ABSTRACT
Géza Róheim was an unusual man. Both his life and his work are full of antinomies, complications, and puzzles. He was born in Budapest in 1891 and died in New York in 1953. My study explores the personality of Géza Róheim in connection with his political views and his identity as a scientist. First, I introduce the young Róheim and his attitude to sports and to his family. These aspects were entangled and were characterized by intense rivalry. As we will see, the tragedy of Róheim and his evolution are rooted in his youth: his early rivalries in sports as well as within his family shifted to his conflict with the state policies, and later to the rules governing the scientific world of Hungary. This was the intellectual path that led Róheim to write his study on patriotism in 1950. Here, he first evokes Sándor Petőfi1 and then quotes Lajos Nagy2 and János Arany.3 The conclusion is very clear: patriotism is a mental state; it is not nationalism but rather a feeling of belonging to a tradition that encompasses both good and bad characteristics.
