Former Hungarian civil servants on the territory of Slovakia amid the first years of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1919–24: a case study on the status regulation of teachers and postal employees

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study investigates the Habsburg (Hungarian) civil service and its relation to the Czechoslovak state on the territory of Slovakia in the immediate post-First World War years. By exploring how Czechoslovakia regulated the status of former Hungarian postal employees and civil servants working in public education until 1918, the study provides an in-depth look at how the civil service was integrated into the Czechoslovak state in its eastern Slovakian regions. The main argument is based on the analysis of 294 personal trajectories, including detailed questionnaires on social networks, language use, nationality declaration, political behaviour and the job opportunities of teachers and postal employees. On the one hand, civil servants’ attitudes are discussed. How did they react to the creation of the new state? To what extent was it possible for them to stay in their position? On the other hand, the Czechoslovak state’s reaction to the shortage of qualified and loyal personnel is analysed. These trajectories belie how the Hungarian civil service was more significant for Czechoslovak institutions and state-building than national historiographies have so far presented and reveal individual strategies of coping with the transition.