📰 Perthi Magyar Hírek – Perth Hungarian News
Category: Media & Publications
Status: 🟡 Research in Progress
Established: 1969
Location: Perth, Western Australia
For decades, Perthi Magyar Hírek (PMH) documented the activities, organisations, people and everyday life of Western Australia's Hungarian community.
It was more than a newsletter.
Its surviving editions contain community announcements, reports, photographs, advertisements, obituaries, cultural activities, visiting performers, Hungarian organisations, businesses and the names of generations of volunteers.
As a result, Perthi Magyar Hírek is also an important historical source for reconstructing the wider story of Hungarians in Western Australia.
📅 Beginning in 1969
Hungarian archival sources identify 1969 as the beginning of Perthi Magyar Hírek.
It has been described as:
“a Nyugat-Ausztráliai Magyar szervezetek hivatalos értesítője”
— the official bulletin of Hungarian organisations in Western Australia.
The publication therefore has a history extending across more than five decades.
However, a complete chronology of its editors, publishers, contributors and surviving editions has not yet been assembled on this page.
That is one of the aims of this History Project.
📰 A Record of Community Life
The significance of Perthi Magyar Hírek extends beyond the publication itself.
Its pages recorded what was happening within Perth's Hungarian community.
Depending upon the period, editions included material concerning:
🇭🇺 Hungarian community organisations
🏠 activities at the Magyar Otthon
🎉 community events and celebrations
🇭🇺 national commemorations
🏫 Hungarian education
💃 dance and cultural groups
🎵 concerts and visiting performers
⛪ religious activities
👥 community members
📰 Australian and Hungarian news
🏪 local businesses and services
📣 notices and announcements
🕯️ obituaries and memorials
For today's historical research, these seemingly ordinary notices can be extremely valuable.
An advertisement can identify a forgotten Hungarian business.
An event notice can establish when a cultural group existed.
A photograph can identify people who contributed to community life.
An obituary may preserve part of a migration story that was never documented elsewhere.
📖 What Did the Publication Look Like?
A surviving December 2017 edition describes itself bilingually as:
Perth Hungarian News
and:
“A Nyugat-Ausztráliai Magyar Szervezetek Havi Értesítője”
— the monthly bulletin of Hungarian community organisations in Western Australia.
The December 2017 issue was:
49th year, Issue 11 (No. 543).
At that time it was published monthly except January.
Both printed and electronic subscriptions were available.
The publisher was identified as the:
Nyugat-Ausztráliai Magyar Egyesület
(Hungarian Association of WA Inc.)
✍️ Editors and Contributors
The people who produced Perthi Magyar Hírek are an important part of its history.
For example, in 2005 the Hungarian Catholic Lexicon identified Csaba László as editing the monthly Perthi Magyar Hírek.
By 2010, Magyar Élet identified Schaffer Frigyes as editor-in-chief of Perthi Magyar Hírek.
A surviving 2017 edition also identifies:
Editor
Schaffer Frigyes
Contributors
Baranyai Aranka
Csaba Lászlóné
Homolya Borbála
Nattán András
Vajda György
Their work included writing and editing articles as well as the practical work involved in folding and distributing the newspaper.
This is unlikely to be a complete historical list.
We would like to identify every editor and regular contributor from 1969 onward.
🌏 More Than One Organisation
An especially important historical feature of PMH is that it was not simply a record of one type of community activity.
By 2017 it described itself as the monthly bulletin of Hungarian community organisations in Western Australia.
Another published description of the Hungarian Association states that PMH reported each month on the activities of the Association and the other local Hungarian organisations.
This makes surviving editions particularly valuable when trying to reconstruct the wider Hungarian community landscape.
👩🏫 Later Contributors
The publication also benefited from people temporarily working within the Perth Hungarian community.
For example, Krisztina Tamás, a participant in the Kőrösi Csoma Sándor Program, records that while working with the Perth Hungarian diaspora in 2019, her activities included teaching Hungarian, organising programs and editing Perthi Magyar Hírek.
This illustrates how the publication continued to evolve and involve different generations of contributors.
📚 An Historical Archive Hidden in Plain Sight
PMH may eventually become one of the most important sources for this entire History Project.
Searching its old editions could help us reconstruct:
📻 Perth Hungarian Radio
🏠 Magyar Otthon
🍽️ Hungarian restaurants
🥘 Hungarian food stalls and businesses
🎻 musicians and performers
💃 dance groups
🏫 Hungarian schools
⚽ sporting organisations
⛪ religious communities
🎉 festivals and balls
👥 community volunteers
🧳 migration stories
🏪 Hungarian businesses
In other words, documenting PMH can help us document many other parts of Western Australia's Hungarian history.
🌍 Copies Have Travelled Back to Hungary
Copies of Perthi Magyar Hírek have also found their way into Hungarian archival collections.
The National Széchényi Library (Országos Széchényi Könyvtár) has specifically discussed receiving Perthi Magyar Hírek material through efforts to recover and preserve Hungarian diaspora publications.
Hungarian archival research guides likewise identify the publication among the sources available for researching Australian Hungarian history.
This creates the possibility that editions no longer readily available in Perth may survive in collections elsewhere.
🔍 Building a PMH Catalogue
One aim of this History Project should be to establish a catalogue showing which editions still survive.
Eventually it could record:
| Year | Issues located | Format | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | Researching | — | — |
| 1970s | Researching | Print/archive | — |
| 1980s | Researching | Print/archive | — |
| 1990s | Researching | Print/archive | — |
| 2000s | Researching | Print/digital | — |
| 2010s | Some digital editions located | PDF/print | Various |
| 2020s | Researching | Print/digital | — |
This table should be expanded only as individual holdings are actually confirmed.
📦 Do You Have Old Copies?
Old copies may still exist in private collections.
We would particularly like to locate:
📰 complete newspapers
📄 individual pages
📷 photographs originally published in PMH
💾 PDF copies
📀 CDs or computer archives
✍️ original articles
📮 correspondence with editors
🖨️ printing material
📚 bound collections
Even apparently duplicate editions can be useful if another archive has gaps.
Please do not discard old editions without first considering whether they may have historical value.
❓ Questions Still to Answer
We would like to establish:
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Who founded Perthi Magyar Hírek in 1969?
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What was the exact date of the first issue?
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What prompted its creation?
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Who was its first editor?
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Who were all subsequent editors?
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Where was it originally produced?
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How was it printed?
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How many copies were distributed?
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How did its appearance change?
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Which organisations contributed material?
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When did electronic distribution begin?
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Which years and issues survive?
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Where are archival collections held?
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Are there complete collections in Perth or Hungary?
-
What is the publication's present status?
🧩 Were You Involved With PMH?
Perhaps you:
✍️ wrote articles
📷 supplied photographs
📰 edited material
🖨️ helped print it
📄 folded copies
📮 prepared postage
📬 delivered newspapers
🏪 advertised a business
📣 submitted community notices
or simply received it at home for many years.
We would like to hear your story.
📚 Sources & Further Research
Historical and archival sources identify Perthi Magyar Hírek as a Western Australian Hungarian publication dating from 1969.
Surviving editions provide direct evidence of its later editors, contributors, publishing arrangements and community content.
Further research is required to reconstruct the complete publication history and locate surviving collections.
Online Sources
🔗 Australian Hungarian Archival Research Guide
Research guide identifying Perthi Magyar Hírek among sources for Australian Hungarian history.
🔗 Hungarian Catholic Lexicon – Hungarians in Australia
Historical information about Hungarian organisations and publications in Australia.
🔗 Perthi Magyar Hírek – December 2017
A surviving edition providing direct evidence of the publication's format, editor, contributors, community organisations and activities.
🔗 Perthi Magyar Hírek – July 2017
A surviving digital edition of the publication.
🔗 Kőrösi Csoma Sándor Program – Tamás Krisztina
Biographical information documenting her work with the Perth Hungarian community and contribution to editing Perthi Magyar Hírek.
🔗 National Széchényi Library – Hungarian Diaspora Collections
Information concerning the preservation of Hungarian diaspora publications and archival material.
🇭🇺 Help Preserve Perthi Magyar Hírek
A community newspaper can disappear surprisingly quickly once printing stops and private collections are discarded.
But its pages may contain decades of Western Australian Hungarian history.
