REMENYI JOSEPH (1 Dec. 1892 – 25 Sept. 1956) was a wide­ly rec­og­nized Hun­gar­i­an-Amer­i­can writer who served as pro­fes­sor of com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture at West­ern Reserve Univ for a quarter-century.

Born in Poz­sony, Hun­gary, he was edu­cat­ed at Fran­cis Joseph Roy­al Univ. in Szeged and also stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Budapest and Vienna.

He worked for sev­er­al Euro­pean news­pa­pers before emi­grat­ing to Cleve­land in 1914 to become an edi­to­r­i­al writer for the Hun­gar­i­an-lan­guage dai­ly, Szabad­sag.

 In 1918 he mar­ried Mar­garet Papol­czy (1892−1975), a Hun­gar­i­an-born actress who there­upon gave up the stage except for an appear­ance lat­er that year in a one-act play writ­ten by her hus­band for the Cleve­land Play House.

Enti­tled 30 Jef­fer­son Arcade, its set­ting was rem­i­nis­cent of Laukhuf­f’s book­store in the Tay­lor Arcade. 

Remenyi also began writ­ing nov­els about the Hun­gar­i­an-Amer­i­can immi­grant expe­ri­ence, which were pub­lished in Hun­gar­i­an back in Budapest. 

Some of them, such as Szerelme­sek Voltak (They Were in Love), had a Cleve­land background. 

He was hired by Ray­mond Moley in 1922 to con­duct social sur­veys for the Cleve­land Foun­da­tion and also was an immi­gra­tion con­sul­tant for Cleve­land Trust (see Amer­itrust).

He began teach­ing in 1929 at WRU’s Cleve­land Col­lege, where his lec­tures on Euro­pean writ­ers often earned spon­ta­neous applause from his classes. 

In 1935 he pub­lished an anthol­o­gy of Amer­i­can authors, Mod­ern Amer­i­can Fic­tion, in Budapest, while a col­lec­tion of his own writ­ings, Hun­gar­i­an Writ­ers and Lit­er­a­ture, was pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in this coun­try under the direc­tion of his wid­ow in 1964. 

He died childless.

Source: case​.edu