The Slovak-Hungarian painter was a unique example of artist influenced by the Theosophical Society who combined Theosophical ideas with a sacralization of homosexuality.
by Massimo Introvigne
Josef Váchal, whom I presented last week in “Bitter Winter,” was not the only artist in present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia who was deeply influenced by Theosophy. In the years when young Váchal explored Spiritualism and the Theosophical Society, in present-day Slovakia Ladislav Medňanský, better known under his Hungarian name László Mednyánszky (1852–1919), became a leading national painter, although both Slovakia and Hungary claim him as their own.
In his art, impressionism meets symbolism. Born in Beckov, Slovakia, in 1852, he moved in 1861 to the castle of his aristocratic Hungarian family, Strážky, near Spišská Belá, also in Slovakia, a mansion that will occupy a special place in his art and now hosts a museum of his paintings. Mednyánszky was educated as an academic artist in Munich and Paris, and lived in Budapest and Vienna, where he died in 1919, although he periodically returned to Nagyor.
Mednyánszky was a Hungarian patriot (as evidenced by his quintessentially patriotic gravestone in the Kerepesi cemetery in Budapest) and at age 62 volunteered as a war painter in World War I. He saw Pan-Slavism as a great danger for both Hungarian identity and regional stability. He conceived the idea of a secret society to fight Pan-Slavism, although later he came to believe that the best protections against political extremism were education and the arts.
Mednyánszky’s circle was interested in Theosophical ideas and included his brother-in-law István Czóbel (1847–1932), who wrote in German about Theosophy. Mednyánszky’s journals studied by Martin C. Putna quote Theosophical leaders Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) and Annie Besant (1847–1933), and German Theosophist Franz Hartmann (1838–1912), and show that he was interested in Theosophical doctrines about the spiritual meaning of colors.
Mednyánszky’s circle also included novelist Zsigmond Justh (1863–1894). According to literary historian Viktória Dian, both Justh and Mednyánszky were “probably members of a Theosophical association,” although it is unclear whether this “association” was the Theosophical Society. Art historian Csilla Markója reports that Mednyánszky’s interest in Theosophy dated back to his school years, and he attended lectures of the Theosophical Society, although she does not specify whether he became a member.
During the final crisis of the Austrian Empire, Slovakian-Hungarian aristocrats such as Mednyánszky often believed that “going to the people” was the only way to revive a moribund aristocracy. Some married peasant girls. Mednyánszky “went to the people” in a homoerotic way, entering into multiple relationships with young men of modest condition.
Mednyánszky had several homosexual relationships but idealized the one with Bálint Kurdi (1860–1906), a Danube boatman from Vác, Hungary. He called him “Nyuli” (Rabbit) and after his death believed he was a divine incarnation and with a few friends built a personal and private devotional movement around his grave in Vác, a micro-new-religious-movement with both Theosophical and homoerotic overtones.
Mednyánszky could have joined the homosexual circles who fought for some sort of social acknowledgement in Germany and Austria – but he didn’t. He was familiar with medical writings on homosexuality but tried to interpret it in a spiritual way through Theosophical lenses. He explained homosexuality through karma and reincarnation and believed it could be “spiritualized” by transforming erotic energy into spiritual energy.
Although Mednyánszky wrote his journals in German and Hungarian, but in Greek characters for additional privacy, both his homosexuality and his interests for alternative spirituality made him controversial in conservative Slovak and Hungarian societies before, during, and after Communism. In 2019, however, the Slovak National Gallery celebrated the centenary of his death, inter alia by publishing a selection of his journals and correspondence.