Greater Hungary Research Articles

Roma Religion: 1775 and 2018 Compared over Time.

The objective of the present study was to compare the religiosity of the Roma in the 18th century with the present. In 1775 and 1776, Samuel Augustini ab Hortis detailed the way of life of the Roma community in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in his work “Von dem Heutigen Zustände, Sonderbaren Sitten und Lebensart, Wie Auch von Denen Übrigen Eigenschaften und Umständen der Zigeuner in Ungarn” (On the Contemporary Situation, Distinctive Manners and Way of Life, as Well as the Other Characteristics and Circumstances of Gypsies in Greater Hungary). A detailed content analysis of the part of his work dealing with religion was performed. Subsequently, in 2018, field research was conducted in the environment in which Samuel Augustini lived and worked. It involved six key informants, each representing a different municipality. Data collection was carried out over two periods: in the summer months of 2012–2013 and the winter period of 2018–2019. After the interviews with the key informants, more than 70 participants were included in semi-structured interviews through snowball sampling, and another 40 participants were included in two focus groups. The data was evaluated and content analysis was used to process the data. The findings confirm that both in the past and the present, the Roma community adopted the dominant religion of the host country. In the studied environments, the activities of the majority, present then and now in the Catholic Church, failed, and various other missionary movements, such as the Maranatha Mission, came to the fore. Membership in new religious movements resulted in social changes in marginalized Roma communities. However, they may not have only had positive effects. Various effects of their activities may be studied in the future.

The Hungarian-Jewish Social Contract, its Rupture, and Jewish Death Rituals

This article explores the supposedly reciprocal social contract between “Greater Hungary” and its Jewish population from the “Golden Age” of the Dual Monarchy to its rupture in the Holocaust. The afterlife of this broken contract will be addressed through the upkeep and neglect of cemeteries in Subcarpathia and Hungary proper. Along the way, I present memoiristic vignettes that illustrate the challenge of loyalty to state / military authority and death rituals in the time of the 1918-1919 Hungarian-Romanian War, Jewish mourning in the context of Czechoslovakia’s loss of Subcarpathia, and the disjuncture between the normal praxis of death ritual and the spectre of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as well as the ritual contrast to Hungarian Jews who were deported, but not to Auschwitz. I also turn to the historical research of Tim Cole and Daniel Rosenthal, in conjunction with Hungarian (especially North-Transylvanian) Holocaust memoirs, to reflect on Holocaust-era suicide as a mode of victims’ resistance to their brutalization by Hungarian gendarmes -- the pinnacle of the betrayal of the erstwhile contract between Hungarian state authority and its Jewish population.

Hungary Relations with Neighboring Countries in the XX – early XXI Century

The article focuses on Hungary’s relations with Slovakia and Ukraine. It is concluded that the foreign policy of Hungary is radicalized at the beginning of the XXI century, which is manifested in the growing pressure on neighboring countries, in particular Ukraine, in order to provide autonomy to members of the Hungarian ethnic minority. It was found that this policy implements the idea of “Greater Hungary”, which must ensure the dominance of the unification and re-assimilation processes and the integration of the Hungarian nation in Eastern Europe around Budapest. It is proved that the preconditions for its development established the Treaty of Trianon, as a result of which the country lost two thirds of its territory and one third of its population. It was found that the antagonism inherent in the disregard of ethnic principle during the establishment of borders after the World War I prompted Hungary to resort to a forceful scenario of resolving territorial disputes, which dominated in the first half of the XX century. It was revealed that the change in the geopolitical situation in the second half of the XX century made it impossible to implement thus scenario, which led to a change in Hungary’s strategy and tactics to return the territories lost as a result of the World War I, II,. So Hungary transfers the solving of disputes with neighboring countries in the legal field, on a bilateral basis. Hungary has relied on the cultural and linguistic unification of the nation, based on the preservation of national traditions. The author concludes that, despite the differences in the situation with the Hungarian community in Slovakia and Ukraine, Hungary uses similar tools to promote the idea of a “Greater Hungary” and pressure on neighboring countries. Hungary’s policy poses a threat to Ukraine’s national security. Its methods lead to periodic interference in the policies of neighboring countries. This should be considered as one of the elements of the policy of “soft accession” of the Hungarian-speaking part of Transcarpathia to Hungary, which can be regarded as one of the elements of hybrid wars of the early XXI century.

The Toolkit of Nationalist Populism in Contemporary Hungary: Symbols, Objects, and Modalities of Circulation

This article belongs to the special cluster, “National, European, Transnational: Far-right activism in the 20th and 21st centuries”, guest edited by Agnieszka Pasieka. Research on populism attributes great significance to mapping the distinctive discursive logic of populist reasoning (e.g., the trope of pitting corrupt elites against the people). This article aims to move beyond the primary focus on discursive structures to stress the role of symbols, objects, and different modalities of circulation in the political communication of populist ideas, using the case of Hungary. By tracing the history of one of the key symbols of nationalist populism—the image of “Greater Hungary”—from its emergence in the interwar period to its present-day use, the article shows how the meanings and material forms this symbol assumed in political communication that evolved under different political regimes. The analysis builds on extensive archival, ethnographic, and online data to highlight how the diversity of material forms and the conduits through which this image circulated have contributed to its endurance as a key political symbol. Symbols, like the Greater Hungary image, condense complex historical narratives into a powerful sign that can be easily objectified, reproduced, and diffused. Today’s differentiated consumer markets provide convenient conduits for this kind of material circulation. These symbols carry meaning in and of themselves as signs, and once they are turned into everyday objects, they facilitate the normalization of radical politics by increasing their salience and broad visibility.

The ‘Greater Hungary’ and the EURO 2020. Sports diplomacy of an illiberal state

ABSTRACT Sports Mega-Events have been part of the modernization of the West and its Macro-Social Changes since the mid-19th century. These are part of both the initial proposal dedicated to strengthening a national identity based on ethnocentrism, monoculturalism and xenophobia and the one from the 70s, centered on cosmopolitanism, human rights and individualism. Therefore, the question must be raised as of the effects of holding a sports event such as the Euro Cup in countries with a policy defying UEFA and European Union values, as in the case of modern Hungary, a sensitive case because of the controversial Home Financing Law; in addition, the public sports diplomacy enhances anirredentist vision of the “Great Hungary'', which is troublesome in the current European Union framework. This work pretends to research and clarify the Hungarian association structure in order to put into perspective the suitability to develop SME in countries proclaiming illiberal values.

Whose Landscape Is It? Remapping Memory and History in Interwar Central Europe

AbstractAfter the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the sanctioning of new national borders in 1920, the successor states faced the controversial task of reconceptualizing the idea of national territory. Images of historically significant landscapes played a crucial role in this process. Employing the concept of mental maps, this article explores how such images shaped the connections between place, memory, and landscape in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Hungarian revisionist publications demonstrate how Hungarian nationalists visualized the organic integrity of “Greater Hungary,” while also implicitly adapting historical memory to the new geopolitical situation. As a counterpoint, images of the Váh region produced in interwar Czechoslovakia reveal how an opposing political agenda gave rise to a different imagery, while drawing on shared cultural traditions from the imperial past. Finally, the case study of Dévény/Devín/Theben shows how the idea of being positioned “between East and West” lived on in overlapping but politically opposed mental maps in the interwar period. By examining the cracks and continuities in the picturesque landscape tradition after 1918, the article offers new insight into the similarities and differences of nation-building processes from the perspective of visual culture.

Social Structure in a Roma Settlement: Comparison over Time.

The objective of the present study was to compare the social structure and internal establishment of a Roma community in two historical periods: in the 18th century and the present. We analysed Samuel Augustini ab Hortis’s work, “Von dem Heutigen Zustände, Sonderbaren Sitten und Lebensart, Wie Auch von Denen Übrigen Eigenschaften und Umständen der Zigeuner in Ungarn” (On the Contemporary Situation, Distinctive Manners and Way of Life, as Well as the Other Characteristics and Circumstances of Gypsies in Greater Hungary), written in 1775–1776. Using content analysis, we subsequently compared his findings with our recent data from analogous qualitative research in a geographically-defined area of north-eastern Slovakia, the same region in which Augustini lived. Data collection was intensely conducted in 2012–2013 and once more in 2017–2019. The qualitative methods included direct observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Four key informants and more than 70 participants collaborated in the study. The greatest difference we observed compared to the 18th century was the absence of a leader of the community, a “vajda”, whose status was taken over by a new social class of “entrepreneurs”. The most vulnerable group of the segregated and separated Roma communities are the “degesa”, the lowest social class. They face a phenomenon consisting of so-called triple marginalization: they live in one of the most underdeveloped regions of the country, they inhabit segregated settlements and they are excluded by their own ethnic group. The socioeconomic status of the richest classes has changed faces, while the socioeconomic status of the lowest has not. We found a misconception among helping professionals (e.g., social workers) regarding the homogeneity of the Roma community. This calls for more attention to the erroneous use of the ethnic-based approach in the helping professions.

Migration activity of the population between Ukraine and Hungary in the context of geopolitical confrontations

The comprehensive analysis of migration activity of the population between Ukraine and Hungary, which is the basis for substantiating the priorities of its regulation in the defined territorial migration system, is carried out in the article. The study subject is theoretical and applied principles of analysis of migration activity of the population within a specific territorial migration system. The research methodology is formed by the fundamental provisions of analytical migration science with the definition of migration activity, which reflects the potential and real ability of the population to move. The article results are the deepening of the theoretical bases of the study of migration activity of the population, the method of complex migration analysis between Ukraine and Hungary with using the national and international statistical base. Complex analysis covers an identification of the features of infrastructure providing and legal environment of migration (visa regime, the operation of the agreement on the rules of local border traffic), tendencies of crossing the state border (Ukrainian and Hungarian statistics), including in the context of border crossing points, determination of educational and labor migration features, naturalization practices and residence of Ukrainian citizens on the Hungary territory. Particular attention is paid to the asymmetric questions of migration activity of the population between Ukraine and Hungary. Complex analysis is complemented by comparisons of demographic, social and economic indicators of countries. The specificity of migration activity of the population in the UkrainianHungarian migration system on the basis of the conducted analysis is generalized – the primacy of ethnocultural determinants of displacement with influences localization on the residents of Transcarpathian region; rapid growth dynamics of the migrants number from Ukraine to Hungary. The main problems of migration activity of the population between Ukraine and Hungary are updated: political and legal character – dual citizenship of a part of the population of the Transcarpathian border regions, which can serve as an occasion for geopolitical speculation; informational character – the rapid growth in the number of Ukrainian citizens, who go to Hungary for long-term residence; socio-cultural character – influence of the «Greater Hungary» ideas on a part of the Transcarpathia population, especially the border regions, which identifies itself with the Hungarians, or as a last resort with the Ruthenians and does not speak Ukrainian.

Percepcja traktatu triańskiego/trianońskiego w węgierskiej kulturze

Perception of the Treaty of Trianon in Hungarian culture The „Trianon” is perhaps the most famous historical term in Hungary. 100 years ago, on June 4, 1920, restrictive peace conditions were imposed on Hungary at the Grand Trianon Palace in Versailles. Apart of the loss of territory, 3,5 million Hungarians remained abroad. In Hungarian historical awareness, the Treaty of Trianon is a symbol of catastrophe and national humiliation. The change of „Greater Hungary” into „small” Hungary. To this day, the effects of the treaty have had an impact on Hungary’s politics, economy and culture.

"Gyöngyösbokréta" (1931–1948): An Interwar Folk-Cultural Movement That Influenced Identity Construction and Heritage Preservation

The post-World War I period was characterized by a search for identity and a turning towards the past, which, in Hungary’s case led to the (re)discovery of folk culture. The idea to represent the popular traditions of the Hungarian peasantry was realized as part of the Saint Stephen’s Day celebration in 1931 in Budapest, and in just a few years, these annual performances of the popular dances and customs became a movement: the support of the ministries allowed the movement’s leader to form an association which was joined by a hundred groups from Greater Hungary. Whereas the government saw the potential in this movement, these peasant groups were soon given a representative role in the identity construction. At the same time, these performances also served to preserve the endangered folk heritage. In a decade and a half, the movement had an impact on fashion and tourism, as well as strengthening the idea of revision. In this article I aim to present the history of the Gyongyosbokreta-movement and highlight the mentality of the era regarding popular culture, the relationship between rural Hungary and Budapest, the notion of heritage preservation and identity construction.

For God and which Nation? The Ideology of František Jehlička, Priest, Politician and Pariah of the Slovak National Movement

For the last years of his life, Frantisek Jehlicka placed a copy of a painting by the Italian baroque artist Pompeo Girolamo Batoni on the walls of his cell in the Capuchin monastery in Vienna. The painting, completed in 1773 and entitled 'The Return of the Prodigal Son', portrays a father tenderly embracing his long-lost and half-naked son who, according to the famous parable, had taken 'his journey into a far country, and […] began to be in want'.1 It is likely that Jehlicka first came across the painting in the House of Habsburg's Imperial and Royal Gallery in Vienna's Belvedere Palace where it was hung following its acquisition by the Empress Maria Theresa. Jehlicka, a devout Catholic who had committed himself to becoming a priest at the age of fifteen, may have seen himself in Batoni's painting as the wandering son who could look forward to the moment, at the end of his life, when he would be welcomed with open arms by his Father in heaven.2 Alternatively, Jehlicka's attraction to Batoni's painting may be explained by his estrangement from his fellow Slovaks that led him to reside in Vienna's Capuchin monastery. Exiled from Czechoslovakia in 1919 due to his hostility to the new state, Jehlicka regarded himself as a 'spiritual father' forced to watch his beloved Slovak nation condemned to a life of want. In Batoni's moving depiction of the act of reconciliation, Jehlicka may have found the comforting hope that he too would eventually be reconciled with his fellow Slovaks. Both his detractors and his admirers have, however, disagreed about what form of reconciliation he actually desired. Did he hope to be welcomed back to an independent Slovakia as a national hero, or did he hope to welcome the Slovaks back into a greater Hungary from which they had been separated in 1918?.

Spatial Formation in 16-19th Century Calvinist Church Architecture: The Calvinist Churches of Sepsiszék

One of the less-known and less researched regions of the Carpathian Basin is Sepsiszék, which as part of Háromszék County, was one of Greater Hungary’s southeastern frontier-guard areas. After the Reformation, the population of the region became almost exclusively the followers of one of the Protestant tendencies with Calvinism gathering the most members. Due to the location of the area, Sepsiszék and its vicinity – the former territory of the county - is home to Europe’s easternmost Protestant communities to this day. Thanks to the unique cultural, religious and social environment, the unique development of local church designs notably enriches the history of Protestant religious architecture.The survey documentation of the area’s 32 Calvinist churches along with the schematic analysis of architectural history was carried out during the summer of 2015. The central question of the research was how did the assessed churches accommodate the spatial demands of the new liturgy, and what tendencies can be identified regarding the shaping of the space. The interior layout, galleries, additions to the buildings, the proportions in the floor plans and spatial ratios will be the topics through which these questions will be answered. After tracing the locally observable main characteristics of Protestant spatial formation, similarities with Hungarian and international examples will also be explored.

Beyond Holocaust Studies: rethinking the Holocaust in Hungary

This article argues that the ideological and emotional meanings of the terms ‘Holocaust’ and ‘antisemitism’ have obstructed their use as analytical concepts in Holocaust scholarship. It claims, specifically, that they frame the persecution and annihilation of Jews during World War II as unique, placing these events and processes apart from essential historical and political contexts. The destruction of Jews in wartime Hungary underscores how histories of state and nation building—in this case the drive to realize ‘Greater Hungary’ with a marked Magyar majority—generated multi-layered mass violence against non-Jews as well as Jews. Focusing on the multi-ethnic borderland of Subcarpathian Rus’ before the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944 illuminates the links in the state's multi-layered attack against the region's society and sheds new light on the particular victimization of Jews, also after March 1944. Almost all the scholarship on the Holocaust in Hungary has addressed the period after the German invasion, dealing with ghettoization and deportation to Auschwitz. This perspective has provided important insight, but it has also overshadowed significant dimensions in the history of wartime Hungary. The histories of the state's borderlands, which have received limited attention, challenge this account of ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary. This article uncovers how anxieties about disloyalty and foreignness played crucial roles in the exclusionary campaign against Jews, Roma and Carpatho-Ruthenians in Subcarpathian Rus’. The Hungarian authorities planned and carried out discriminatory and violent measures against them and, whenever national and international opportunities permitted, mass deportations. The examination of these related processes of mass violence lays bare the meaning of ‘antisemitism’ in a specific political context, highlighting connections between anti-Jewish policies and the persecution of other groups. Viewing this violence as it unfolded, rather than backward from the ‘final solution’ and Auschwitz, opens new paths to rethink ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary.

Maps, Meanings, and Ideologies: The Case of Greater Hungary

Maps, Meanings, and Ideologies: The Case of Greater Hungary

Et in Hungaria ego: Trianon, Revisionism and the JournalMagyar Szemle(1927-1944)

The journal Magyar Szemle (1927-1944), founded by Prime Minister Istvan Bethlen and edited by the historian Gyula Szekfu, was the primary forum for the discussion of the revision of the Treaty of Trianon and the situation of the Hungarian minorities in the neighboring states. Rejecting all proposals for border revision on an ethnic basis, the journal espoused integral revisionism, or the restoration of the historical Kingdom of Hungary. The periodical's own position on revision is best illustrated by the “New Hungaria” essays of the legal scholar Laszlo Ottlik, published between 1928 and 1940, which hoped to win back the former national minorities through promises of wide-ranging autonomy within a re-established Greater Hungary.

Folk Religion in a Calvinist Context: Hungarian Models and Scottish Examples

Introduction President, members of The Folklore Society, and friends: I am deeply conscious of the honour which the Society has bestowed on me by its invitation to deliver the Katharine Briggs Memorial Lecture for 2001. This annual lecture was instituted in order to commemorate the life and work of a scholar who made a lasting contribution to our subject, to its wider understanding and its extending horizons. She worked tirelessly to ensure respect for folklore among the disciplines which have the study of human experience as their focus, and took a broad, inclusive and comparative approach to all she did. We remember Katharine Briggs with gratitude and affection. In my lecture tonight I wish to pay tribute to research in the field of folk religion carried out by a dedicated team who have also been inspired by a scholar with very special qualities, whose work deserves to have our attention. The Reverend Doctor Ambrus Molnar (see Figure 1), who was born in 1922 and died in 2000, gave encouragement to others in the study of religious life both within and beyond the bounds of officially recognised denominational practice by his own commitment and dedication, often at risk to his own personal safety. Since the late 1980s I have had the privilege of a growing acquaintance with, and limited participation in, the work of Dr Molnar and his team, carried out in a part of Europe where East meets West in the lands of Greater Hungary. The fact that the research findings of the group are published almost entirely in Hungarian means that they are not widely known to international folklore scholars. And because of their relevance to the study of religious phenomena in countries such as Scotland, where I am based, I have chosen them for the focus of this Katharine Briggs Lecture. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Some Personal Reflections But first of all, in a reflexive mode, let me say something about my own background which will help to place my interests in this conjunction of cultures in context. I was born in 1945 in the Western Canadian province of Saskatchewan to parents who would not have called themselves anything but Canadian, but whose heritage was, in both cases, Highland, Scottish and Calvinist. My mother was born in Scotland, in the Badenoch community of Kingussie, and emigrated as a small child with her parents after the First World War. My father was a descendent of emigrants of an earlier period, Mackays from Sutherland in the north of mainland Scotland, who settled as part of a group migration in what is now Western Ontario--then known as Upper Canada or Canada West--in 1831. Like his father, his uncle and several cousins, he was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Growing up in a manse, in a ministerial household, provided me with experiences which I could recognise later in my life for their folkloric significance. There was exposure on a regular basis to the events in the human life cycle, and responses to them, among members of the congregation and community. Consciously or unconsciously came a growing awareness of the multiple meanings associated with foodways and expressive genres such as the in-group humour of the clergy, to select but a few examples. Life in a western Canadian city, Saskatoon, provided the multicultural context of a province which had been settled by Europeans within seventy-five years of my own birth, where Ukrainian and German could be majority mother-tongues and where the population of my primary school classroom in the early 1950s bore witness not only to several generations of settlement, but also to the influx following the Second World War of so-called New Canadians from Europe and from Asia. My acquaintance with the phenomenon of Hungarian Calvinism can be said to date from this period. There were Hungarian families in the St Andrew's Presbyterian congregation. …