American Geographical Society

Obituary: Count Paul TelekiAuthor(s): George KissSource: Geographical Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jul., 1941), pp. 514-515Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/210187 .

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514 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

OBITUARY

Count Paul Teleki. On April 3, 1941, the news of the sudden death of Count Paul Teleki reached America. To his friends the world over this was bad news indeed: a great scholar, an eminent teacher, a distinguished geographer had passed away, a man to whom European geography owed much, Hungary, his country, more, his former students most.

Count Paul Teleki (born 1879), a descendant of one of the great families of Hun- gary, had a varied career, during which he contributed to government, to education, and to geography. Although he received his early training in political science, he became interested in geography as an undergraduate and worked as an assistant of Professor Loczy of the University of Budapest. His first major contribution to geography, an "Atlas of the History of the Cartography of the Japanese Islands," published in I909, is considered to be one of the best publications in its field. During the World War of I9I4-I9I8 he served Hungary both as a geographer and, later, as head of a government war-relief agency. At the close of the war he was appointed to the newly created chair of economic geography in the Faculty of Economics of Budapest and, at the same time, was put in charge of the preparation of Hungarian memoranda to the Peace Conference. In this latter capacity he prepared what is known as the "Red Map" of the nationalities of Hungary. Teleki was well aware of the usual shortcomings of ethnographic maps and based his publication on popula- tion densities. His map remains one of the best guides to the complex pattern of minorities in the mid-Danube area.

After having served, between 1920 and 192I, as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Hungary, Teleki returned to the University. He visited the United States on several occasions and on his first visit participated in the Transcontinental Excursion of the American Geographical Society in I912. In I92I he was the first scientist of the former Central Powers to be invited as a guest lecturer to Williams College. In recognition of his merits as a student of minority problems, he was appointed, in 1925, to serve as an expert on a League of Nations commission for the settlement of the Mosul boundary dispute between Turkey and 'Iraq (see Geogr. Rev., Vol. i6, 1926, pp. I43-144).

To describe the life and work of a man of so wide an outlook and such diversified activities is not easy. Paul Teleki was an inspiration, both as a teacher and as a counselor. He was a prolific writer and lecturer, having published books and articles in Hungarian, German, French, and English. His study of the "Economic Geogra- phy of the United States," his textbook, entitled "Geographical Bases of Economic Life," in which are condensed his lectures and courses of more than a decade at the University of Budapest, and his latest work-collaborating on a three-volume geography of Hungary, published between I936 and I939-call for special mention. To the present writer, a quotation, often used by Count Teleki in his lectures and articles, well summarizes the trend of his geographical thought. This quotation stems from the "Geographia" of Bernhardus Varenius: "Quum Oceanus movetur, totus movetur." The organic unity of the world, the close relationship between its regions, seems to dominate Teleki's geographical thinking.

Autarchy, whether it involved the exclusion of foreign goods, services, or ideas, did not seem possible to him. Speaking of Europe in I930 he said: "Europe is a concept of history, a result of the integration, the centralization of human society in this corner of the world, so favored by nature. Europe is composed of many states; it does not have a common, guiding authority. Yet there is an organic development of similar political structures, of economic systems resembling each other, of a common moral standard, throughout Europe. This development affects every nation, every state, every individual of the continent. There is an organic unity of Europe, a community of interests between all its nations."

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GEOGRAPHICAL RECORD 515

Count Teleki realized, soon after the World War, that European supremacy belonged to the past. He saw the approaching struggle. "Imperialism is a driving force in the integration of great regional units of the world and an important factor in the rise of new centers, such as the development of the early national states from the Roman provinces or the rise of the British Dominions from a colonial status." The part played by the small nations in this struggle for world supremacy did not seem an enviable one to him. Yet, stressing the importance of the ethnographic, political, economic, and, ideological forces within Europe, and the resulting diversity of the continent, as its main raison d'etre in the present world, he strongly advocated the preservation of the small states of Europe. He realized that the merging of all the conflicting ideas, ambitions, and personalities of Europe would lead to chaos instead of a New World Order.

A man of science, to whom scholarship was a high aspiration, Paul Teleki did not hesitate to answer the call of duty and to abandon his cherished work of teaching and research for the post of Premier of Hungary. It is the hope of all who knew him that his final sacrifice was not in vain. His name will be remembered, his memory preserved, by all who had an opportunity to meet him, to know him, to work with him. GEORGE Kiss

Colonel Claude H. Birdseye. Colonel Claude H. Birdseye died in Washington on May 30 at the age of 63. At the time of his death Colonel Birdseye was chief of the Division of Engraving and Printing of the United States Geological Survey. His forty-year association with the Survey was broken only by a short period as surveyor with the General Land Office, war service with the Army Corps of Engi- neers, and an interval as president of the Aerotopograph Corporation of America.

Tribute to one of Colonel Birdseye's most notable achievements is paid in this number of the Geographical Review. In the article "Mapping Lake Mead" acknowl- edgment is made of the debt owed to his expedition down the Colorado in 1923, an expedition "justly acclaimed for its outstanding topographic and geologic accom- plishments." For this and preceding achievements, which included participation in the mapping of Kilauea, Hawaii, and Mt. Rainier, Colonel Birdseye was awarded the American Geographical Society's Charles P. Daly Medal in 1924 (see Geogr. Rev., Vol. I4, 1924, pp. 465-466, and also Colonel Birdseye's article in collaboration with R. C. Moore, "A Boat Voyage through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado," ibid., pp. 177-I96). Among his later publications, reference may be made to "Spirit Leveling in California I896-I923 " (U. S. Geol. Survey Bull. 766, 1925) and "Formu- las and Tables for the Construction of Polyconic Projections" (ibid., 809, 1929).

Colonel Birdseye's geographical work was climaxed by his presidency of the Association of American Geographers in 1939. His presidential address, "Stereo- scopic Phototopographic Mapping" (Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 30, 1940,

pp. 1-24), outlined the course of the "greatest advance of the past twenty-five years in map making," the "application of aerial photography to the preparation of planimetric and topographic contour maps," especially in regard to the work of the United States Geological Survey.

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