Vom Karpatenbecken zum Rheinknie: Eine Quellenanalyse zu den Beziehungen der ungarländischen reformierten Kollegien in Debrecen und Sárospatak zur Universität Basel im 18. Jahrhundert

Abstract

Among the countries belonging to the Holy Crown of Saint Stephen in the 18th century, Hungary and Transylvania were governed as separate administrative units because Habsburg rulers did not unite the original state formation of integer Hungary that had been disintegrated in the 16th century. Therefore, the protestant churches had to cope with different situations in the Habsburg monarchy, among which this study focuses only on the Hungarian situation. In the Age of Enlightenment the Reformed Church had two centres of education in Hungary (Debrecen and Sárospatak), which achieved the college level, but did not reach the level of a university. Consequently, Western European universities had a highly significant role in the education of Calvinist intellectuals, as the Hungarian students could attain a university level education only at these institutions. The University of Basel was particularly important for Hungarian students in the 18th century because one third of the overall number of students consisted of only Hungarians at certain periods. Moreover, one could even observe a moderate competition among students arriving in Switzerland from the Debrecen and Sárospatak Colleges respectively, as the professors of both institutions lobbied for scholarships at Basel. This study pre-eminently investigates this process, while also examining the Hungarian relations of book publications in Basel.