
Will Feri and Christine's love survive if Christine forsakes the comforts of her own world and joins Feri in a challenging agrarian peasant lifestyle as he undertakes his dream of moving to Romania as a minister and community educator/activist in order to help the Transylvanian-Hungarian peasants build a better life physically, spiritually, and educationally?
The courageous, outspoken, driven man, Feri Balazs, already afflicted with the tuberculosis that will eventually wear down his body, optimistically answers a call to an out-of-the-way village called Meszko, where impoverished, poorly educated villagers are seeking the hope and help he deeply desires to provide.
Christine hesitates, but decides to join him. They soon marry. This is more than a story of a particular time and place -- though it is that;
the book also offers a very personal view into a woman's thoughts and emotions inside a marriage, including her struggles with pregnancy and childbearing in an unfamiliar peasant lifestyle --amid poverty and disease -- among peoples whose languages she has not fully mastered.
The book brims with day to day details, revealing reactions, and tough choices Christine must face.
For instance, when, if ever, does her obligation to an unborn child or her own health and self --or child (she eventually has a daughter with Feri) surpass her obligations to her husband's wishes and needs-- does that change when her husband's health begins to fail seriously? Sometimes two individuals who love each other can arrive at very different decisions about important matters.
This is an unusual book set in a part of the world where Christian Europe's first edict of religious tolerance occurred in the 1500s thanks to the first and only Unitarian king in history: King John Sigismund (1540 - 1571) of Hungary/Transylvania -- and his mother Isabella (of Poland.)
The photos are a welcome addition to the book -- which was later translated from English into Hungarian.
April 2, 2013
Moving true story of the courtship and marriage of a dynamic Transylvanian-Hungarian Unitarian minister and the American woman who made a life with him in the tiny village of Meszko in the 1920s/30s. He died of tuberculosis; she (after wading through a bizarre amount of Romanian red tape) returned home to California with their daughter. The minister, Balazs Ferenc, is sometimes considered the "Transylvanian Emerson," but his writings have not been translated. Would like to find a way to make that happen.
November 3, 2008
A perspective on life in rural Transylvania and the struggles of a young Unitarian minister and his wife. Even more interesting as I have visited the village of Meszko and his beautiful church.
July 3, 2010
Francis Balazs' American wife's autobiography of her time in Meszko (small village in Transylvania)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews