Hungarians in New Guinea? How did a cohort of Hungarians end up in New Guinea? How did this small central European country send so many of its sons to such a faraway corner of Melanesia? The answer lies in Hungary’s 19th century history, when it was part of the important Habsburg empire, as the junior partner in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, that officially began in 1867. This was a German-speaking entity, as was the Prussian-led alliance that unified the German nation in the 1870s. This was the country that in the 1880s colonized parts of Africa as well as the north-east area of New Guinea in 1884. Shortly before the year 1900, two Hungarian scientist-collectors, Samuel Fenichel and Lajos Biro, worked in German New Guinea, the pioneers of the Hungarians who came after them.