Crossing Borders: Memories and Identities of Erwin Nagy (1930– 2022)

Abstract

My topic is the memories and identities of one “ordinary” man who wrote an interesting autobiography: Erwin Nagy, Past in my memory (2001). It was originally written in Russian and translated into German (2008) and Japanese (2020). I would like to tell you about Erwin Nagy and his memoirs because his life makes us reconsider the meaning of “crossing borders” and its influence upon the self-identities of human beings. In the 20th and 21st centuries we have gotten much more chances to cross various “borders” than in previous centuries. That is a result of modernization and the globalization of the world. A lot of people started to think they can cross such borders that existed among them and have started to venture across them. For example, we are doing an online seminar between Ukraine and Japan which we would never have dared to try just a few years ago. But the pandemic and new online technology have made it possible, and even ordinary, for such things to spread out for more general consumption.