HUNGARIAN AMERICAN

'Hungarian-American' refers to American citizens of Hungarian descent. Some notable examples include George Cukor, Bela Lugosi Adolph Zukor, Andrew Grove, Béla Bartók, Harry Houdini, Dagmar Papic, Joseph Pulitzer, Albert Szent-Györgyi, Edward Teller, Elie Wiesel, Thomas Szasz, and King Vidor. Many Hungarians fled to the United States after the Soviet invasion in 1956.

History

Hungarians have been a part of America for as long as Europeans have settled the New World, with Hungarian-Americans such as Michael de Kovats, the founder of the United States Cavalry, active in the American Revolution. Hungarians have maintained a constant state of immigration to the United States since then, however are best known for three principle waves of immigration.
The first wave occurred in 1849-1850 by the so-called "Forty-niners," who emigrated to escape retribution by Austrian authorities after the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. By the turn of the century, the United States saw an immigration boom primarily of Southern and Eastern Europeans. Included in this wave was between 650,000-700,000 ethnic Hungarians. Unlike the educated gentry who formed the core of the 1849 wave, the second wave was mostly poor and uneducated immigrants seeking a better life in America.
The circumstances of the third wave of immigration had much in common with the first wave. In 1956, Hungary was again under the power of a foreign state, this time the Soviet Union, and again Hungarians rose up in revolution. Like the revolution of 1848, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution failed and led to the emigration of 200,000 "56-ers" fleeing persecution after the revolution. 40,000 of them found their way to the United States.

Demographics

Distribution of Hungarian Americans according to the 2000 census.

According to the 2000 US Census, there are 1,398,724[1] Hungarians in the United States at the present time.
Estimates of the number of Hungarians in the United States go well above 2 million. This number also includes the large number of ethnic Hungarian immigrants who have arrived to the US from Romania, Czechoslovakia, the former Yugoslavia.
The states with the largest Hungarian-American populations include[2]:

Ohio	193,951
New York	137,029
California	133,988
Pennsylvania	132,184
New Jersey	115,615
Michigan	98,036
Florida	96,885

Notables

★ List of Hungarian Americans