Magyarization
Encyclopedia
Magyarization is a kind of assimilation
or acculturation, a process by which non-Magyar elements came to adopt Magyar culture and language due to social pressure (often, though not exclusively, in the form of a coercive policy).
Defiance or appeals to the Nationalities Law, met with derision or abuse. Despite the law, the use of minority languages was almost entirely banned in administration and justice. The Magyar language was highly overrepresented in the primary schools and almost all secondary education was in Hungarian.
By the end of the 19th century, the state apparatus was entirely Hungarian in language, as were business and social life above the lowest levels. The percentage of the population with Hungarian as its mother tongue grew from 46.6 % in 1880 to 54.5 % in 1910. The Hungarian government manipulated the census figures, counting non-Magyars as Magyars. The Magyarization of the towns had proceeded at an astounding rate. Nearly all middle-class Jews
and Germans
and many middle-class Slovaks
and Ruthenes had been Magyarized. In 1837 the number of Hungarians in the kingdom of Hungary have risen from 37% to 48% of the total population in 1910.
However, most of the Magyarization happened in the centre of Hungary and among the middle classes, who had access to education; and much of it was the direct result of urbanization
and industrialization. It had hardly touched the rural populations of the periphery, and linguistic
frontier
s had not shifted significantly from the line on which they had stabilized a century earlier.
The process continued also in post-Trianon
era. The political and cultural rights offered to interwar Hungary's ethnic minorities were stingier than their equivalents in any other country of East Central Europe. On the other hand, this kind of approach to minority languages and culture was fully in line with the trends of the time. From the onset of Enlightenment Era, the same or even more severe forced assimilation
techniques were used with success by significant Western European countries, such as Spain
, France
or Britain
.
of Austria-Hungary
in the 19th century and early 20th century, especially after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, and in particular after the rise in 1871 of the Count Menyhért Lónyay as head of the Hungarian government. The idea owes its existence to the Enlightenment due to which the 19th century saw the emergence of nation-states in many places in Europe (France, Italy, Germany).
When referring to personal and geographic names, Magyarization stands for the replacement of an originally non-Hungarian name with a Hungarian one. For instance, the Romanian name "Ion Negru" would become "János Fekete", or the Slavic name "Novo Selo" would become "Újfalu".
, Slovaks
, Ukrainians
, Serbs
, Croats
, etc., as aggression or active discrimination, especially where they formed the majority of the population.
(1780–90), a leader influenced by the Enlightenment sought to centralize control of the empire and to rule it as an enlightened despot. He decreed that German
replace Latin
as the empire's official language.
This centralization/homogenization struggle was not unique to Joseph II, it was a trend that one could observe all around Europe with the birth of the enlightened idea of Nation State.
Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue. As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language
and culture. The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of whom less than half were ethnic Magyars, and even those had become French-
and German-speaking courtiers.
The magyarization policy actually took shape as early as the 1830s, when Hungarian started replacing Latin and German in education
In July 1849, Hungarian Revolutionary
Parliament acknowledged and enacted foremost the ethnic and minority rights
in the world, but it was too late: To counter the successes of the Hungarian revolutionary army, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph asked for help from the "Gendarme of Europe", Czar Nicholas I
, whose Russian armies invaded Hungary. The army of the Russian Empire and the Austrian forces proved too powerful for the Hungarian army, and General Artúr Görgey surrendered in August 1849.
The Magyar national reawakening therefore triggered national revivals among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian
, and Croatian minorities within Hungary
and Transylvania
, who felt threatened by both German and Magyar cultural hegemony. These national revivals later blossomed into the nationalist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that contributed to the empire's ultimate collapse.
The eagerness of the Hungarian government in its Magyarization efforts was comparable to that of tsarist Russification
from the late 19th century
The term Magyarization is used in regards to the national policies put into use by the government of the Kingdom of Hungary
, which was part of the Habsburg Empire. The beginning of this process dates to the late 18th century and was intensified after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which increased the power of the Hungarian government within the newly formed Austria-Hungary
. some of them had little desire to be declared a national minority like in other cultures. However, Jews in Hungary appreciated the emancipation in Hungary at a time when anti-semitic laws were still applied in Russia and Romania. Large minorities were concentrated in various regions of the kingdom, where they formed significant majorities. In Transylvania
proper (1867 borders), the 1910 census finds 55.08% Romanian-speakers, 34.2% Hungarian-speakers, and 8.71% German-speakers.
In the north of the Kingdom
, Slovaks and Ruthenians formed an ethnic majority also, in the southern regions the majority were South Slavic Croats, Serbs and Slovenes and in the western regions the majority were Germans.
The process of Magyarization did not succeed in imposing the Hungarian language as the most used language in all territories in the Kingdom of Hungary. In fact the profoundly multinational character of historic Transylvania was reflected in the fact that during the fifty years of the dual monarchy, the spread of Hungarian as the second language remained limited. In 1880, 5.7 % of the non-Hungarian population, or 109,190 people, claimed to have a knowledge of the Hungarian language; the proportion rose to 11 % (183,508) in 1900, and to 15.2 % (266,863) in 1910. These figures reveal the reality of a bygone era, one in which millions of people could conduct their lives without speaking the state's official language. The policies of Magyarization aimed to have a Hungarian language name as a requirement for access to basic government services such as local administration, education, and justice.
Between 1850 and 1910 the ethnic Hungarian population increased by 106.7%, while the increase of other ethnic groups was far slower: Serbians and Croatians 38.2%, Romanians 31.4% and Slovaks 10.7%.
According to census data, the Hungarian population of Transylvania increased from 24.9% in 1869 to 31.6% in 1910. In the same time, the percentage of Romanian population decreased from 59.0% to 53.8% and the percentage of German population decreased from 11.9% to 10.7%. Changes were more significant in cities with predominantly German and Romanian population. For example, the percentage of Hungarian population increased in Braşov
from 13.4% in 1850 to 43.43% in 1910, meanwhile the Romanian population decreased from 40% to 28.71% and the German population from 40.8% to 26.41%.
The first Hungarian government after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the 1867–1871 liberal
government led by Count Gyula Andrássy
and sustained by Ferenc Deák
and his followers, passed the 1868 Nationality Act, that declared "all citizens of Hungary form, politically, one nation, the indivisible unitary Hungarian nation (nemzet), of which every citizen of the country, whatever his personal nationality (nemzetiség), is a member equal in rights." The Education Act, passed the same year, shared this view as the Magyars simply being primus inter pares ("first among equals"). At this time ethnic minorities "de jure" had a great deal of cultural and linguistic autonomy, including in education, religion, and local government.
However, after education minister Baron József Eötvös died in 1871, and in Andrássy became imperial foreign minister, Deák withdrew from active politics and Menyhért Lónyay became the Hungarian prime minister. He became steadily more allied with the Magyar gentry, and the notion of a Hungarian political nation increasingly became one of a Magyar nation. "[A]ny political or social movement which challenged the hegemonic position of the Magyar ruling classes was liable to be repressed or charged with 'treason'…, 'libel' or 'incitement of national hatred'. This was to be the fate of various Slovak
, South Slav
[e.g. Serb
], Romanian
and Ruthene cultural societies and nationalist parties from 1876 onward…" All of this only intensified after 1875, with the rise of Kálmán Tisza
, who as minister of the Interior had ordered the closing of Matica slovenská
on 6 April 1875. Until 1890, Kálmán Tisza
brought the Slovaks
many other measures which prevented them from keeping pace with the progres of other European nations.
For a long time, number of non-Hungarians that lived in the Kingdom of Hungary was much larger than a number of ethnic Hungarians. According to the 1787 data, the population of the Kingdom of Hungary numbered 2,322,000 Hungarians (29%) and 5,681,000 non-Hungarians (71%). In 1809, the population numbered 3,000,000 Hungarians (30%) and 7,000,000 non-Hungarians (70%). As an increasingly intense Magyarization policy was implemented after 1867.
Although in Slovak
, Romanian
and Serbian
history writing administrative and often repressive Magyarization is usually singled out as the main factor accountable for the dramatic change in the ethnic composition of the Kingdom of Hungary
in the 19th century, it should be noted that spontaneous assimilation was also an important factor. In this regard, it must be pointed out that large territories of central and southern Kingdom of Hungary lost their previous, predominantly Magyar population during the numerous wars fought by the Habsburg
and Ottoman
empires in the 16th and 17th centuries. These empty lands were repopulated, by administrative measures adopted by the Vienna Court especially during the 18th century, by Hungarians and Slovaks from the northern part of the Kingdom that avoided the devastation (see also Royal Hungary
), Swabians, Serbs (Serbs were majority in most southern parts of the Pannonian Plain during Ottoman rule, i.e. before those Habsburg administrative measures), Croats and Romanians. Various ethnic groups lived side by side (this ethnic heterogeneity is preserved until today in certain parts of Vojvodina
, Bačka
and Banat
). After 1867, Hungarian became the lingua franca
on this territory in the interaction between ethnic communities, and individuals who were born in mixed marriages between two non-Magyars often grew a full-fledged allegiance to the Hungarian nation. Of course since Latin was the official language until 1842 and the country was directly governed from Vienna (which excluded any large-scale governmental assimilation policy from the Hungarian side before the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the factor of spontaneous assimilation should be given due weight in any analysis relating to the demographic tendencies of the Kingdom of Hungary
in the 19th century.
The other key factor in mass ethnic changes is that between 1880 and 1910 about 3 million http://www.ufr-anglais.univ-paris7.fr/ETUDIANTS/infopedagogiques/code%2041%20CI1US2/Immigration.htm of Austro-Hungarians migrated to the United States alone. More than half of them were from Hungary (1.5 million+ or about 10% of the total population) alone The term "másfélmillió koldus országa" ("land of the one and half million beggars") was coined that time to describe the situation. Besides the 1.5 million that fled to the US (2/3 of them or about a million were ethnically non Hungarians) mainly Romanians and Serbs had migrated to their newly established mother states in large numbers, like the Principality of Serbia or the Kingdom of Romania
, who proclaimed their independence in 1878. Amongst them were such noted people, like the early aviator Aurel Vlaicu
(his face is on the 50 Romanian lei
) or famous writer Liviu Rebreanu
(first illegally in 1909, then legally in 1911) or Ion Ivanovici
. Also many fled to Western Europe
or other parts of the Americas
.
) were imprisoned or even sentenced to death during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
. One of the incidents that shocked European public opinion was the Černová massacre when 15 people were killed and 52 injured in 1907. Massacre caused Kingdom of Hungary to lose much prestige in the eyes of the world when English historian R. W. Seton-Watson
, Norwegian writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
and Russian writer Leo Tolstoy
championed this cause. The case being a proof for the violence of Magyarization is disputed, partly because the sergeant who ordered the shooting and all the shooters were ethnic Slovak and partly because of the controversial figure of Andrej Hlinka
.
The effect of Magyarization on the education system in Hungary was very significant, as can be seen from the official statistics submitted by the Hungarian government to the Paris Peace Conference
: (Formally, all the Jewish people of the kingdom were considered as Hungarians, who had higher rato in tertiary education than Christians)
Source:
In 1900, nearly a third of the deputies were elected by fewer than 100 votes and close to two-thirds were elected by fewer than 1000 votes. Transylvania had an even worse representation: the more Romanian a county was, the fewer voters it had. Out of the Transylvanian deputies sent to Budapest, 35 represented the 4 mostly Hungarian counties and the major towns (which together forming 20% of the population), whereas only 30 deputies represented the other 72% of the population, which was predominantly Romanian.
In 1913, even the electorate that elected only one-third of the deputies had a non proportional ethnic composition. The Magyars who made up 54.5% of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary represented a 60.2% majority in the electorate. Ethnic Germans made up 10.4% of the population and 13.0% of the electorate. The participation of other ethnic groups was as follows: Slovaks (10.7% in population, 10.4% in the electorate), Romanians (16.1% in population, 9.9% in the electorate), Rusyns (2.5% in population, 1.7% in the electorate), Croats (1.1% in population, 1.0% in the electorate), Serbs (2.2% in population, 1.4% in the electorate), and others (2.2% in population, 1.4% in the electorate).
Officially, Hungarian electoral laws never contained any legal discrimination based on nationality or language. The high census was not uncommon in other European countries in the 1860s but later the countries of Western-Europe gradually lowered and at last abolished their censi. That never happened in the Kingdom of Hungary, although electoral reform was one of the main topic of political debates in the last decades before World War I.
books prescribed that all names in these books should be in Hungarian. The native names of non-Hungarians were, thus, replaced with Hungarian ones, for example Serbian name Stevan was replaced with Istvan or Jelena with Ilona. The policy included not only Magyarization of personal names, but of surnames as well.
Hungarian authorities put constant pressure upon all non-Hungarians to Magyarize their names and the ease with which this could be done gave rise to the nickname of Crown Magyars (the price of the registration being one krone). In 1881 the "Central Society for Name Magyarization" (Központi Névmagyarositó Társaság) was founded in 1881 in Budapest
. The aim of this private society was to provide advice and guidelines for those who wanted to Magyarize their surnames. Telkes Simon became the chairman of the society, who professed that "one can achieve being accepted as a true son of the nation by adopting a national name". The society began an advertising campaign in the newspapers and sent out circular letters. They also made a proposal to lower the fees of the name changing. The proposal was accepted by the Parliament and the fee was lowered from 5 Forints to 50 Krajcárs. After this the name changings peaked in 1881 and 1882 (with 1261 and 1065 registered name changes), and continued in the following years on the average of 750-850 per year. During the Bánffy-administration there was another boost with the highest 6700 application forms in 1897, mostly due to the pressure from authorities and employers of the government sector. Statistics show that only between 1881 and 1905 42,437 surnames were Magyarized.(It is less than 0.5% of the total non-Hungarian population of Hungarian Kingdom) Voluntary Magyarization of German or Slavic-sounding surnames remained a typical phenomenon in Hungary during the course of the whole 20th century.
Together with Magyarization of personal names and surnames, the exclusive use of the Hungarian names of geographical places, instead of multilingual usage, was also common. For the places that were not known under Hungarian names in the past, new Hungarian names were invented and used in administration instead of the former original non-Hungarian names. Examples of places where original non-Hungarian names were replaced with newly invented Hungarian names: Szvidnik - Felsővízköz (in Slovak Svidník
, now Slovakia
), Najdás - Néranádas (in Romanian Naidǎş
, now Romania
), Sztarcsova - Tárcsó (in Serbian Starčevo
, now Serbia
), Lyutta - Havasköz (in Ruthenian Lyuta
, now Ukraine
), Bruck - Királyhida (now Bruck an der Leitha
, Austria).
According to Hungarian statistics and considering the huge number of assimilated persons between 1700-1944 (~3 million) only 340,000-350,000 names were magyarised between 1815–1944; this happened mainly inside the Hungarian-speaking area. One Jewish name out of 17 was Magyarised, in comparation with other nationalities: one out of 139 (Catholic) -427 (Evangelical) for Germans and 170 (Catholic) -330 (Evangelical) for Slovaks.
, Szepes, Zemlén, and from Ung county where a substantial Rusyn
population lived. In the next tier were some of the southern counties including Bács-Bodrog
, Torontál
, Temes
, and Krassó-Szörény
largely inhabited by Serbs, Romanians, and Germans, as well as the northern mostly Slovak counties of Árva and Gömör-Kishont
, and the central Hungarian inhabited county of Veszprém
. The reasons for emigration were mostly economic. Additionally, some may have wanted to avoid Magyarization or the draft, but direct evidence of other than economic motivation among the emigrants themselves is limited. The Kingdom's administration welcomed the development as yet another instrument of increasing the ratio of ethnic Hungarians at home.
The Hungarian government made a contract with the English-owned Cunard Steamship Company
for a direct passenger line from Rijeka
to New York
. Its purpose was to enable the government to increase the business transacted through their medium. While encouraging emigration, the company did not give passports to ethnic Hungarians.
By 1914, a total number of 3 million had emigrated, of whom about 25% returned. This process of returning was halted by World War I and the partition of Austria-Hungary. The majority of the emigrants came from the most indigent social groups, especially from the agrarian sector. Magyarization did not cease after the collapse of Austria-Hungary but has continued within the borders of the post-WW-I Hungary throughout most of the 20th century and resulted in high decrease of numbers of ethnic Non-Hungarians.
and Rusyns
, most of them are today ethnically and linguistically related to Hungarians. Most of the Greek-Catholic Hungarians have Rusyn and Romanian ancestors. The Hungarian Greek-Catholic diocese of Hajdudorog
was founded in 1912. On that time, the diocese promoted the replacement of the Rusyn and Romanian liturgic language with Hungarian. Today, the seat of the diocese is in Nyíregyháza
.
After the emancipation of Jews in 1867, the Jewish population of the Kingdom of Hungary
(as well as the ascending German population) actively embraced Magyarization, because they saw it as an opportunity for assimilation without conceding their religion. (We also have to point out that in case of the Jewish people that process had been preceded by a process of Germanization earlier performed by Habsburg rulers). Stephen Roth writes, "Hungarian Jews were opposed to Zionism
because they hoped that somehow they could achieve equality with other Hungarian citizens, not just in law but in fact, and that they could be integrated into the country as Hungarian Israelites. The word 'Israelite' denoted only religious affiliation and was free from the ethnic or national connotations usually attached to the term 'Jew'. Hungarian Jews attained remarkable achievements in business, culture and less frequently even in politics. But even the most successful Jews were not fully accepted by the majority of the Magyars as one of their kind — as the events following the Nazi
German invasion of the country in World War II so tragically demonstrated." However, in the 1930s and early 1940s Budapest
was a safe haven
for Slovak, German and Austrian Jewish refugees and a center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life.
In 2006 the Company for Hungarian Jewish Minority could not collect 1000 signatures for a petition to declare Hungarian Jews a minority even though there are at least 100 000 Jews in the country. The official Hungarian Jewish religious organization, Mazsihisz advised not to vote for the new status because they think that Jews identify themselves as a religious group, not as a 'national minority'. There was no real control throughout the process and non-Jewish people could also sign the petition.
According to the 1920 census 10.4% of the population spoke one of the minority languages as mother language:
The number of bilingual people was much higher, for example
Hungarian was spoken by 96% of the total population and was the mother language of 89%.
In interwar period, Hungary expanded its university system so the administrators could be produced to carry out the Magyarization of the lost territories for the case they were regained.
The percentage and the absolute number of all non-Hungarian nationalities decreased in the next decades, although the total population of the country increased. Bilingualism was also disappearing. The main reasons of this process were both spontaneous assimilation and the deliberate Magyarization policy of the state. Minorities made up 8% of the total population in 1930 and 7% in 1941 (on the post-Trianon territory).
After World War II about 200,000 Germans were deported to Germany according to the decree of the Potsdam Conference
. Under the forced exchange of population between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, approximately 73,000 Slovaks left Hungary. After these population movements Hungary became an ethnically almost homogeneous country except the rapidly growing number of Roma people in the second half of the 20th century.
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
or acculturation, a process by which non-Magyar elements came to adopt Magyar culture and language due to social pressure (often, though not exclusively, in the form of a coercive policy).
Defiance or appeals to the Nationalities Law, met with derision or abuse. Despite the law, the use of minority languages was almost entirely banned in administration and justice. The Magyar language was highly overrepresented in the primary schools and almost all secondary education was in Hungarian.
By the end of the 19th century, the state apparatus was entirely Hungarian in language, as were business and social life above the lowest levels. The percentage of the population with Hungarian as its mother tongue grew from 46.6 % in 1880 to 54.5 % in 1910. The Hungarian government manipulated the census figures, counting non-Magyars as Magyars. The Magyarization of the towns had proceeded at an astounding rate. Nearly all middle-class Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
and many middle-class Slovaks
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
and Ruthenes had been Magyarized. In 1837 the number of Hungarians in the kingdom of Hungary have risen from 37% to 48% of the total population in 1910.
However, most of the Magyarization happened in the centre of Hungary and among the middle classes, who had access to education; and much of it was the direct result of urbanization
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
and industrialization. It had hardly touched the rural populations of the periphery, and linguistic
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
frontier
Frontier
A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. 'Frontier' was absorbed into English from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"--the region of a country that fronts on another country .The use of "frontier" to mean "a region at the...
s had not shifted significantly from the line on which they had stabilized a century earlier.
The process continued also in post-Trianon
Treaty of Trianon
The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement signed in 1920, at the end of World War I, between the Allies of World War I and Hungary . The treaty greatly redefined and reduced Hungary's borders. From its borders before World War I, it lost 72% of its territory, which was reduced from to...
era. The political and cultural rights offered to interwar Hungary's ethnic minorities were stingier than their equivalents in any other country of East Central Europe. On the other hand, this kind of approach to minority languages and culture was fully in line with the trends of the time. From the onset of Enlightenment Era, the same or even more severe forced assimilation
Assimilation
Assimilation may refer to:*Assimilation , a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound...
techniques were used with success by significant Western European countries, such as Spain
Nueva Planta decrees
The Nueva Planta decrees were a number of decrees signed between 1707 and 1716 by Philip V—the first Bourbon king of Spain—during and shortly after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession which he won....
, France
Vergonha
La vergonha is what Occitans call the effects of various policies of the government of France on its citizens whose mother tongue was a so-called patois, specifically langue d'oc...
or Britain
Welsh Not
The Welsh Not or Welsh Note was a punishment system used in some Welsh schools in the late 19th and early 20th century to dissuade children from speaking Welsh...
.
Origin of the term
The term generally applies to the policies that were enforced in the Hungarian partKingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
in the 19th century and early 20th century, especially after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, and in particular after the rise in 1871 of the Count Menyhért Lónyay as head of the Hungarian government. The idea owes its existence to the Enlightenment due to which the 19th century saw the emergence of nation-states in many places in Europe (France, Italy, Germany).
When referring to personal and geographic names, Magyarization stands for the replacement of an originally non-Hungarian name with a Hungarian one. For instance, the Romanian name "Ion Negru" would become "János Fekete", or the Slavic name "Novo Selo" would become "Újfalu".
Magyarization in broader sense
As is often the case with policies intended to forge or bolster national identity in a state, Magyarization was perceived by other ethnic groups such as the RomaniansRomanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
, Slovaks
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
, Ukrainians
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
, Serbs
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
, Croats
Croats
Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...
, etc., as aggression or active discrimination, especially where they formed the majority of the population.
Historical context
Joseph IIJoseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
(1780–90), a leader influenced by the Enlightenment sought to centralize control of the empire and to rule it as an enlightened despot. He decreed that German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
replace Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
as the empire's official language.
This centralization/homogenization struggle was not unique to Joseph II, it was a trend that one could observe all around Europe with the birth of the enlightened idea of Nation State.
Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue. As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
and culture. The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of whom less than half were ethnic Magyars, and even those had become French-
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German-speaking courtiers.
The magyarization policy actually took shape as early as the 1830s, when Hungarian started replacing Latin and German in education
In July 1849, Hungarian Revolutionary
Hungarian Revolution of 1848
The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...
Parliament acknowledged and enacted foremost the ethnic and minority rights
Minority rights
The term Minority Rights embodies two separate concepts: first, normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or sexual minorities, and second, collective rights accorded to minority groups...
in the world, but it was too late: To counter the successes of the Hungarian revolutionary army, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph asked for help from the "Gendarme of Europe", Czar Nicholas I
Nicholas I of Russia
Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...
, whose Russian armies invaded Hungary. The army of the Russian Empire and the Austrian forces proved too powerful for the Hungarian army, and General Artúr Görgey surrendered in August 1849.
The Magyar national reawakening therefore triggered national revivals among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
, and Croatian minorities within Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
and Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
, who felt threatened by both German and Magyar cultural hegemony. These national revivals later blossomed into the nationalist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that contributed to the empire's ultimate collapse.
The eagerness of the Hungarian government in its Magyarization efforts was comparable to that of tsarist Russification
Russification
Russification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attributes by non-Russian communities...
from the late 19th century
Magyarization in the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary
| Time | Total population of the K. of Hungary Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders... |
Percentage rate of Hungarians |- |
|---|---|---|
| 1800 | - | 35% |
| 1846 | 12,033,399 | 40–45% |
| 1880 | 13,749,603 | 46% |
| 1900 | 16,838,255 | 51.4% |
| 1910 | 18,264,533 | 54.5% (5% Jews History of the Jews in Hungary Hungarian Jews have existed since at least the 11th century. After struggling against discrimination throughout the Middle Ages, by the early 20th century the community grew to be 5% of Hungary's population , and were prominent in science, the arts and business... ) |
The term Magyarization is used in regards to the national policies put into use by the government of the Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
, which was part of the Habsburg Empire. The beginning of this process dates to the late 18th century and was intensified after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which increased the power of the Hungarian government within the newly formed Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
. some of them had little desire to be declared a national minority like in other cultures. However, Jews in Hungary appreciated the emancipation in Hungary at a time when anti-semitic laws were still applied in Russia and Romania. Large minorities were concentrated in various regions of the kingdom, where they formed significant majorities. In Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
proper (1867 borders), the 1910 census finds 55.08% Romanian-speakers, 34.2% Hungarian-speakers, and 8.71% German-speakers.
In the north of the Kingdom
Upper Hungary
Upper Hungary is the usual English translation for the area that was historically the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary, now mostly present-day Slovakia...
, Slovaks and Ruthenians formed an ethnic majority also, in the southern regions the majority were South Slavic Croats, Serbs and Slovenes and in the western regions the majority were Germans.
The process of Magyarization did not succeed in imposing the Hungarian language as the most used language in all territories in the Kingdom of Hungary. In fact the profoundly multinational character of historic Transylvania was reflected in the fact that during the fifty years of the dual monarchy, the spread of Hungarian as the second language remained limited. In 1880, 5.7 % of the non-Hungarian population, or 109,190 people, claimed to have a knowledge of the Hungarian language; the proportion rose to 11 % (183,508) in 1900, and to 15.2 % (266,863) in 1910. These figures reveal the reality of a bygone era, one in which millions of people could conduct their lives without speaking the state's official language. The policies of Magyarization aimed to have a Hungarian language name as a requirement for access to basic government services such as local administration, education, and justice.
Between 1850 and 1910 the ethnic Hungarian population increased by 106.7%, while the increase of other ethnic groups was far slower: Serbians and Croatians 38.2%, Romanians 31.4% and Slovaks 10.7%.
According to census data, the Hungarian population of Transylvania increased from 24.9% in 1869 to 31.6% in 1910. In the same time, the percentage of Romanian population decreased from 59.0% to 53.8% and the percentage of German population decreased from 11.9% to 10.7%. Changes were more significant in cities with predominantly German and Romanian population. For example, the percentage of Hungarian population increased in Braşov
Brasov
Brașov is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.According to the last Romanian census, from 2002, there were 284,596 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania....
from 13.4% in 1850 to 43.43% in 1910, meanwhile the Romanian population decreased from 40% to 28.71% and the German population from 40.8% to 26.41%.
State policy and ethnic relations
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
government led by Count Gyula Andrássy
Gyula Andrássy
Gyula Count Andrássy de Csíkszentkirály et Krasznahorka was a Hungarian statesman, who served as Prime Minister of Hungary and subsequently as Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary...
and sustained by Ferenc Deák
Ferenc Deák
Ferenc Deák de Kehida , , was a Hungarian statesman and Minister of Justice. He was known as "The Wise Man of the Nation".-Early life and law career:...
and his followers, passed the 1868 Nationality Act, that declared "all citizens of Hungary form, politically, one nation, the indivisible unitary Hungarian nation (nemzet), of which every citizen of the country, whatever his personal nationality (nemzetiség), is a member equal in rights." The Education Act, passed the same year, shared this view as the Magyars simply being primus inter pares ("first among equals"). At this time ethnic minorities "de jure" had a great deal of cultural and linguistic autonomy, including in education, religion, and local government.
However, after education minister Baron József Eötvös died in 1871, and in Andrássy became imperial foreign minister, Deák withdrew from active politics and Menyhért Lónyay became the Hungarian prime minister. He became steadily more allied with the Magyar gentry, and the notion of a Hungarian political nation increasingly became one of a Magyar nation. "[A]ny political or social movement which challenged the hegemonic position of the Magyar ruling classes was liable to be repressed or charged with 'treason'…, 'libel' or 'incitement of national hatred'. This was to be the fate of various Slovak
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
, South Slav
South Slavs
The South Slavs are the southern branch of the Slavic peoples and speak South Slavic languages. Geographically, the South Slavs are native to the Balkan peninsula, the southern Pannonian Plain and the eastern Alps...
[e.g. Serb
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
], Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
and Ruthene cultural societies and nationalist parties from 1876 onward…" All of this only intensified after 1875, with the rise of Kálmán Tisza
Kálmán Tisza
Kálmán Tisza de Borosjenő was the Hungarian prime minister between 1875 and 1890. He is credited for the formation of a consolidated Magyar government, the foundation of the new Liberal Party and major economic reforms that would both save and eventually lead to a government with popular...
, who as minister of the Interior had ordered the closing of Matica slovenská
Matica slovenská
The Matica slovenská Mother) is Slovakia's public-law cultural and scientific institution focusing on topics around the Slovak nation. It is based in the city of Martin...
on 6 April 1875. Until 1890, Kálmán Tisza
Kálmán Tisza
Kálmán Tisza de Borosjenő was the Hungarian prime minister between 1875 and 1890. He is credited for the formation of a consolidated Magyar government, the foundation of the new Liberal Party and major economic reforms that would both save and eventually lead to a government with popular...
brought the Slovaks
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
many other measures which prevented them from keeping pace with the progres of other European nations.
For a long time, number of non-Hungarians that lived in the Kingdom of Hungary was much larger than a number of ethnic Hungarians. According to the 1787 data, the population of the Kingdom of Hungary numbered 2,322,000 Hungarians (29%) and 5,681,000 non-Hungarians (71%). In 1809, the population numbered 3,000,000 Hungarians (30%) and 7,000,000 non-Hungarians (70%). As an increasingly intense Magyarization policy was implemented after 1867.
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
, Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
and Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
history writing administrative and often repressive Magyarization is usually singled out as the main factor accountable for the dramatic change in the ethnic composition of the Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
in the 19th century, it should be noted that spontaneous assimilation was also an important factor. In this regard, it must be pointed out that large territories of central and southern Kingdom of Hungary lost their previous, predominantly Magyar population during the numerous wars fought by the Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
and Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
empires in the 16th and 17th centuries. These empty lands were repopulated, by administrative measures adopted by the Vienna Court especially during the 18th century, by Hungarians and Slovaks from the northern part of the Kingdom that avoided the devastation (see also Royal Hungary
Royal Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary between 1538 and 1867 was part of the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy, while outside the Holy Roman Empire.After Battle of Mohács, the country was ruled by two crowned kings . They divided the kingdom in 1538...
), Swabians, Serbs (Serbs were majority in most southern parts of the Pannonian Plain during Ottoman rule, i.e. before those Habsburg administrative measures), Croats and Romanians. Various ethnic groups lived side by side (this ethnic heterogeneity is preserved until today in certain parts of Vojvodina
Vojvodina
Vojvodina, officially called Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is an autonomous province of Serbia. Its capital and largest city is Novi Sad...
, Bačka
Backa
Bačka is a geographical area within the Pannonian plain bordered by the river Danube to the west and south, and by the river Tisza to the east of which confluence is located near Titel...
and Banat
Banat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
). After 1867, Hungarian became the lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
on this territory in the interaction between ethnic communities, and individuals who were born in mixed marriages between two non-Magyars often grew a full-fledged allegiance to the Hungarian nation. Of course since Latin was the official language until 1842 and the country was directly governed from Vienna (which excluded any large-scale governmental assimilation policy from the Hungarian side before the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the factor of spontaneous assimilation should be given due weight in any analysis relating to the demographic tendencies of the Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
in the 19th century.
The other key factor in mass ethnic changes is that between 1880 and 1910 about 3 million http://www.ufr-anglais.univ-paris7.fr/ETUDIANTS/infopedagogiques/code%2041%20CI1US2/Immigration.htm of Austro-Hungarians migrated to the United States alone. More than half of them were from Hungary (1.5 million+ or about 10% of the total population) alone The term "másfélmillió koldus országa" ("land of the one and half million beggars") was coined that time to describe the situation. Besides the 1.5 million that fled to the US (2/3 of them or about a million were ethnically non Hungarians) mainly Romanians and Serbs had migrated to their newly established mother states in large numbers, like the Principality of Serbia or the Kingdom of Romania
Romanian Old Kingdom
The Romanian Old Kingdom is a colloquial term referring to the territory covered by the first independent Romanian nation state, which was composed of the Danubian Principalities—Wallachia and Moldavia...
, who proclaimed their independence in 1878. Amongst them were such noted people, like the early aviator Aurel Vlaicu
Aurel Vlaicu
Aurel Vlaicu was a Romanian engineer, inventor, airplane constructor and early pilot.-Biography:Aurel Vlaicu was born in Binţinţi , Geoagiu, Transylvania. He attended Calvinist High School in Orăştie and took his Baccalaureate in Sibiu in 1902...
(his face is on the 50 Romanian lei
Romanian leu
The leu is the currency of Romania. It is subdivided into 100 bani . The name of the currency means "lion". On 1 July 2005, Romania underwent a currency reform, switching from the previous leu to a new leu . 1 RON is equal to 10,000 ROL...
) or famous writer Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
(first illegally in 1909, then legally in 1911) or Ion Ivanovici
Ion Ivanovici
Ion Ivanovici was a Romanian military band leader and composer, best remembered today for his waltz Waves of the Danube....
. Also many fled to Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
or other parts of the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
.
Allegation of violent oppression
Many Slovak intellectuals and activists (such as Janko KráľJanko Král
Janko Kráľ Janko Kráľ Janko Kráľ (24 April 1822 in Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš (now Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia) - 23 May 1876 in Zlaté Moravce was one of the most significant and most radical Slovak romantic poets of the Ľudovít Štúr generation and a national activist....
) were imprisoned or even sentenced to death during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
Hungarian Revolution of 1848
The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...
. One of the incidents that shocked European public opinion was the Černová massacre when 15 people were killed and 52 injured in 1907. Massacre caused Kingdom of Hungary to lose much prestige in the eyes of the world when English historian R. W. Seton-Watson
Robert William Seton-Watson
Robert William Seton-Watson , commonly referred to as R.W. Seton-Watson, and also known by the pseudonym Scotus Viator, was a British political activist and historian who played an active role in encouraging the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the emergence of Czechoslovakia and...
, Norwegian writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer and the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Bjørnson is considered as one of The Four Greats Norwegian writers; the others being Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland...
and Russian writer Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
championed this cause. The case being a proof for the violence of Magyarization is disputed, partly because the sergeant who ordered the shooting and all the shooters were ethnic Slovak and partly because of the controversial figure of Andrej Hlinka
Andrej Hlinka
Andrej Hlinka was a Slovak politician and Catholic priest, one of the most important Slovak public activists in Czechoslovakia before Second World War...
.
Education
Schools funded by churches and communes had the right to provide education in minority languages. These church-funded schools, however, were mostly founded before 1867, that is, in different socio-political circumstances. In practice, the majority of students in commune-funded schools who were native speakers of minority languages were instructed exclusively in Hungarian. Moreover, the number of minority-language schools was steadily decreasing: in the period between 1880 and 1913, when the number of Hungarian-only schools almost doubled, the number of minority language-schools almost halved. Nonetheless, Transylvanian Romanians had more Romanian-language schools under Hungarian rule than there were in the Romanian Kingdom itself. Thus, for example, in 1880, in Hungary there were 2,756 schools teaching exclusively in the Romanian language, while in the Kingdom of Romania there were only 2,505. The process of magyarization culminated in 1907 with the Apponyi laws which forced all primary school children to read, write and count in Magyar for the first four years of their education. From 1909 religion also had to be taught in Magyar.The effect of Magyarization on the education system in Hungary was very significant, as can be seen from the official statistics submitted by the Hungarian government to the Paris Peace Conference
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
: (Formally, all the Jewish people of the kingdom were considered as Hungarians, who had higher rato in tertiary education than Christians)
| Hungarian | Romanian | Slovak | German | Serbian | Ruthenian | |
| % of total population | 54.5% | 16.1% | 10.7% | 10.4% | 2.5% | 2.5% |
| Kindergartens | 2,219 | 4 | 1 | 18 | 22 | |
| Elementary schools | 14,014 | 2,578 | 322 | 417 | n/a | 47 |
| Junior high schools | 652 | 4 | ||||
| 6 | 3 | |||||
| Science high schools | 33 | 1 | ||||
| 2 | ||||||
| Teachers' colleges | 83 | 12 | ||||
| 2 | 1 | |||||
| Gymnasiums for boys | 172 | 5 | ||||
| 7 | 1 | |||||
| High schools for girls | 50 | |||||
| 1 | ||||||
| Trade schools | 105 | |||||
| Commercial schools | 65 | 1 | ||||
Source:
Election system
The census system of the post-1867 Kingdom of Hungary was unfavourable to those of non-Hungarian nationality. According to the 1874 election law, which remained unchanged until 1918, only the upper 5.9% of whole population had voting rights. That effectively excluded almost the whole of the peasantry and the working class from Hungarian political life. The percentage of those on low incomes was higher among other nationalities than among the Magyars, with the exception of Germans who were generally richer. From a Hungarian point of view, the structure of settlement system was based on differences in earning potential and wages. The Hungarians and Germans were much more urbanised than Slovaks, Romanians and Serbs in Kingdom of Hungary.In 1900, nearly a third of the deputies were elected by fewer than 100 votes and close to two-thirds were elected by fewer than 1000 votes. Transylvania had an even worse representation: the more Romanian a county was, the fewer voters it had. Out of the Transylvanian deputies sent to Budapest, 35 represented the 4 mostly Hungarian counties and the major towns (which together forming 20% of the population), whereas only 30 deputies represented the other 72% of the population, which was predominantly Romanian.
In 1913, even the electorate that elected only one-third of the deputies had a non proportional ethnic composition. The Magyars who made up 54.5% of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary represented a 60.2% majority in the electorate. Ethnic Germans made up 10.4% of the population and 13.0% of the electorate. The participation of other ethnic groups was as follows: Slovaks (10.7% in population, 10.4% in the electorate), Romanians (16.1% in population, 9.9% in the electorate), Rusyns (2.5% in population, 1.7% in the electorate), Croats (1.1% in population, 1.0% in the electorate), Serbs (2.2% in population, 1.4% in the electorate), and others (2.2% in population, 1.4% in the electorate).
Officially, Hungarian electoral laws never contained any legal discrimination based on nationality or language. The high census was not uncommon in other European countries in the 1860s but later the countries of Western-Europe gradually lowered and at last abolished their censi. That never happened in the Kingdom of Hungary, although electoral reform was one of the main topic of political debates in the last decades before World War I.
Names
The law about registryRegistry
-Computing:* Windows Registry, a database of configuration settings in Microsoft Windows operating systems* Domain name registry, an organization that manages the registration of top-level internet domain names...
books prescribed that all names in these books should be in Hungarian. The native names of non-Hungarians were, thus, replaced with Hungarian ones, for example Serbian name Stevan was replaced with Istvan or Jelena with Ilona. The policy included not only Magyarization of personal names, but of surnames as well.
Hungarian authorities put constant pressure upon all non-Hungarians to Magyarize their names and the ease with which this could be done gave rise to the nickname of Crown Magyars (the price of the registration being one krone). In 1881 the "Central Society for Name Magyarization" (Központi Névmagyarositó Társaság) was founded in 1881 in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
. The aim of this private society was to provide advice and guidelines for those who wanted to Magyarize their surnames. Telkes Simon became the chairman of the society, who professed that "one can achieve being accepted as a true son of the nation by adopting a national name". The society began an advertising campaign in the newspapers and sent out circular letters. They also made a proposal to lower the fees of the name changing. The proposal was accepted by the Parliament and the fee was lowered from 5 Forints to 50 Krajcárs. After this the name changings peaked in 1881 and 1882 (with 1261 and 1065 registered name changes), and continued in the following years on the average of 750-850 per year. During the Bánffy-administration there was another boost with the highest 6700 application forms in 1897, mostly due to the pressure from authorities and employers of the government sector. Statistics show that only between 1881 and 1905 42,437 surnames were Magyarized.(It is less than 0.5% of the total non-Hungarian population of Hungarian Kingdom) Voluntary Magyarization of German or Slavic-sounding surnames remained a typical phenomenon in Hungary during the course of the whole 20th century.
Together with Magyarization of personal names and surnames, the exclusive use of the Hungarian names of geographical places, instead of multilingual usage, was also common. For the places that were not known under Hungarian names in the past, new Hungarian names were invented and used in administration instead of the former original non-Hungarian names. Examples of places where original non-Hungarian names were replaced with newly invented Hungarian names: Szvidnik - Felsővízköz (in Slovak Svidník
Svidník
Svidník is a town in eastern Slovakia, acting as the capital of Svidník District in Prešov Region. It has a population of 12,384 .-Geography:...
, now Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
), Najdás - Néranádas (in Romanian Naidǎş
Naidas
Naidăş is a commune in Caraş-Severin County, western Romania with a population of 1314 people. It is composed of two villages, Lescoviţa and Naidăş.-References:...
, now Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
), Sztarcsova - Tárcsó (in Serbian Starčevo
Starcevo
Starcevo can refer to:* Starčevo, a town in Serbia* Starčevo culture, a neolithic culture of Europe* Startsevo, a village in Bulgaria...
, now Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
), Lyutta - Havasköz (in Ruthenian Lyuta
Lyuta
Lyuta, also Ljuta is a small village located in the Velykyy Bereznyi Raion of Zakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine.Lyuta lies at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, about northeast of Uzhhorod and West-SouthWest of Kiev. It is on the bank of the Lyutanka River. The name of the village means...
, now Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
), Bruck - Királyhida (now Bruck an der Leitha
Bruck an der Leitha
Bruck an der Leitha is a city located in Lower Austria, Austria at the border to the Burgenland, which is marked by the Leitha river....
, Austria).
According to Hungarian statistics and considering the huge number of assimilated persons between 1700-1944 (~3 million) only 340,000-350,000 names were magyarised between 1815–1944; this happened mainly inside the Hungarian-speaking area. One Jewish name out of 17 was Magyarised, in comparation with other nationalities: one out of 139 (Catholic) -427 (Evangelical) for Germans and 170 (Catholic) -330 (Evangelical) for Slovaks.
Migration
Part of the Magyarization was a result of internal migration of segments of the ethnically non-Hungarian population to the Kingdom of Hungary's central predominantly Hungarian counties and to Budapest where they assimilated. The ratio of ethnically non-Hungarian population in the Kingdom was also dropping due to their overrepresentation among the migrants to foreign countries, mainly to the United States. Hungarians, the largest ethnic group in the Kingdom representing 45.5% of the population in 1900, accounted for only 26.2% of the emigrants, while non-Hungarians (54.5%) accounted for 72% from 1901 to 1913. The areas with the highest emigration were the northern mostly Slovak inhabited counties of SárosSáros county
Sáros was a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory is presently in northeastern Slovakia...
, Szepes, Zemlén, and from Ung county where a substantial Rusyn
Rusyns
Carpatho-Rusyns are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, or Ukrainian dialect, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century...
population lived. In the next tier were some of the southern counties including Bács-Bodrog
Bács-Bodrog
Bács-Bodrog County was the administrative county of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary from 18th century to 1918. Its territory is currently in northern Serbia and southern Hungary. The capital of the county was Zombor .-Name:The county was named after two older counties: Bács and Bodrog...
, Torontál
Torontál
Torontál was the name of administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary. Its territory is presently in northern Serbia , western Romania and southern Hungary...
, Temes
Temes
Temes was the name of an administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary. Its territory is currently in southwestern Romania and northern Serbia...
, and Krassó-Szörény
Krassó-Szörény
Krassó-Szörény was the name of an administrative county of the historic Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory is presently mostly located in south-western Romania, with one small part which is located in Serbia. The capital of the county was Lugoj...
largely inhabited by Serbs, Romanians, and Germans, as well as the northern mostly Slovak counties of Árva and Gömör-Kishont
Gömör-Kishont
Gömör-Kishont is the name of a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its capital was Rimaszombat...
, and the central Hungarian inhabited county of Veszprém
Veszprém (former county)
Veszprém was the name of a historic administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory, which was smaller than that of present Veszprém county, in western Hungary. The capital of the county was Veszprém.-Geography:...
. The reasons for emigration were mostly economic. Additionally, some may have wanted to avoid Magyarization or the draft, but direct evidence of other than economic motivation among the emigrants themselves is limited. The Kingdom's administration welcomed the development as yet another instrument of increasing the ratio of ethnic Hungarians at home.
The Hungarian government made a contract with the English-owned Cunard Steamship Company
Cunard Line
Cunard Line is a British-American owned shipping company based at Carnival House in Southampton, England and operated by Carnival UK. It has been a leading operator of passenger ships on the North Atlantic for over a century...
for a direct passenger line from Rijeka
Rijeka
Rijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...
to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Its purpose was to enable the government to increase the business transacted through their medium. While encouraging emigration, the company did not give passports to ethnic Hungarians.
By 1914, a total number of 3 million had emigrated, of whom about 25% returned. This process of returning was halted by World War I and the partition of Austria-Hungary. The majority of the emigrants came from the most indigent social groups, especially from the agrarian sector. Magyarization did not cease after the collapse of Austria-Hungary but has continued within the borders of the post-WW-I Hungary throughout most of the 20th century and resulted in high decrease of numbers of ethnic Non-Hungarians.
Greek-Catholic Hungarians
According to the 2001-census they are 268,935 Greek-Catholic Christians living in Hungary. Excepting few thousands of RomaniansRomanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
and Rusyns
Rusyns
Carpatho-Rusyns are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, or Ukrainian dialect, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century...
, most of them are today ethnically and linguistically related to Hungarians. Most of the Greek-Catholic Hungarians have Rusyn and Romanian ancestors. The Hungarian Greek-Catholic diocese of Hajdudorog
Hajdúdorog
Hajdúdorog is a town in Hajdú-Bihar county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary.-Geography:It covers an area of and has a population of 9070 people .-Twinnings: Lubartów, Poland Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania Podenzano, Italy...
was founded in 1912. On that time, the diocese promoted the replacement of the Rusyn and Romanian liturgic language with Hungarian. Today, the seat of the diocese is in Nyíregyháza
Nyíregyháza
- Tourist sights :Nyíregyháza also has several museums and exhibitions, showing the city's rich cultural heritage.* Collection of the International Medallion Art and Small Sculpture Creative Community of Nyíregyháza-Sóstó – periodic exhibitions of works of contemporary artists-Twin towns — Sister...
.
Jews
In the nineteenth century, the Neolog Jews were located mainly in the cities and larger towns. They arose in the environment of the latter period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire generally good period for upwardly mobile Jews, especially those of modernizing inclinations. In the Hungarian portion of the Empire, most Jews (nearly all Neologs and even most of the Orthodox) adopted the Hungarian language as their primary language and viewed themselves as "Magyars of the Jewish persuasion". The Jewish minority which to the extent it is attracted to a secular culture is usually attracted to the secular culture in power, was inclined to gravitate toward the cultural orientation of Budapest. (The same factor prompted Prague Jews to adopt an Austrian cultural orientation, and at least some Vilna Jews to adopt a Russian orientation.)After the emancipation of Jews in 1867, the Jewish population of the Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
(as well as the ascending German population) actively embraced Magyarization, because they saw it as an opportunity for assimilation without conceding their religion. (We also have to point out that in case of the Jewish people that process had been preceded by a process of Germanization earlier performed by Habsburg rulers). Stephen Roth writes, "Hungarian Jews were opposed to Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
because they hoped that somehow they could achieve equality with other Hungarian citizens, not just in law but in fact, and that they could be integrated into the country as Hungarian Israelites. The word 'Israelite' denoted only religious affiliation and was free from the ethnic or national connotations usually attached to the term 'Jew'. Hungarian Jews attained remarkable achievements in business, culture and less frequently even in politics. But even the most successful Jews were not fully accepted by the majority of the Magyars as one of their kind — as the events following the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
German invasion of the country in World War II so tragically demonstrated." However, in the 1930s and early 1940s Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
was a safe haven
Safe harbor
The term safe harbor has several special usages, in an analogy with its literal meaning, that of a harbor or haven which provides safety from weather or attack.-Legal definition:...
for Slovak, German and Austrian Jewish refugees and a center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life.
In 2006 the Company for Hungarian Jewish Minority could not collect 1000 signatures for a petition to declare Hungarian Jews a minority even though there are at least 100 000 Jews in the country. The official Hungarian Jewish religious organization, Mazsihisz advised not to vote for the new status because they think that Jews identify themselves as a religious group, not as a 'national minority'. There was no real control throughout the process and non-Jewish people could also sign the petition.
Magyarization in Upper Hungary
Although the share of Slovaks within the electorate (10,4%) largely reflected their weight in the total population of Hungary proper (10,7%) Slovaks had extremely marginal representation in the parliament (1 deputy out of 420 MPs). Although at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 there were more than one thousand Slovak elementary schools, their number was gradually reduced to 322 by 1918.Notable dates
- 1844 - Hungarian is gradually introduced for all civil records (kept at local parishes until 1895). German became an official language again after the 1848 revolution, but the laws reverted in 1881 yet again. From 1836 to 1881, 14,000 families had their name Magyarized in the area of Banat alone.
- 1874 - All Slovak secondary schools (created in 1860) were closed. Also the Matica slovenskáMatica slovenskáThe Matica slovenská Mother) is Slovakia's public-law cultural and scientific institution focusing on topics around the Slovak nation. It is based in the city of Martin...
was closed down in April 1875. The building was taken over by the Hungarian government and the property of Matica slovenská, which according to the statutes belonged to the Slovak nationSlovaksThe Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
, was confiscated by the Prime Minister's officeBéla WenckheimBaron Béla Wenckheim was a Hungarian politician who served as prime minister for several months in 1875.- References :...
, with the justification that, according to Hungarian laws, there did not exist a Slovak nationSlovaksThe Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
. - 1883 - FEMKE (Upper Hungarian Magyar education society) was created. Society was founded to propagate Magyar values and Magyar education in the Upper HungaryUpper HungaryUpper Hungary is the usual English translation for the area that was historically the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary, now mostly present-day Slovakia...
. - 1874 - 1892 Slovak children were being forcefully deportedDeportationDeportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
into "pure Magyar districts". Between 1887 and 1888 about 500 Slovak orphans were deported by FEMKE. - 1898 - Simon Telkes publishes the book "How to Magyarize family names".
- 1897 - The Bánffy law of the villages is ratified. According to this law, all officially used village names in the Hungarian Kingdom had to be in Hungarian language.
- 1907 - The Apponyi educational law made Hungarian a compulsory subject in all schools in the Kingdom of Hungary. This also extended to confessional and communal schools, which had the right to provide instruction in a minority language as well. "All pupils regardless of their native language must be able to express their thoughts in Hungarian both in spoken and in written form at the end of fourth grade [~ at the age of 10 or 11]"
- 1907 - The Černová massacre in present-day northern Slovakia, a controversial event in which 15 people were killed during a clash between a group of gendarmes and local villagers.
Post-Trianon Hungary
Considerable number of other nationalities remained within the frontiers of the post-Trianon Hungary:According to the 1920 census 10.4% of the population spoke one of the minority languages as mother language:
- 551,212 German (6.9%)
- 141,882 Slovak (1.8%)
- 23,760 Romanian (0.3%)
- 36,858 Croatian (0.5%)
- 23,228 Bunjevac and Šokac(0.3%)
- 17,131 Serb (0.2%)
The number of bilingual people was much higher, for example
- 1,398,729 people spoke German (17%)
- 399,176 people spoke Slovak (5%)
- 179,928 people spoke Croatian (2.2%)
- 88,828 people spoke Romanian (1.1%).
Hungarian was spoken by 96% of the total population and was the mother language of 89%.
In interwar period, Hungary expanded its university system so the administrators could be produced to carry out the Magyarization of the lost territories for the case they were regained.
The percentage and the absolute number of all non-Hungarian nationalities decreased in the next decades, although the total population of the country increased. Bilingualism was also disappearing. The main reasons of this process were both spontaneous assimilation and the deliberate Magyarization policy of the state. Minorities made up 8% of the total population in 1930 and 7% in 1941 (on the post-Trianon territory).
After World War II about 200,000 Germans were deported to Germany according to the decree of the Potsdam Conference
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...
. Under the forced exchange of population between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, approximately 73,000 Slovaks left Hungary. After these population movements Hungary became an ethnically almost homogeneous country except the rapidly growing number of Roma people in the second half of the 20th century.
See also
- Treaty of TrianonTreaty of TrianonThe Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement signed in 1920, at the end of World War I, between the Allies of World War I and Hungary . The treaty greatly redefined and reduced Hungary's borders. From its borders before World War I, it lost 72% of its territory, which was reduced from to...
- Transylvanian MemorandumTransylvanian MemorandumThe Transylvanian Memorandum was a petition sent in 1892 by the leaders of the Romanians of Transylvania to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King Franz Joseph, asking for equal ethnic rights with the Hungarians, and demanding an end to persecutions and Magyarization attempts.-Status:After the Ausgleich...
- SlovakizationSlovakizationSlovakization or Slovakisation is a term used to describe a cultural change in which ethnically non-Slovak people are made to become Slovak. The process can be named as 'accelerated assimilation'....
- RomanianizationRomanianizationRomanianization or Rumanization is the term used to describe a number of ethnic assimilation policies implemented by the Romanian authorities during the 20th century...
- SerbianisationSerbianisationSerbianisation or Serbification or Serbisation is the spread of Serbian culture, people, or politics, either by integration or assimilation.-Serbianisation:...
Sources
- Dr. Dimitrije Kirilović, Pomađarivanje u bivšoj Ugarskoj, Novi SadNovi SadNovi Sad is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and the administrative centre of the South Bačka District. The city is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain on the Danube river....
- Srbinje, 2006 (reprint). Originally printed in Novi Sad in 1935. - Dr. Dimitrije Kirilović, Asimilacioni uspesi Mađara u Bačkoj, Banatu i Baranji, Novi Sad - Srbinje, 2006 (reprint). Originally printed in Novi Sad in 1937 as Asimilacioni uspesi Mađara u Bačkoj, Banatu i Baranji - Prilog pitanju demađarizacije Vojvodine.
- Lazar Stipić, Istina o Mađarima, Novi Sad - Srbinje, 2004 (reprint). Originally printed in Subotica in 1929 as Istina o Madžarima.
- Dr. Fedor Nikić, Mađarski imperijalizam, Novi Sad - Srbinje, 2004 (reprint). Originally printed in Novi Sad in 1929.
- Borislav Jankulov, Pregled kolonizacije Vojvodine u XVIII i XIX veku, Novi Sad - Pančevo, 2003.
- Dimitrije Boarov, Politička istorija Vojvodine, Novi Sad, 2001.
- Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change, Routledge, 1998. ISBN 0-415-16111-8 hardback, ISBN 0-415-16112-6 paper.
External links
- Scotus Viator (pseudonym), Racial Problems in Hungary, London: Archibald and Constable (1908), reproduced in its entirety on line. See especially Magyarization of schools (as of 1906)
- Magyarization in Banat