William Juhasz (August 30, 1899, Budapest – September 29, 1967, New York City) was a Hungarian-American author, editor, cultural and religious historian, journalist, Roman Catholic lay intellectual, literary translator, university professor, lecturer, commentator, Cold War operative. Research topic: the comparative religious history of pre-Christian times.
Early life to World War II
William Juhasz came from a family of industrialists, financiers and land owners. Many members of this family were also involved in the world of arts and letters, among whom the most important and prominent was the composer Franz Schrecker. Juhasz's early interests and eventual career were a departure from his immediate family's involvement in finance and industry. Influenced by some of his secondary school teachers who were recognized leading intellectuals as well as some of his classmates and school mates who became leading intellectuals of the period between the two World Wars. He went on to become a leading intellectual of that period. Secondary education was at the Markó Street Gymnasium in Budapest. His home room teacher, Marcell Benedek, as well as his class and school mates were formative influences in his life and work. Among his youthful friends were some of the leading lights of the Hungarian intelligentsia between the Wars; including: Bence Szabolcsi, György Sárközi, Márta Sárközi, Márta Vágó, Zoltán Horvát, and the monks László and Dénes Szedő. Like many in his milieu, William came from a Jewish family, and, again, like many in his milieu he became a convert to Roman Catholicism. Two of his closest friends, and associates, the Szedő brothers, also from Jewish families, became cloistered Carthusian monks in Italy. His conversion was a milestone in his personal and professional development. Mary Christianus, his future wife, was yet another major influence on his spiritual and professional development.
Having decided not to follow the family line of finance and industry, he embarked upon studies at the University with the aim of becoming a scholar. He dropped out after the second year and did not receive a degree, and embarked upon an intellectual career not based on higher educational attainments.
It was shortly after abandoning his university studies that he married Mary Christianus. Mary's background and educational career was quite different from his own although they were members of the same emerging intellectual elite between the wars. Her family background was more in the trades and manufacturing than in finance and industry. She never attended classical academic secondary school. Her family was not primarily Jewish and she had been raised Roman Catholic.
William and Mary met in their early 20s in the turmoil of post-World War I Budapest, as it found itself a capital of a minor European country after being a co-capital of one of the world's major powers. Mary Juhasz, was a lifelong collaborator both in the thought process as well as the actual writing of his published works. As is not uncommon, she did not receive formal recognition as a collaborator. Nonetheless there was nothing that he published that he did not or, more accurately, they did not discuss in depth and come to consensus on.
They would have three children together: Francis Juhasz, born Haas Ferenc (25 June 1925, died 1977), Lester Shepard, born Juhasz Laszlo (27 September 1929, died 2014), and Joseph Juhasz, born Juhaszi Jozsef Borisz (30 January 1938).
One of the members of his circle, Bence Szabolcsi's father-in-law Győző Andor, who was the proprietor of an eponymous respected publishing house, provided William with the opportunity to edit several encyclopedias as well as the writing of numerous entries in these. The entries in Encyclopedia of the Theater (Szinészeti lexikon) dealing with the ancient history of dance and drama in which he developed his ideas regarding symbolism in performance art, received very favorable notice not merely in Hungary but elsewhere in the world as well. With this, his career as a non-university educated intellectual was under way.