Project Director: Viktor Karady, Project Title: "Ethnic Dimensions of Nation
Building and Elite Training in 20th Century Central Europe”, Duration: January 7,
2003 - January 7, 2004
Given the complexity of my projects for the completion of which I demanded (and obtained) support
from the CEU and other foundations, I will take seperately the different parts of my research
activities thereby funded.
1. The movement to Magyarise (change) surnames in the late Dualist era.
Although the project has been fully accomplished, some further research is still needed, since
one – not inessential – aspect of the work could not be fully explored, the very specific
strategy of chosing the ’right name’ by those involved in the movement extended during the
Dualist period over close to 100 000 cases.
Our main task here consisted of the delicate operation of codifying all socio-historically
relevant data to be found in the available printed but not published records of the changes of
surnames accepted by the minister of interion between 1896 and 1913. A very large sample of close
to 33 000 such documents have been processed, representing approximately somewhat less than one
half of all demands presented to the Ministry. Demands for several full years (almost every second
year) have been treated, thus covering the whole period, especially the peak year of 1898 (that of the
’Bánffy terror’) and the years before and after this year when the state started to enforce, for the first
time, the Magyarisation of names of its employees. This is probably the ever biggest survey of
historical materials treated, outside population censuses.
At present there is a CD rom containing all the coded informations of the survey, together
with the actual names (both the abandoned and the chosen ones). Since the Jewish-non Jewish
division appeared to be a major variable in the distribution of the applicants as well as in their
choices of names, a first systematic set of informations (in the alphabatical order of both types of
surnames) have been produced. These results are accessible for scholars upon demand, ready for
further statistical study and secondary analyses.
One aspect of the material could nevertheless not explored : the clusters of chosen names.
For this I succeeded though to mobilize, together with my young colleague István Kozma, two of
the best linguists specialized in the linguistic study of Magyar surnames, both teaching at the ELTE.
During several working session we have arrived at a number of new coding schemes approaching
the nature of surnames. Now this part of the codification process has started, due to be completed in
a matter of months.
By the same token, to continue the detailed and multi-disciplinary exploration of name
changes, we have gathered a large team of students (mostly from the Department of Linguistics at
ELTE), some of them preparing Ph. D. Theses, to work on related archival documents prior to 1894.
Indeed the list of those having actually received the necessary ministerial permission was published
up to 1894, but without some important informations (notably confession), but the demands refused
by the Ministry are lacking from the documentation. Besides a number of other relevant
informations and documents may be also found in the archival funds, hence the importance of the
work started by the team.
A general study report will be prepared on the main findings of the survey, some of which
have already been used incidentally in several of my recent lectures and studies. See notably :
“Differential Modernisation and the Anti-Semitic Turnabout. Socio-Political
Foundations of the numerus clausus and the ‘Christian Course’ in Post World War
I. Hungary”, Transversal (Graz), 2004/1, Janner.
2. Prosopographic Study of the Hungarian University in Kolozsvár/Cluj
This was a long term project accomplished thanks to the friendly collaboration of my
Romanian colleague Lucian Nastasa. There is not much to say about it except that we have
achieved the preparation of three volumes of this considerable entreprise. The first volume is
forthcoming in a matter of weeks, due to the joint efforts of an editor in Cluj and the CEU
Press :
(with Lucian Nastasa), The University of Kolozsvár/Cluj/Cluj and the Students of the
Medical Faculty (1872-1918), Cluj, Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center, Budapest-New
York, Central European University Press, 370 pages.
The other two volumes will contain studies and prosopographies related to the
Faculties of Letters and of Sciences on the one hand, the Faculty of Law, on the other hand. The volume of
the Legal Faculty may be divided into two volumes, due to its enormous expected size.
3. Ethnic Inequalities of Schooling in Szeged
This part of the project has been not only fully accomplished, though not exactly with the results
expected, due to the scarcity of sources, which has been under-estimated before the survey operations.
However it was, several publication has been using several results of this survey and a general report is
under preparation. See particularly :
“Zsidó diákok a szegedi középiskolákban 1948 előtt. (Adalékok a magyar-zsidó ‘túliskolázás’
témájához)” /Jewish pupils in Szeged High schools. Contribution to the problem of
Hungarian-Jewish Overschooling/, Szeged, a város folyóirata, 15. évf. 6-7, 2003 június-július,
92-94.
« Zsidó diákok a budapesti középiskolai piacon 1945 előtt és után. Esettanulmány
a
társadalmi krízis és a trauma szociológiájához » /Jewish pupils on the market of
secondary schooling before and after 1945. Case study in the sociology of social
crisis and traunma) , in Iskolakultúra Budapesten (?), Budapest, Napvilág Kiadó (a
Fővárosi levéltár gondozásában), forthcoming.
« The ’Smart Jew’ in pre-1919 Hungary. Denomination Specific Educational
Investments and Cultural Assimilation. » in Lajta-Lethe Conference Studies, Wien,
Forthcoming.
Following the disappointment of this partial failure I extended my project to draw upon other,
hitherto unidentified source materials, thus integrating the monographic data of Szeged schooling in a much
larger regional and potentially national context. Thus, since the original project was limited to classical
secondary schools I took on me to proceed to two supplementary study operations :
First the basic exploration of the relative size of student populations by a number of relevant sociohistorical variables was extended to every kind of school (elementary and post elementary). Thus in my
forthcoming study report I can intewgrate the ckienteles of the classical gymnasiums and the Realschule
into the whole hierarchy of local schooling (Bürgerschule, girls’ schools, Normal School, commercial high
school, besides elementary schools). Interesting insights may be gained from the comparisons of various
historically changing school clienteles by fathers’ professional status, ethnicity, confessions, place of
residence, etc.
Second, thanks to the collaboration of a Hungarian colleague, Tibor-Péter Nagy, we could find the
archival funds corresponding to census results giving the the age specific data of levels of schooling by
ethnicity and confessions for each county and city of Hungary in 1910. We have the information seperately
for Szeged town and for the surrounding counties (notably for Csongrád) wherefrom our students
originated in large numbers. We are going to publish the whole data set in a number of volumes, including
one on the Szeged region. The first volume of this series of publications has just come out :
(With Peter Tibor Nagy), Denominational Inequalities of Education in Dualist
Hungary. A Data Bank for Transdanubia, 1910. Budapest, Oktatáskutató Intézet,
207 pages. (‘Kutatás közben’)
4. International Student Exchange
In pursuing research in this field I had to change some of my orientations, though most of the tasks
fixed in my programme have been accomplished. I could in particular complete the codification of data
pertaining to students having been enrolled in a university or in a vocational school of advanced learning
(Polytechnics, Commercial, artistic, agronomical, etc.) in Germany between 1850 and 1919. But I could
not complete the similar codification work on students in Vienna and elsewhere in the Austrian university
network, because part of the relevant data have not yet been gathered, contrary to my previous
expectations. My colleagues engaged in this work of data collection couzld indeed not fill the lacks foir
over twenty years for the same period in Vienna, a central place for Hungarian emigrant students
(peregrinators).
Nevertheless I have used my material incidentally for lectures and studies. See in particular :
„Les logiques des échanges inégaux : contraintes et stratégies ŕ l’oeuvre dans les migrations
d’étudiants en Europe (avant les années 1930).”, in Universitäten als Brücken nach
Europa/Universités : ponts á travers l’Europe. Etudes sur l’histoire des migrations étudiantes,
sous la direction de Hartmut Rüdiger Peter et Natalia Tikhonov, Frankfurt/M., Peter Lang,
2003, 17-33.
“Peregrinusok” /Students abroad/, Iskolakultúra (Pécs), XIII., 2003 aug., 139-140.
(Review article : Szögi László, Magyarországi diákok németországi egyetemeken és
gőiskolákon, 1789-1919, Budapest, ELTE Leváltár, 2001.)
«L’accueil perturbé. Les étudiants juifs étrangers dans les universités françaises
dans l’entre-deux-guerres », forthcoming n Cahiers du CEFRES, Prague,
The importance of this chapter and the one dedicated to the University of Kolozsvár resides if the
future projects which they help to prepare. Indeed via the nominative prosopographic registration of
graduates and students of the second Hungarian university together with all those who have studied some
time abroad in the first period of the post-feudal modernisation of the Carpathian Basin (the then Kingdom
of Hungary, including a qualified majority of non Magyars !), one can have an empirical grasp of almost
one half (possibly even more) of would be intellectuals (with or without higher degrees) in the country, that
is half (or more) of the edicated elite of that time. This can be a crucial data bank for any future study of
modernising elites in this region.
5. Sociology of Post-Shoah Survivors.
All the studied planned for this part of my programme have been fully accomplished. After the
first book which came out last year on the topic, a second volume is being prepared, to be published by the
same editor. Independently from this, I hace prepared other studies as well exploring other aspects of the
position of Jews in Communist and post-Communist Hungary :
Review article : Zsidók a mai Magyarországon. Az 1999-ben végzett szociológiai
felmérés eredményeinek elemzése. Szerkesztette Kovács András. Budapest, in Szombat, 2002,
január,
„A halálozási kockázat egyes felekezeti összetevői Magyarországon a második
világháború előtt és alatt” /Some confessional factors of the risk of death in
Hungary during and after the Second World War/, in Etnikai konfliktusok és
kölcsönhatások a Kárpát-medencében, /Ethnic conflicts and mutual influences in
the Carpathian Basin/, Budapest, Gondolat, MTA Kisebbségkutató Intézete, 2003,
117-129.
« Jewish Identity in Post-Communist East Central Europe », Monitor, ISH
(Revue des sciences humaines et sociales (Ljubjana), vol VI, 1994, no. 1-2,
forthcoming.
« Ordinary Deaths in Times of Mass Murder. Patterns of Jewish Mortality in
Budapest (1937-1960) », Washington, Holocaust Museum, forthcoming.
A túlélés traumái. Újabb fejezetek a magyar zsidóság szociológiájából 1945 előtt és után.
/Traumas of survival. New chapters of the sociology of Hungarian Jewry after 1945/,
Budapest, Múlt és jövö, forthcoming.
« Survivors’ Dilemmas. Jewish-Hungarian Identity Patterns after the Shoah (19451956) » Yearbook of the Jewish Studies Programme of the Central European University,
Budapest, CEU, forthcoming.