Were Frida Kahlo’s Ancestors From Hungary?

For decades it had been widely accepted that Frida’s paternal ancestors were Jews from Hungary, based on her own words. She wrote in her diary the following: “My paternal grandparents, who were Hungarians, were born in Arad, Hungary, and moved to Germany, when they were already married. It was here, in Baden Baden, that their children, including my father Guillermo Kahlo, were born.” Arad is a town in Romania, that used to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary. It came as a complete surprise, when in 2005 German researchers Gaby Franger and Rainer Huhle published a book, in which they demonstrated that Frida’s father Guillermo Kahlo’s ancestors were Lutherans from Germany at least since the 18th century. 

My Grandparents My Parents and Me, 1936 by Frida Kahlo. Source: www.fridakahlo.org

A quick last name analysis of the surname Kahlo also suggests its German origin. This surname distribution map shows Kahlo as a valid, but relatively rare surname, with 83 representatives currently living in Germany. There is a similar last name, Kahl, which is much more common in modern Germany. The two could have the same root. Also, records from the FamilySearch database show people named Kahlo mostly being from Germany.

Although Franger and Huhle’s research seems to give a definitive answer, there are still many questions in this story. Naturally, in Hungary there is a vivid interest to this aspect of the painter’s biography. One of the focal points of Frida Kahlo exhibition in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, Hungary, held in July-November 2018, was her connection to Hungary. Even though the curator of the exhibition Adriana Lantos acknowledged the lack of evidence for Kahlo's Hungarian roots, the respective exhibit seems to leave the question open: “We can only trust that new, earlier unknown documents will become available in the future that will reveal the truth of the matter”.

Picture taken at the Frida Kahlo exhibition in Budapest, 2018

So, why did Frida maintain that her father was of Jewish Hungarian origin?


There are a couple of speculations. Some researchers think that she did not want to associate herself with Germany because of WWII, and for the same reason she may have liked the idea of being Jewish. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that Frida did not mention her Jewish origin until 1936, when antisemitic legislation was adopted in Germany.

As to the Hungarian identity she claimed, many think it is connected with Nickolas Muray, a famous photographer of Hungarian Jewish origin, with whom she had a decade-long relationship. Muray's photography was published in Harper’s Bazar, Vogue and The New York Times. He also competed at the 1928 and 1932 Summer Olympics in the fencing events.

Now, if with the Jewish and Hungarian identities there are some plausible speculations, it is harder to come up with an explanation of how Arad came into the picture. A publicist from Transylvania Péter Puskel mentions his futile efforts to investigate Frida’s possible connection to Arad.

My own quick online research on Muray’s ancestry did not reveal any apparent connection with Arad, either. He was born as Miklós Mandl in Szeged, Hungary, in 1892. Although Szeged is only 100 km (about 62 miles) away from Arad, it is not enough to assume a connection here. Miklós' birth record lists his father as Samu Mandl, a grocer from Albert Irsa and his mother as Klára Lóvit from Nagy Abony. Albertirsa was located in Pest county, while Nagy Abony, now called Veľké Blahovo, is in Slovakia. 

At Miklós' birth record there is a note, that he changed his surname to “Murai”. So, his emigration to the U.S. was already under this last name. As per Nick Muray’s naturalization files, he immigrated in 1913. I found a 1914 ship manifest of his brother Stefan Murai, whose contacts were father Samu in Budapest and brother Nicholas Muray in Brooklyn, NY. Stefan’s place of birth is rather difficult to read, but it looks like “Kispest, Delegyhaza”, which may be Délegyháza in Pest county. So, again, Arad is nowhere is sight…

Another Frida’s known Hungarian connection was Martin Munkácsi (born Márton Mermelstein), also an American photographer of Jewish Hungarian descent. He was the author of a number of famous photos of Frida and her husband Diego Riviera. Martin Munkácsi was born in born in Kolozsvár, then Hungary, now Cluj-Napoca in Romania. Even though both Cluj and Arad are part of Transylvania region, it is still not providing enough explanation of Frida’s “choice” of her paternal ancestral town.
 
And lastly, another touch to Frida’s Hungarian mystery: a copy of the letter she wrote in Hungarian to Nickolas Muray. It was on display at the exhibition.

Source

Translation:

Nick,

I love you like an angel. You are a lily-of-the-valley, my dear. 
I will never forget you, never, never. 
You are my whole life. I hope that you will not forget this, either. 
Frida.






The language of the letter is quite curious. On one hand, the text is in proper Hungarian. On the other hand, it has multiple spelling mistakes (like missing diacritics, compound words written separately, etc.). It feels like it was either written by a Hungarian native speaker, who did not learn how to write properly (as it happens, for example, with émigré children), or by a non-native who wrote down a phrase learned by ear. It is not known, whether Frida indeed wrote this letter on her own, or got help from a Hungarian acquaintance.
In any case, there are many sides to this puzzle.