Hungarian Geography Research Articles

A hegységképződéstől a karsztokig. Beszélgetés Veress Mártonnal [Interjú] = From Mountain Formation to Karsts: Conversation with Márton Veress [Interview

Márton Veress was born on February 7, 1946 in Szombathely, Hungary. He graduated from the József Attila University as a teacher of Biology and Geography. He became the doctor of Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2004. He has been active in karst research since the mid-1970s, where his main research area was karst morphology, including the study of covered karsts and karren. He received various awards and prizes, including the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 2009, and the title of Professor Emeritus in 2016. The semi-structured interview was conducted in February 2023 at the ELTE Savaria University Centre. The purpose of this conversation is to gain a better understanding of the important moments in the professor’s life, and of the milieu that played a role in shaping his professional career. The interview also aims to present the virtues, challenges and tasks of Hungarian geography through the experiences of this article.

Hungarian Geography between 1870 and 1920: Negotiating Empire and Coloniality on the Global Semiperiphery

Going beyond the conventional approach that locates imperial geographies at either the center or periphery of overseas colonization, this article focuses on coloniality in fin de siècle Hungary to examine the complex negotiation of the colonial project on the global semiperiphery. As a junior partner in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary was simultaneously both an object of Western Europe’s orientalizing gaze and an agent of its own civilizing mission on the nation’s periphery and in the Balkans. Adopting a decolonial framework, we investigate how Hungarian geographers fit themselves into the colonial paradigm and examine their shifting and ambiguous relationship to colonial notions. Beginning with the institutionalization of Hungarian geography in the 1870s and ending with the collapse of Austria-Hungary after World War I, we explore this evolving relationship in light of three factors: (1) the attitudes of Hungarian geographers toward Western imperialism in general and Austro-Hungarian imperialism in the Balkans in particular; (2) the diverse perspectives of Hungarian geographers as thinkers embedded in an epistemic community on the global semiperiphery; and (3) their perspectives on ethno-nationalist conceptualizations of national space. Offering critical insight into the history of fin de siècle Hungarian geography, our study also opens the possibility for comparative discussions regarding the semiperipheral coloniality of other broadly similar cases and the decolonizing of semiperipheral geographies and their pasts.

A Tóth József témavezetésével PhD-fokozatot szerzett tanítványok – a földrajz talentumai, avagy a talentumok földrajza

József Tóth was an outstanding figure in Hungarian geography. This article aims to present his scientific talent management at the University of Pécs through the data of his PhD students (n=63). During the analysis we used university publications and electronic databases, as well as Spearman’s correlation calculation, independent T-test, Mann–Whitney U-test, Kruskal–Wallis test and Chi-squared test to explore the relationships. The largest proportion of students were born and worked in the Southern Great Plain, North Hungary and Transdanubia, however the winner of the regional talent migration is Transdanubia. The professional openness of the professor is reflected in the topic selection of the dissertations completed under his supervision. His students, carrying on his intellectual heritage, are still active in scientific publishing. The charismatic personality, world view and professional knowledge of the head of doctoral school are manifested in the diversity and academic performance of his former students.

Tóth Józsefre emlékezünk. Előszó a Modern Geográfia tematikus számához

February 7, 2023 marked the 10th anniversary of the death of Professor József Tóth. Our journal would like to contribute to a worthy commemoration. Perhaps it is not surprising that the following articles recalling the past appear in the thematic issue of Modern Geográfia. This is partly due to the fact that the professor was the founder of our journal. In terms of their scope and genre, the following articles are not research articles in the classical sense of the term, but rather short studies, or more precisely essays, which are based primarily on personal memories and experiences in addition to secondary analyses of academic literature. All of our authors invited to the commemoration were students, friends, and colleagues of József Tóth, so they gladly agreed to pay tribute to the professor’s memory with a piece of writing each. The articles point out, among other things, József Tóth’s role in 20th-century Hungarian geography, the results of his rectorship, the residential and territorial characteristics of his famous students, and the impact of his versatile research on the development of geography in Pécs.

Burgenland or West-Hungary: The aspirations and limits of Austrian and Hungarian geography, 1918–1938

At the end of World War I, peace treaties wiped the Austro-Hungarian Empire off the map, and as a result of the Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, the Kingdom of Hungary was dismembered. As a part of this process, a thin band of mainly German-speaking territory of some 4000 km2, West-Hungary, became a part of Austria. This paper investigates both the arguments used by Hungarian geographers in defence of that country's territorial unity, notably those aimed at retaining and potentially recovering West-Hungary, and the arguments used by Austrian and German geographers to justify the annexation of that area. Analysing published and unpublished sources (articles, books, maps, propaganda material, and popular science literature), we show that scholars from both sides of the new border based their detailed arguments on similar theories, and used the same methods and mapping technologies for their own causes. We demonstrate that geographical arguments and analyses cannot be divorced from their political context, and that the politics of the new Europe that emerged after 1918 were profoundly geographical in nature.

The Presence of Sustainability in Hungarian Geography Textbooks

The Lucerne Declaration on Geographical Education for Sustainable Development recommends including the subjects of Education for Sustainable Development and sustainability in Geography teaching all over the world. One possible way to examine the practical implementation of education for sustainability is through textbook analysis. The present study investigates how Hungarian textbooks published after 2015 perform in terms of ESD. In order to do that, it conducts content analysis the help of the MAXQDA 2020 programme, looking for the presence of Sustainable Development Goals and competencies related to sustainability in the analysed educational media. The results show that Geography in Hungary has an ecological approach to teaching about sustainable development. Sustainability issues relevant to society are less emphasized. Textbooks written in a modern, problem-centric spirit pay a lot of attention to competence development. However, ESD only appears in the studied textbooks sporadically; there is no evident competence development concept present in them in a planned, structured format.

Rezső Milleker and political geography

This paper aims to examinate and to present the political geographical work of Rezső Milleker. Although political geography was not his main specialty, time to time he tried to create something of scientifical value in this field of science, but the attention of professional circles and the success avoided him. By evaluating these works we try to answer the question, where his place was in Hungarian political geography between the two world wars.
 Keywords: Milleker, political geography, Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, ethnic maps

Mendöl Tibor (1905–1966), a Budapesti Tudományegyetem emberföldrajzi tanszékének alapító professzora

This article examines the career of Hungarian geographer, Tibor Mendöl, who was appointed the first Chair of Human Geography at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in 1940. Mendöl’s career had a bright start but was shattered following World War II. His story is not unique in Hungary, and in fact was common to other countries in the former Soviet sphere where a generation of geographers shared his fate. The history of Mendöl’s career and the reception of his work reaches beyond the significance of a personal life story. It offers insight into twentieth-century Hungarian geography and into Hungarian scholarly life in general. Mendöl’s career was emblematic of a period when geography–which had been institutionally strong, vital in public thought in Hungary, and important in a policy context–became marginalised within academia, and came very close to disciplinary annihilation. Mendöl was allowed to retain his chair up to his date of retirement, but his disciples had to leave the university. His efforts to publish his work were in turn hindered, and his scientific theories received strong criticism. Students of geography in Budapest probably did not even hear his name uttered, even a few years after his death. Mendöl’s works were even removed from the university curriculum. The output of the more recent Mendöl ‘heritage industry,’ however, proves that the legacy of his work has not yet been exhausted, and that his story remains relevant. Though the protagonist of this story has been dead for more than fifty years, his spirit (or perhaps his phantom) returns occasionally. Varying attitudes towards his life and work–from rejection, through concealment, to carefully expressed and later more bravely- worded tributes–have always been only partially about professional and subject-based issues. Interpretations of his life and work have also always been matters of historiography and politics.

A füstölgő meddőhányóktól a globális közlekedésig. Beszélgetés Erdősi Ferenccel [Interjú

Ferenc Erdősi was born on April 19, 1934 in Pécs, Hungary. He first graduated from the University of Szeged as a teacher of Geography and Geology, and then from the Faculty of Humanities at the Eötvös Loránd University as a teacher of History. He became the doctor of Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1989 and was appointed university professor in 1993. In the last two decades, he has dealt with transport geography and the study of the territorial effects of telematics. In 2004, he was awarded the Gábor Baross Prize and the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. In 2010, he was awarded the Officer’s Cross. The subsequently semi-structured interview was conducted in September 2021, at his home. The purpose of this discussion was to gain a better understanding of the important moments in the professor’s life, the milieu that played a role in shaping his professional career. Our aim was also to present the virtues, challenges and tasks of Hungarian Geography through the experiences of this conversation.

A földrajztudomány intézményesülése és szellemiségének fejlődése az Osztrák–Magyar Monarchiában

The foundation and institutionalisation of Austrian and Hungarian geography not only occurred in the same historical period but also within the confines of the same territorial unit, the Habsburg Empire, and then the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. Just as in the case of the population and the enterprises, science had no internal borders within the Monarchy either; still, the vast majority of scholars treat the two parts of the Empire separately. In this paper, my view of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy as a unified legal entity is applied for the development of the discipline of geography. In addition to the process of institutionalisation in the Empire’s two parts (in the form of the establishment of university geography departments and geographical societies), I also provide an overview of the scientific work done by the heads of geography departments of the universities of Vienna and Budapest, the two main centres of national scientific life. By doing so, not only the Dualism-era development of Austrian and Hungarian geography can be compared and their connections can be identified but the Monarchy’s geographical discipline can also be placed in an international context.

Water as theme in the Hungarian educational system

There is no life without water on the Earth. With the climate change the water cycle will also change. Some regions will be affected seriously. Although Hungary is a water rich country, we have to be aware of our water resources, as most of them is not renewable. Facing to the global warming we recognized the anomalies in the precipitation of the last decades. As, a geography teacher we have several themes during our course in which we can speak about water related problems. But we must prepare and sensitize our student regarding their water usage. Water will be more precious in the closer future. We examined how the water appears in the thematic lessons during the Hungarian geography courses from the elementary to university level. We found a lot of themes in which we can introduce them to become environmentally conscious. Regarding water related problem we found that water footprint is a good tool to involve our students into challenges. On its website www.waterfootprint.org, where is a lot of educational tool as well. Our pupils found it very interesting and useful.

Tudományágak a szakosodás és a populáris kultúra határán

Scientific associations that still exist today were founded all across Europe since the middle of the 19th century. Magyar Földrajzi Társulat (Hungarian Geographical Society; now: Magyar Földrajzi Társaság) was created in 1872, Magyarországi Néprajzi Társaság (Hungarian Ethnographical Society; now: Magyar Néprajzi Társaság) in 1889; but they were different from today’s similar organizations in their basic goals, tasks and their membership as well. These associations were “hybrids” of sorts: they possessed both a scientific side and a science-popularizing side that aimed for a large number of members for financial security. The Hungarian Geographical Society used the huge public interest surrounding the exploration of Africa better: inviting explorers returning from Africa, public readings and regular news based on foreign associations’ publications served undoubtedly the above mentioned popularizing purpose. However the geographers of the early 20th century voiced harsh critiques against the sensationalism of the Hungarian Geographical Society. At the same time Hungarian geography as a science was not lagging behind that of Western Europe at the time of the explorations. 1870-1880 were the decades of Central African exploration, and the main focus of Western European geographical publications and events as well. The official journal of the Hungarian Ethnographical Society, Ethnographia containing much fewer Africa-centric publications is partly due to the Association having been created at the end of the explorations. However, while Földrajzi Közlemények (the official journal of the Hungarian Geographical Society) followed the political movements of Europe in Africa between 1890 and 1900, even though the time of explorations was over, Ethnographia distanced itself from these in favour for more professional content. Földrajzi Közlemények and Hungarian geography in general only followed suit after 1900.

Regime Change and the Attempted Rehabilitation of Self: Ferenc Fodor and the Production of Communist Geography, 1948-1962

The communist takeover in Hungary after World War II presented obvious challenges, hardships, and even dangers for the conservative-nationalist scholars who were part of the intellectual elite of the interwar period. Marginalized within the new socio-political order that emerged after the communist consolidation of power in 1948-49, conservative-nationalist intellectuals who were not completely silenced by the communists either retreated from public life entirely, or else found themselves having to struggle to remain relevant within the state-socialist system then under construction. Though limited in what they could publish, and relegated to minor and often precarious positions within the scholarly community, former conservative-nationalist scholars were nevertheless granted limited spaces within which they could produce relevant and even important scholarship, and in so doing could also “reinvent” themselves—if in many cases only partially and perhaps opportunistically—as public intellectuals. Focusing on the life and work of Ferenc Fodor between 1948 and his death in 1962, this article explores the concrete ways that a once-prominent geographer of the interwar period continued to contribute to geographical knowledge production under communism, and how he used this scholarly work as leverage in his attempts to partially rehabilitate himself in the early communist period. Contributing to a growing body of critical work on Hungarian geography under communism (see articles by Márton Czirfusz and Róbert Győri in this issue, for example), this study helps to lay the groundwork for future research on the relationship between the politics of scholarly production and the spatial re-imagining of postwar Hungary.

Communist Geography Instead of Nationalist Geography: The New Cadres and the Case of Sándor Radó

This article provides an introduction to the scholarly career of Sándor Radó (1899-1981), one of the leading Hungarian geographers and cartographers of the 1960s and 1970s. Belonging to a generation of newcomers who took control of every aspect of Hungarian scholarly life in the 1950s after the ousting of the old elite, Radó’s scholarly path was not unique. The complete transformation of Hungarian geography was deeply embedded within this broader process, as its nature, approaches, conduct, and institutional organization was rearranged along Marxist-Leninist ideological lines. A critical examination of Radó’s career and his scientific work, therefore, helps us to understand how Hungarian science functioned during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and provides insight into the practice of career and institution building, and thus reveals the atmosphere within which scientific results were achieved.

The Contested Post-Socialist Rehabilitation of the Past: Dual Narratives in the Republishing of Tibor Mendöl’s "Introduction to Geography"

This paper aims to unravel the contextual layers of the postsocialist republishing of a prominent Hungarian geographer’s textbook originally written in the 1950s, which is considered here as a vehicle of the contested narrativity in the “big historical gap” of postsocialist Hungarian geography. Tibor Mendöl’s Introduction to Geography [Bevezetés a földrajzba] was a hybrid text written in a dual narrative: first in a traditional “age of discoveries” narrative of the previous conservative-nationalist regime, and second in the obligatory Marxist-Leninist language of the later Sovietized regime. In 1999, the two rehabilitators of the text were driven by different motivations (such as the return to a formerly glorious geographical tradition, or the selective confining of a discredited socialist past), but in both cases through a symbolic contestation of the author. This ultimately led to the arbitrarily reediting of the text.

The Sovietisation of Hungarian Geography, 1945–1960

Following Hungary’s serious losses of territory after World War I, geography becameregarded as a major tool for the scientific substantiation of claims to territorialrevision by the political elite. The discipline’s position was strengthened, and the vastmajority of geographers supported the political goals of the regime. After 1945, however,Hungary became a part of the Soviet occupation zone. After the violent establishmentof the Communist system, geography was found guilty of having served the interwarpolitical regime. The old ‘reactionary’ and ‘bourgeois’ geography was demolished anda new, Marxist-Leninist geography on Soviet principles was established. The latter wasbased on the concept of economic determinism: ‘physical’ and ‘economic’ geographywere strongly distinguished. Geography became a part of national economic planning.State research institutes and those of the Academy of Sciences, and the CentralPlanning Office became the most important ‘centres of calculation’ where Soviet-type‘big science’ was established. Several ‘old’ geographers were pensioned off or exiledfrom academia; others were driven to the periphery or forced to compromise withthe system. In the meanwhile, all important positions were given to politically loyal‘newcomers’. The international orientation of Hungarian geography changed as well:former German and French influence was followed by a stable orientation towards‘friendly’ Socialist countries, especially towards the USSR.

Challenges for Hungarian Geography: Perspectives of ‘Disability Studies’ in Hungary

In Hungary people with disabilities are one of the most oppressed and marginalized social groups. During the last two decades they have become more and more ’visible’ for social sciences too, but unfortunately disability is still neglected in human geography. However, it always appears in media, public discourses and political debates and good examples for disability research from ‘Western’ geography are known and available. The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that disability, as a research topic could be well adopted into Hungarian geography. Keeping the eyes on this goal, the paper is divided into three major parts. First, it gives a summary on the ‘geographical research’ of the mostly examined marginalized social groups in the Hungarian society and on some important research areas and results reached by scholars of various science areas. Second, it reveals some practicable approaches, research topics and methods of ‘disability geography’, a sub-discipline of Anglo-American geography. Finally, it explores how disability geography could be used in Hungary and gives an example based on own research.

Female representation in the higher education of geography in Hungary

This paper charts the changing female representation in the higher education of geography, connecting it with the faltering development of feminist geography in Hungary. The transition from socialism to capitalism has compounded gender inequalities while many of the relevant statistical data display gender blindness. Gender issues fail to form a coherent part of national political debates while women's opportunities in Hungarian higher education and research have only recently been examined. Constraints on issues of equal opportunities within Hungarian geography are discussed.

Reviews: The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900–1940: Natural Hazards in Puerto Rico: Attitudes, Experience, and Behaviour of Homeowners, Studies in Geography in Hungary 27. New Perspectives in Hungarian Geography, Urban Landscape Dynamics: A Multi-Level Innovation Process, People and Environment: Behavioural Approaches to Human Geography, the New Global Economy in the Information Age: Reflections on Our Changing

Reviews: The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900–1940: Natural Hazards in Puerto Rico: Attitudes, Experience, and Behaviour of Homeowners, Studies in Geography in Hungary 27. New Perspectives in Hungarian Geography, Urban Landscape Dynamics: A Multi-Level Innovation Process, People and Environment: Behavioural Approaches to Human Geography, the New Global Economy in the Information Age: Reflections on Our Changing

New Perspectives in Hungarian Geography

New Perspectives in Hungarian Geography