ABOUT THIS BOOK

A Scholar's Quest for Home and Identity

Experience the remarkable story of a Romanian-born, Hungarian-speaking Jewish professor. From Vienna to Columbia and Harvard, he navigates a life marked by rootlessness, seeking comfort and purpose. His journey unfolds against the backdrop of five decades, two continents, and significant political and cultural changes.

As we follow his pursuit of a home, we gain insight into the critical developments of post-1945 Europe and America. Markovits's emigration experiences, first from Romania to Vienna and later from Vienna to New York, shed light on the challenges he faced.

His journey offers a panoramic view of the forces shaping the latter half of the 20th century. Despite America's flaws, he finds it a beacon of academic excellence, intellectual openness, cultural diversity, and religious tolerance—qualities that Europe lacked.

Explore the complexities of identity, culture, and the universal search for belonging in this captivating narrative.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Andrei S. Markovits is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies; Professor of Political Science; Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures; Professor of Sociology at the The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Michael Ignatieff served as President and Rector of CEU between 2016 and 2021. He now is a professor in CEU's history department. Ignatieff comes to CEU after serving as Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice of the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

REVIEWS

"The great Jewish historian Salo Baron defined the “lachrymose school of Jewish historiography,” that long litany of suffering and persecution that for many defines Jewish life and history. Andy Markovits’s memoir is the anecdote to that school: a sunny, optimistic, and uplifting read. It doesn’t gloss over the sadness of post-War Europe, but it shows how that lost world could produce a vital future and how a stateless, rootless person could nonetheless turn that condition into a fulfilled life." https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/the-passport-as-home-comfort-in-rootlessness

-- Martin Green Jewish Book Council

"Perhaps the best that one may hope for sometimes is the richness of a life lived without such a destructive set of emotions, the worth of work that is grounded on logic and evidence, the support of people (as the author generously attests to in this memoir) from whom one can learn and with whom one can share insight and understanding. It is this record and these experiences, perhaps above all, which shine brightest out of this evocative memoir."

-- Philip Spencer Fathom

"Markovits says his passport is his home. Yet there is an unmistakable warmth with which he describes the various academic institutions that have welcomed and supported him. He also describes the pleasures of discovering a new form of Jewish identity and learning to express that identity in ways that were unavailable in the Timişoara of his childhood. The 'un-belonging' he values does not seem to be the right description for his adult condition. Nor perhaps is 'rootlessness,' which suggests the lack of something life-giving and generative. Maybe we should see his story as one of gaining a new grounding in institutions and social bonds that could afford him the very independence and agency—in short, the freedom—he had long prized."
-- Steven Lukes Dissent

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
Michael Ignatieff
Preface and Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Origins: The Virtues of Rootlessness

Chapter 2. A Paean to Tante Trude (Who Might or Might Not Have Been a Nazi)

Chapter 3. Four Friendships: Discovering America in Vienna

Chapter 4. Daphne Scheer, Real Madrid and Internazionale Milano (Inter Milan): The Personal Meets the Political

Chapter 5. The Rolling Stones Play Vienna (Resulting in Bodily Harm to the City’s Jews)

Chapter 6. Arrival in New York: The Dream Meets the Reality

Chapter 7. Columbia 1968: How the World – and Andy – Changed in a Single Year

Chapter 8. Kiki: Big Politics and Little Andy

Chapter 9. The Grateful Dead: My American Family

Chapter 10. Harvard’s Center for European Studies: The Interloper Finds a Home

Chapter 11. Dogs: The Rescuer Rescues Himself

Chapter 12. Germany: Admiration for the Bundesrepublik, Discomfort with Deutschland

Epilogue