Another Hungary: The Nineteenth-Century Provinces in Eight Lives 9780804799126

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Another Hungary

Stanford Studies on Central and Eastern Europe Edited by Norman Naimark and Larry Wolff

Another Hungary The Nineteenth-Century Provinces in Eight Lives

Robert Nemes

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Nemes, Robert, author. Title: Another Hungary : the nineteenth-century provinces in eight lives / Robert Nemes. Other titles: Stanford studies on Central and Eastern Europe. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2016. | Series: Stanford studies on Central and Eastern Europe | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016004873 (print) | LCCN 2016005673 (ebook) | ISBN 9780804795913 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780804799126 (electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Hungary--Biography. | Hungary--History--19th century. Classification: LCC DB933.2 .N46 2016 (print) | LCC DB933.2 (ebook) | DDC 920.0439/9--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016004873 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 11/13.5 Adobe Garamond

for my parents

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction

1



1 The Aristocrat

13



2 The Merchant

41



3 The Engineer

67



4 The Teacher

93



5 The Journalist

121



6 The Rabbi

151



7 The Tobacconist

179



8 The Writer

205

Conclusion

231

Notes 243 Index 285

Acknowledgments

This book tells the story of nineteenth-century Hungary through the lives of eight men and women. All eight have their own chapters in this “collective biography.” This is my first attempt at biography, collective or otherwise, a form of history I’ve found both challenging and exhilarating. The challenges have come as I scrambled to assemble my cast of characters (suffice it to say that “the merchant” and “the journalist” were late but welcome additions), tried to extract biographic material from poems about hunting and reports on tobacco, and struggled to present fully formed characters without ignoring the wider historical context. But this project has been rewarding in so many ways. It has repeatedly taken me to the places I write about. All eight of these men and women came from the same region: the northeastern corner of what was once the Kingdom of Hungary and is today the place where Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine meet. This is a fascinating part of the world, and I have found inspiration in its welcoming inhabitants, wonderful museums, changing landscapes, and hearty foods. I wish I could have worked into this book the stunning Baroque synagogue in Mád, Hungary, or the moving “merry cemetery” in Săpânța, Romania, if only to encourage others to go see them. Along the way I have visited many archives and libraries in this region (and beyond). I would especially like to recognize the staffs of the ­Lucian Blaga Central University Library of Cluj-Napoca (Romania), the State District Archives of Komárno (Slovakia), and the branch of the B ­ orsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County Archives in Sátoraljaújhely (Hungary). Research in regional archives

x Acknowledgments

in Debrecen (Hungary), Komárom (­Hungary), Nitra (Slovakia), and Oradea (Romania) has likewise given me a glimpse of the trove of historical sources to be found in the provinces. In Budapest, I benefited from the kind assistance of archivists in the Budapest Capital City Archives (and Sándor Nagy in particular), the Hungarian National Archives, and the Ráday Archive. I am especially grateful to the staff of the Széchényi National Library, who humored my requests for everything from old issues of the Hungarian Tobacco News to a medical doctor’s manuscript diary from the First World War. I would like to express my gratitude to the Ferenc II Rákóczi County Library in Miskolc for allowing me to reproduce the poignant “Greetings from Mád” postcard in Chapter 2, as well as to the Budapest Capital City Archives for allowing me to reproduce Vilmos Daróczi’s will in Chapter 7. Many of the places I have visited have multiple names. Driving through the Romanian countryside, I delighted in seeing one village’s bilingual sign in Romanian and Hungarian, followed closely by another in Romanian and Ukrainian. These many names can pose a problem for historians who want to capture the linguistic diversity and historical richness of regions like the one studied here. In earlier publications, I have sometimes met this challenge by using two names, such as ­Nagyvárad/ Oradea. Many of the towns and villages that appear in this book, however, would require even more. The hometown of “the engineer,” for example, appears on maps as Wallendorf (its German name), Olaszi (Hungarian), Spiśské Vlachy (Slovakian), and even Villa Latina (from Latin). In this book, I have tried to convey this complexity and share my enthusiasm for names in the text itself. But for the sake of simplicity and clarity, I have decided to use just one name, drawing them from the nineteenth century and following the lead of my sources. This means that most of the places in this book are given their Hungarian names. The two main exceptions are the hometown of “the rabbi,” which he called by its German and Yiddish name, Hunsdorf, and the final residence of “the journalist,” who spoke several languages but mostly used the Romanian name, Oradea, for his town. The index lists places names (towns, rivers, counties) mentioned in the text, along with their forms in other languages. I should add that “Hungary” is sometimes used here as shorthand for the nineteenth-century Kingdom of Hungary, which was part of the much larger Habsburg Monarchy. Along with places, people have offered me inspiration and guidance at every stage of this project. These range from the elderly woman who

Acknowledgments  xi

shrugged off ninety-degree temperatures to guide me through the magnificent Calvinist church in Tákos, Hungary, to the friendly bus driver who made sure I was not stranded in the small Romanian town I had visited but was not quite sure how to leave. Special thanks are due to Judít Dávid and her son Andrya for their kind hospitality during my many v­ isits to Budapest, as well as to another old friend, Matt Caples, for some of the first trips to towns mentioned in this book and for more recent conversations about all things Hungarian. Since I first became interested in Hungarian history, István Deák has been a mentor, friend, and model of how to write history; he has thoughtfully answered more questions than I’d care to count. For answers to other questions, leads on locating documents, and different perspectives on the nineteenth century, I would like to thank Gary Cohen, Paula Sutter Fichtner, Michael Miller, András Paszternák, Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, Benjamin Thorne, Daniel Unowsky, Karesz ­Vandor, Miklós Zeidler, and the late Gábor Vermes, whose warm friendship and sure guidance through the past I miss very much. A number of colleagues read all or part of this manuscript, making it much better with their thoughtful feedback: Chad Bryant, Paul Hanebrink, Pieter Judson, Menachem ­Keren-Kratz, Elizabeth Marlowe, and John Swanson. In this book I have worked with sources in several languages, and I am grateful to those who offered timely help with others: Glenn Dynner (Yiddish), Carolyn Guile (Polish), and Andrew Koss (Hebrew). Finally, I would like to recognize the people at Stanford University Press who have helped bring this book to light; it has been a pleasure to work with Eric Brandt, Tom Finnegan, Mary Kate Maco, Mariana Raykov, and Friederike Sundaram. In the end, this book about small towns in nineteenth-century Hungary was largely written in a small town in Upstate New York. Much of what I know about local stories that get told and retold, across the generations, about the power of face-to-face communication, and about people’s complex feelings about neighboring villages and distant cities comes from living in a town with only a few thousand residents. Hamilton, New York, contains Colgate University, where I teach and whose Research Council generously funded much of the work undertaken in this project. I am very grateful that Colgate University continues to value scholarship of this sort. At Colgate I have benefited from conversations about my work with many of my colleagues, both in the History Department and beyond. I would especially like to thank Dan Bouk, Lesleigh Cushing, Noah Dauber, R. M. Douglas, Chris Henke, Matthew Miller, David Robinson, Andy Rotter,

xii Acknowledgments

Ben Stahlberg, Mark Stern, and Eddie Watkins. I have greatly enjoyed working with Lara Scott, who produced the book’s marvelous map. Closer to home, my family has sustained me through the many lives of this project. Ari and Dahlia are the wind beneath my wings, a constant source of joy and wonder. Liz Marlowe has borne my long obsession with and frequent disappearance to distant regions with unfailingly good humor and unerring advice (the book’s subtitle is from her). My brother and sister live elsewhere but I have thought of them often as I have written about “Hungarians” and hometowns; they have helped me in more ways than they know. It is to my parents that I dedicate this book. Provincials in their own way, they have taught me much and given me more. Their lives are no less worthy of biography than the eight people written about in this book.

Another Hungary

Introduction It is not down on any map; true places never are. Herman Melville, Moby Dick or, The Whale, chapter 12

THE DECISION to write Another Hungary came, somewhat unexpectedly, from an obituary of the actor Tony Curtis, who died in 2010. The obituary told me much that I had not known about Curtis’s life and his work in Hollywood (I had seen Some Like It Hot but few of his other films). I read with particular interest that Curtis’s parents, Helen and Emanuel Schwartz, had left Hungary for the United States, where they had settled in New York City and started a family. Their son Bernard, who would later become Tony Curtis, had spoken Hungarian at home until he was five or six. The obituary suggested that his childhood had been “Dickensian.”1 The unhappy Schwartzes, I eventually discovered, came from the small Hungarian town of Mátészalka. I had been in Mátészalka just once, in the early 1990s, and had stayed long enough to walk from the train station to the main road, where a friend and I had hitched a ride to a village in the vicinity. I was on the trail of my late grandfather, who had been born in the region but left when he was very young. The little I saw of Mátészalka was uninspiring: empty streets, concrete apartment buildings, and fields that appeared suddenly at the edge of the town. I could understand why the Schwartzes, like my grandfather and so many others, had left this part of Hungary. So it had seemed at the time. I now see things differently. Over the past decade, I have written a number of studies of small towns in the Hungarian provinces. The obituary helped me think about how these loosely connected microhistories amounted to something larger. It made me want to tell the story of people like Helen and Emanuel Schwartz. Instead of focusing on those who left,

2 Introduction

however, I would look at those who stayed; instead of starting with the time of the Schwartzes’ departure for America (the First World War), I would end with it. My book, in other words, would explore the region that had created Helen and Emanuel Schwartz, and it would tell its story through the lives of men and women who had lived there. In Another Hungary, I revisit places like Mátészalka, “those out-ofthe-way hamlets with tongue-twisting names,” as the memoirist Gregor von Rezzori once called them.2 Unlike my previous visit, I slow down and look more closely at prewar Hungary’s small towns and their inhabitants. I try to understand how locals earned a living, what they thought about politics, and how they got along with their neighbors, including those who might speak a different language or attend a church other than their own. I pay attention to their families and houses, peer into their schools and clubs, replay their weddings and funerals. Mostly I listen to what they said about their small towns and villages, and how they talked about the wider world. What I have learned has convinced me that the history of small towns in Central and Eastern Europe matters. Places like Mátészalka were not just a dull reflection of the capital city or of western Europe, but interesting and important in their own right. They mattered economically, they mattered culturally, and they mattered politically; their history deserves our attention. This book focuses on the Hungarian provinces in the century before the First World War. “Hungary” in those days meant the eastern half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the second-largest state in Europe after R ­ ussia. Hungary then was as large as Italy and more populous than Spain; it encompassed all or part of what is today Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. By “provinces” I mean, most broadly, everything that was not part of the capital city. Nineteenth-century Budapest had no equal when measured by its booming population, political power, economic activity, and cultural influence; it held the same position in the Kingdom of Hungary that Paris did in France or London did in England. Capturing the outsized role Budapest played, the novelist Dezső ­Kosztolányi had the residents of his fictional small town flock to the train station to meet the Budapest express: “They simply came to observe the passengers and, for a few short moments, to immerse themselves in the ­alluring glamor of metropolitan life.”3 As the opposite of “metropolitan,” the adjective “provincial” could be used to describe not just small towns and remote villages, but mentalities, dress, morals, speech, and food. Then, as now, “the

Introduction 3

provinces” had the same mix of positive and negative connotations in Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, and other languages of the region that “small town” might have in American English. How the Hungarian provinces took on so many meanings is one of the stories this book tells. I have approached provincial Hungary with three research questions in mind. How did their residents make sense of the dramatic changes of the nineteenth century, from the advent of the railroad to the outbreak of the First World War? Similarly, how did they respond to the army of political ideologies that marched through this region, one after the other: liberalism, nationalism, antisemitism, socialism, and Zionism? And finally, to what extent did people in the provinces not just respond to, but in fact influence, what was happening in the centers of political power? Another Hungary answers these questions through a collective biography. It tells the story of the Hungarian provinces through the lives of eight loosely linked individuals.4 This approach is not without risks: biography has been called the historical profession’s “unloved stepchild, occasionally but grudgingly let in the door, more often shut outside with the riffraff.”5 Its thick tomes on American presidents and European dictators seem only distantly related to the streamlined cultural and social histories produced by many scholars (including me before this project!). But I have plunged ahead, heartened by historians who see in biography an opportunity to engage rather than run away from important questions about the past. In the words of one American historian, “At its best, biography, like history, is based on archival research, interweaves historical categories and methodologies, reflects current political and theoretical concerns, and raises complex issues of truth and proof.”6 In Another Hungary, I have tried to sketch a collective portrait that is intimate and panoramic, grounded and speculative, and confident in its reconstruction but also aware of its own limitations. In choosing the eight individuals, I selected men and women who were in some ways representative of their era. Together they help us understand the profound changes that remade Europe over the course of  the “long” nineteenth century, as historians have called the period from the  French Revolution to the First World War.7 The subject of the first chapter thus lived from 1725 to 1801; the subject of the last was born in 1880 and died in the global flu pandemic of 1918. Although the lives of these men and women overlap in meaningful ways—half of them lived through the 1848 revolutions and another half were alive at the turn of the twentieth century—the

4 Introduction

chapters are roughly chronological, and each sheds light on particular historical events. The eight allow us to view the provinces from multiple perspectives. They include six men and two women, three Jews and five Christians (two Roman Catholics, one Calvinist, one Lutheran, and one Greek Catholic). Most of them spoke and wrote two or more languages: Hungarian, Romanian, German, Yiddish, Polish, and, in the case of the aristocrat whose father cleverly changed his name from the Florentine Guidagni to the Hungarian-sounding Gvadányi, Italian. They pursued a range of occupations, from engineering to journalism. As the chapter titles indicate, I have tried to capture a range of social types, even as others have eluded my grasp: no peasants or landowners appear here, nor craftsmen, doctors, or musicians. A thorough study of the Hungarian provinces would encompass all these groups and many more besides.8 In the end, I settled on a relatively narrow swath of society, what we might call provincial Hungary’s movers and shakers: hard-working, educated, public-minded, outspoken men and women. These are the provinces’ thinkers, writers, and doers.9 These eight individuals are exceptional, and for many reasons. Five of them lived into their seventies, a striking achievement in an era marked by high infant mortality, low life expectancy, and recurrent epidemic diseases. The aristocrat studied in the first chapter died at the age of seventy-six; none of his ten siblings survived to adulthood. Similarly, at a time when most people stayed in place—a census taken in 1880 reported that 74 percent of Hungary’s residents lived where they were born—these eight were highly mobile.10 Work, study, and travel set them in motion, as did war and revolution. Several of them spent time abroad; at some point more than half quit the provinces and lived in Budapest, if only for a few years. Finally, these men and women are unusual in that they left behind sufficient documents to allow me to reconstruct (if only partially) their families, careers, and thoughts. These sources include sermons, poems, newspaper articles, novels, letters, business contracts, and wills. When possible, I have also visited their graves, tracked down their portraits and photographs, and inspected their residences; one belonging to “the editor” has become a house museum, while the birthplace of “the novelist” contains apartments, a photo studio, and a fish shop. The available sources leave much unsaid. We hear little about their parents and even less about their childhoods. All but one of the eight ­married—and some more than once—but few wrote about their spouses

Introduction 5

or children. Typical is the memoir of “the rabbi,” which lists all his yeshiva teachers but does not give the names of his wife and children! It does not help that little of their private correspondence has survived, to the extent that it once existed. But the intimate lives of these men and women are not wholly closed to us. Listening carefully, we can hear them grumble about their careers, sense their loneliness, share pride in their accomplishments, and nod as they recount the cares of old age. These are, above all, public lives. The subjects of Another Hungary wanted their words to be heard and their books to be read. They spoke in synagogues, town halls, learned societies, and schools; their writings appeared in scholarly journals, literary magazines, trade publications, and small-town newspapers. They grappled with the questions of the day, diagnosed problems, and offered solutions. These men and women did not wield political power, and none served in parliament or played a leading role in county or town politics. Yet nearly all of them joined the political process in other ways. They wrote newspaper articles, appealed to officials, and took up subscriptions. The eight allow us to trace the remarkable growth of a realm of informal politics across the nineteenth century.11 The emergence of what scholars have called “civil society” or “the public sphere” in the Hungarian provinces is one of the themes of this book. The eight men and women all spent at least part of their lives in the same region, the northeastern corner of Kingdom of Hungary. Nineteenthcentury uses of “northeastern Hungary” lacked clarity and consistency, but they often identified it with the lands adjoining the upper reaches of the Tisza River.12 This book defines the region even more broadly, trading a narrow geographic focus for a wide range of settings and stories. “Northeastern Hungary” thus includes everything to the north and east of ­Debrecen, a large city 140 miles east of Budapest.13 It bordered Transylvania to the east and the Austrian provinces of Galicia and Bukovina in the north. In 1900 this entire region fell within the confines of the Kingdom of Hungary; today it lies at the intersection of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Mátészalka, the hometown of Tony Curtis’s parents, can be found here, still in Hungary and close to the Romanian border. “Northeastern Hungary” does not have a strong identity. The region contained a dozen or so counties, the building block of local administration in Hungary. But cartographers rarely unified these counties on maps, and officials divided them into overlapping military, educational, medical, and financial jurisdictions. Even the region’s claims on the collective

6 Introduction

imagination were weak. Unlike the adjacent Transylvania and Upper Hungary (the Hungarian felvidék, largely coextensive with Slovakia today), the northeastern counties rarely fixed the attention or stirred the emotions of outsiders. Instead, the northeast was closer to the amorphous “no place” described by historian Kate Brown in her study of the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands: a region without significant political power or economic weight.14 Like other peripheral regions in Europe, the defining features of northeastern Hungary seemed to be its remoteness, poverty, and cultural diversity. These characteristics require some explanation. Northeastern Hungary was physically far from the centers of power in Austria-Hungary. The Schwartzes’ hometown of Mátészalka lay more than 170 miles from Budapest and 320 from Vienna. Geography stretched out distances, particularly as the land climbed from the wide plains in the south to the high Carpathian Mountains in the north. The crumpled foothills in between produced Tokaj, the best wine in Hungary, and deflected the Tisza, the Danube’s largest tributary and the most important river in this region. This “slothful Hungarian Nile,” as the writer Kálmán ­Mikszáth dubbed it, was only partly navigable and prone to flooding, which created vast wetlands in low-lying areas.15 Trees were rare in the south but abundant in the north, where unending forests of walnut, oak, beech, and pine sheltered bears and wolves. Travelers in the mountains marveled at what they took to be primeval forests and untouched villages. But here, as elsewhere in the region, locals had long worked the land and altered the landscape. Change accelerated in the nineteenth century, as residents and outsiders cleared forests, straightened rivers, drained marshes, and opened mines. They also built roads, telegraphs, and railroads, which gradually linked the northeastern counties more closely to other parts of Hungary, Austria, and Europe. Geography in turn influenced the region’s social and economic relations. In the south, the plains allowed large-scale agriculture, which in nineteenth-century Hungary often meant vast estates owned by the nobility and worked by poor tenant farmers. In the mountainous north, people lived from pasturage, forestry, and mining. Merchants risked bad roads and bandits to bring their products to markets. The region had many towns, including a handful with more than ten thousand residents.16 Most settlements, however, were little more than large villages; the statistician Martin Schwartner noted with disapproval in 1809 that “most craftsmen in [the towns] have fields and barns, and not infrequently still carefully pile manure

Introduction 7

under their windows, according to the old custom.”17 Exceptions to this rule surprised visitors: “Nagy Bánya, is rather a pretty little town,” noted an English traveler, “with a large square and some buildings, so good, that one wonders how they ever have got there.”18 These towns had some rich families, and the countryside held both wealthy nobles and well-to-do peasants. But many residents of the region, including noblemen and burghers, struggled to make ends meet. One of the more reliable products of the northeast, with its early marriage ages, high fertility rate, limited arable land, and tradition of male inheritance, was a steady stream of emigrants to other parts of Hungary, Vienna, and points beyond. On a train in Austria, the poet Endre Ady, a native of this region, once saw “a small piece of northeastern Hungary” (egy kis darab északkeleti Magyarország): bent, hungry Ruthenians on their way to Trieste, and from there to America.19 As Ady’s tart observation suggests, the residents of northeastern Hungary spoke many languages and belonged to many faiths. Here lay the linguistic and religious fault lines of Central Europe: the places where Hungarians and Romanians lived alongside one another, where eastern and western Christianity met, and where Hasidism bumped into other Jewish traditions. The landscape helped create this diversity, and one scholar has written of “the many local identities being enhanced by mountain ranges and fast-flowing rivers.”20 So did history: the Reformation had swept across this region, and centuries of migration, conversion, and de facto tolerance only muddied the religious waters even more. For many contemporaries, this remarkable diversity was a source of pride. The ­jurist Johann von Csaplovics bragged in 1829 that Hungary was “Europe in miniature,” explaining that it contained “nearly all European peoples, languages, religions, occupations, and cultural levels, as well as ways of life, customs, and traditions.”21 Such assertions, however, could not fully disguise the many sources of economic, social, and political conflict in northeastern Hungary. Particularly during moments of crisis—peasant rioting in 1831, revolution and war in 1848–49, and antisemitic agitation in 1882–83—­social relations on the ground came under tremendous strain. Intolerance and violence punctuate the chapters that follow. These chapters draw on a deep reservoir of local studies, county histories, published sources, archival materials, and newspapers. In recent years, excellent studies have appeared on everything from the northeast’s Romanian peasants and urban Jews to its ethnic boundaries and symbolic geography.22 In more general works, however, the northeastern counties appear

8 Introduction

only rarely; they are peripheral to the larger problems that define the history of Habsburg Hungary and its many peoples. But outlying regions can sometimes help us see the whole more clearly, and it is my contention that unexceptional places can help us understand the wider processes remaking nineteenth-century Hungary. This investigation of the provinces traverses several fields of research that have recently attracted the attention of scholars, including “backwardness,” the history of nationalism, and Jewish history. First, Another Hungary seeks to revise the conventional view that the Hungarian provinces were uniformly backward, their development belated, and their leaders blinkered.23 In recent decades, scholars have done much to refine our understanding of social and economic conditions in nineteenth-century Hungary. Fine-grained analysis has revealed a complex society, stratified but dynamic, in which generational differences and family strategies require as much attention as modes of production and property relations.24 The overall economic indicators nonetheless remained grim: Hungary had lower incomes and a slower growth rate than much of Europe. The result was what economists today call underdevelopment, which was pronounced in regions (including much of the northeast) illsupplied with roads, schools, doctors, and banks. What this meant to the residents of provincial Hungary, however, has not been fully explored. One still reads of “dull and sleepy” provincial towns, which look good only when compared with “the primitive and motionless conditions of the villages and farmsteads of the countryside.”25 Another Hungary in contrast takes seriously the idea that many men and women in the provinces took pride in their towns and sought to make them better. In particular, it argues that underdevelopment, far from being stifling, often encouraged bold plans for reform. This book tells the story of an unlettered merchant who became an enlightened patron of education, a water engineer who hoped to tame Hungary’s wild rivers and transform the countryside, and a tobacco booster who saw the plant as a cure-all for the ills that plagued prewar Hungary. Another Hungary is also meant to contribute to the history of nationalism. It joins a growing scholarly literature that challenges the long-held view that prewar Central and Eastern Europe was hopelessly divided into a number of antagonistic national groups, which states either rewarded or punished but rarely left alone. Admittedly, the Hungarian case presents obstacles to a revisionist course. Unlike in Austria, where the Habsburg

Introduction 9

state long tried to stay above the nationalist fray, in Hungary the state increasingly became a source of jobs and patronage for Hungarian elites and a vehicle for Hungarian nationalism. Particularly after 1867, when Hungary gained a large measure of autonomy, officials used the state’s power to encourage the wider population to learn and use the Hungarian language (to “Magyarize,” in a word), a nearly impossible task in a region with few schools and trained teachers, and where fully half the population spoke languages other than Hungarian. At the same time, state officials attempted to quash competing national movements among Romanians, Serbs, and Slovaks. The most visible and dismaying results of their actions—the shuttered schools, censored newspapers, and fixed elections—revealed clearly the underlying lack of equal opportunities and protections for the wider population. Another Hungary documents many of these issues. But it also attempts to understand what nationalism meant in the provinces, far away from the center of power.26 Useful here is scholarship that has begun to look at nationalization in new ways, emphasizing the importance of sociological factors such as urbanization and social mobility, as well as work that underscores the practical motives that drove language use and people’s refusal to let their lives be defined by nationalist agendas.27 Another Hungary, in short, examines both the spread of nationalism and its limits; it looks closely at indifference to nationalism and at patterns of cultural exchange. A good example of the latter is Béla Bartók, who ventured into the highlands of northeastern Hungary to collect Romanian folksongs. In them he identified examples of Hungarian-Romanian melodic borrowing; he also wrote letters to local teachers in both Hungarian and Romanian. In one, he approvingly described a poem of Endre Ady, which, Bartók explained, “says that the Hungarians, Romanians, and Slavs in this country should all be united, since they are kindred in misery.”28 With Bartók, we can see evidence of an imagined kinship between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians, as well as hints of a political outlook at odds with more intolerant forms of nationalism. The third field of research that informs Another Hungary is Jewish history. The northeastern counties had a large, diverse, and vibrant Jewish population, and Jews played an active role in the region’s political, economic, and cultural life. In contrast to neighboring Russia and Romania, Hungary had Jewish city councilors, medical officials, policemen, and mayors. Yet antisemitism also lurked in the region, and it emerged at moments of political and economic crisis. There exists a rich tradition

10 Introduction

of Hungarian Jewish history, but it occupies an uncertain place in historical writing about modern Hungary as a whole. Important works have appeared on certain topics: Budapest Jewry, the rise of Ultra-Orthodoxy, antisemitism, and the Holocaust, most notably.29 Less attention has been paid to relations between Jews and Christians in Hungary’s small towns and villages, where the bulk of the population lived. Another Hungary examines interactions among Jews and other residents of the provinces in multiple contexts: schools, taverns, stores, newspaper offices, and town governments. It explores a world in which the mother of Lajos Kossuth, a Lutheran and future leader of the 1848 Revolution, might take her sick son to a celebrated Hasidic rabbi in a nearby town, hoping for counsel or even a cure. The Hungarian provinces were no earthly paradise. But neither were they sites of unrelenting economic crisis, social strife, political corruption, or ethnic and religious conflict. In a recent study of provincial Russia, historian Catherine Evtuhov set out to argue that nineteenth-century Russia was not, as is often believed, “a vast, uniform, centralized state, socially and economically polarized, and primarily agrarian and resistant to change.”30 Another Hungary has a similar aim. Through a collective biography, I hope to bring to light not just the contradictions of the countryside, but also the patterns of economic innovation, political bargaining, and everyday coexistence that have too often been obscured. A character in The Emperor’s Tomb, Joseph Roth’s 1938 novel about the last years of Austria-Hungary, remarked that “Austria’s essence is not to be central, but peripheral.”31 I am wary of searching for the “essence” of Hungary in the northeastern counties. But I have taken Roth’s dictum to heart. In this book, I shift the perspective from the center to the periphery, from the state administration to local institutions, and from political luminaries to the residents of a relatively isolated and poor region. In telling the stories of these eight men and women, I hope to show what can be gained if we approach the history of Hungary from a new perspective. A fascinating “map” of historic Hungary may emerge. None of the eight men and women examined were cartographers or geographers (­although “the engineer” did make exquisite maps of rivers he surveyed), and none spent their entire lives in this region. Yet all of them had clear mental maps of northeastern Hungary, which revealed a strong if sometimes ambivalent sense of “home” and a deep attachment to its landscapes and peoples. In these “imagined geographies,” to borrow terms from Benedict Anderson and

Introduction 11

Edward Said, we can see how the eight marked the boundaries of northeastern Hungary and what qualities they attributed to it.32 As Said wrote, such geographies “can help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close and what is far away.”33 This process of mapmaking helped the eight men and women explain the relationship between the countryside and the capital city, and also locate their “homes” within the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary, Europe, and the world beyond. In short, it helped these eight men and women to define what it meant to be “provincial” in nineteenth-century Hungary. Mapmaking often led to mythmaking. These men and women were careful observers of the provinces, documenting the region’s cuisine and costumes, landmarks and languages, flora and fauna, train stations and taverns. But their well-grounded observations often gave way to flights of fantasy, as the eight dreamed and schemed. Eastern Europe, historian Larry Wolff has shown, has long been “particularly fertile imaginative terrain,” and this was especially true of northeastern Hungary, where will-o’-the-wisps and dragons were said to dwell.34 The book’s first chapter opens with an old, garrulous cavalryman (“the aristocrat”), who begins to spin what I call the “myth of the provinces,” according to which northeastern Hungary was a region of great economic potential, harmonious ethnic relations, and peaceful confessional coexistence. The following six chapters both unravel and add to this myth: two take up economic questions through transportation (“the engineer”) and agriculture (“the tobacconist”), two more (“the merchant” and “the rabbi”) examine the place of Jews in the provinces, and the last two consider ethnic relations from Hungarian (“the teacher”) and Romanian (“the journalist”) perspectives. The subject of the final chapter (“the writer”) is the most critical of the “myth of the provinces,” but even she cannot—or will not—entirely let go of it. The title of this book—Another Hungary—has a number of meanings. Its immediate inspiration came from an older book called Another Germany, a collection of historical essays published in 1988. In their introduction, the editors of Another Germany asked why so many residents of the German Empire were “basically pleased with the society in which they had found themselves.”35 I might not phrase the question so sunnily—this is, after all, Hungarian history! But the underlying impulse to push back against a bleak assessment of the period appealed to me. So too did the personal meanings of this title: my first book was on Budapest, and this work on the provinces has been a new departure for me. Research trips to small towns in Hungary,

12 Introduction

Romania, and Slovakia have only confirmed my belief that the provinces hold untold riches for historians, if only they are willing to look for larger truths in small-town newspapers and largely-forgotten memoirs. The sources I found in these provincial archives and libraries provide the final and most important meaning of the title. Another Hungary communicates the hopes and aspirations of the eight men and women I write about in the chapters that follow. All eight sought, in their own ways, to imagine a very different Hungary from the one they saw before them. I have tried to record their visions faithfully. Of course, we also need to recognize the limits and inconsistencies of their ideas. But this should not blind us to one of the central premises of this book: that surprising, interesting, and valuable ideas can sometimes emerge from the most unlikely of places.

1 The Aristocrat Before my very eyes I have seen youths grow up who have made good progress along the road of science and knowledge . . . But hardly had they returned to their ancestral meadows, then I know not what inexplicable faintness soon came over them. The library was soon replaced by weapons, the arts by the love of hunting, and meditation by greyhound coursing. József Kármán, “The Embellishment of the Nation” (1794)1 One nobleman said, let us ride every day, Another chimed in, catching sturgeon is the way, Added a third, shooting at ducks would be the best, Declared the count at last, hunting is my request. Count József Gvadányi, A Satirical-Critical Description of the Now Assembled Diet (1791) 2

WHAT SETS ARISTOCRATS APART from the rest of us? First, a title, such as prince, count, marquis, or baron. Viewers of the TV series Downton Abbey, set in England in the first decades of the twentieth century, might also point to the sprawling estate, countless servants, and fashionable clothes of the Earl of Grantham and his family. Fittingly, the Granthams shoot and hunt, and viewers can see the requisite hounds, horses, guns, and outdoor gear of the Edwardian era. The show is less fastidious, however, about the carnage involved in a day’s hunting and shooting. Once common, images of rulers and aristocrats surrounded by their servants, beaters, and gamekeepers (not to mention the dead game itself ) are at best anachronistic—a 1961 “trophy photograph” of a young Queen Elizabeth II standing over a slain tiger in India would be impossible to reproduce today—if not highly symbolic. Old photographs of Emperor William II of Germany, inspecting long rows of neatly arranged

14  The Aristocrat

chamois and deer, seem to foreshadow the brutality and slaughter of the First World War. The subject of this chapter, Count József Gvadányi, had no qualms about hunting. It comes up again and again in his writings. That an uncle died on a hunting trip did nothing to cool his ardor.3 In a letter poem written to one of his protégés, he explained that he would have responded sooner had two aristocrat friends not invited him to go hunting in nearby Moravia. Gvadányi provided only the barest sketch of the region they visited: “We ascended as well the lustrous, looming peaks,  / We delved in deep valleys rumbling with rapid creeks.”4 But he gave a precise inventory of their haul: twenty-eight roe deer, eight red deer, and fourteen boars, one of which nearly gouged a beater, who escaped by scrambling up a birch tree. When storms forced the hunters to retreat to a local village, they stayed with the priest, whom they repaid with part of their game. So often attentive to the sensibilities of his readers, Gvadányi in this case did not consider that his correspondent—a seamstress who lived in town, had two children, and struggled to make ends meet—may not have shared or even understood his enthusiasm. But hunting had never been a pastime for commoners. In 1729 the Hungarian Diet (the kingdom’s bicameral assembly) had confirmed that nobles alone had the right to hunt, pursue game across surrounding lands, and keep hunting dogs such as greyhounds and vizslas.5 For the writer József Kármán and other critics, practices like hunting stood as an impediment to progress and a symbol of the problems that lurked in the provinces. Kármán once complained that Hungarians preferred “a pack of cards or a heifer” to a book.6 Kármán could be a blind patriot—he boasted that “the uncouth Hungarian on our endless plains is possessed of a sounder judgment than the refined foreigner in his arrogant towns”— but he also bemoaned the isolation, indolence, and ignorance he found in the countryside.7 In his analysis, people and place are organically connected; that the nobility loved to hunt and play cards reflected and in turn perpetuated the rude state of the Hungarian provinces. The resulting equation, in which a blinkered nobility plus a poor countryside adds up to inaction and immobility, has long been a staple of Hungarian literature and history writing.8 Recently, scholars have looked more closely at the place of nobles in this equation. The importance of the nobility to the fortunes of the Kingdom of Hungary has never been in doubt. Nor has its great size: nearly

The Aristocrat  15

one in twenty residents of eighteenth-century Hungary enjoyed noble privileges, a figure matched only in Poland and Spain. Solidarity among nobles came from their shared privileges and common interests, but differences in rank, religion, language, wealth, and education were just as likely to divide them. A huge gap separated the poor, illiterate, lesser nobility of the villages (sometimes called the “sandaled” nobility because they could not afford boots) from the wealthy, cosmopolitan aristocracy ensconced in ­Baroque palaces on sprawling estates (of whom the Esterházys are the best known). Splitting the difference, scholars have focused on those in between, on the reasonably well-to-do, mostly literate, politically engaged “county ­nobility”—later called the “gentry.”9 The outlook of these noblemen, historian Gábor Vermes has shown, fused Christian ethics, classical ideals, public service, and tireless legalism; they looked with suspicion on outsiders, members of other religions (especially Jews), and middle-class occupations. At the same time, their strong “sense of permanence” gave them the confidence to stand up to distant rulers, and Hungary’s forty-six counties gave them a large measure of self-government on the local level. “The king might decide, but the county implemented,” explained one historian.10 With the counties as their springboard, these provincial noblemen leaped over the aristocracy and became the leading force in statewide Hungarian politics at the end of the eighteenth century. Events reached a head in the early 1790s, against the backdrop of revolution in France, deep crisis in the Habsburg lands, and widespread political agitation in Hungary. Gvadányi was peripheral to these events. Most scholars in fact have little patience with Gvadányi, who was neither a young reformer like Kármán nor an influential member of the county nobility. At best, he is portrayed as the “quill-wielding old Hussar general,” avuncular and mustachioed, who wrote some humorous verses in sparkling Hungarian. Critics allow that his defense of traditional Hungarian dress made a splash at the close of the eighteenth century. But the count is also dismissed as hopelessly conservative—if not reactionary—in many areas. His opposition to literary innovations left him isolated from other writers, just as his loyalty to the Habsburg rulers kept him outside the Hungarian political opposition. He was indifferent to economic matters and wary of those who did not share his Roman Catholic faith. In many ways, the hunt-loving Gvadányi seems to embody the worst features of the Hungarian nobility.11 But there may be more to Gvadányi than meets the eye. Two close readers of Gvadányi, the literary critics Ferenc Bíró and Viktor Julow, have

16  The Aristocrat

found substance beneath the count’s frothy rhymes. Bíró urges us to take seriously Gvadányi’s claim that he wanted to write about “important ­matters.”12 Julow sees in Gvadányi’s writings internal contradictions that produce surprising results: “although he firmly believed that he was defending the old, in more than one respect he was blazing a trail for the new.”13 Following these promising leads, this chapter looks anew at Gvadányi’s life and work, paying careful attention to what they tell us about northeastern Hungary. Gvadányi passed much of his life in the region; he was born there, spent his childhood there, and was later stationed there as a solider. When he became a writer, he recreated its landscapes, languages, customs, and ­cuisine. These writings created a literary map of the region, and by poring over this map we can see how Gvadányi struggled to make sense of the region’s poor material conditions, diverse population, and political aspirations.14 For all his love of hunting and horses, then, Count Gvadányi offered thoughtful answers to the questions of what it meant to be “provincial” in Hungary.

To the Modest Manor Born Like many aristocrats, Count Gvadányi had roots outside Hungary. The Gvadányis came from Tuscany, where they were known as Guadagni and held the title of marquis. The family held important offices in a number of Italian states, and one Guadagni rose to the rank of cardinal. Around 1648 another member of the family, who styled himself Marchio Alexander de Gvadagnis, came to Austria and joined the ranks of condottieri serving the Habsburgs in their far-flung wars. Alexander died in Hungary fighting the Ottomans; his Italian-born son followed in his footsteps and ended up as commander of a border fortress in northeastern Hungary. As luck would have it, King Jan Sobieski of Poland-Lithuania, fresh from his momentous victory over the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683, stopped at ­Guadagni’s fortress for eight days. After Guadagni openhandedly hosted the king, retainers, and soldiers, Sobieski gratefully made him a Polish count (the conversion of Italian titles to their Central European equivalents was never automatic). Guadagni then used this honor to apply for acceptance as a naturalized Hungarian count, which the Hungarian Diet approved in 1687.15 Good hospitality as much as martial valor explained the sudden success of the Guadagnis in Hungary. Quick wits and an ability to adapt also helped. In the next generation, they would change their surname to the more Hungarian-sounding Gvadányi.

The Aristocrat  17

Scholars have made much of Count József Gvadányi’s Italian ­origins. To one nineteenth-century biographer, they explained Gvadányi playfulness, vivaciousness, and sentimentality.16 Scholars less prone to stereotypes have argued that his family’s recent arrival and rapid rise in Hungary may have influenced the count’s outlook. When he was born in 1725, his family had been aristocrats for just thirty-eight years and Hungarian by birth for just one generation. Gvadányi, the argument goes, became a loud Hungarian patriot to avoid being taken as an arriviste, a latecomer to the Hungarian cause. His was the zeal of a convert. There may be some truth in this. But the ascent of his family was hardly unique. In the late seventeenth century, as Ottoman rule in Hungary collapsed and the Habsburgs moved in, many other families in the employ of the Habsburgs used a combination of military service, royal favor, shrewd marriages, and patronage of the Catholic church to secure estates and titles in Hungary.17 Most remained absentee landlords and eventually sold their properties. Not so the Gvadányis, who worked tirelessly to acquire lands to match their new title. The family’s strategy, followed unerringly by all the male Gvadányis ( József, his father, and two uncles), began with military service, followed by marriage to a Hungarian noblewoman with property, and then retirement from the Habsburg army and the life of a country gentleman. Marriage brought Gvadányi’s father back to Borsod County in northeastern Hungary. He settled in the village of Rudabánya, which was close to the fortress where his own father had earned much distinction. Rudabánya lay in a narrow valley in the foothills of the Carpathians, and its mines had produced iron ore for centuries. In 1700 the Gvadányis leased the village and its mines from Count István Csáky, whose family’s great wealth and power placed it in the small circle of dominant aristocratic families. The Gvadányis in comparison lived modestly. According to the 1720 census, their main house was built of wood, had a tile roof, and sported a wooden tower.18 It had two large rooms (for the Gvadányis and their servants!), a kitchen, and a bath; a butcher worked below. Its outbuildings included a brewery, malt house, distillery, foundry, and blacksmith. The smells of butchered animals, fermenting beer, and charcoal fires must have been power­ful and influential; Gvadányi’s writing engages all the senses (village girls, he claimed, could not “set the heart ablaze” because they smelled “not of perfume but of cows”).19 The estate also included numerous farm animals, and peasants who tended the surrounding fields and vineyards. Each week

18  The Aristocrat

the peasants gave their lord two or three days of unpaid labor, called robot; otherwise they worked their own rented plots of land. They also drank, and the Gvadányis made more money selling alcohol to peasants than they did pulling iron out of the ground.20 Undercapitalized and unproductive, the mines brought little income and were later abandoned. Significant investment arrived only during the communist era, when R ­ udabánya briefly flourished, but the iron mines closed for good in 1985. Count József Gvadányi was born in Rudabánya on October 16, 1725. As a child, he had tutors, servants, books, and friends; he dressed up as a soldier and battled trees he imagined were Turks. But death was a frequent visitor in Rudabánya: of his mother’s eleven children, only four survived infancy, and only one—József—lived to adulthood.21 The many pregnancies and early deaths must have taken their toll on József ’s mother and cast a pall over the house. József ’s father also died young, at the age of fortyfive. When József left for school at age eleven, his mother came with him, and they never returned to Rudabánya. The Gvadányis were Roman Catholic, and József spent his second decade in Jesuit schools. First came the equivalent of middle and high school in nearby Eger and then three years of university in distant NagySzombat. One biographer has suggested that the Jesuits’ emphasis on sustained concentration, oral argumentation, and historical drama influenced Gvadányi’s later writings.22 For his part, Gvadányi stated that school awakened his love of poetry, philosophy, and reading; as a soldier, he hauled around trunks filled with books from one garrison to another. The heavily Latin-based curriculum of eighteenth-century schools also left its mark. Gvadányi bragged that by the end of high school he could produce a hundred lines of rhyming Latin couplets in under three hours. Like other writers labeled “Baroque,” Gvadányi larded his writing with classical references. Most were well-worn: soldiers fight on the field of Mars, poets climb Mount Parnassus, hunters emulate Diana, and doctors recall Hippocrates. Readers today may find these references labored and wearisome, but two hundred years ago they conveyed seriousness and sophistication. Latin enjoyed special status in Hungary, and through much of the eighteenth century it remained an indispensible language of the royal administration, the Hungarian Diet, the legal system, medicine, the university, and the Catholic church. Not every official or magistrate could speak let alone read or write basic Latin, but they would have recognized and likely welcomed the gods and muses that populate Gvadányi’s writings.23

The Aristocrat  19

For Gvadányi, the choice of a career was easy. Soldiering ran in the family, and other options (the church, law, and public administration) did not and offered limited prospects to a young nobleman with an aristocratic title but little else. In 1744, at age nineteen, he joined the Habsburg army as an officer cadet and remained in uniform until 1783, when he resigned as a cavalry general. In between he fought in both the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) and the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). In the first he faced the Prussians, Spanish, and French, who briefly held him prisoner and later seriously wounded him in the leg. In the second he took part in Count Andreas Hadik’s daring raid that captured the Prussian capital of Berlin in 1757; Gvadányi later claimed that the enemy responded by putting a bounty on his head. By all accounts Gvadányi was a brave soldier, and he won steady promotions over the years. His writings romanticize war but also document the hardships soldiers faced: “Alongside my glory, I suffered privation, / I endured frequent thirst, and sometimes starvation, / I withstood the snarling cold and sweltering heat, / Horses’ jolts and horses’ throws, with chaos complete.”24 As the army shrank during peacetime he had to switch regiments, and promotions came more slowly. Older biographers sensed anti-Hungarian forces at work, but Gvadányi himself betrayed no bitterness about his service.25 In a letter written to an aspiring poet, he boasted about the Monarchy’s armies and stated that there is “no more beautiful death” than to die for faith, homeland, and “gracious king.”26 Retirement took Gvadányi to a small town in what is today western Slovakia, close to the border with the Czech Republic. Soon after leaving the service, he had married Katalin Szaleczki, the widow of another military officer. This was Gvadányi’s second marriage. His first, to Francziska Horeczky in the 1750s, had produced two surviving children out of four: a son Ignácz, who became a soldier, and a daughter Erzsébet, who stayed at home. We know little else about this marriage, except that it lasted fourteen years and that Francziska died young. Gvadányi’s second marriage brought no children but was a happy one. The count esteemed his wife and bragged that she spurned makeup and wore a married woman’s traditional bonnet.27 The couple lived in a handsome Renaissance-style building in the center of a town where Katalin had a 160-acre estate. Gvadányi complained that he was surrounded by Slovaks and Germans (“I see a true Hungarian only when I look at myself,” he wrote).28 But he filled his days pleasantly, reading, writing, fiddling, hunting, and hobnobbing with the local nobility.

“As much for Mars as for Apollo” reads the inscription above Gvadányi’s portrait. The paired feathers of the cavalry headdress and writing quill send the same message as do the tools of war (the bayonet, telescope, and sword) strewn alongside Gvadányi’s best known works. source: Károly Széchy, Gróf Gvadányi József, 1725–1801 (Budapest: Franklin-Társulat, 1894).

FIGURE I. 

The Aristocrat  21

He took special pride in his four-acre garden, which featured hyacinths, daffodils, and tulips. Gvadányi, in short, struck the pose of the country gentleman, contentedly spending his last years in bucolic isolation. Appearances can deceive. Gvadányi liked to give the impression that he was not really a writer, but merely a scribbler, someone who wrote out of habit and boredom. He had recycled his earliest poems, he said, as wadding for his musket. “I am not an author,” he stressed, casting aspersions on “authors” who wrote for a living.29 But this flimflam could not disguise Gvadányi’s great ambition and remarkable output as a writer. After decades of composing poems for friends’ birthdays and name days, he published his first work in 1787 (at the age of sixty-one) and in the next dozen years produced fourteen more books in diverse fields. These included the first Hungarian-language handbook on military science, a biography of the Swedish King Charles XII, and thousands of lines of poetry. At the time of his death, he was hard at work on a nine-volume general history of the world, which drew heavily on French and German originals, but with significant editing and additions from Gvadányi. The frontispiece of the first volume showed Gvadányi in profile, surrounding him with the trappings of a soldier and writer (Figure 1). Gvadányi’s success has puzzled critics. The era had better poets, and Gvadányi’s insistence on using rhyming couplets and quatrains could lead to stilted, forced constructions. Writing in the 1850s, the poet János Arany concluded that circumstances had helped Gvadányi, whose chest-­ thumping patriotism had captured the spirit of his day.30 Arany added that with relatively few works in Hungarian to choose from the reading public was in a “rudimentary state,” which meant that its standards were not high. Critics might squirm when they encounter Gvadányi’s “barracks humor,” but readers in the late eighteenth century ate it up. This would explain the success of Gvadányi’s first work, The Baths at Pöstény (Pöstényi ­Förödés), in which a series of humorous anecdotes unfold at a provincial spa: a soldier cuckolds a pedantic theologian, Gypsy musicians take medicine they should not have, and a peasant youth loses his swimming trunks in the crowded pool. In describing this last episode, Gvadányi draws out the scene to amuse and titillate. The peasant, we read, mistakenly concludes that if he covers his eyes and climbs naked out of the pool, then no one will see him. The many women present pretend not to look, but of course they do. Gvadányi is ready with the punch line: “But from more than one mouth a quiet sigh soon slipped, / That her husband, alas, was not so well

22  The Aristocrat

equipped.”31 In Gvadányi’s later works, critics have observed a decline in quality and a churlish opposition to change in all forms: political, social, and literary. “The art of most of our great writers shows development,” concluded one sympathetic reader, “unfortunately, with Gvadányi the deterioration is most striking.”32 Gvadányi’s reputation as a writer in fact rests on one and a half poetic works. The half comes from the first part of Paul Rontó (Rontó Pál, 1793), which describes the ill-spent youth of a peasant boy whose parents want him to be something grander than the soldier he was destined to be; the poem’s second part, in which Paul leaves Hungary for Russia, Japan, and Madagascar, is far less original and inspired. The one work of Gvadányi’s that earns universal praise is The Village Notary’s Journey to Buda (A falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása). Gvadányi wrote The Village Notary in twelve weeks in 1787 and published it in early 1790. It was an immediate bestseller. The Village Notary relates the adventures and misadventures of István Zajtai, a nobleman and village magistrate, as he travels from his hometown in the provinces to Buda and back. Zajtai has been compared to Don ­Quixote (a comparison Gvadányi himself suggested) and remained an enduring figure of Hungarian literature, in no small part because the playwright József Gaál put him on stage in the 1830s in a durable comedy. The writer Dezső Kosztolányi recalled that when he saw the play as a sevenyear-old in the 1890s, “my grandfather spoke about [Zajtai] as if he were an old, dear friend.”33 As Arany observed, Gvadányi’s genius lay in creating a character that resonated and lingered with people of all social classes. It was not a stretch, then, for Gvadányi to become the spokesman of the provincial nobility. His Italian ancestors and military career notwithstanding, much about him—his upbringing, education, and interests— placed him in the world of the county nobility. But not fully: he was a Catholic aristocrat and from a region dominated by the Protestant gentry, few of whom served in the Habsburg army. Nor had Gvadányi managed an estate or taken part in county administration, which meant he did not have the same material concerns and political background as many of his fellow nobles. Gvadányi’s studies, career, and marriage had taken him far from the region of his youth. Yet the northeastern counties stayed with him. More than half a century after his departure, his home county still figured prominently in Gvadányi’s writings. Scholars have heard echoes in Gvadányi’s work of the Palóc dialect spoken around the village in which he grew up. Gvadányi had

The Aristocrat  23

lived in close contact with the lower orders and seen firsthand how farmers, miners, brewers, smiths, and servants worked. He later revealed that some of his earliest poems took inspiration from the common people he had known as a child. The introduction to The Village Notary likewise claims that Gvadányi received the manuscript from “an old friend in ­Borsod County”; in letters written in the late 1780s, Gvadányi happily claimed that he and his correspondent were “countrymen” because both came from the same region.34 Northeastern Hungary thus influenced Gvadányi’s writing, and he in turn put it at the center of his literary map of the provinces.

“I Had Myself a Feast” Following the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Count Gvadányi was stationed in northeastern Hungary. He spent much of his time quartered in small, isolated places. When not on duty, Gvadányi amused himself with his books, fiddle, pipe, fishing rod, and whatever companions he could muster. Gvadányi later wrote about his time in one woebegone village on the banks of the upper Tisza River.35 Swamps filled with flies, mosquitos, frogs, and snakes surrounded his house, which floods cut off for months at a time. But the irrepressible count made the best of it, and during one flood he organized a hunting trip in a boat. It did not end well: the boat capsized. In drier weather, he hosted balls for the villagers and paid calls on the local gentry. His friendship with one noble family brought him to Nagy-Peleske, a small village in Szatmár County, which later became the hometown of István Zajtai, the protagonist of The Village Notary. Gvadányi was always a sharp observer: his ear for region’s language, his eye for its customs, and his nose for its food gave him a storehouse of material from he would later draw. Critics have praised the rich, ethnographic detail of Gvadányi’s writing. But they have hesitated to use him as a guide to the historical changes remaking eighteenth-century Hungary, and with good reason.36 In print Gvadányi is rarely a systematic thinker. His longer works can be inconsistent and unstructured, and readers of The Village Notary have long wondered about its protagonist’s split personality: passive and fearful in the countryside, energetic and caustic in the city. Nor did Gvadányi dig deep, so that most of his characters have little psychological depth (the title character in Paul Rontó is the exception that proves the rule). Some wider issues engage Gvadányi, but many do not. Economic questions hold no interest,

24  The Aristocrat

social questions yield to quick humor, and political questions give way to loud patriotism. Yet works like The Village Notary contain clues about the northeastern counties in which Gvadányi was born and spent many years. When assembled, they reveal how Gvadányi reflected on and reimagined the concrete reality of this region, from its bad roads to its good wines. The Village Notary has much to say about long-distance travel. The notary István Zajtai journeys from Szatmár County in northeastern Hungary to Buda in the center of the kingdom. As Kosztolányi observed in 1935, this was comparable to the distance between Budapest and New York City in his day (or today, for that matter!). In The Village Notary, a dun-colored horse carries Zajtai to Buda; a Greek merchant’s wagon takes him home. In both directions Zajtai covers more than twenty miles a day, a respectable pace given the deplorable state of Hungary’s roads. Officials in Vienna and Buda had long encouraged the building of turnpikes, bridges, and postal relay stations, but local authorities were often slow to act and ineffectual when they did.37 Gvadányi’s home county of Borsod left unanswered one postmaster’s request for greater funds for more than two decades, perhaps reasoning that bad roads and irregular mail kept intrusive royal authorities at bay.38 An English traveler described the consequences of this neglect: “land carriage is rendered very expensive by the badness of the roads, and territorial tolls; a thing severely felt upon raw produce.”39 Historians have argued that the high cost and slow pace of transport made it difficult to export agricultural products (wine and cattle, which traveled reasonably well, were exceptions). As a result, most goods were consumed locally, trade was limited, and news about the outside world arrived sporadically. In The Village Notary, Gvadányi turns the troubles of travel to his advantage. The plains Zajtai traverses have few residents and faint roads (the lack of trees and stones in the lowlands hindered road building).40 Zajtai mostly rides across open fields and repeatedly gets lost, which Gvadányi uses to introduce a host of popular characters: cowboys, shepherds, bandits, musicians, and soldiers. Zajtai’s rambles likewise allow Gvadányi to show the rich culture of every town and region Zajtai visits. The Village ­Notary describes local buildings (the Red Tower in Debrecen, a famous brick campanile), landmarks (the “Devil’s Ditch,” a defensive fortification dating to Roman times), and antiquities (the Horn of Lehel in Jászberény, reportedly from the tenth century). The depictions of Buda and Pest, where Zajtai spends ten weeks, are even more detailed. As a tour guide, Gvadányi has a light touch: Zajtai falls into the ditch in the dark, and he

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and a former schoolmate later chug wine from the Horn of Lehel: “To his level of perfection I could not soar, / The whole into my gut I could not quickly pour.”41 What travelers lose in speed and comfort, Gvadányi suggests, they gain in variety and history. Zajtai traverses a highly stratified society. Gvadányi had a keen sense of rank and privilege, and both were unevenly distributed in northeastern Hungary. The region had more nobles than other parts of the kingdom, close to 10 percent of the total population in some counties, twice the overall figure.42 Many of these nobles came from old, Hungarian-speaking Protestant families with branches spread across the northeastern counties; they saw themselves as defenders of their Hungarian homeland and their Calvinist faith. Yet not all of them could not read or write, in spite of good schools such as the Calvinist Academy in Sárospatak and the Lutheran Gymnasium in Eperjes. Some nobles were nearly indistinguishable from the peasants they lived among. The peasants themselves were no less diverse.43 They spoke a number of languages, practiced a range of religions, and owed unequal burdens of labor, taxes, and other dues to their lords. Relations between nobles and peasants varied widely and were more often governed by oral agreements and established customs than by written laws or contracts. Surviving petitions suggest that landlords sometimes abused their privileges. In one village in Szatmár County, peasants protested in 1783 that the bailiff had forced them to work continuously for five weeks at the expense of their own plots of land, seized fields they had already cultivated, and forbade them from cutting wood.44 Perhaps this is why peasants in the region were linked to later petitions that demanded far-reaching reforms of the local administration and judiciary. In The Village Notary Zajtai is mindful of his superior rank over commoners. His clothing, sword, education, Latin, and office all set him above the residents of his home village and the craftsmen and herdsmen he encounters on the road. In Debrecen, Zajtai stays with a furrier and his wife. When he asks the man about the practice of law in town, the furrier pleads ignorance, leading Zajtai to reflect on the differences between them: “My head is full of ancient laws, his head with fluff, / My trade is prudent and learned, his trade is rough.”45 But just a few pages later, a shepherd saves Zajtai from charging bulls. In gratitude, Zajtai offers to help him in all legal matters. To this the shepherd humorously replies that he has no outstanding lawsuits, except with wolves, and that his “collared attorneys”—that is, his six tough sheepdogs—will soon resolve the case.46 In later chapters

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Zajtai interacts easily with aristocrats, burghers, and merchants. Social distinctions matter, but in The Village Notary they do not impede the exchange of ideas, affections, and services, especially in the countryside. Northeastern Hungary was a poor region. The infant mortality rate was high, life expectancy low. Agricultural methods and productivity remained unchanged from earlier centuries. In good years, the favorable climate and fertile land made food plentiful. But bad years brought famines, floods, fires, and disease, which ate into surpluses and devoured savings. Most noble families lived in simple houses with adobe walls and thatched roofs; only in the nineteenth century would more durable building materials such as stone, wood, and roof tiles become widespread.47 Families instead spent their money on clothes and tableware. Yet many noble households still lacked eating utensils or glass windows; imported goods were rarities, and boots prized wedding gifts.48 Eyeglasses and books began to appear frequently in nobles’ estate inventories only in the eighteenth century. The majority of peasants lived in single-room houses and had few possessions. “The Sclavack peasant’s house,” opined an English traveler, “is almost always built of the unhewn strands of the pine, covered with straw thatch, carelessly and ill-made; its interior is not overclean, and the pig, oxen, and goats are on far too familiar terms with the rest of the family.”49 Exceptions could be found: one well-to-do peasant in a northeastern county had, among other items, three beds, two mirrors, two pairs of scissors, a dining room table with ten chairs, nearly a hundred plates, forty-three bowls, seven drinking glasses, and two pitchers. Contemporary observers stressed that most Hungarian households purchased few goods made elsewhere, which contributed to the lack of trade and commerce across the kingdom.50 Gvadányi pays close attention to the material conditions of the provinces. The Village Notary offers careful descriptions of food and drink. We learn that Zajtai sets out with bacon, red onions, salt, and a canteen of wine; white bread is his one luxury. Every county he traverses has its own wine, and the varieties Zajtai drinks reveal a more complex map of wine production than exists today. Gvadányi praises the simple meals Zajtai eats in the open: With my bacon skewered, to the fire I sped, And the fat I dribbled on my lovely white bread, From the part I had drenched I bit off a large slice, With wine from my canteen this went down very nice,

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With my eyes full of tears my chewing never ceased, In this princely manner I had myself a feast.51

In contrast to this “princely” fare, the mussels Zajtai eats in Buda make him ill, the game bird canapés make him wish for bacon, and the offer of hot chocolate and lemonade disgusts him. In this way, Gvadányi puts the modest material conditions of the countryside in the best possible light. The Village Notary seems to assert the superiority of the simple life of the countryside over the empty extravagance of the city.52 In Buda, Zajtai encounters a number of Hungarian aristocrats, all of them slaves to foreign fashions and manners. The men wear ribbons, powder their hair, take snuff, mumble French words, and totter around in high shoes (Zajtai asks one whether he is a tightrope walker). The women mass their hair in high towers, carry small dogs, chatter in church, and toss aside their clothes after one use. The aristocrats dismiss Zajtai (“An idiot like you doesn’t know the world” says one), but he has the last word, railing against their wasteful luxury and affected behavior. Gvadányi’s message appears plain: men like Zajtai are the backbone of Hungary. The provinces are authentic, Hungarian, and devout; the city is false, foreign, and profane. Yet details in The Village Notary confound this logic. At home, Zajtai imagined Buda as the “seat of kings” and the “ornament of the nation.”53 Once there he marvels at the rich houses, paved roads, healing baths, and royal castle; he surveys the ruins of a Turkish mosque, visits the university, and counts the cargo-laden ships on the Danube. As Julow observed, Zajtai went to Buda to study the new legal system implemented by the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II (ruled 1780–90). There Zajtai readily applied for a position at the high law court. He does not get the position, but he returns home secure in the knowledge that “the system’s new laws I have learned, / Precisely how it works I have discerned.”54 The road that connects Buda to the provinces, it becomes clear, runs in two directions. At the end of the poem, Zajtai accepts that he will remain a village magistrate until the end of his life, when, he hopes, his son can inherit the office: “My life’s only wish is to be a notary / while the village’s piety is fixed on me.”55 The Village Notary closes with the lesson that one should take pleasure in small things and be happy with family and neighbors. But Zajtai’s restlessness—like Gvadányi’s own—has allowed us to see a large portion of provincial Hungary in a new light. Far from dull and monotonous, the provinces become a brightly colored patchwork of adventure-filled plains, wholesome villages, and noteworthy towns. Each

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has its own history, occupations, food, and drink. As the leading cities in the kingdom, Buda and Pest hold a special place in this literary map. For Gvadányi, the contrasting hues of city and countryside together form a harmonious whole. The effect is remarkable, as it both blurs social boundaries and celebrates regional differences. As we shall see in the next section, Gvadányi attempted to do the same with the mix of peoples who inhabited the northeastern corner of the Kingdom of Hungary.

“Like a Seller of Lemons No Magyar Should Appear” At the end of The Village Notary, István Zajtai reveals that in addition to Latin, he knows many of the languages of the northeastern counties: Hungarian, Romanian, and “Russian” (or Carpatho-Rusyn, the Slavic tongue spoken by Ruthenians).56 In Zajtai’s Szatmár County, the population had grown rapidly across the eighteenth century, as newcomers resettled lands laid waste during the Ottoman Wars. A census taken in the 1780s showed a diverse population, which included large numbers of Hungarian-speaking Calvinists (roughly 30 percent of the population), Hungarian- and German-speaking Roman Catholics (20 percent), and Romanian- and Ruthenian-speaking Greek Catholics (45 percent), along with smaller groups of German-speaking Lutherans, Yiddish-speaking Jews, and Roma, who spoke Romani and the languages of their neighbors.57 These groups lived together in both small villages and in larger towns. For example, in Felső-Bánya (“Upper Mine,” famed in the Middle Ages for its gold and silver deposits), the census counted 4,272 residents in the late eighteenth century. They spoke at least four languages (German, Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak) and attended three churches (Roman Catholic, Calvinist, and Lutheran); Armenian and Jewish merchants moved among them.58 Gvadányi too spoke several languages, and he had lived among Ruthenians, Romanians, and Slovaks. This was typical: Hungarian speakers were a minority in much of the Kingdom of Hungary, and so it was natural that a mix of peoples would also inhabit the count’s stories. Yet he wrote at a time when a growing number of educated Hungarians were demanding that Hungarian alone be the official language of administration, thereby replacing the more common Latin and German in courts, royal councils, and secondary schools. With this Gvadányi had no argument, and he called for Hungarian to be used in education and legislation, and for establishment

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of a scholarly academy modeled on the Royal Society in London or the Académie française in Paris. Unlike many other writers, however, Gvadányi did not link the wider use of Hungarian to a program of social, religious, or political reform. He conceded that Hungarian would facilitate communication among people of different classes, but his main argument for it was simply that it was unnatural for born Hungarians or for any other peoples not to speak their “mother tongue.”59 Nor did he make the case forcefully. In the end, the question of language was of secondary importance to Gvadányi. Not so the question of dress. In The Village Notary, Gvadányi had trained his guns on the foreign fashions of the Hungarian elite, and in later writings he continued to blaze away. He never missed an opportunity to praise Hungarian attire and urged both men and women to wear it. His target audience was the well-to-do, who could afford to choose between the Hungarian costume, with its lace and furs, and imported fashions, which were also expensive. Gvadányi offered a broadside of arguments: Hungarian clothes lasted a long time, they made men more manly and women more womanly, the king wore them in Hungary, and foreigners esteemed them. The underlying logic again was that it is unnatural for Hungarians to pretend to act as though they were French or English; clothes should openly display the wearer’s status, gender, and nationhood. In a 1790 publication, Gvadányi advocated sumptuary laws to uphold this dogmatic approach to fashion: “It is by their feathers that we recognize birds, / In clothes we know a person’s nation without words, / Like a seller of lemons no Magyar should appear / Our nation should pass a law on clothing this year.”60 Other Hungarian writers had championed national dress—women’s costumes, wrote one journalist, “are of more worth and signify more than all the trappings of the world”—but none with the intensity or influence of Gvadányi.61 To what end? Scholars have contended that Gvadányi picked the wrong target. That is, his obsession with Hungarian dress blinded him to more pressing constitutional and social questions, as well as to the importance of the Hungarian language, an issue of much greater consequence for the Kingdom of Hungary across the long nineteenth century. In Gvadányi’s defense, Viktor Julow perceptively observed that clothes have often taken on political meanings, as the sans-culottes showed in revolutionary France and young people demonstrated in the 1960s.62 In these cases, however, dress is part of an oppositional politics of the streets, whereas Gvadányi had little use for noisy political demonstrations.

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More compelling is the interpretation of critic Ferenc Bíró, who sees careful calculation in Gvadányi’s advocacy of Hungarian dress.63 According to Bíró, Gvadányi’s arguments for the national costume—that it was a symbol of the nobility’s wealth, social status, antiquity, and prominence within the Habsburg Monarchy—were arguments for the status quo. Support of the Hungarian language, in contrast, threatened to unsettle relations among the many ethnic groups within Hungary, as was already evident in 1790, when representatives of the Croatians, Romanians, and Serbians met to demand greater collective rights. By championing the Hungarian dress, Gvadányi could show his support for the Habsburgs, defend the nobility, and celebrate the mix of peoples in the Hungarian lands. Acceptance of diversity may explain the many positive depictions of non-Hungarians in Gvadányi’s works. In The Village Notary, Zajtai attends the funeral of a wealthy Serbian Orthodox magistrate in Buda. Gvadányi carefully sketches the scene: the sixteen priests, Orthodox burial rites, Serbian prayers, and torchlit procession to the cemetery. Throughout he sprinkles Serbian words across the page: Hoszpodi, pomiluj (Kyrie eleison or “Lord Have Mercy”), kalugyer (Greek Catholic priest), slusba (mass), and bozsenitza (roasted goat).64 In a sequel to The Village Notary, Gvadányi incorporates into his Hungarian-language text words of Romanian origin, most obviously málé (from mălai) for “cornmeal,” the staple of the diet of Romanians in Hungary. Careful descriptions of Slovak customs, costumes, and cuisine punctuate other works.65 Gypsy musicians are likewise stock characters, constructed out of negative stereotypes mixed with praise for their virtuosity. Gvadányi would have encountered many Roma, Romanians, and Slovaks in the northeastern counties.66 Few would have been his social equals, and most were poor shepherds, farm laborers, woodsmen, and craftsmen. But their inclusion in his writings suggested that Gvadányi saw other ethnic groups as a literary inspiration rather than as a national danger. For Gvadányi, religion was much more divisive than language. Gvadányi’s travels would have exposed him to people of many faiths. The northeastern counties included sizeable numbers of Roman Catholics (Gvadányi’s religion), Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholics (members of Eastern Orthodox churches that had accepted the authority of Rome in the 1600s and early 1700s), Calvinists, Lutherans, and Jews. Yet Gvadányi had been educated in Jesuit schools and remained a devout Catholic his entire life. In private he sometimes kept religion at arm’s length; one let-

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ter asked for news from a friend, with the caveat “only do not write about priestly matters, since the whole world is wholly bored with them.”67 In public, however, Gvadányi loudly defended the Roman Catholic church. When other writers began to call for greater privileges for the Protestant and Eastern Christian churches, Gvadányi bristled. Roman Catholicism, he argued, had been integral to the kingdom from its founding, Hungary’s rulers had always been Catholic, and Catholics formed the largest part of the population. He also claimed that Roman Catholicism “alone can lead to salvation.”68 Gvadányi must have known many Protestant noble families in northeastern Hungary, but this familiarity did little to blunt his defense of the Catholic church. Gvadányi reserved some of his harshest words for a barely visible minority: Jews. The northeastern counties had some of the largest Jewish populations in Hungary, but overall they accounted for fewer than 2 percent of all residents. By one count, Gvadányi’s home county of Borsod had just 461 Jewish households (compared with 26,727 Christian ones) and neighboring Szatmár County 524 (versus 26,343 Christian households).69 In Gvadányi’s writings, Jews take on an outsized importance, primarily as a source of crude humor. In a grim chapter in The Baths at Pöstény, a Jewish woman passes out in the water. Yelling and crying, her husband takes her away. The woman later dies, and the local Jews prepare to bury her. But soldiers staying at the baths have prepared a surprise: “Arriving at the grave they had a terrible scare,  /  For at the grave they found dead piglets waiting there.”70 Gvadányi offers no commentary on this scene of defilement. And he offers a very similar tale of pollution and Jewish ritual in an early scene in Paul Rontó.71 The title character, still a child but already a thief, decides to break into his Jewish neighbor’s house and steal money he suspects is hidden there. But Paul gets stuck in a window and is soon caught when the homeowners return early. They alert his parents, and his angry mother spanks him right there, with the result that Paul urinates all over the Jews’ walls. Gvadányi lingers over this detail: the Sabbath is approaching, leaving the family little time to clean the wall, and the Gypsy who comes to free Paul observes that the boy must have been eating rotten fish because of the terrible smell. Paul’s father later pays the neighbors to cover the damage, but the boy shows no remorse. In these scenes, Jews are depicted as ludicrous figures, shouting “vaj mir” and dancing about helplessly. Bíró’s claim that such scenes are tasteless but not intolerant seems hard to sustain.72 Rather, they reflect a hostility toward Jews that was common during

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this era and, importantly, show that Gvadányi’s sense of who “belonged” in the provinces had clear limits. In large measure, then, Gvadányi’s literary map confirms the diversity of northeastern Hungary, and thus his writings contain Hungarian craftsmen, German soldiers, Romanian priests, and Greek merchants. Gvadányi’s incorporation of these various groups does not just add ethnographic “color” to his map. It also indicates the patterns of cultural exchange and daily interaction that shaped life in Hungary’s small towns and villages. To be provincial, Gvadányi tells us, is to live among people who speak a mix of languages and profess a range of religions. That the exchanges among these groups were not always equal does not trouble Gvadányi, who, as a Hungarian-speaking nobleman and Roman Catholic, stood near the top of the pecking order. This confidence allowed him to lecture his fellow aristocrats on how they should dress and what they should eat. But many of his contemporaries were interested in matters that went far beyond costumes and cuisine: they wanted to introduce sweeping cultural, religious, and political reforms to Hungary. How Gvadányi would respond to these initiatives was far from certain.

“Let Women Write” “The affairs of this kingdom have not taken a more favourable turn towards tranquility since the last sitting of the Diet on the 18th of last month.”73 The understated language of the London Times in August 1790 captured a pivotal moment in Hungary. Revolution had broken out in France, and Belgium seethed in rebellion against its distant Habsburg rulers. Many observers feared (or hoped) that Hungary would soon follow. The Emperor Joseph II had died in February, and his younger brother and heir, Leopold, had not yet been crowned King of Hungary. In preparation for his coronation, Leopold had summoned the Hungarian Diet, which had not met for twenty-five years yet retained a strong sense of its privileges.74 The aristocrats, prelates, nobles, and burghers who assembled in June brought with them grievances accumulated over the past decade of Joseph’s reign. The largely Protestant gentry of northeastern Hungary played a leading role in the opposition. At their imitative, the Diet soon produced a list of demands: that the king reside for part of the year in Buda, the Diet’s consent be obtained for all taxes, and Hungarian troops be stationed at home. Some deputies also wanted greater rights for religious minorities

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(and for Protestants in particular) and wider use of the Hungarian language. The place of Hungary within the Habsburg Monarchy seemed to hang in the balance. Count Gvadányi was there, and he wrote a bad book about what he saw. His poem A Satirical-Critical Description of the Now Assembled Diet (A mostan folyo ország gyűlésének satyrico criticé való leírása) was written in 1790 and appeared anonymously in 1791 (only with Paul Rontó in 1793 would Gvadányi begin to attach his name to his publications). As in The Village Notary, Gvadányi used a simple observer—here a humble, sheepskin-clad nobleman from the countryside—to comment on the affairs of the rich and powerful. The narrator witnesses the opening of the Hungarian Diet in Buda, the deliberations over its address to the throne, the coronation of Leopold II in Pressburg, and the departure of the king for Vienna. A long hunting scene, originally written in 1788, fills the middle third of the poem. The good humor, effortless rhymes, and obvious expertise of this section have impressed critics: “Gvadányi has rarely written better,” said one. The unevenness of the other sections has not: “The description of the sessions is rather dry,” wrote one biographer, who noted that “the [narrator] has few ideas and grumbles humorlessly about fruitless debates.”75 Without detailed annotation, Julow concluded, A SatiricalCritical Description is “for the most part unreadable today.”76 Yet what Gvadányi thought about the events of 1790 matters for us. However tedious, his observations reveal a coherent political outlook. Speaking the thoughts of many noblemen, A Satirical-Critical Description demanded restoration of Hungary’s “ancient liberties and customs.” In practice, this meant that Hungary should again have a Palatine (the king’s representative in Hungary), the taxes set right, the laws improved, and trade promoted. The poem also called for Hungary to have its own army. That is, infantry and cavalry units raised in Hungary should be stationed in Hungary, paid for by Hungary, and have Hungarian as their language of command. Such demands put Gvadányi squarely in the ranks of reformers at the Diet. But unlike many of them, including many members from the northeastern counties, Gvadányi remained wholly devoted to the Habsburgs, and his poem’s narrator rehearsed the highlights of their long rule over Hungary. About the Empress Maria Theresa (ruled 1740–80), for example, he exclaims, “She was our mother, our queen, the nation recognized / While she sat on the throne, danger was minimized.”77 The coronation of her son Leopold II, which took place in Pressburg on November 11, 1790, brings the

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poem to a stirring end. The Diet stayed in session for another half year, and it produced seventy-four laws and established nine standing committees on trade, taxes, mines, and other topics central to the development of Hungary. All this happened without Gvadányi’s help. Like his narrator, Gvadányi thrilled in the festivities surrounding the coronation but then left Pressburg just days after the king did. For all his forceful opinions about the issues of the day, Gvadányi’s engagement with politics seemed to be very limited. Gvadányi was in many ways a fish out of water at the Hungarian Diet. It did not help that the count took a dim view of the day-to-day practice of politics. The narrator of A Satirical-Critical Description decries the Diet’s empty speeches, endless deliberations, loud shouting, and pointless bickering: “Because in great matters they just politicize, / This type does not construct but only criticize.”78 This was a satire, to be sure. But nothing about Gvadányi’s writings suggests that he possessed the qualities required for success in politics: patience for the long speeches characteristic of the era, a willingness to compromise, and a head for the coalition building that might turn budding demands into fully formed laws. Gvadányi’s family background also worked against him. As historian László Kósa has written, “because the breadth and sheer quantity of kinship ties was directly linked to social status and power, noble families would keep track of even distant collateral branches, down to cousins in the fifth or sixth degree.”79 Unlike many older and larger noble families, the Gvadányis did not have a dense network of relatives in one county or region. Nor had Gvadányi served in the county administration, which was both another source of status and patronage as well as the place where political careers in Hungary usually began. In 1790 the county nobility stepped onto the stage and pushed aside the aristocrats who had formerly dominated Hungarian political life.80 Muttering about this and other changes, Gvadányi bowed out of the Diet and returned to his provincial estate. To understand Gvadányi’s political importance, we need to leave behind the Diet and counties and venture into the world of print, where Gvadányi felt much more at home. Gvadányi emerged as a writer at a fortuitous moment, soon after Joseph II had lessened censorship across the Habsburg lands. In Hungary the number of printing presses, booksellers, libraries, and readers had grown rapidly in the last decades of the eighteenth century. The result was a profusion of publications, including pamphlets, prayer books, and poetry, as well as novels, newspapers, and nonfiction.81 Gvadányi did his part: he contributed to journals; published

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his correspondence; wrote biographies, military studies, and e­ ncyclopedias; and churned out the poems that rapidly made him one of the most popular writers in Hungary. Part of Gvadányi’s success, one suspects, lay in his ability to attract readers who otherwise might not read much. The provincial nobility may have preferred cards to books (as Kármán alleged), but they could see in Gvadányi’s works their world and its values, landscapes, language, and people. Print tightened Gvadányi’s many connections across provincial Hungary. His publisher, the Protestant Simon Péter Wéber, worked in the western towns of Pressburg and Komárom, where he published works in German, Hungarian, Latin, and the Slavic languages.82 Gvadányi’s literary correspondents were also provincials, and they included a retired sergeant, an ambitious student, and a poor seamstress, all of them residents of small towns. In his letters, Gvadányi holds forth on everything from German literature to the Russo-Turkish War. For the critic Bíró, the correspondence lacked literary merit and showed the “immobility and imperturbability of the eighteenth-century Hungarian provinces.”83 Perhaps. But the fact that Gvadányi and a student in northeastern Hungary could correspond about events from across Europe also shows the impressive geographic and social reach of the world of letters. Several of Gvadányi’s correspondents were provincial women. Few Hungarian women could read, and fewer still tried their hand at writing.84 In his memoirs, the writer Ferenc Kazinczy recalled that his grandmother, married to an estate owner and county official, could read but not write. By the late eighteenth century, however, an increasing number women bought and read books, subscribed to journals, and hosted literary salons. Male writers and publishers took notice, as did Gvadányi. Many of the female characters in his works are two-dimensional: flighty creatures of fashion, careworn mothers, flirtatious village girls, and devoted daughters. Yet the count also dedicated Paul Rontó to “the worthy women of the Hungarian homeland” and used his introduction to recall the “valor of our ancestors’ fair sex.”85 In his correspondence Gvadányi was more direct, and in a letter to a fellow aristocrat he conceded that “women have no difficulty with good judgment.”86 Writing to his seamstress protégée, the count expressed confidence that women would follow her example: “I will always applaud, when our poets multiply, / Soon many ladies will give poetry a try.”87 Closed-minded in so many areas, Gvadányi was open-minded when it came to reading and writing.

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Education was the key. Gvadányi applauded the spread of literacy, which was still uncommon in Hungary, even among the nobility. Importantly, it was highest in northeastern Hungary, with its many Protestants and small towns, and where an estimated 45 percent of noblemen could read.88 Gvadányi encouraged one ambitious young correspondent to study mathematics, Greek, theology, and ancient Jewish history, and to consider attending a foreign university such as Göttingen or Geneva.89 Gvadányi also laid stress on education in his fictional works. In Paul Rontó, for example, the protagonist is the son of prosperous peasant smallholders. Paul brags that his father knows how to read and write better than anyone else in the village (we have to take his word for it, since the father spends much of the first chapter in conversation with his dog and horse). Paul’s mother also has some education, and she teaches him the ABCs. From the start, Paul is too mischievous and restless to share his parents’ dream that he achieve greatness as a field marshal, chancellor, bishop, or county official. In Paul’s telling, his parents have a clear strategy: “Their purpose was such, that among the unlettered, / I should not remain, a peasant, rude and fettered. / So the two of them decided my fate for me, / An educated man would be made out of me.”90 A series of schools and misfortunes follow; things do not work out as planned. Gvadányi’s depiction of the gap between Paul’s misbehavior and his parents’ hope is poignant; what burdens the parents place on their only child! But the message of Paul Rontó is that literacy and learning can allow one to climb the social ladder, if only by a few rungs. Gvadányi’s vivid portraits of peasants and other commoners downplay innate social differences. Indeed, Gvadányi at times endorses the idea that all people are born with the same capabilities for moral understanding. In Paul Rontó, after describing how the protagonist has a schoolmate who steals and a tutor who drinks, Gvadányi offers this wisdom: “If the mentor himself is at times immoral, / All his instruction will be fruitless and fallow./ The heart of a child is like paint of whitish hue, / That absorbs every color, green, yellow, or blue.”91 Gvadányi’s words can be read as a warning to parents against the company their children keep. But they also share an affinity with the idea, closely associated with John Locke and widespread in the eighteenth century, that children’s minds were a “blank slate.”92 Thinkers across Europe used this idea to argue for key Enlightenment ideas, including natural rights and popular education. The point is not to turn Gvadányi into a disciple of Locke or a follower of the Enlightenment; he was neither. The purpose is to show that

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Gvadányi’s writings left open the door for provincials and “outsiders” (women, peasants, and soldiers) to enter the world of letters as readers and writers. Gvadányi’s emphasis on education likewise reflected the views of many reformers, who saw in schools a key to both individual and collective development. No less importantly, Gvadányi contributed to a boom in publishing that reverberated across Hungary. As elsewhere in Europe, print carried ideas and opinions across great distances, connected people who would otherwise not meet, and provided a forum for those excluded from positions of power. In this way Gvadányi contributed, however modestly and unwittingly, to the emergence of a realm of informal politics in the provinces—and in the process helped create a forum in which ideas and opinions on myriad subjects could be aired, circulated, and formed. But informal politics cannot exist in isolation. The actions of royal officials, county leaders, and the Hungarian Diet—the pillars of “formal politics” in Hungary—also contributed to the development of informal politics.93 Gvadányi’s indifference to the Diet, for example, meant he did not participate in debates over laws that might have sustained the world of letters through expanded schooling, improved communications, and lighter censorship. It is no small irony that Gvadányi, who placed so much hope in the royal administration, had to do battle with its censors in the late 1790s when he tried to publish his multivolume encyclopedia of world history.94 By this time, however, the political climate in Hungary had begun to change, and the thaw that had allowed Gvadányi’s works to flower had given way to chillier conditions for writers. All was not lost: works in economics, linguistics, folklore, and other fields continued to appear in Hungary even as war raged across Europe. By 1800 the possibilities that Gvadányi had glimpsed (print as a bridge across great distances, education as a means of social mobility, and women as readers and writers) were firmly established, but so too were the obstacles (poor transportation, low level of education, uncertain high-level politics).

“Good Old Gvadányi” It is difficult to imagine Count József Gvadányi as anything but old. He belongs to that small circle of artists whose creativity seems to burst forth fully formed late in life. Gvadányi was sixty-one when his first publication appeared, and he continued writing through his death at the age of seventy-six. In letters from this period, the worries of old age weigh on

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Gvadányi. He put a brave face on it, grumbling that although his doctor had prescribed an “un-Hungarian” diet of meatless soup and tea, he dreamed of getting better so that he could return to wine, stuffed cabbage, and his pipe. Yet old age brought moments of serenity as well: “There is nothing on earth more beautiful to me,  / What besides flowers could have greater majesty? / In flowers the works of nature I have explored, / And above all marveled at the works of our Lord.”95 The count spent his last years as he had spent his first, in a small town in the Hungarian provinces. József Gvadányi died on December 21, 1801. He had been seriously ill and bedridden for some time. Obituaries appeared in the leading Hungarian literary journals. They noted his contribution to Hungarian literature, amusing verses, and use of material drawn from the common people.96 One journal published a letter Gvadányi had written just weeks before his death to an old army friend in Tokaj. In it Gvadányi stated that he had made his peace with God and was ready for his end; with pathos (and perhaps a wink) the count had signed his name, “Your humble servant and friend, Count József Gvadányi, a General languishing in the shadows of death.”97 Equally moving were the many poems written by his admirers and published in the months following his death. These poems lacked Gvadányi’s nimble rhymes, but they paid homage to his beloved Alexandrine meter and honored his affection for the classics. Read one: “The circle of muses in these days surely grieves,  /  In place of their laurels they now bear cypress wreathes.”98 Gvadányi’s name and reputation did not long survive him. His wife Katalin Szaleczki died just two years later, and their daughter soon followed. The count’s only son, also a cavalry officer, died childless in 1828, bringing the Hungarian branch of the Gvadányi family to an end.99 Gvadányi’s two great works, The Village Notary and Paul Rontó, remained in print. In the 1840s, the young poet Sándor Petőfi wrote “Good Old Gvadányi” (A régi jó Gvadányi), which imitated perfectly the count’s meter and style. On travels through northeastern Hungary Petőfi passed through the village of Nagy-Peleske, which Gvadányi had made famous as the home of his notary. Petőfi reflected: “Lord, what I would give to have written The Village Notary! I would be satisfied if my works gave as many pleasurable hours to others as I have had from Gvadányi.”100 Petőfi added that the public had forgotten Gvadányi (and mistakenly predicted that they would forget his own poetry). Petőfi was right about Gvadányi: poetry and politics in Hungary had passed him by. Although biographies in the late nineteenth cen-

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tury secured Gvadányi’s place in the Hungarian literary canon, his image became frozen. He was a “guardian of tradition,” a tribune of an unchanging “Old Hungary.” The writer Dezső Kosztolányi once warned against treating Gvadányi with “pious condescension.”101 With Gvadányi, if we look for a hidebound conservative, hostile to all change and uninterested in anything beyond his corner of the provinces, we will find it. In many ways, Gvadányi in print was that. But the old count offers much more. As this chapter has shown, Gvadányi’s writings created an enduring literary map of northeastern Hungary. The count would have us believe that it was thrown together around a campfire after a day of hunting and riding. To our eyes, it may appear faded and dusty from disuse, much of its content unrecognizable. If we pause over it, however, we can see the prominent features of northeastern Hungary, from its historic towns and confident commoners to its good wine and aspiring authors. Gvadányi used humor to lighten the darker hues of provincial life: the feudal system, infant mortality, and bad roads. Gvadányi was supportive of upward social mobility through education and sympathetic to the diverse peoples who lived in the northeastern counties. His acceptance had limits, and Jews in particular have no place in Gvadányi’s literary landscapes. This map, in short, boldly proclaims Gvadányi’s pride in the provinces, even as its details hint at problems faced by the residents of this region. Woven into this map is what we might call the “myth of the provinces.”102 That is, it shows the provinces not as they are but as they might or should be. Several aspects of this myth stand out. First, Gvadányi pushes back against the notion that rural Hungary is economically backward. He extols the simple comforts of the countryside and the land and people that have produced them. Later chapters (“the engineer,” “the tobacconist”) will explore in greater depth the idea that Hungary was a land of great economic potential. Second, Gvadányi upholds the view that Hungary’s various ethnic groups lived in relative harmony. Like many other writers, Gvadányi accepts that there is a clear hierarchy of groups, with Hungarians at the top. But his characters take pride in knowing multiple languages, and Gvadányi himself worked Romanian, Serbian, and German words into his poems, a small gesture that suggests larger possibilities of cultural borrowing and exchange. At the same time, Gvadányi’s “myth of the provinces” counters the view, articulated at the start of this chapter by Kármán, that the provinces were an economic morass and an ethnic muddle, out

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of which little good could come. This too was a myth, and it would prove to be a powerful one, widely and loudly repeated over the course of the nineteenth century and beyond. Most importantly perhaps, Gvadányi put the northeastern counties at the center of his literary map. The twin towns of Buda and Pest occupy an ambiguous place, and Vienna is barely visible. This “imagined geography” explains in part why Gvadányi’s literary map is, from our vantage point, so disorienting, like the south-up maps of the world that upend our expectations. But this geography made sense to Gvadányi, who spent the first part of his life in the region and the last part writing about it. In one of his later works, a sequel to The Village Notary, the aged Zajtai brags that he has thousands of friends across the northeastern counties: “To bring them all here at one time would be in vain, / So many the entire village cannot contain.”103 It is hard not to suspect that Gvadányi had himself in mind when he wrote these words.

2 The Merchant His imperial-royal Majesty has, in the following decree, announced the following regulations . . . to bring to a halt the continued immigration into Hungary and its attached provinces of so many foreign Jews, who have for some time accumulated there. Imperial-royal decree issued in Vienna, 18061 From the guidance of sober intelligence as well as from my own experience, I feel wholeheartedly that Jehovah does not take notice of religious differences but rejoices in my good works for Christians as much as when I do good deeds for my own confession. Last will and testament of Ráfáel Kästenbaum, 18252

HUNGARY TODAY is rarely thought of as a nation of immigrants. The label is used to describe Canada, France, the United States, and other countries, but not Hungary. At first glance, Hungary seems to lack the two ingredients needed to earn this designation: a critical mass of immigrants and openness to the idea. In fact, the number of foreign-born residents of Hungary has been steadily rising, and it recently surpassed 4 percent of the total population, putting it on par with countries such as Argentina, the Czech Republic, Finland, and South Africa.3 Evidence of these newcomers is scarce in the countryside but readily apparent in Budapest, with its Turkish restaurants, Chinese trading companies, and Romanian construction workers. Yet neither the Hungarian population nor the government has as yet embraced immigration, often viewing it as a regrettable side effect of European Union membership and global capitalism. Giving voice to these concerns, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated at a summit held in 2011 that “the EU should not build its future on immigration” and instead called for policies to support families and, it was understood, increase the nativeEuropean birth rate.4

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This was not always the case. At key moments in the past, large numbers of immigrants have come to Hungary. The expulsion of the Ottomans from Hungarian territory in the 1680s created one of these moments, and in the century that followed outsiders poured into the kingdom, drawn by cheap land, low taxes, and a degree of religious toleration.5 Many immigrants came from surrounding lands: Galicia (in the Kingdom of Poland), Wallachia and Serbia (in the Ottoman Empire), and Moravia (in the Austrian half of the Monarchy). Recruiting campaigns also drew hundreds of thousands of settlers from the southern German lands, where peace had produced a surplus population of younger sons and daughters with few prospects at home. The added promise of cash, cows, and churches often set entire families in motion. The impact was significant: after stagnating for more than two centuries, the population of Hungary more than doubled over the course of the 1700s, from several million at the beginning of the century to an estimated 9.5 million at its end. Villages sprang up on the central lowlands and southern marches, which now flourished after long years of warfare. Commerce blossomed in the hands of merchants from the Ottoman and Polish lands—Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and Serbs. Then, as now, the idea of immigration proved controversial. The royal officials and Hungarian landlords who sponsored large-scale projects of resettlement wanted settlers who would work hard and pay taxes; they were flexible when it came to the languages the migrants spoke and the religions they practiced. But the immigration of some groups raised alarms, as the 1806 decree on Jews makes clear (the decree proved largely ineffectual, but the anxieties it expressed were real). Over the course of the nineteenth century, moreover, as nationalism exercised greater influence on the educated classes, these earlier population movements took on different meanings. For some Hungarian observers, the influx of people in earlier centuries amounted to little more than a program of “colonization.” Writing in 1910, the historian Henrik Marczali saw a darker political purpose behind the new German and Serbian settlements: “They were organized by the Government at ­Vienna with the open or covert purpose of eventually using them as ­levers for overthrowing the Hungarian constitution.”6 The interwar historian Gyula Szekfű allowed that landlords’ initiatives and spontaneous movements had accounted for much of the immigration, and he also noted that German settlers had injected new life into Hungary. Yet he cautioned that the immigration of Romanians and Serbs had created a “dangerous situation.”7 More recent historical works are quicker to point out the overall benefits of mass

The Merchant  43

immigration, but here too one can hear warnings that the changed ethnic composition of the kingdom created insoluble long-term problems.8 This chapter takes as its subject an immigrant who came to Hungary in the eighteenth century. Ráfáel Kästenbaum was a poor Jew from Poland who crossed into Hungary as a child, remained in the north­eastern counties, and in time achieved success as a merchant, moneylender, and leaseholder. In spite of his achievements, Kästenbaum remains a shadowy figure; only a handful of documents give evidence about his life, and few are unimpeachable. The recollections of Izsák Rosenmeyer, a language teacher and textbook writer from the same region, are the most detailed, but these appeared in 1861, more than three decades after Kästenbaum’s death. The first part of the chapter nonetheless pulls together these sources to tell Kästenbaum’s story. To hear Kästenbaum’s final wishes—if not, one suspects, his exact words—we can turn to his will, a six-page document written four years before his death.9 An analysis of it forms the middle part of the chapter. Finally, by looking at what happened to his bequests we can understand the results of his generosity, as well as the obstacles that stood in the way of the changes he had hoped for. The life of Ráfáel Kästenbaum can help us understand how people with very different backgrounds and social positions intersected in the small towns and villages of northeastern Hungary. In particular, Kästenbaum’s story encourages us to think about relations between Jews and Christians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Kästenbaum’s will stated that “Jehovah does not take notice of religious differences,” but the residents of Habsburg Hungary certainly did, and we should too. This compels us to examine everyday life and to imagine how the immigrant Kästenbaum interacted with the settled Jewish and Christian populations. But it also encourages us to look at wider issues, including education and Jewish emancipation. The story of Ráfáel Kästenbaum is a reminder that dramatic change can sometimes come from unexpected quarters—and in this case from a Jewish immigrant in a remote Hungarian village in the provinces.10

The Galician Immigrant Ráfáel Kästenbaum was born around 1750 in Galicia, then part of the Kingdom of Poland.11 Like Ireland and southern Italy, Galicia produced streams of emigrants, many of them Jewish. Starting in the 1700s, Galitzianer left this densely populated area for Russia, Ukraine, Austria, and later the

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United States. Many also went to Hungary, which lay to the south of G ­ alicia and shared a long border with it. In 1772 the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa claimed Galicia in the First Partition of Poland, and in the years that followed she and her son Joseph II worked to integrate this new territory into the empire and to will it into a coherent province.12 In a series of decrees issued in the 1780s, Joseph sought to transform administrative, economic, and religious relations not just in Galicia but throughout the empire as a whole. Hoping to make his Jewish subjects more useful and productive, Joseph II issued Toleration Acts for Hungary in 1783 and for Galicia in 1789. These and other decrees allowed Jews to settle in most cities and towns, encouraged Jews to practice crafts formerly closed to them, permitted Jews to attend university, and called on communities to establish German-language schools. They also restricted the use of Yiddish and Hebrew, barred Jews from leasing taverns (a traditional source of income), and ordered Jews to shave their beards. Several of these requirements were soon revoked, and more lapsed with Joseph’s death in 1790. Yet the net effect was to normalize and to some extent raise the status of Jews in the Habsburg lands. In Hungary, the Diet confirmed the substance of Joseph’s decrees in 1791. Perhaps unwittingly, Joseph II’s reforms made it easier for Jews to leave Galicia. Even before Galicia became Habsburg territory, the border between Poland and Hungary had been porous. The memoirs of the Galician merchant Ber of Bolechów noted that he had family on both sides of the Carpathians and that moving between Poland and Hungary was unexceptional, if hazardous due to the high mountains, bad roads, brazen robbers, and grasping customs officers.13 Over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, an increasing number of Galician Jews moved south to settle in Hungary. The actual numbers were modest: some twenty-five thousand Jews came from Galicia in the 1700s, and a further forty-five thousand joined them in the early 1800s.14 Too often viewed in isolation, this immigration has to be understood in the context of wider movements of people from across Europe into Hungary during this time. From this perspective, the influx of Jews from Poland was marginal. Yet resentment and fear of Galician Jews was widespread among Christians in Hungary from the start.15 One of these Galician migrants was a boy named Ráfáel Kästenbaum. We know that he was born into a poor Jewish family in the vicinity of Nowy Sącz, a small town in Galicia near the Hungarian border. Around 1760 Ráfáel moved more than one hundred miles south to Hungary, where

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he remained the rest of his life. Whether Kästenbaum came alone, with relatives, or with his family is uncertain; his will indicates that he had six siblings (Efraim, Joel, Aron, Luttya, Rozália, and Peslya). Most seem to have resided in Hungary, but at least one still lived in Galicia in the 1820s.16 Kästenbaum eventually settled in Zemplén County, whose southern lowlands slowly became foothills and then mountains as it stretched to the Polish border in the north. An eighteenth-century geographer noted that the northern part of the county was so wild and barren that it made the more fertile south “a paradise in comparison.”17 A more optimistic observer later claimed that Zemplén was “one of the most beautiful, largest, and happiest” counties in Hungary, adding that the mountainous north had a harsh but healthy climate; he also emphasized the fecundity of the southern hills and lowlands, with their famous vineyards, wheat fields, and fruit orchards.18 The county seat of Sátoraljaújhely held crowded grain markets that attracted buyers and sellers from across the region. Wine was the most valuable and coveted commodity exported from Zemplén County. For immigrants from Galicia, this part of the Kingdom of Hungary must have looked a lot like Poland. Most obviously, Zemplén was overwhelmingly rural, with noble landowners lording over their peasants and dominating the county administration. There were many small villages and few sizeable towns: in the 1780s only twenty-eight settlements had more than a thousand residents and none (including the county seat) had more than five thousand. Like the region Kästenbaum had left, ­Zemplén County also had great religious and ethnic diversity: a sizeable number of Protestants, Jews, Roman Catholics, and Greek Catholics lived in this region, and the languages they spoke included German, Hungarian, R ­ uthenian, Slovak, and Yiddish. Finally, this was a rapidly changing society. Over the course of the eighteenth century the population had more than doubled, and economic opportunities had grown apace. In his youth Ráfáel was poor. One contemporary recalled that the young Kästenbaum had peddled goods door to door for pennies, which in turn accustomed him to going hungry and wearing ragged clothes, habits he maintained into his old age. Historian Michael Silber offers a vivid description of what peddling entailed: At the lowest rung of the itinerant traders was the so-called “bundle Jew” (Pinkel-Jude or dorsarius) who wandered from village to village chased by dogs and stoned by wanton youths, a heavy knapsack on his back, selling peasants such knickknacks as rouge, ribbons, needles, threads, umbrellas, hats, scissors, and utensils, while collecting old

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clothes (for the Flickschneiders in town, tailors who specialized in mending and patching), small animal hides (especially rabbit skins, which came to be identified with Jews), feathers and other farmyard surplus, all of which would otherwise go to waste.19

Christian villagers viewed these peddlers with a mix of curiosity and mistrust, eagerness and resentment. The Slovak writer Martin Kukučín described these fraught encounters in an 1883 short story: “For his profit and to increase his sales, [the peddler] bore the villagers’ gibes, practical jokes, ridicule, and tricks; he had even a forgiving smile for them when he had to bear the worse degradation. . . . He understood his vocation, he had studied every detail of it.”20 After a few years of peddling Kästenbaum secured a more settled position. Rosenmeyer states that Kästenbaum worked as a farm servant, adding nostalgically, “in the good old days, when Hungary was still regarded as the land of milk and honey . . . servants ate at the same table as their masters, and differences of rank were not so well defined as today; at that time it was not unusual for Kästenbaum to think of setting up his own household.”21 How Kästenbaum acquired the needed capital is unknown, although it seems safe to assume that Kästenbaum possessed as a young man the qualities he exhibited later in life: thrift, industry, good health, and an eye for opportunity. Literacy may not have been one of his skills. Surviving documents show that he could write his name in Yiddish. Rosenmeyer notes that “he could barely read and write,” which presumably means that Kästenbaum was not literate in German or in Hungarian, the main languages of administration and commerce. Nor did Kästenbaum know much Hebrew; he could recite daily prayers but no more.22 In this Kästenbaum was not unusual: no more than 15–20 percent of village elites (schoolteachers, clergy, and communal leaders) could sign their names.23 The literacy rate was higher among Jews, and yet higher for more successful merchants, but still low. Kästenbaum nonetheless proved adept at navigating the multilingual world of Zemplén County. Striking out on his own, Kästenbaum settled in the village of Pelejte (today Plechotice in Slovakia), located in the middle of Zemplén County. There he spent years and then decades, and passed from youth to middle age. Pelejte was an old village with seventy houses and more than six hundred residents, about the same as it has today. A military survey from the 1780s described its soggy fields, surrounding oak forests, and roads that were passable in good weather but “bottomlessly muddy” after heavy

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rain.24 A dozen or so noble families owned the land; the villagers who tilled it were mostly Slovak-speaking Roman Catholics, who had a new stone church but little else of value. The population also included smaller numbers of Greek Catholics and Calvinists. A handful of Jews lived in Pelejte; the 1811 census lists fourteen Jewish taxpayers.25 This was barely enough for a minyan, the quorum required by Jewish law for public worship, and otherwise Pelejte seems to have had no Jewish institutions. In Hungary, 60 percent of Jews lived in scattered villages, and the 1811 census lists many settlements in Zemplén with just two or three Jewish taxpayers. As Silber has noted, for immigrants from Moravia or Galicia, who left behind a dense Jewish population and established communities, much of Hungary offered a “desolate Jewish environment.”26 Relative isolation made marriage all the more important. A wife meant companionship, children, and capital in the form of a dowry. Kästenbaum did not hurry to marry, and by the time he did, he was no longer young. But his new wife was: she was the daughter of a Jewish leaseholder in Zemplén County. Rosenmeyer tartly describes her as “young, but not very worthy of love.”27 When no children came from the marriage, Kästenbaum divorced her, presumably after ten years in accordance with Jewish practice. Kästenbaum married again—far too quickly, Rosenmeyer tells us. The second wife was a better catch: the daughter of a local rabbi, she was young, beautiful, and intelligent. But once more no children arrived, and Kästenbaum grew jealous of his vivacious and flirtatious wife. Rosenmeyer even imagines a scene in which Kästenbaum, lame and old, watches his wife dance with handsome young men. Kästenbaum soon banned her from his house and then divorced her. He took a housekeeper and did not marry again. Rosenmeyer states that Kästenbaum fell into a deep sadness that lasted until the end of his days. All this time Kästenbaum lived very simply. It started with his clothes, which one source describes as “ragged” and another as “half Polish” peasant dress.28 His house too was that of a well-to-do peasant, with dirt floors and simple furniture. Kästenbaum had one steward to help him but otherwise managed all his affairs himself. The sources agree that Kästenbaum worked tirelessly. As an observant Jew, however, Kästenbaum did not work on Saturday. Rosenmeyer notes that these must have been the “most painful hours” for Kästenbaum. In Rosenmeyer’s words, “anyone who knows the happy domestic lives of this region’s Jewish landlords and leaseholders, who has seen their model farms, who has watched their busy activity, will

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join us in feeling sorry for Kästenbaum and will acknowledge that more is required for earthly happiness than riches alone.”29 Most residents of Zemplén, including Kästenbaum’s fellow Jews, did not show the same sympathy. Kästenbaum’s success and wealth created envy, and his simplicity and loneliness gave birth to stories, which locals wove together out of older Jewish folk tales. In them Kästenbaum was neither a successful immigrant nor a piteous eccentric but instead a stereotypical Jewish miser. One told of how an illness took Kästenbaum to the doctor. When the doctor prescribed a bottle of Tokaj wine (at that time widely used as a medicinal drink), Kästenbaum supposedly balked at the price of a full bottle and asked the doctor whether just half would restore his health. Another story was set at the weekly market. To everyone’s amazement Kästenbaum arrived with two chickens tied to the horns of two powerful oxen. Mysteriously, he asked an outrageous sum—several hundred florins—for the poultry, and only a few pennies more for the chicken and oxen together. He refused to sell the oxen alone. When people asked about his curious methods, Kästenbaum is said to have replied: “A few weeks ago, as I lay dangerously ill, I made a vow that if the good Lord restored my health, then I would give the price of my two most beautiful oxen to the poor. But since a few pennies are enough for those lazybones [i.e., the poor], I can best fulfill my vow [and still make a profit] with this double sale.”30 Rosenmeyer defends Kästenbaum against charges of miserliness. He describes the old man’s deep loneliness and stubborn independence, which showed itself in Kästenbaum’s refusal to accept any assistance from relatives. Rosenmeyer does not deny Kästenbaum’s eccentricity: his insistence, for example, on walking rather than taking a coach from the county seat to his home village—a journey of nearly twenty miles (a seven-hour walk)! But this was an era when most people traveled by foot, and Kästenbaum’s trips pale in comparison to those of his contemporary David Mandelli, a brilliant philologist and mathematician, who went on foot from Hungary to Berlin, and from Berlin to Paris.31 They joined many other people on the road. In places like northeastern Hungary, people routinely lived and died where they had been born; they occupied small worlds bound by their villages, fields, churches, and families. And yet, as historian Catherine Evtuhov has observed, for much of this era “goods had to be physically transported in order to be saleable,” which impelled peasants and craftsmen to local markets and quarterly fairs in nearby cities.32 Others pursued itinerant professions: the Slovak

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peasants of northeastern Hungary, for example, engaged in many occupations—shepherds, basket weavers, woodsmen, shinglers, and ­raftsmen— that involved long-distance travel. A staple figure of the provinces was the wandering “Slovak tinker” (the drótos tót in Hungarian or simple drotár in Slovak): “Having seen him once,” reported a later observer, “you will always recognize him by his picturesque hat, long-hair, and mantle. With his rolls of wire and mouse-traps slung over his back, the tinker is a tireless trotter who feels himself at home everywhere.”33 In a short story about a luckless third son who has no prospects in his home village, Martin Kukučín documented the economic forces and family strategies that forced some young men and women to take to the road. In this case, the road leads from one part of the provinces to another, from the known world to an unfamiliar place: “Today before evening they would put him on the train which would take him God knows where, uphill and downhill, until he reached Nyíregyháza. Where was that village, or is it a city? Far away—very far.”34 Such sentiments would have been familiar to Kästenbaum, the onetime immigrant, peddler, and trader. As a lonely Jew in Zemplén County, then, Kästenbaum was a marginal figure in a marginal group in a marginal region. He was the opposite of Count Gvadányi, a Roman Catholic aristocrat confident in his exercise of power and privilege. Yet the curmudgeonly merchant and the convivial count had one thing in common: a deep affection for their home counties. Why this lonesome Jew would feel such a strong connection with an institution that served the interests of the local nobility is somewhat mysterious. To understand Kästenbaum more fully, we need to look closely at Zemplén County in the early nineteenth century.

“The Rich Jew from Pelejte” Ráfáel Kästenbaum died a rich man. How did he make so much money? His will spoke of his “meager accomplishments,” and one local history simply observed that he “scraped together” money over the course of his long life.35 Other sources point to more specific sources of income. As we have already seen, Kästenbaum began as a peddler. He then moved into agriculture, leasing lands from local noblemen and raising crops with hired or obligatory labor. Kästenbaum later owned an inn in the county seat, where he sold alcohol that he had distilled from grains (for vodka) and fruit (for brandy). Finally, Kästenbaum also provided commercial and

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financial services to noblemen in Zemplén County, transporting and selling their crops, and lending them money at interest. Surviving documents give glimpses of Kästenbaum’s achievements. Court records from 1808 already referred to him as “the rich Jew from ­Pelejte.”36 The Napoleonic Wars had brought wealth to many traders in agricultural goods, who fed the Monarchy’s armies and allies. But Kästenbaum thrived even when the economy slumped following the end of hostilities in 1815. A contract from two years later shows that he distilled and sold large quantities of brandy and vodka.37 Such deals were risky: in the same year that he signed the contract, the local authorities responded to widespread hunger in Zemplén County by banning distillation of alcohol from grain; surviving documents do not reveal whether Kästenbaum knowingly sidestepped these regulations. What is clear is that by the 1820s Kästenbaum, now in his seventies, was one of the wealthier Jews in the county. According to an 1821 tax assessment, Kästenbaum owed 204 Rhenish florins, which far exceeded the one or two florins most Jewish leaseholders had to pay. His assessment accounted for nearly 10 percent of the district’s taxes and made him the district’s third-highest taxpayer, out of a total of around three hundred leaseholders.38 Kästenbaum’s success was unusual, but the range of occupations he pursued was not. Shut out of the craft guilds, excluded from the state and county administration, and in many places barred from directly working the land, Hungarian Jews had limited options to make a living. Particularly in rural areas, Jews did what Kästenbaum did: they peddled, worked for noblemen, kept inns, and lent money.39 For most this was a precarious existence, even in the best of times. In places like Zemplén County, Jews had to navigate a world that promised opportunity and uncertainty in equal measure. We can grasp the meaning of Kästenbaum’s achievements if we step back and examine Jews’ relations with the local authorities, the county nobility, and the wider population of Zemplén County.40 The northeastern borderlands attracted many newcomers across the eighteenth century. Like Kästenbaum, a growing number of Jews decided to try their luck in Zemplén.41 Before the mid-1700s Jews had been a marginal presence. Several hundred Jews had lived in scattered settlements in the north, near the border to Galicia. In the decades that followed they moved south and increased in numbers, with the result that by the 1780s more than six thousand Jews lived in Zemplén. Yet Jews remained a small minority, just over 3 percent of the total population. In the larger villages and towns, they

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established synagogues, burial societies, schools, and autonomous communities. Zemplén, moreover, was one of the few Hungarian counties that permitted Jews to own property; the census of 1771, for example, listed a Rabbi Moshe Wahl Littman, who lived in a house that he owned. Jews in turn demonstrated their loyalty at moments of crisis, and during the Napoleonic Wars provided badly needed horses, provisions, and cash to the nearly three thousand noblemen from Zemplén County who rode off to war. In the same spirit, Kästenbaum in his will thanked “the honorable noble county [of Zemplén], in whose bosom and under whose gracious protection I was fortunate to have lived for more than 40 years.”42 Not all Jews in Zemplén enjoyed the same good fortune. Most were desperately poor, and all were heavily taxed.43 Like Jews in other parts of the Monarchy, Hungarian Jews had to pay the so-called Toleration Tax, a special assessment introduced by Maria Theresa (Jews thus called it m ­ alke-geld, or queen’s money). Historian Michael Silber has pointed out that Hungarian Jews contributed much less per capita than their brethren in Galicia and Moravia, but Jews in Hungary still resented paying this on top of the many other taxes and levies they owed to the royal treasury, the county, and local noblemen.44 At the same time, even with the reforms of Joseph II and the Hungarian Diet’s law of 1791, Jews lacked basic rights, beginning with the right of residence in Hungary. In 1807 a zealous official in Zemplén County, responding to orders from above to reduce the number of poor Jews, rapidly deported eighty-three families—around 360 people—from the county seat and surrounding district to Galicia. A ­ lthough many of the adults had been born outside Hungary, most of the deportees had lived in Zemplén for more than a decade. Indeed, some had been born in other parts of Hungary. The deported included rabbis, glovers, musicians, tutors, tailors, tavern keepers, and merchants (Kästenbaum, who lived outside this district, seems to have avoided deportation). The 1811 census, which list the names of seventy-four Jewish taxpayers, suggests that Jews rapidly returned to the town.45 But the episode underscored how precarious the Jews’ existence in Zemplén County could be. Kästenbaum had good relations with the Hungarian nobility, on whom so much depended. Both individually (as landowners) and collectively (as officials of Zemplén County), noblemen were crucial to the financial and physical security of Jews. Noble landowners invited Jews to settle on their property, rented them houses, and then leased them mills, tolls, taverns, and farmland. The wine merchant Ber of Bolechów recorded

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many cordial business dealings with individual noblemen in Zemplén. Nobles sometimes lent Jews land for schools or petitioned the royal authorities to lessen the tax burden on Jews—if only because they feared that Jews would return to Galicia or not be able pay local taxes. Historian Meir Sas also records an usual incident in the town of Szerencs, whose Jewish community “sought the intercession of the authorities to compel their members to attend synagogue services regularly.”46 That Jews would ask Christian officials to intervene in local religious practices is evidence of the close relationship between Jewish leaders and the county nobility. But what nobles could give, they could also take away. Jews’ fortunes could change overnight, depending on the whims of officials and landowners. In Zemplén, the county authorities repeatedly banned Jews from owning vineyards in the Tokaj region and from making or trading aszú, the best-known and most valuable Tokaj wine. Between 1791 and 1819 the county issued sixteen decrees that circumscribed Jews’ participation in the production and sale of Tokaj. In these decrees, the county nobility loudly defended its feudal privileges, which it equated with the “national interest” and claimed to be the same as those of “poor, taxpaying people.” The larger issue was free trade in agricultural products, something most noble landowners viewed with anxiety and suspicion. The county would eventually bow to market forces, and from 1841 onward it allowed Jews to participate fully in the production, sale, and trade in Tokaj wine.47 But nobles were not always so ready to give way, and in times of crisis authorities readily singled out Jews. When famine broke out in Zemplén, as it did periodically, county officials slapped special levies on Jews, banned production of alcohol, closed the Galician border to Jewish traders, and issued warnings about price gouging.48 Although such measures indirectly revealed the importance of Jewish merchants like Kästenbaum in the local economy, they again highlight the vulnerability and visibility of Jews in Zemplén County. Like many Jews, Kästenbaum lived among Christian villagers. The attitudes of these peasants and craftsmen must have strengthened Jews’ sense of isolation and defenselessness. Some evidence does suggest that Christians accepted Jews as part of the fabric of society. Ber of Bolechów had many unremarkable interactions with peasants in Hungary, and even the remarkable ones were often positive, including an episode in which he purchased two enormous pike. When he arrived in one village, the peasants greeted him and said “The luck of the fish will bring you luck.”49 Further evidence can be found in a widely known expression in Hungarian that has its origins

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in Zemplén County: “I reached the same place as the Jew from Mád” (Ott vagyok, ahol a mádi zsidó). In one version of the story, a secondhand clothes dealer from the village of Mád set off for a nearby town. When he stopped to light his pipe, a strong wind forced him to turn around. Now happily puffing away, the man continued on his way, without, however, turning back around. When he arrived at what he thought was his destination, the Jew marveled at how much the houses, shops, and synagogue resembled those of his hometown! But when he reached his own house, he soon realized his mistake. The expression, used to convey resignation, doubt, or humor, thus means “We’re right back where we started from.”50 It appears on old postcards (Figure 2) and in anthologies of Hungarian sayings. More to the point: its use among both Christians and Jews hints at a cross-fertilization of cultures in places like Zemplén, with their mix of languages, religions, and customs. But folk culture and village life in Zemplén were not always so receptive to Jews, something Kästenbaum would have experienced firsthand.

FIGURE 2.   “Greetings from Mád. I reached the same place as the Jew from Mád” reads the printed text of a postcard. With a scrawled word and an arrow, the sender has joked “That’s me!” and identified himself with the unimposing wagoner. The good humor of the postcard is noteworthy, given that it is dated July 22, 1939—just months after Hungary passed the Second Jewish Law, which was modeled on Nazi Germany’s racial laws and placed severe restrictions on Jews. source: Ferenc II Rákóczi County Library (II. Rákóczi Ferenc Megyei Könyvtár), Miskolc. Reprinted with permission.

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Holidays, food, housing, and family size separated Jews from their Christian neighbors. In folktales collected from an elderly Hungarian cowhand in 1964, Jews menacingly pursue the Virgin Mary and Christ through fields and forests that closely resemble those of his native Zemplén County.51 The official county history, which was published in 1901 and otherwise stressed the peaceful coexistence of the many religious and ethnic groups in ­Zemplén, documented the Hungarian peasants’ many derogatory names for Jews, including “trouble bringer” (bajnakjött) in one village, “cold soup” (hidegleves) in another, and “lame” (kutyaláb) in a third.52 Such names reaffirmed the Jews’ status as unwelcome outsiders. Jews were easy targets of violence. In 1831, when famine and cholera struck Zemplén County, terrified peasants rose en masse against both their landlords and local Jews, whom they accused of poisoning wells and receiving money for every infected person. In one small settlement close to where Kästenbaum had lived, peasants rounded up and tortured Jews; in another neighboring village peasants tied up Jews, ripped out their beards strand by strand, and prepared to burn them on bonfires before a local official intervened.53 Only the arrival of soldiers restored calm to the county. When John Paget traveled through the region four years later, noblemen readily told stories of the terrible “barbarism of the people”; yet the many gallows he saw also made Paget wonder about the “barbarism of the judges,” who had ruthlessly hanged peasants in the wake of the violence.54 When Kästenbaum, in his will, mentioned the “gracious protection” of Zemplén County, he was telling only half the story. Missing is a sense of the danger that surrounded him and his fellow Jews. With the threat of expulsions organized from above and violence erupting from below, Jewish life in Zemplén was a dance on the edge of a volcano. Against all odds, many Jews persevered and even prospered under these conditions. Yet their very success (no less than their failures) often heightened social tensions, which then led to periodic eruptions. In this context, one might expect Jews to turn inward, accept the status quo, and keep their Christian neighbors at arm’s length. In his will, Kästenbaum did no such thing.

“A New Spinoza or Mendelsohn” “An uneducated and miserly Jew.” So wrote the Calvinist nobleman Ferenc Kazinczy about Ráfáel Kästenbaum.55 Hungary’s preeminent man of letters in the early nineteenth century, Kazinczy lived on an es-

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tate in Zemplén County, from which he maintained a lively correspondence with friends across the kingdom. In a letter dated February 12, 1830, K ­ azinczy explained that he had never spoken with Kästenbaum, although they had lived in the same region and traveled the same roads for decades. He did recall seeing the old man limping through the streets of the county seat, complaining all the while that he could barely survive from one day to the next. In death Kästenbaum did something that surprised even Kazinczy. When Kästenbaum’s will was opened in late 1829, it revealed that the old man had been wealthier and more generous than anyone had suspected. Learning of the munificent bequests of this “uneducated and miserly Jew,” Kazinczy could not hide his astonishment: “My friend, the rays of reason thus affect even the brains of fools.”56 In another letter written the same day, Kazinczy speculated that Kästenbaum had been altruistic only because he feared that the county authorities might otherwise have seized his wealth. In this letter Kazinczy switched his imagery from the Enlightenment to the farmyard: “A pig is also a noble animal, if it gives benefit only at its death. If only there were many such pigs.”57 One doubts that Kästenbaum, an observant Jew, would have appreciated this porcine praise. Most contemporaries were more generous than Kazinczy. Kästenbaum had died on November 28, 1829. Two days later, his will was read before the Zemplén County Assembly in Sátoraljaújhely. The County Assembly met in a handsome Baroque structure erected in 1761, in which Kazinczy had worked for years as an archivist. In theory, all of Zemplén’s noblemen could participate in the assembly, but in practice those present would have been the well-to-do landowners and local officials who had a stake in public affairs. Commoners had no place at the assembly, and thus no merchants and certainly no Jews would have been present. The members of the County Assembly, in short, likely had as little regard for Kästenbaum as Kazinczy did. The reading of the will, however, shocked the nobles in attendance. Baron Miklós Vay, who presided over the meeting, reportedly exclaimed, with tears in his eyes: “I am deeply moved, and I am astonished at the magnificent deed of such a simple person.”58 The minutes of the meeting likewise spoke of Kästenbaum’s service to “all humanity” with his “beneficial bequests and edifying institutions.”59 Newspaper reports were no less effusive: “Hearing [the will read],” one paper stated, “all were amazed that a man known only for his wealth had expressed thoughts and feelings

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which one would hear from the lips of a new Spinoza or Mendelssohn with reverence and wonder.”60 What was this wondrous will, which could amaze aristocrats and recall Spinoza? Six pages in length, written in Hungarian, and dated August 26, 1825, it was at first glance an ordinary legal document. On the last page, however, the testator’s signature appeared in a different hand and language. In cramped but correct Yiddish, Kästenbaum had signed his name, noted the date and place, and confirmed that the text expressed his final wishes. The confident signatures and bright red seals of five county officials followed, further indicating that this was an unusual document. An attorney or secretary had produced the document. The writer was almost certainly a Christian, as no observant Jew would have written out the divine name “Jehovah,” as the will does three times. The text begins with a preamble, which states that Kästenbaum is of sound mind and body, has reflected on his mortality and on God’s grace, and wishes to put his affairs in order. Ten numbered points follow. In the first Kästenbaum expresses his gratitude to Zemplén County, where he has lived for forty years, and stated his intention to contribute to its common good. The second point names the magistrate Ferenc Richter as the executor of the will. The remainder spell out Kästenbaum’s specific bequests, which include thirty thousand Rhenish florins in capital and two thousand florins in expenses to compensate the executor and lawyer of his will, twenty thousand in capital for construction of a hospital, one hundred thousand florins in capital for construction of a Jewish school, and one hundred thousand florins in capital to support the children of his relatives. Kästenbaum intended in each case that the capital not be touched, and that the beneficiaries spend only the interest that accrued on it every year; at a rate of 5 percent, this would still mean an annual contribution of five thousand florins to the school and to his relatives (by way of comparison, the annual salary of a county doctor was four hundred florins, that of a successful craftsman slightly less). The final points concern execution and supervision of the deceased’s bequests. Kästenbaum’s will was not unique. Historian Howard Lupovitch has documented the generous bequest in 1841 of Wolf Brody, the long-serving head of the Jewish Community in nearby Miskolc.61 Like Kästenbaum, Brody left money to establish a new school and to help poor children. The Herzfeld family did the same in the town of Pápa, in western Hungary. Importantly, contemporaries compared Kästenbaum not only with other

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Jews, but with generous Christians as well. Citing similar bequests of two well-known Hungarian aristocrats, one journalist saw in Kästenbaum’s will evidence that “there are good and bad [people] in every confession, and the good are esteemed in every confession.”62 Kästenbaum’s bequests thus extended a tradition that cut across religious and regional lines. Yet Kästenbaum’s will was deeply rooted in Zemplén County. His gratitude to the county has already been quoted, and he backed up his words with generous bequests to local institutions and individuals. That he left a large sum to his siblings’ children is unsurprising, if at odds with the usual image of him as a lonesome curmudgeon. (He did add the c­ aveat that no money would be forthcoming to any relatives “sentenced to corporal punishment or jailed for crimes.”63) Nor perhaps is his gift of ten thousand florins in capital to three local rabbis, who probably knew Kästenbaum personally. Instead, his gift to the planned county hospital stands out. Like much of Hungary, Zemplén County offered few medical services to its residents; trained doctors and surgeons were few and far between. Those who worked in the provinces may not have been so different from Dr. Scherer, a fictional character in József Eötvös’s Village Notary (1844–46), who had failed as a cobbler and barber before he married a rich widow and purchased his surgeon’s license. Dr. Scherer knew little of medicine and less of cures, but “during the sixteen years he had lived [in the village],” writes Eötvös, “he had never given occasion for the slightest complaint to those who . . . had never been ill.”64 Zemplén County planned to construct a hospital to improve this situation, and in 1823 the Roman Catholic bishop had given twelve thousand florins in capital to the hospital. Kästenbaum offered more, and did so even when, as he stated in his will, “it is not known whether [the hospital] will accept a person of Jewish nationality or not.”65 Kästenbaum’s equanimity in the face of prejudice is remarkable. This leads to another conspicuous feature of the will: its acceptance of religious pluralism in Zemplén County. We have already encountered Kästenbaum’s lack of empathy for the poor in the story of the oxen and the chickens. But in his will Kästenbaum stated that he wanted to help “unfortunate beggars living in poverty.”66 To this end, he donated one hundred florins each to Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, and Calvinist charities. Compared to his other bequests, these were small (although not inconsequential) sums. But they added weight to Kästenbaum’s claim, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, that his gifts to other religions were as pleasing to God as his generosity toward Jews, since “Jehovah does not take

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notice of religious differences.” These bequests also posed an unspoken challenge to the hierarchy of religions in early nineteenth-century Hungary, in which Roman Catholics and Calvinists stood at the top and Greek Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Jews at the bottom. If a lowly Jew could make a generous donation to the leading churches, then perhaps the gap between Christians and Jews was not unbridgeable. Education would provide that bridge. This conviction emerged plainly in the will’s lengthiest section, which called for establishment of a Jewish elementary school in Zemplén County.67 It began with the observation that the shortcomings of education and instruction explained the growing number of thieves and bandits in Zemplén County. Education of Jews, it continued, was also very deficient. In order to correct these errors and to make Jews “more useful members of society,” Kästenbaum offered one hundred thousand Rhenish florins in capital for a school in ­Sátoraljaújhely that would resemble those of other religious confessions. The school would offer classes not just in Hebrew and the Talmud (the primary focus of much Jewish education) but also in Hungarian history, language, literature, and geography, as well as in subjects like German and mathematics. The rabbi of Sátoraljaújhely would direct the school (or name another Jew as director), and two other upstanding Jews would assist him. It further required that Jewish orphans be allowed to attend the school for free, and that teachers’ salaries not exceed half the yearly income from the capital, so that the care and education of poor students and orphans would not be neglected. These plans may have sounded familiar to older Jewish residents of Zemplén County. In the 1780s, Joseph II had also asserted that education could solve social problems, that existing Jewish education was wanting, and that Jews must be turned into more productive residents of the realm. He ordered Jews to establish schools in which modern languages (including German and Hungarian), mathematics, and other useful subjects were taught, and he appointed non-Jewish school inspectors to ensure that his orders were followed. Ferenc Kazinczy served for four years as the school inspector for Zemplén County, and he strongly supported Jewish education: “All of mankind are entitled to the treasures of science,” he later said.68 Across Hungary, dozens of schools were soon established, including three in Z ­ emplén County, and thousands of Jewish children attended them. But J­ oseph’s successors were less interested in Jewish education, and many communities had trouble paying for the schools on top of the other taxes they owed. By the

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early 1800s, every one of these schools had closed. Yet their influence lingered and perhaps found expression decades later in Kästenbaum’s will. The time must have seemed right. In 1806 the imperial-royal authorities had issued a sweeping education decree, which had mandated that children between the ages of six and twelve attend primary school and called on churches and landlords to establish schools (it would take decades for these ambitions to be even partly realized).69 Education was also on the minds of many individuals, who organized readings rooms, kindergartens, public lectures, and schools in the provinces. Kazinczy for one felt Zemplén County would benefit from such institutions. He once explained to an acquaintance that he sometimes attended the County Assemblies in Sátoraljaújhely and afterwards sat down with other noblemen to discuss “geography, statistics, history, paintings, [and] books.” He hoped to enlighten his listeners but complained that they only wanted to play cards.70 As a former school inspector, moreover, Kazinczy knew well the sad state of elementary education across much of Hungary. It must have seemed like a small miracle that the uneducated and unlettered Ráfáel Kästenbaum had taken it upon himself to found a Jewish elementary school in Zemplén County. Who would stand in the way of the “edifying institution” that Kästenbaum had proposed and funded? Quite a few people, it turned out.

Against the Wonder Rabbi The question of Jewish education was inseparable from the question of Jewish emancipation. “Emancipation” was not the same thing as “equality”—the latter would have to wait for the end of feudalism and long political struggles in the second half of the nineteenth century. For now, Jews and their supporters wanted to remove limits on where Jews could live, end restrictions on what professions they could pursue, and do away with the humiliating Toleration Tax. These issues took on new life in the political ferment of the 1820s and 1830s, as a politically liberal and Hungarian national opposition gathered strength, challenging the imperialroyal government in Vienna and their powerful supporters in Hungary. As during Gvadányi’s time, the county nobility played a leading role in this movement; this time, however, the opposition would not be derailed by war or coercion, as happened in the 1790s. These liberal reformers aimed to remake Hungary from top to bottom: to ameliorate the peasants’ lot, expand schooling, develop industry, and promote the Hungarian language.

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But not all reformers favored Jewish emancipation, and fewer still welcomed Galician Jews in Hungary. For most noblemen, Jews were an unwanted and alien presence in the countryside. Jewish merchants and moneylenders like Kästenbaum represented economic forces (a cash economy, long-distance trade, capital accumulation) and values (thrift, ­sobriety, risk taking) that many provincial noblemen neither understood nor welcomed. The unfamiliar speech, customs, and clothing of many Galician Jews further underscored their foreignness. To one leading reformer, Count István Széchenyi, Hungary simply could not absorb Jewish immigrants: “If someone empties a bottle of ink into the Hungarian soup,” he warned, “it will be inedible.”71 Many obstacles thus stood in the way of Jewish emancipation. As the historian Rafael Patai observed, if change was going to come, it would take the dogged efforts of key Hungarian noblemen and Jewish leaders.72 But the same groups could also stand in the way of reform. In ­Zemplén County, the local nobility and Jewish leadership originally opposed Kästenbaum’s school, if for very different reasons. For the nobility, the school raised wider issues about the role Jews played in the region’s economy. For Zemplén’s Jews, in contrast, it revealed divisions between the Hasidim and their non-Hasidic opponents. There was a real possibility that Kästenbaum’s vision might never be realized. The decadelong struggle to open the school thus holds several lessons. It shows the dangers of entrusting money to noblemen, the indifference of most nobles to Jewish emancipation, and the fault lines within the Jewish community. Yet it also shows that a small number of determined individuals could make a difference and use existing institutions to push through meaningful reforms. Many noblemen in Zemplén County had known Ráfáel Kästenbaum. He had managed their estates, sold their crops, distilled their grain, and lent them money. In his own way, he had been a constant presence at the county assemblies. According to Rosenmeyer, Kästenbaum would sit on the front steps of the county building, waiting until one of the nobles needed him. And they often did: Zemplén’s nobility turned to Kästenbaum for loans during elections, when candidates had to wine, dine, and sometimes bribe the noble electors.73 As Rosenmeyer explains, noblemen appreciated his discretion and availability, since Kästenbaum would rather lunch on dry bread than leave his post on the steps of the County Hall. A register compiled after Kästenbaum’s death lists sixty-nine loans dating from 1798 to 1825. They ranged in size from 17 florins lent to Julianna Fejér

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in 1800 to 43,000 florins loaned to a Count Klobusiczky in 1811. Kästenbaum even loaned money to his own attorney in the 1810s.74 The outstanding loans totaled more than 250,000 florins. Moneylending was risky business. An 1834 audit of Kästenbaum’s estate revealed many bad loans, in addition to eight years of back taxes owed to the district collector of the Toleration Tax, unsold wine and brandy, and other problems.75 As a result, the funds available in the 1830s fell far short of what had been listed in the will. To make matters worse, the executor of Kästenbaum’s estate, a Zemplén nobleman named Ferenc Richter, had put his hand in the till. Few were surprised: when the will had been unveiled, rumors circulated that Richter had taken advantage of Kästenbaum’s trust (and inability to read Hungarian) and changed the amount set aside for the executor from three thousand florins to thirty thousand! The audit revealed that Richter had taken even more money than was owed to him. When Richter’s defalcation came to light, Zemplén County did what it could. It removed Richter from his position and took the unusual step of seizing and auctioning his property to pay back some part of the missing funds.76 The county also halved the amounts available for all of Kästenbaum’s bequests. It took more than a decade for the county to bring some order to Kästenbaum’s finances. The Zemplén County nobility was equally slow to throw its support behind Jewish emancipation. When the king had summoned the Hungarian Diet in 1832, all the counties in Hungary had given written instructions to their two delegates. Reformers hoped for meaningful changes in many areas: peasant dues, taxes, Protestant-Catholic relations, and infrastructure. When it came to Jews, however, Zemplén County remained stuck in a rut. Ignoring the question of emancipation, it reminded its delegates that Jews had done great damage to growers and the reputation of wine from the Tokaj region, and it urged the Diet to support its efforts to ban Jews from the wine trade.77 Nothing came of this at the Diet, which lasted from 1832 to 1836. When the Diet was called in 1839, Zemplén again issued instructions to its delegates. Liberal nobles increasingly had the upper hand in the county assembly. Why these overwhelmingly Protestant, provincial noblemen began to think differently about Jews is difficult to pin down; personal contact with individual Jews may have influenced some ­individuals, the anti-Jewish violence of 1831 may have awakened the sympathy of others, and the shared experience of being a religious minority in a largely Catholic country may have made still others receptive to the claims of Jews

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(the Diets of the 1830s and 1840s spent much time discussing the status of Protestants in Hungary).78 Perhaps Kästenbaum’s remarkable will and generous bequests had even changed some minds in the county. Whatever the causes, Zemplén’s instructions to its delegates now read: From the human and brotherly love arising honestly from nature and from the most holy tenets of the purest Christian faith, in order to free the Jews from an oppressive societal yoke, to invest them with the beneficial feeling of homeland and patriotism, and to give them a freer civil status: the delegates should thus effectuate that in our Hungarian homeland Jews be worthy of civilization and of lasting attention to their education, and that for the happiness of our common homeland and for the service of our good ruler, the followers of Moses also be raised as good citizens and loyal peasants.79

Opinion had changed in other counties as well. The result was a landmark law in 1840 that gave Jews much of what they had desired, including the right to settle anywhere in Hungary (except seven mining towns), to open factories and workshops, and to own property in towns. Zemplén County’s shift in the 1830s to the cause of Jewish emancipation meant that it would not stand in the way of a new Jewish school. But other difficulties remained. Jews in Zemplén County were themselves divided on the school and what it represented. This was to be expected. The Jewish population of Zemplén County had reached fifteen thousand in 1812, and natural increase and continued immigration from Galicia pushed it upward. By the 1820s more than twelve hundred Jews lived in Sátoraljaújhely, where they made up one-fifth of the city’s total population and created many Jewish institutions: a synagogue (erected in 1790), cemetery, burial society, kosher butchers, and ritual baths. Sátoraljaújhely also had a bes-medres (a  prayer and study house), and a number of chederim, traditional elementary schools where boys learned to read Hebrew and studied Torah. These schools were not idyllic, but Jews knew and trusted chederim. Secular schools like the one Kästenbaum had proposed were unknown and often aroused suspicion. A journalist in western Hungary described what had happened when new elementary schools had been established in his region: “The parents reluctantly send their children to them. The children even more reluctantly attend them. The frequent pedantry of the teachers, who are not perfectly qualified instructors, crushes the good pupils rather than elevating them.”80 It would take strong leadership in the Jewish community to turn Kästenbaum’s ideas into reality.

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This leadership would not come from the head rabbi of Sátoraljaújhely. Rabbi Mózes Teitelbaum had held this office since 1808, when he had come to Hungary from Galicia.81 He had been brought up in a non-Hasidic home, and as a young man he had been involved in the wine trade between Poland and Hungary. He studied with a number of famous rabbis, among them Rabbi Jacob Isaac Horowitz, known as the “Seer of Lublin,” who had created an important center of Polish Hasidism. This encounter put Teitelbaum on the path to Hasidism. From the Seer, Teitel­ baum learned to trust in dreams, prayers, miracles, and the coming of the Messiah; in constant readiness, he slept with his walking stick and best clothes beside his bed. In Hungary Teitelbaum was treated as a tzadik, a saintly leader. As such Teitelbaum received petitioners from far and wide, who sought his wisdom, counsel, and magic amulets. A story later circulated that the mother of Lajos Kossuth, a Lutheran, once took her desperately ill son to Rabbi Teitelbaum, who gave the boy a blessing and restored his health.82 The story may be apocryphal, but its circulation indicates the great respect given the rabbi and the complex ways in which Jews and Christians interacted in the northeastern counties. Teitelbaum was also a gifted preacher and inspiring teacher, and he opened a popular yeshiva in Sátoraljaújhely. It is unsurprising, then, that in the 1830s members of the Jewish community initially proposed that Kästenbaum’s money be used to establish another yeshiva devoted to the study of Talmud and to the training of rabbis. Such a school would support and strengthen the Hasidic community in Zemplén County. It would also be very different from the elementary school Kästenbaum had envisioned, with its emphasis on modern languages, Hungarian subjects, and practical skills. Not all Jews in Zemplén supported the plan to open a school for Talmud study. Opposition to Teitelbaum came from reform-minded leaders of the Jewish community of Sátoraljaújhely.83 They had clashed with Teitelbaum before. When they had hired Teitelbaum, he had not been a declared Hasid. His moves in that direction had troubled these leaders, however, and they asked him to stop distributing amulets, evidence of their reservations about the tzadik and his miracles. They also had doubts about the usefulness of the traditional Jewish schools, which reformers saw as an obstacle to progress and patriotism; students at the chederim, a Jewish teacher later claimed, knew nothing of the Hungarian language and as much about the Kingdom of Hungary as they did about the Chinese Empire.

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For much of the 1830s, however, reformers in Zemplén had to face a popular Hasidic rabbi, a wary Jewish population, and hostile county authorities. Years dragged by without action, as county leaders struggled to balance Kästenbaum’s accounts and Jewish leaders argued about what kind of school Zemplén’s Jews needed. Jewish reformers pushed back against the Hasidic proposal to create a yeshiva, and in 1838, under the leadership of Mózes Schön, the president of the Sátoraljaújhely Jewish community, Jews formally petitioned the county to open the school in accordance with Kästenbaum’s wishes—that is, as an elementary school in which modern languages and other secular subjects would be taught. The county assembly approved the plan on September 4, 1838. The school opened weeks later, in October 1838. Fully nine years had elapsed since Kästenbaum’s death. Why had it taken so long? Rosenmeyer noted that Kästenbaum “was not taken with Hasidism,” and in this episode we might see a struggle over resources and institutions between on the one hand a charismatic Hasidic rabbi and his many followers and on the other the educated leaders of the same town. But things were not so simple: many Jewish elites in fact embraced Hasidism, and even Teitelbaum’s authority had its limits. In his memoirs, a Hungarian rabbi recalled that Sátoraljaújhely contained a sizeable “intelligent, enlightened element,” which condemned the direction taken by Rabbi Teitelbaum and what they called his “business”—presumably his distribution of amulets and other charms. The eminent Schön family, he explained, had led the opposition to Teitelbaum. But this did not prevent one member of the family, the county physician, from becoming a follower of the Hasidic rabbi, if only for a short time.84 This detail is worth holding onto. In small towns like Sátoraljaújhely, face-to-face contact and local knowledge were no guarantee of mutual understanding, as Kazinczy’s deprecatory comments about Kästenbaum made plain. But at times they could also create unexpected connections, as shown by the esteem Dr. Schön (and even the mother of Lajos Kossuth) felt for Rabbi Teitelbaum. Larger issues were at stake in these debates about the school. As both the county nobility and the Jewish community realized, Kästenbaum’s school brought into focus the question of what role Jews would play in Hungarian society. When the Zemplén County Assembly said that it wanted Jews to be “good citizens” and Hungarian patriots, it left unsaid the assumption that Jews would adopt a more culturally Hungarian orientation, especially in their language, dress, and education. Enough Jews in Zemplén were willing to take this step. The result was the Kästenbaum

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School, which lasted for more than a century and educated thousands of boys and girls. Its graduates became newspaper editors, teachers, lawyers, and medical doctors. A school history written in 1896 bragged that “this institution has performed excellent work in the field of education and has been a great transmitter of culture.” The author expressed his belief that “it would follow its sacred calling in the future as well.”85

Sons and Daughters Ráfáel Kästenbaum died early in the morning on November 28, 1829. He was soon buried without ostentation on the outskirts of his home village. The funeral was a sad affair. “Nobody said Kaddish, none of the wellto-do Israelites escorted him to his final resting place,” wrote Rosenmeyer. “In the hour of his death, he was surrounded by low-born people hoping to enrich themselves, and it is said that they even stole his grave clothes.” Kästenbaum was buried alone in a field; no stone marked his grave. To the younger generation, Rosenmeyer reported, Kästenbaum was nothing more than “an eccentric, miserly peasant, who had perhaps befriended the devil to make his fortune.”86 His school initially fared no better. After opening to great fanfare in 1838, it struggled to attract students and pay the bills. Even in Sátoraljaújhely, the great majority of parents continued to send their children to chederim. In 1852, the school building burnt down. Yet supporters of the Kästenbaum School did not give up. Led by a local medical doctor, they rebuilt and reorganized the school.87 They admitted girls and added grades; they rewrote the curriculum and hired new teachers, including Kästenbaum’s biographer Izsák Rosenmeyer as well as Mihály Heilprin, a brilliant Polish immigrant who wrote Hungarian poetry and joined the 1848 Revolution (Heilprin later made a name for himself in America with his translations of ancient Hebrew poetry). The school’s leaders also took time to remember their benefactor. In 1856, the school committee placed a tombstone on Kästenbaum’s grave in ­Pelejte and a plaque on the entrance to the school. The marble tablet read, in Hungarian, “From the endowment of Márton Kästenbaum. A Jewish School, Opened October 16, 1838.” A Hebrew inscription added: “The School, which Rafael built and when he died, in its sons and daughters it keeps alive his memory and his name in Israel.” Quite a tribute to a man whom Rosenmeyer called “one of his era’s most honorable, and at the same time, most peculiar men.”88

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If we imagine the “map” that emerged from his life and work, it would be faded and creased from long years in the pocket of a peddler. It would be remarkably precise in its notation of roads, villages, and certain properties (fields, distilleries, taverns); it would be graffitied with numbers and calculations. It would also be small in scale: unlike Gvadányi, whose vision encompassed much of provincial Hungary, Kästenbaum restricted himself to a more narrow world. His mental map centers on just one Hungarian county, a framework usually associated with the Hungarian nobility but here given shape and texture by a Jewish immigrant.89 Buda and Pest are not visible on this map, whereas the county seat of Sátoraljaújhely features prominently. What meanings should we attach to Kästenbaum’s map? In other words, what does this “imagined geography” tell us about nineteenth-­ century Hungary? In Kästenbaum’s life we can see many features of the local reality: economic relations, social hierarchies, folk customs, and political debates. Yet we can also glimpse subtle challenges to the status quo, with its suggestion that religious divides are not unbridgeable, that education is the key to progress, and that a handful of individuals could bring lasting changes in places like Zemplén. In this way, Kästenbaum, no less than Gvadányi, contributed to the “myth of the provinces,” even as he changed the content of the myth. What is surprising is not that this myth emerged from the countryside, but that it was put forward by an immigrant Jew who was in turn a peddler, distiller, and moneylender. It is perhaps fitting to give the last words to Izsák Rosenmeyer, Kästenbaum’s staunch defender and sympathetic biographer. In the end, what mattered most for Rosenmeyer is what Kästenbaum did in his will. To Rosenmeyer, the will ensured that people of all faiths would remember Kästenbaum’s name. It demonstrated to the world “that a simple person can also be noble-spirited if he has the desire, if there exists in his soul an inclination to noble deeds and moral elevation.”90 It hardly needs to be said that under different circumstances, Ráfáel Kästenbaum, a poor Jewish migrant from Galicia, might well have been kept out of Hungary. But then Hungary would have missed his school and so much else that immigrants have brought.

3 The Engineer This is the fourth navigable river, the mouth of which we have passed within a space of fifty miles. Surely never was any country so blessed by nature with the means of communication as Hungary,—never have they been more signally neglected. John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (1839)1 Rivers rank among the first gifts given to humanity. Almost nothing offers more blessings than rivers flowing across the land. They are the main routes and tools of transportation and commerce, the natural promoter of navigation. . . . Rivers raise agriculture. . . . Industry and crafts advance with them. Pál Vásárhelyi, A Proposal for the Navigation of the Berettyó River, On the Example of the Bege Canal (1840) 2

was a river civilization. True, it possessed a short stretch of coastline on the Adriatic Sea and Central Europe’s largest lake, the Balaton. But it was crosshatched with rivers. The Kingdom of Hungary contained one-third the length of the Danube River and dozens of its tributaries. Rivers determined patterns of settlement and trade, they flowed through folktales and literature, they suffused history and tradition. The four silver stripes on the Hungarian coat of arms, it was said, represented the kingdom’s four main rivers: the Danube, Tisza, Sava, and Drava. Hungary’s rivers fascinated western travelers, who saw “the East” reflected in their waters: “The Rhine is pretty and highly cultivated,” observed Paget, but “the Danube is wild and awfully grand.”3 Hungary’s rivers were untamed. Residents of nineteenth-century Hungary sometimes referred to large tracts of their country as the v­ advízország, the land of wild water. By this they meant rivers that shifted beds, islands that rose and fell, floods that came every year, and rocks, c­ataracts, and NINETEENTH-CENTURY HUNGARY

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e­ddies that made river navigation hazardous in all seasons. Rivers chose their own paths, creating swamps, steep bends, and a strong sense of disorientation: “So abrupt and frequent were the windings of the Danube,” wrote an Irish traveler, “that often, on looking back, we saw no trace of the direction by which we had come; nor, on looking before us, could we discern by what course we were to proceed.”4 With blue tints and looped curls, cartographers struggled to bring order to this disorderly, watery world; a map later published by the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture suggested that water had regularly covered two-thirds of the Hungarian plains.5 The “land of wild water” found a worthy adversary in Pál ­Vásárhelyi, a native of northeastern Hungary and the leading water engineer of the first half of the nineteenth century.6 Like Paget and many other contemporaries, Vásárhelyi saw rivers as one of Hungary’s greatest resources.7 Vásárhelyi spent years on these rivers, taking their measure and learning their secrets. Armed with surveying equipment and a mathematical disposition, Vásárhelyi helped create the most accurate maps ever made of riparian Hungary. He also drew up ambitious plans, like the one quoted above, in which he outlined how Hungary’s rivers could be bridged, embanked, deepened, and straightened. The wild water would be tamed and the provinces transformed. Measurement would open the door for river regulation, and river regulation would open the door for civilization. It was a brilliant vision. The plans of Vásárhelyi and other engineers were of great consequence for northeastern Hungary, which contained much of the Tisza River and many of its tributaries. River regulation and flood protection, it was hoped, would open new avenues of transportation, turn wetlands into farmlands, and quicken the pace of trade. Products from the northeast like salt, tobacco, and timber would find new, more distant markets. Rivers would tie the northeastern counties more tightly to other regions, both to the west and to the south. This, at least, was the promise. In practice, many obstacles stood in the way of these plans. Even in the best of conditions, river regulation was technically challenging and physically exhausting. Poor regions like northeastern Hungary could provide little capital for massive public works, and not all their residents welcomed outside intervention. The waters of Hungarian politics were no less troubled, and the court in Vienna, the Hungarian Diet in Pressburg, and public opinion in BudaPest all had a say in whether Vásárhelyi’s plans could be implemented. Here Vásárhelyi faced obstacles that could not be removed as easily as rocks

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from a river. Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that realization of many of his goals would have to wait until later in the nineteenth century. In Vásárhelyi’s life and work, then, we can discover a bold vision to radically remake the northeastern counties, as well as a reminder of the growing influence that decision makers in distant cities could exercise over the Hungarian provinces.

Following the Hernád Pál Vásárhelyi was born in 1795 in an old town in northeastern Hungary, in what is today Slovakia.8 The town lay close to what had recently been the Polish border; Cracow was 120 miles away, whereas Buda-Pest was 200 miles.9 Here the high Carpathian Mountains contained narrow river valleys dotted with towns and villages. The Englishman Paget, who traveled through this region, marveled at its charming towns, with their Gothic churches, good wines, and costumed residents, even as he noted the general poverty of the countryside (“the country through which we passed . . . is, like most of the north of Hungary, poor and cold”) and the wretched roads through the mountains (“never was a more uncouth road formed”).10 Ringed by forbidding peaks and plagued by bad transportation, this was yet another remote corner of northeastern Hungary. It was not wholly isolated, and the region’s merchants regularly shipped goods such as linen, bacon, lard, and millet to markets in Debrecen, a distance of almost 200 miles.11 Visitors noted that local German speakers had borrowed many words from the Hungarians and Slovaks they lived among; they also emphasized how seclusion had preserved archaic linguistic features and created pronounced differences in the German spoken in one village from that used in another. Vásárhelyi, who worked much of his adult life on the Danube River, might have explained the remoteness in this way: the small river that flowed near his hometown, the Hernád, was but a tributary of a tributary of a tributary of the Danube.12 Vásárhelyi spent just the first decade of his life in this town and returned to the surrounding county only for a few years of secondary school. His life was thus spent on waters far away from his hometown. But just as these mighty rivers contained something from the modest Hernád, Vásárhelyi too may have carried something from this region. A knowledge of languages, for starters. Vásárhelyi grew up in a multilingual environment. His hometown had many names: Wallendorf in

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German, Olaszi in Hungarian, Villa Latina in Latin, and Spišské ­Vlachy in Slovak.13 It had been founded in the thirteenth century by settlers from the German and Italian lands (“Olaszi” means “Italian” in Hungarian). It long flourished because of its skilled craftsmen and especially its stonemasons, who had helped build a nearby fortress, one of the largest in Central Europe, and because of its rich mines, which produced iron, copper, and marble. Like other towns in the region, Olaszi enjoyed significant economic privileges and political autonomy. By the late 1700s the town had just over three thousand inhabitants. Roughly one-third were Lutherans, the balance Roman Catholics. The leadership of the town was almost equally divided between these two religions. Tailors, glaziers, masons, wagoners, and other guildsmen dominated the town council, and they kept their records in German.14 But many other languages—Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Yiddish, and Ruthenian—could also be heard in the region. The Vásárhelyis, who were newcomers and Lutherans, likely spoke German with their social equals and shopkeepers, Slovak with servants and peasants, and Hungarian with their relations in the countryside. It is not surprising that Vásárhelyi later possessed formidable linguistic skills: he could speak and write Hungarian, German, and Latin; he spoke English and “Slavic” (presumably Slovak, but maybe Serbian as well); and he understood French and Spanish.15 Vásárhelyi may also have understood later, when he had seen more of the world, that much of his hometown’s former glory was gone. A contemporary geographer enthused that the surrounding region, with its high peaks, alpine beauty, and occasional avalanche, was Hungary’s Switzerland.16 Near Vásárhelyi’s town was a limestone ice cave and excellent mineral waters. These charms, however, could not disguise the relative decline of Olaszi. By the late 1700s, the fortress had been abandoned, the mines had begun to dry up, and state and county authorities had chipped away at the town’s privileges. Frequent floods, fires, and epidemic diseases only added to the town’s woes. Surveying the region’s dilapidated houses, one visitor wondered “how the good people can sleep in them, without fear of being buried in the rubble of collapsing walls or the Babylonian wooden roofs?”17 With the expulsion of the Ottomans from Hungary, patterns of trade, settlement, and military activity had shifted southward, to the lowlands of the Hungarian plains and the southern marches. The partition of Poland further strengthened this trend. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Olaszi would lose nearly one-third of its population. The

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town’s one hope, perhaps, was someone like Pál Vásárhelyi, who sought his fortune elsewhere but dreamed of remaking Hungary’s transportation network and reconnecting towns and regions that now found themselves off the beaten path. Like his hometown, Pál Vásárhelyi’s family had seen better days. According to family lore, the Vásárhelyis had been granted their patent of nobility in the thirteenth century, as part of a tribe of warriors who had liberated fifty horses and thousands of Hungarian prisoners of war from Mongol invaders. The Vásárhelyi clan had prospered, and many of Pál Vásárhelyi’s ancestors had served as high officials in the northeastern counties—a sure measure of social prominence and landed wealth.18 By the eighteenth century, however, not all branches of the family tree were thriving. Perhaps there were simply too many branches; Pál’s grandfather had four brothers, and noble estates could be divided only so many times. Education and the professions offered an escape for some noblemen, and this may have been the case with Pál’s father. Mátyás Vásárhelyi had come to Olaszi in 1786 as a cantor in the Lutheran church. This position held some prestige—Johann Sebastian Bach had been a Lutheran cantor—but it was a far cry from the county posts held by earlier generations. Although the Vásárhelyis lived comfortably in Olaszi, their time there did not end well. Mátyás Vásárhelyi had married a noblewoman, Mária Bekk-Téglási, and she may have brought a significant dowry to the marriage (two of her nieces later married counts).19 Their son Pál was born on March 25, 1795, and a year later his father purchased a house: a low, one-story building with a large wooden gate and two windows facing the street. According to Vásárhelyi’s biographer, Mátyás’s “great learning and superior manners” made him widely respected.20 Less charitably, one could observe that in a small town of craftsmen and miners, the blue-blooded Vásárhelyis would have stood out regardless. They sent young Pál to the local elementary school, which he attended until he was nine. But Mátyás soon sold his house (the sources do not explain why), and a few years later a fire destroyed their rental property, together with much of their movables. In 1804 Mátyás left Olaszi and settled in Miskolc, a much larger town closer to the center of Hungary. There Mátyás taught at the Lutheran school for girls, where he played the organ, gave private lessons, and delivered sermons. His steady employment ensured that Pál received a good education, first at a school in Miskolc and later at a Lutheran gymnasium in a town not far from his birthplace.

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By the time he finished secondary school Pál Vásárhelyi had decided to become an engineer. In some ways, this was an unusual choice. Landless noblemen usually made careers in the army, the church, and the law, which might lead to a minor position in the county administration. Engineering offered at best an uncertain future, with little social status. As the writer Sándor Márai later explained, “the engineering and medical professions were looked down upon and not thought suitable for gentlemen. . . . It was not proper to give enemas or to fiddle around with compasses and India ink.”21 Engineering was still a new profession in Hungary, as it was in much of Europe, and many of Hungary’s early engineers were commoners. But Vásárhelyi had to earn his living somehow, and Hungary already had many, many lawyers and officials. At the same time, the remarkable economic changes remaking England—what would later be termed the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions—combined with the no-less-­ astounding military conquests by French armies after 1789, highlighted the importance of civil and military engineers to the modern state.22 In the Habsburg lands, Maria Theresa and Joseph II had established a central office for waterways and construction and also ordered all Hungarian counties to employ engineers to survey lands, drain marshes, and build roads. In 1807 the Hungarian Diet passed a law approving formation of local flood protection and drainage societies. Four years later, during a lull in the Napoleonic Wars, Vienna established a separate office of waterways for Hungary, with an eye toward improving navigation and thus movement of troops on Hungary’s many rivers. Navigation required measurement, and measurement required engineers. After completing gymnasium, Pál Vásárhelyi apprenticed with a county engineer. He then spent two semesters at the Institutum Geometricum in Buda, the forerunner to the Budapest Technical University, where he took courses in “practical geometry, mechanics, rural economics, and higher mathematics.”23 He received his engineering degree after just two semesters; “poor funding and limited facilities” characterized AustriaHungary’s early polytechnical institutes.24 After another year spent surveying property lines and forests, Vásárhelyi began to map and measure rivers, a task that would consume him for the next two decades. Working under the direction of Mátyás Huszár, who was noted for his innovations in surveying practices (he added micrometer screws to telescopes and decimals to measurements), Vásárhelyi slowly mastered the difficult craft of hydrologic engineering. In 1827 Vásárhelyi published two pamphlets in Latin

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and in German on triangulation, a method essential to large-scale surveying. These works demonstrate Vásárhelyi’s command of his field and show many of the features of his later writings: lucid presentation of empirical data, introduction of practical examples, and use of trigonometry to bolster his arguments. In 1829, at the age of thirty-four, Vásárhelyi succeeded Huszár as the lead engineer on the project to map the Danube River. For the next several years Vásárhelyi and his small team produced a series of maps and measurements of the Danube of such accuracy that engineers continued to use them half a century later. In Hungary, the prime mover of work on the Lower Danube was Count István Széchenyi, a reform-minded aristocrat and the dominant figure of political life in the 1820s and 1830s. Széchenyi tirelessly championed development of the river: he pushed for steamship navigation, a permanent bridge at Buda-Pest, and regulation of the river’s treacherous lower reaches. A bemused Prince Metternich once observed that Széchenyi acted as though he had discovered the Danube! Széchenyi met Vásárhelyi on the Lower Danube in 1833 and was sufficiently impressed that he soon took Vásárhelyi with him on a fact-finding mission through Munich and Paris to London, and from there to all parts of England, Ireland, and the Low Countries—the Mecca of hydraulic engineers. Along the way they met inventors and engineers; they purchased a diving bell and steam-powered dredger; they studied waterworks, mills, factories, railroads, canals, roads, and bridges. It is a pity that Széchenyi’s diary from the trip does not shed more light on Vásárhelyi’s character. None of Vásárhelyi’s personal papers have survived, and his extant writings reveal little of his personality. Both contemporaries and historians typically satisfy themselves with platitudes about his patriotism and hard work. There is some basis for this: Vásárhelyi’s superiors commended his “zeal, diligence, and perseverance.”25 Széchenyi in contrast found Vásárhelyi a tiring traveling companion and grumbled that the engineer was taciturn and unpolished. Széchenyi’s zoological metaphors are amusing: “I have to drag him around like a bear,” “Vásárhelyi sits like a dog and drools,” and “Vásárhelyi is really an ass.”26 But they tell us more about the mercurial, moody Széchenyi than about Vásárhelyi, who also could be acerbic in his writings but was likely cautious around his wealthy, influential patron.27 Back in Hungary, Széchenyi stopped carping about Vásárhelyi and instead came to rely on him and worked to secure his promotion, which arrived in 1837 when Vásárhelyi was named navigation

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inspector for the Hungarian waterways. This promotion made Vásárhelyi the chief water engineer in all of Hungary.28 It also brought him to Buda-Pest, the largest city in Hungary and its cultural and political center. After regularly spending up to nine months a year on the river, Vásárhelyi could now spend more time with his wife and four daughters. He had married in 1821; his wife was the daughter of a ­Lutheran nobleman and county doctor, that is, someone of the same religion and comparable social status.29 The Vásárhelyis seem not to have had much money. But Pál could take pride in the ascent of his career and the distance he had traveled from his hometown in northeastern Hungary. Perhaps this is why Vásárhelyi, alone among the men and women examined in this book, did not write about the town or county of his birth; nothing indicates that he felt a strong attachment to this region. Yet Vásárhelyi and his work were of great importance to the northeastern counties. To understand why, we need first to follow Vásárhelyi to the opposite end of the Kingdom of Hungary, to the Lower Danube River.

Mapping the Danube One of the most vivid portraits of the Danube River appears in Mór Jókai’s 1872 novel The Man with the Golden Touch (Az Aranyember). Jókai was the most popular Hungarian writer of the nineteenth century, and in The Man with the Golden Touch he tells the story of a young ship’s captain who makes a fortune with ease but finds love much more challenging. Jókai set the novel in the early nineteenth century, just before Huszár, Széchenyi, Vásárhelyi, and others began work on the Danube. It opens with a vivid description of the Iron Gate, the narrow gorge on the Lower Danube where Austria-Hungary met the Ottoman principalities of Serbia and Wallachia. Jókai likens the Iron Gate to a cathedral, “a temple built by giants, with rocky pillars, towering columns, and wonderful colossi in its lofty frieze . . . revealing in the distance new domes with yet more groups of natural masonry and other wondrous forms.”30 Much of the action takes place in Komárom, a small city on the Danube above Buda-Pest and also Jókai’s hometown. A third locale is called “Nobody’s Island,” and it is one of the innumerable small islands created by the interplay of the river with sand, stone, and wind. In Jókai’s telling, the island is a miniature paradise, untouched by commerce and unclaimed by either of its neighbors, the Habsburgs and Ottomans: “so arose a nameless island, which

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was possessed by no one, over which there ruled no landlord, no king, no authority, and no church—which belong to no country and no diocese.”31 Jókai’s island is an extraterritorial Eden. It was also fantastic, even to readers in the 1870s, when his book appeared. All the elements that made “Nobody’s Island” possible—a river without a fixed bed, inaccurate maps, and distant, disinterested states—had given way to new forces beginning in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Across Europe, states surveyed, straightened, and regulated their rivers; they drew borderlines across watery surfaces; they signed international conventions to foster commerce. What had once been undefined, unmapped, nonnational space was now documented, charted, national territory. But why had this happened? Whence the urge to “tame” rivers? And what role did engineers like Pál Vásárhelyi play in this process? For Hungary, “war” is the shortest answer to the question of why rivers were mapped and regulated.32 The Habsburgs’ war against the Ottoman Empire in the late 1780s demonstrated not just the defensive importance of rivers, but the need to move soldiers and supplies rapidly to the Monarchy’s southern borders. In the absence of good roads, rivers were the most obvious form of transportation. The Napoleonic Wars brought this lesson home: in his 1809 campaign against Austria, Napoleon had followed the course of the Danube, using it for defense when needed and for supplies as he moved downriver. Hungary was distant from the main theater of war, but its troops and foodstuffs were essential to the Habsburg war effort. Indeed, war was a boon for Hungarian grain exports, which benefited from high prices, increased demand, and disruption of normal European trade patterns. In this situation, both landowners and government officials called for improved riparian transportation in Hungary. But “peace” also mattered. In the eighteenth century the population of the Kingdom of Hungary had more than doubled, to 9.5 million, and it rose to nearly 13 million in 1842. More people meant more residents of towns and villages in the river valleys; it meant more watermills and weirs clogging rivers and streams. It also meant more people living in marginal lands, including swampy and flood-prone areas along rivers, which made periodic floods all the more costly in human and material terms. At the same time, population growth in distant mountainous regions led to widespread deforestation (easily transported and seemingly limitless, wood was one of Hungary’s most reliable exports), which in turn increased the spring runoff and made floods in the lowlands both more likely and

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more severe. Contemporaries grasped the link between deforestation and flooding; both Vásárhelyi and Széchenyi saw tree planting as essential to regulation of the Tisza River Valley. Along with navigation, then, flood protection—and even flood prevention—became powerful arguments for regulating Hungary’s rivers. Such arguments employed new kinds of quantitative reasoning. Writers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries frequently attempted to quantify the costs and benefits of river control. Typical was a series of articles that appeared in 1838 in the short-lived journal Nature (Természet). Flooding on the Danube River, Nature explained, had created unproductive wetlands, forced floodplains to lie fallow, and reduced opportunities for trade. It calculated the annual cost of these three problems at one million florins each. Noting that the Hungarian state had been in existence for nine hundred years, the journal concluded that the cost of not regulating the Danube was 2.7 billion florins, an astronomical figure.33 One could easily dismiss these numbers. The larger point is the quantitative mode of analysis, in which flooding is not an act of God but an economic problem in need of an engineering solution. Nature was also quite clear that regulation of the river mattered to the entire country, not just to the residents who lived along the river. In this analysis, improved navigation and land reclamation are given equal weight. Against the backdrop of these large, structural changes—the needs of war, the unforeseen consequences of peace, and the emergence of more secular, quantitative assessment of natural phenomena—a younger generation of water engineers gained new prominence.34 They had many talented predecessors in the 1700s, technically minded men who drained swamps and built embankments, surveyed lands, and mapped rivers. What set the new generation apart was their formal training, most often in Vienna or, like Vásárhelyi, at the technical school in Buda, which produced more than a thousand graduates between 1782 and 1850. These new engineers also had better tools at their disposal, many of them acquired from German and Austrian workshops: the theodolite, scaled level, and optical square. These tools allowed them to map and measure Hungary’s rivers with unprecedented accuracy. So too did steady work, as the royal government, individual counties, and large landowners all employed growing numbers of trained engineers. If Vásárhelyi stood out among his peers, it was for the accuracy and scale of his work on Hungary’s rivers. Precision was the highest virtue for

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Vásárhelyi’s cohort. An expert surveyor and careful observer, Vásárhelyi was among the first water engineers in Europe to demonstrate that water speed in a river has a parabolic shape: that is, water flows more slowly on the surface and bottom of a river than it does at medium depth. Even in his narrative descriptions of rivers, Vásárhelyi routinely included charts, tables, figures, and mathematical formulas. He succinctly explained his methodology in a 1834 report: “This and other mistakes will be made if one tries to enter the watery labyrinth without scientific tools. The fundamental knowledge of a river requires, in addition to complete hydro­ graphic and hydrometric measurements, that one observe it for several years.”35 If, as one historian has written, the “nineteenth century can be seen as the century of counting and measuring,” then Vásárhelyi was one of its stars.36 Yet Vásárhelyi did not think just in feet and inches. His work was also important because of its scale. Numerous projects had taken ­Vásárhelyi across much of Hungary, and this helped him understand the entire hydrological system of the Carpathian Basin. Appointed in 1840 to a dietal committee asked to investigate regulation of Hungary’s rivers, Vásárhelyi produced a report in which he stressed the interconnectedness of the Danube and Tisza river systems. He used this knowledge to criticize piecemeal solutions and impatiently refute many common misconceptions, such as the fear that widening the Danube downstream would drain all the water from the rest of Hungary. Similarly, against those experts who insisted that the work on Hungary’s rivers had to take place in a certain order, ­Vásárhelyi held that “regulation can continue or begin at any number of places or rivers, so long as it happens according to some premeditated and coherent plan, and the work’s technical parts strictly adhere to the project’s higher economic goals.”37 Vásárhelyi brought a new approach to rivers. His was a new generation of water engineers: rational, modern, abstract, and mathematical. He had none of the romanticism that suffuses Jókai’s The Man with the Golden Touch. If Jókai’s novel made the Danube mystical, then Vásárhelyi’s work demystified it. But Vásárhelyi’s reference above to “the project’s higher economic goals” is a reminder that he was above all a working engineer, one who appreciated all too well that engineers had to confront not just daunting physical challenges but also economic and political constraints. Over the course of his career, Vásárhelyi showed remarkable perseverance in the face of such obstacles. What helped him persevere was in part a faith that

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had little basis in measurements or mathematics, namely, that river regulation would allow provincial Hungary to enter a new golden age.

Blasting the Danube The Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen traveled up the Danube River, from the Black Sea to Vienna, in the early 1840s. He found much to observe: the French merchants who came to Bulgaria to buy leeches, the Hungarian swineherd who boasted of his noble descent, and the Otto­ man doctor who “prescribed a medicine which appeared to me excellent for Wallachian horses, but not for weak persons suffering from pains in the stomach” (a large glass of liquor, followed by black coffee).38 He even suffered with tolerably good spirits the forty days of quarantine required for all those who wanted to cross from the Ottoman Empire into Austria. Andersen had much to say about the river itself, and he noted its flooded islands, wrecks that littered the water at the Iron Gate, and the reliance on human muscle to haul boats upstream through otherwise impassable sections. He dubbed the river the “imperishable highway to the East” and noted the commerce that it facilitated.39 Andersen was not alone in his awareness that the Danube could facilitate travel and trade. Many observers saw the river as the key to AustriaHungary’s economic development, particular after 1829, when the Treaty of Adrianople forced the Ottoman Empire to allow unrestricted commerce on the river and open the Dardanelles to merchant ships.40 Access to the Black Sea would link Austria-Hungary to the markets of southeastern Europe and Asia. Giving voice to these dreams, the U.S. consul in Vienna enthused: “The Danube is already navigable to the Black Sea, and only a few more rocks are to be blown to make navigation very convenient. Should the Danube be brought into communication with the Rhine, a great flux of trade is expected to this part of Europe.”41 Vásárhelyi knew the Lower Danube well: he had spent much of the 1820s surveying and mapping it, and he understood that it required much more than removal of “a few more rocks” to open the length of the river to shipping. In 1834, under the direction of Széchenyi and with the financial support of the royal authorities, Vásárhelyi began work to improve navigation and transportation on the Lower Danube. For the next three years, he directed hundreds of laborers, who removed rocks from one stretch of the river and built a stone road along another. The larger goal was to open the

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Danube for navigation all the way to the Black Sea. This was a monumental undertaking, comparable in ambition to many of the era’s other great engineering projects, including regulating the Rhine River and building the Erie Canal. In Vásárhelyi’s work on the Lower Danube, we can see his remarkable achievements, as well as the financial and political pressures that doomed this project. The geography of the Lower Danube posed enormous challenges. In places it was exceptionally fast, often shallow, and dangerously rocky (Figure 3). Its sides were steep and inaccessible; the Roman Emperor Trajan had built a road on the right bank seventeen hundred years earlier, but by the 1800s the road was no longer serviceable and in any event ran on the side that belonged to Serbia and to the Ottoman Empire. There were few towns on either bank where laborers and supplies could be found. Mosquitoes and malaria posed a constant menace. The Irish traveler Michael Quin enumerated the dangers in the river itself: “Its bed is wholly composed of rough rocks, sometimes starting up in masses, nearly to the surface of the river, sometimes forming a wall, running across from bank to

FIGURE 3.   The weekly Sunday Newspaper (Vásárnapi Ujság) published this illustration of the Iron Gate on the Lower Danube in 1899, just as the Hungarian state was completing work that Vásárhelyi had begun in the 1830s. It shows the river before any efforts were made to improve navigation. Without a sail or motor, the boat relied on the rapid current and careful steering to carry it through the perilous waters. source: Béla de Gonda, La navigation intérieure en Hongrie (Budapest: Feldmann M., 1900).

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bank and producing a perceptible fall in the current. The obstacles which the river met in its course produced considerable undulations on its surface, amounting now and then to waves, on which our bark was hurried away, notwithstanding all the efforts of our rowers, and dashed against the rocks.”42 Local Serbian legends held the water in this part of the Danube was so compressed that iron thrown into the river would not sink. Working with Széchenyi and other officials, Vásárhelyi came up with a two-pronged solution. First, taking advantage of unusually low water in the Danube in 1834, Vásárhelyi had his workers clear a channel through some of the most treacherous stretches of the river; they used gunpowder for some rocks and crowbars for others. It was back-breaking, hazardous work, but it allowed ships to navigate this part of the Danube an estimated 150 days a year. Second, Vásárhelyi built a wide stone road on the left bank of the Danube above Orsova, the last town on the Hungarian portion of the river. The road would allow ships traveling upstream to use mules to pull them when the current was especially strong, and also permit movement of goods on land in seasons when the river was not navigable. Workers often had to cut the road directly into the steep banks of gorges, a dangerous game of blasting, digging, and bracing. Quin praised the “magnificent” road but found his visit to the construction site unnerving: “I might have been reduced to powder with the greatest possible expedition.”43 Labor issues were a constant headache for Vásárhelyi. His reports to Széchenyi documented the many problems he faced locating, feeding, and paying the workers.44 Much of the heavy labor was done by local Romanian villagers pressed into service by the military authorities who governed the border region. The Protestant Vásárhelyi complained that these Eastern Orthodox peasants had too many feast days when they did not work and were mostly useless when they did. He understood clearly, however, that poor food, bad housing, low wages, and coercion would never create a reliable workforce, and he pleaded with Széchenyi for more supplies and funds. The situation was somewhat better with the skilled workers, such as the stonemasons who came from as far away as Pest. The military also released local Romanian miners to do the most difficult demolition work. Vásárhelyi had high praise for the miners’ strength and stamina, although he noted that the miners were at first reluctant to work on cliffs and in the river. The military might provide workers, but Vásárhelyi had to clothe, feed, and pay them. The royal authorities had agreed to fund ­Vásárhelyi’s clearance of the Lower Danube, and Széchenyi was always quick to inform

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Vásárhelyi when payments were due to arrive from the treasury. Széchenyi also instructed Vásárhelyi to do things as cheaply as possible. “It is understood,” the count wrote, “that the most strict economy must be observed,” and he badgered Vásárhelyi about the price he was paying for wood.45 Vásárhelyi did what he could. He wrote to an influential priest in Orsova, asking for donations of clothing, and when supplies of food improved, Vásárhelyi pushed down the workers’ daily wages. He drew up careful budgets and calculated the average cost of detonating a cubic foot of rock. In one report, Vásárhelyi defended himself against charges of “­extravagance” or “luxury” for building with marble, which he said was locally available and well-suited for roadwork.46 His own circumstances were hardly luxurious; a fellow engineer recalled living in a rude hovel made of interwoven branches, which took a toll on their health when the cold, rainy weather came.47 Vásárhelyi’s digging and demolition came to an abrupt end just a few years after it had started. The immediate cause was the death of the monarch hundreds of miles upstream, in Vienna. In 1835 Emperor Francis died and was succeeded by his son, the incapable Ferdinand. Power in Vienna shifted to a regency council, on which Prince Metternich had great influence and the supporters of Vásárhelyi’s work did not. Széchenyi desperately appealed to the authorities in writing and in person, but to no avail. In Vienna, Széchenyi was told that “a Hungarian nimbus” hung over Vásárhelyi’s latest proposal for regulation of the Danube, as if the goal was “to wrest control [of public works] from the government.”48 He also learned that military leaders, more worried about the Monarchy’s neighbors than its commerce, opposed Vásárhelyi’s work. It is difficult to confirm Széchenyi’s allegations about shadowy machinations in Vienna grinding against Vásárhelyi. What is certain is that Vienna faced chronic budget woes, and that work on the Lower Danube was distant, expensive, and unlikely to bring immediate financial benefits. That Széchenyi and Vásárhelyi tended to speak about “Hungarian trade” and “Hungarian interests” (rather than “Austrian” or “Habsburg” ones) may also have aroused Metternich’s suspicions.49 By the fall of 1836 the authorities in Vienna had made it plain they would not fund any further projects on the Lower Danube. Széchenyi poured out his frustrations in a letter to Vásárhelyi, offering as consolation some of his own funds and the German saying, “When the need is greatest, help is closest.”50 In a letter sent the following month, Széchenyi advised

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Vásárhelyi to sell his equipment for as much money as he could. Work on the Lower Danube would soon cease and decades pass before engineers finished what Vásárhelyi and his laborers had begun. Széchenyi was right about one thing: help was close at hand. In 1837 Széchenyi helped secure Vásárhelyi a promotion that took him off the river and brought him to Buda-Pest. Vásárhelyi left behind work in which he could take pride: his workers has cleared a channel through long stretches of the river and the completed stone road stretched more than seventy miles along the left bank of the Danube. When Miklós Barabás, the leading portraitist of the era, later made a lithograph of Vásárhelyi, it showed the engineer in a large, ornate chair. Vásárhelyi is perched on its edge, and gazes somberly at the viewer. In the background, distinct and detailed, is a section of the road Vásárhelyi built on the Lower Danube.51 The project had taken its toll on Vásárhelyi. When Széchenyi visited the Lower Danube in 1834, he found Vásárhelyi physically weakened and spiritually broken; Széchenyi doubted whether he could carry on much longer on the Lower Danube.52 Vásárhelyi persevered, and it was not exhaustion but politics that brought his work to an end. The plan to regulate the Lower Danube had fallen victim to the political struggle between the royal government in Vienna and the growing political opposition in Hungary. Széchenyi had hoped to occupy a middle ground between the two sides, but in the late 1830s this was an increasingly difficult position. In 1835 Széchenyi had written to Vásárhelyi that “you and the work under you have made a good impression. You have many friends, and many enemies and enviers.”53 In the end, Vásárhelyi’s “enemies and enviers” had carried the day and shut down work on the Lower Danube. Work on this stretch of the river would begin again half a century later. Yet this defeat on the Lower Danube only strengthened Vásárhelyi’s faith in the transformative power of river regulation. In 1840 he delivered an address to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (then called the Hungarian Scholarly Society), which had made him a corresponding member in 1835 and a full member three years later. In the talk he outlined plans to improve navigation on a river on the eastern edge of the Hungarian plains.54 This was a rather modest topic: the river in question was slow, short, and swampy. But Vásárhelyi used his address to outline his views on the Hungarian provinces as a whole. Hungary, he asserted, “is crosshatched with the most beautiful rivers,” which had formerly flowed more freely and supported a much larger population. Now, he explained, many

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rivers were so choked by sand, gravel, and trees that navigation was impossible and life along them miserable. These sluggish rivers had created swamps and marshes, whose foul air and armies of insects tormented local populations of humans and animals. Few people lived along such rivers: “fiendish fevers, dysentery, dropsy reign there.” Vásárhelyi had little sympathy for vernacular practices of river regulation—poorly placed dikes, badly built bridges that acted as dams, and ill-conceived dredging projects—all of which he held responsible for the sad state of Hungarian river valleys. A solution lay at hand. “Our rivers,” he claimed, “want to wake up, but cannot.”55 Rational regulation of rivers, Vásárhelyi suggested, could rouse them. His address carefully analyzed how hydraulic engineering, and in this case a combination of dikes, dams, canals, and dredging, could rescue provincial Hungary. The results would be spectacular: the fertility of the land would improve and the population would rise. Trade and travel would increase thanks to the watery highway system across Hungary. Manufactures and crafts would flourish. “There is no doubt,” Vásárhelyi concluded, that decisions about water engineering could determine “the fortitude of entire regions, the improvement of navigation, the flowering of commerce, [and] the good standing of the entire country.”56 In the 1840s, Vásárhelyi would turn his attention to the Tisza River and to northeastern Hungary, the land of his birth. This would give him another chance to close the gap between this intoxicating vision of a transformed countryside and the sobering difficulties that stood in the way of its realization. In this case, however, problems would start not in Vienna but at home, in Hungary.

Cutting the Tisza Budapest today is a metropolis and the capital of Hungary. It was neither in Vásárhelyi’s time. Properly, there was no “Budapest” before 1872–73, when the towns of Buda, Pest, and Óbuda united to form one city (hence the hyphen used here in “Buda-Pest”). By 1840 the towns’ combined population had reached a hundred thousand, which made it the largest urban center in the Kingdom of Hungary but just one-third the size of Vienna. Although the twin towns of Buda and Pest housed several important governing bodies, their influence was checked by the Hungarian Diet, which sat in Pressburg, and by the court and chancelleries in Vienna, which exercised significant power over Hungarian affairs.

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By the 1830s and 1840s, Buda-Pest had nonetheless become the undisputed political center of the Kingdom of Hungary. It helped that a number of leading aristocrats (including Széchenyi) had started spending much more time in the twin towns, and that the meetings of the formerly quiescent Pest County Assembly had become a focus for oppositional political activity. Buda-Pest also achieved its status because it was the center of Hungarian journalism, culture, and associational life. The ideas and arguments laid out in this emerging civil society countered the political gravity of Vienna and influenced the political culture of the provinces. Participation in this informal politics required a new set of skills: the ability to write and speak in Hungarian, the backing of a newspaper, and membership in social clubs and voluntary associations. For someone like Vásárhelyi, who wanted to influence public opinion but had limited experience in doing so, this world offered both promise and peril. The engineer proved to be an adept student of Hungarian journalism. Vásárhelyi’s first publications had been pamphlets written in G ­ erman and Latin, but in the 1830s and 1840s most of his writings appeared in Hungarian-language newspapers and journals based in Pest. In them Vásárhelyi addressed a range of topics, including plans to construct a permanent bridge across the Danube at Buda-Pest, a project with great symbolic importance (ground was broken on the Chain Bridge in 1842, and it opened to traffic in 1849). He also weighed in on plans for a canal that would start in Buda-Pest and link the Danube and Tisza rivers, as well as discussions about how best to connect Buda-Pest to the Adriatic Sea. For the most part, Vásárhelyi used these writings to offer critical reviews of plans put forward by other engineers. His favorite target was József Beszédes, like Vásárhelyi an accomplished water engineer, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and contributor to the Hungarianlanguage press. Beszédes was only eight years his senior, but Vásárhelyi succeeded in painting him as the representative of an older generation of engineers who lacked the necessary data, mathematical skills, and knowledge of foreign scholarship to solve Hungary’s most pressing hydrological problems. In contrast, Vásárhelyi presented himself in print as a new kind of engineer, mathematical and modern. For all his enthusiasm for numbers and logic, however, Vásárhelyi also used a number of rhetorical strategies in his writing. As was common in the era’s journalism, sarcasm abounds in his newspaper and journal articles. In one piece Vásárhelyi suggested that Beszédes’s ideas had been pulled “from

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thin air”; in another he stated that the engineer’s arguments for a long canal across Hungary were so flawed that he was ready to believe “that the whole thing is only a joke.”57 But Vásárhelyi could also take the high road. Like Gvadányi, he peppered his writings with classical allusions and quotations: a conversation with a Serbian ship captain recalls Virgil, ice on the Danube brings Horace to mind, and, somewhat predictably, the gorges of the Lower Danube evoke Scylla and Charybdis.58 He mined the classics most often in letters and reports to his superiors, who presumably would appreciate the show of learning, but Vásárhelyi also used them in his newspaper articles. Occasionally he also tried out metaphors from other fields, as when he compared his assessment of the Lower Danube to a doctor making a diagnosis of a sick patient. Vásárhelyi’s writing, then, is far from dry and technical, and its tone and imagery show the engineer to be sensitive to his audience and a quick learner of the rules of informal politics. Even as Vásárhelyi moved in ever wider social and political circles, Count Széchenyi remained his chief patron. The engineer dined frequently at Széchenyi’s house, and at the count’s initiative Vásárhelyi was named head engineer of the Tisza Valley Society, an association established to coordinate local efforts at flood protection and undertake large-scale river regulation. Drawing on a careful survey of the river completed under the leadership of Sámuel Lányi in the 1830s, Vásárhelyi submitted his first draft for regulation of the middle section of the river in June 1845, and after some discussion he produced a longer, more detailed plan in March 1846.59 Regulation of the Tisza was an enormous project. From its twin sources in the High Carpathians to its confluence with the Danube, the Tisza wound more than seven hundred miles, making it Hungary’s secondlongest river (its catchment area in Hungary was larger than the Danube’s). Vásárhelyi was of one mind with Széchenyi, who in 1846 wrote to the engineer that “with the regulation of traffic in the Tisza Valley we are occupied not just with the Tisza, but with the rivers directly and indirectly connected to it and with the swamps and floods caused by them; our concern is their management, delimitation, and drainage and indeed the exploitation of the entire Tisza River Valley water system.”60 Vásárhelyi’s plan accordingly began with a survey of the river valley’s hydrological properties and revealed keen awareness of the dynamic relationship of the river system’s many parts. Compared with what had come before, his goal was audacious: Vásárhelyi hoped to straighten, shorten, and fix a riverbed that had never been straight, short, or fixed. With more than one hundred cuts,

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he would have reduced the length of the river by almost three hundred miles—more than one-third of its total. With these cuts and with narrow embankments, Vásárhelyi wanted to speed up the river, which would then anchor and deepen its channel. This in turn would ease navigation and lessen the danger of floods. Northeastern Hungary stood at the center of Vásárhelyi’s plan, which dealt with the middle third of the Tisza. In 1838, engineers had compiled a table of all the Hungarian counties and districts affected by flooding on the Tisza.61 It showed that in three northeastern counties alone—­ Szabolcs, Szatmár (home of the village notary), and Zemplén (Kästenbaum’s home)—nearly four hundred settlements lay within the river’s flood zone, which covered more than two million acres. Earlier surveys had shown that flooding routinely tore apart existing embankments, made roads impassable, and worsened the spread of cattle disease. Vásárhelyi likely had this waterlogged region in mind when, in his 1846 proposal, he stated that the Tisza connected “the country’s happier lands with its less blessed parts.”62 He promised that “fundamental repairs and forceful measures” would have a dramatic effect on the northeast, potentially opening up vast acreage to farming, speeding movement of goods to market, and reducing the frequency of floods. Vásárhelyi knew that large landowners in northeastern Hungary had pushed hardest for flood control, and his plans called for simultaneous construction of embankments upstream and cuts downstream. Without sacrificing hydrological principles, Vásárhelyi thus promised that these landowners would be among the first to reap the benefits from river regulation. Not all locals shared his optimism. For every landowner who clamored for drier fields, another grumbled about supplemental taxes and expensive contractors. Villagers who lived along rivers often resisted efforts to do away with wetlands from which they gathered fish, reeds, and medicinal plants.63 Many of the affected counties had their own ideas about how work on the river should proceed. The larger truth was that river regulation in Hungary mostly took place in poorer, thinly populated areas. Contrasting Hungarian efforts with those in Italy, the Netherlands, and France, one scholar has observed that river control in Hungary was not “implemented by a well-capitalized agriculture in order to protect cultivated land or to intensify production. On the contrary: these operations were expected to trigger capital formation and strengthen Hungarian agriculture and ensure its development at a faster pace.”64

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Even before Vásárhelyi had unveiled his plans, then, debates about regulation of the Tisza had spread far beyond northeastern Hungary. In part this was due to the project’s large scale and high costs. As the president of the Tisza Valley Society, Széchenyi had turned for funds to Viennese bankers and the royal authorities, who had grudgingly agreed to raise taxes on salt to provide one hundred thousand florins annually for work on the Tisza (higher prices for an everyday staple like salt were another reason for the poor to oppose river regulation). Even the lukewarm support of Vienna in turn aroused the suspicions of the Hungarian political opposition. Other engineers soon entered the fray, offering their own expert opinions on cuts and embankments. Editors and journalists were not far behind. Regulation of the Tisza, in short, brought Hungarian public opinion into play in ways that Vásárhelyi’s earlier work on the Danube had not. The Tisza mattered to educated Hungarians for reasons that went beyond navigation, flood protection, and land reclamation. They saw the Tisza as a “Hungarian” river. Unlike the Danube, which flowed from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the Tisza stayed within the borders of Hungary; to the statistician Schwartner, it was the “winding Hungarian Nile.”65 The Tisza, moreover, was understood to flow through largely Hungarianspeaking regions. Again, we can contrast it with the Danube, on whose banks lived a diverse mix of peoples: on the Lower Danube, Vásárhelyi had worked among Hungarians, Serbs, and Romanians, and he had negotiated with Ottoman officials and consulted Eastern Orthodox priests. This diversity on the Danube has long spurred thoughts of coexistence and connections. In his great 1936 poem “By the Danube” (A Dunánál ), József Attila urged his contemporaries to embrace their shared history: “Turkish, Tartar, Slovak, Romanian whirl / in this heart—today’s H ­ ungarians— / You 66 owe a tender future to this past!” It is difficult to imagine the Tisza giving rise to similar thoughts among national-minded Hungarians. Perhaps sensing this, Széchenyi at times defended the Tisza project in narrowly national terms. Summoning the specter of national death—the idea the Hungarians might somehow cease to exist—Széchenyi wrote of “the Tisza Valley, in which the most and the earliest Hungarians live, and whose final destruction approaches from one day to the next.”67 He urged the entire nation to give material and spiritual aid to this region, to the “cradle of the Hungarians.” Backers of the Tisza Valley project also had to fend off the indirect challenge from railroads. Before the 1830s, Hungarian writers had often

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cited England’s canals as the linchpin of industrialization; by the 1840s, they increasingly saw England’s railroads as the key to economic development. Although railroads were unrelated to the problem of flooding in the Tisza Valley, Vásárhelyi understood that they threatened his vision of making Hungary’s rivers the basis of its transportation network. In a number of articles, Vásárhelyi made a strong case for canals and rivers. The gist of his argument was that conditions in Hungary were very different from those in England, which possessed sufficient natural resources and travelers to support a rail system. Hungary in contrast was rich in water but poor in iron ore, coal, and potential passengers. River and canal traffic were thus cheaper and better suited to Hungary’s agricultural economy. “Perhaps someone believes,” wrote Vásárhelyi sarcastically, “that wool, Tisza tobacco, and other Hungarian rarities will be profitable with a steam railroad in Hungary. I deny it.”68 The railroad’s defenders, observed that river regulation was costly, technically difficult, and slow to take effect; railroads were open year round, unlike even the best-controlled waterways, which froze in winter and were often impassible in summer months of low water. Railroads also had an advocate in Lajos Kossuth, who in the 1840s supplanted Széchenyi as the leading figure in Hungarian political life. Kossuth had gained national attention in the 1830s at the Diet in Pressburg, but in the 1840s he threw himself into informal political initiatives such as newspapers and economic associations in Pest. One of Kossuth’s pet projects was a railroad line from the Lower Danube to Fiume, Hungary’s sole international port on the Adriatic Sea. This project faced many obstacles: Fiume in the 1840s was small and unimportant, and steep hills separated it from the rest of Hungary. But Kossuth hoped to increase Hungarian exports, assert Hungary’s economic independence from Austria (and from its nearby port at Trieste), and spread Hungarian civilization among the Croatians who occupied the region. Kossuth did not dispute the importance of river regulation, but he also asserted that trade on the Danube (and by extension the Tisza) was a nonstarter, given the physical obstacles in the waterway and Russian control of the Black Sea. When Kossuth famously wrote a newspaper article titled “To the Sea, Hungarians!” (Tengerhez magyar!), the title referred to the Adriatic, not the Black Sea. By championing Fiume and railroads, then, Kossuth helped turn river regulation into a political football. The point was not lost on Vásárhelyi, who reported to Széchenyi in early 1846 that “in Kossuth there is still much malice.”69

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None of these difficulties could have caught Vásárhelyi by surprise. He once observed that the greatest challenges to river regulation in Hungary were not engineering problems but economic and political issues, to which he added, “I would like the reading public to be aware how harmful their influence is on public works.”70 But in Hungary in the 1840s, political debates could not be wished away so easily. After reviewing Vásárhelyi’s and Beszédes’s proposals for a canal across Hungary, one politician confidently stated that “experts alone will not decide” the fate of the project, stressing that the Diet should have the final say over the larger financial, technical, and other questions.71 With his plans to regulate the Tisza River, Vásárhelyi had proposed to remake northeastern Hungary in dramatic fashion. The realization of this plan, however, depended on much more prosaic financial and political realities. In the past, Vásárhelyi had held his own in the realm of informal politics, and we can only imagine whether the debate over the Tisza River would have ended differently had Vásárhelyi not died, suddenly, in early 1846. Three months later the first railroad line opened in Hungary.

Mapping the Provinces Pál Vásárhelyi died in Pest on April 8, 1846. In the morning, he had come to Count György Károlyi’s house for a meeting of the Tisza Valley Society. In the middle of a heated discussion, Vásárhelyi stood up and staggered out of the room. He had a heart attack and collapsed, unconscious. A doctor was called and the meeting ended. Vásárhelyi clung to life for the next twelve hours, but died at eleven o’clock at night. He was fifty-one years old. Széchenyi, who was with Vásárhelyi that day, recorded in his journal: “What a great loss!”72 Vásárhelyi was buried two days later at ten in the morning. His grave was in Buda; the marble gravestone recalled him simply as “the best husband and father.” The newspapers were much more effusive: “May the heavens preserve the fatherland from this loss, doubly sensitive and painful at a moment when such great hopes had been tied to Vásárhelyi, who had only been offered few opportunities to use his rich talents on such a magnificent and beneficent undertaking.”73 Other contemporaries elaborated on these patriotic themes. Speaking for the Hungarian Academy of ­Sciences, the literary critic Ferenc Toldy stated that Vásárhelyi had embodied the Tisza project and shown that “the wanderings of this purely Hungarian

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river could be halted not just with Hungarian gold, but with Hungarian intelligence.”74 With such words, the myth of Pál Vásárhelyi was born. He became “the engineer of the Reform Era,” a national hero who embodied the era’s technical achievements and aims. Myths don’t mean money. Vásárhelyi’s pay had not kept up with his responsibilities, and he died poor. He was survived by his wife Mária and four daughters, three of them unmarried. When Széchenyi called on the widow, he was overcome by pity and by sad memories of when he had first met Vásárhelyi on the Lower Danube. Realizing that Mária and her daughters had nothing to live on, Széchenyi appealed to the royal authorities, who granted them a small sum of money. The Academy of Sciences also raised money for the family. (The next chapter looks at women under very similar circumstances.) Pál’s widow Mária Vásárhelyi lived until 1884. Engineering and math remained in the family. One daughter married Ferenc Stuller, a young lawyer who served as Lajos Kossuth’s secretary during the 1848 revolution. Their son later became an accomplished engineer and worked in Paris and Brazil; their daughter married a teacher at the technical university in Buda that Pál Vásárhelyi had once attended. Another granddaughter married a water engineer, who died tragically in a flood on a tributary of the Tisza River in 1879.75 The Tisza itself flooded in the same year, with devastating results. It destroyed much of the city of Szeged and killed hundreds of people. Work on the Tisza had continued since Vásárhelyi’s death. But the embankments were seldom as high as he had recommended, and it is simply that flood control has the effect of making floods less common but more violent when they do come. Destructive floods have continued on the Tisza down to the present, most dangerously in 2000, when cyanide from a gold mine in Romania spilled into the Tisza, creating an ecological nightmare along much of its course. Work on Vásárhelyi’s other great project, regulation of the Lower Danube, also moved forward. In the 1890s the Hungarian government removed more than a hundred thousand cubic meters of rocks from the river (Vásárhelyi had removed four thousand!), built dams, cut channels, and dredged the bottom in order to make the Danube navigable for eight to nine months a year. Yet even these efforts paled in comparison with what twentieth-century states could do. Starting in the 1960s, Yugoslavia and Romania undertook construction of two huge dams, hoping to harness the Danube for hydroelectric power and open it to bigger ships. As

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a result, the Lower Danube rose 35 meters, burying forever the island that had inspired Jókai’s idyllic “Nobody’s Island.” The remarkable stone road that Vásárhelyi had built in the 1830s also disappeared. Vásárhelyi nonetheless accomplished much that was important. In his work and writings, he helped to transform how the Hungarian countryside was understood. His official charge from the Tisza Valley Society had expressed the hope that his plan would “rescue the homeland’s most fertile land, the heart of the country, from further devastation of the destructive watery element, and that the people of the Tisza Valley will be elevated from their gradual decline.”76 Like many of his contemporaries— and especially his patron Széchenyi—Vásárhelyi accepted this narrative of decline, if only because it justified the dramatic changes he wanted to bring. He dreamed of unleashing the energies of provincial Hungary; river regulation, he promised, would allow fields and towns to take the place of swamps and shoals. Vásárhelyi would surely have agreed with his contemporary Quin, who wrote, “The steam navigation of the Danube will also be a most powerful instrument of civilization: for it is quite true that steam and civilization are daily becoming almost convertible terms.”77 Vásárhelyi spent his life making Hungary’s rivers ready for the spread of “civilization.” The “imagined geography” underpinning Vásárhelyi’s work signals something new about the relationship between the centers of power and regions like northeastern Hungary. Like Gvadányi, Vásárhelyi was a provincial who spent his life working in and thinking about the provinces. What separated the engineer from the count was not just the differing conclusions they drew about the material conditions and economic prospects of the countryside. Gvadányi had kept his distance from Buda-Pest, instead finding his collaborators and correspondents in the provinces, whereas Vásárhelyi was inexorably drawn to the Hungarian capital. His family, friends, and (eventually) work were there, along with the Academy of Sciences and the Tisza Valley Society. Buda-Pest’s newspapers and journals published his works and debated his ideas. Indeed, even the numbers and statistics that filled Vásárhelyi’s articles tipped the balance toward Buda-Pest and away from the provinces. Statistics, in the words of historian Jürgen Osterhammel, “made things visible that had previously been hidden or taken for granted.”78 In Hungary, numbers and statistics seemed to reveal what the Tisza Valley Society had called the “gradual decline” of the provinces (and what we might call their economic underdevelopment) and bolstered calls for “solutions” more often than not created, debated,

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and dictated in the centers of power. In many small ways, then, Vásárhelyi helped secure the dominance of Buda-Pest over the rest of the Kingdom of Hungary. But Vásárhelyi’s work also suggests very different possibilities for the provinces. His goal of making Hungary’s rivers the basis of its transportation system was not realized; railroads built in the second half of the nineteenth century would largely serve that role. But it is interesting to consider what it would have meant for provincial Hungary had ­Vásárhelyi’s plans been fulfilled, at least in part, by the mid-1800s. It is unlikely that the Tisza-Danube river system could have replicated the role that the MissouriOhio-Mississippi system played in the United States. At most, a network of rivers and canals would have spurred development of riparian towns and villages; poorer regions on the Upper Tisza and Lower Danube might have seen their fortunes improve. Rivers would have strengthened connections between distant regions of the country; goods, people, and power would have flowed more easily on the rivers that traversed the kingdom. But this did not come to pass. The railroad network, which did, was centered on Budapest, from which lines emanated, metallic and straight, like the spokes on a wheel. (Even today it can be difficult to travel by train from one provincial town to another without first returning to the capital.) Railroads served the interests of centralization in ways that rivers did not. Railroads also created clear “winners” and “losers” in the provinces. Only in 1894, for example, did Vásárhelyi’s hometown receive a railroad connection—a short, single-track branch line. But it was better than nothing. A terrible fire had decimated the town in 1862, and a sluggish economy inflicted its own damage; the town’s population declined over the course of the nineteenth century. Stuck on a tributary of a tributary of a tributary of the Danube, it had remained, like many settlements on Hungary’s rivers, a backwater.

4 The Teacher Why is it that my town still enchants me so? Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (1996)1 Ah, how good the air of Máramaros is! The whole countryside looks new to me. The hills seem smaller and the air sweeter. Klára Lövei, letter from 18562

THE TOWN THAT ENCHANTS Elie Wiesel is Sighet, in northern Romania. When Wiesel was born there in 1928, it lay on the border between Romania and what was then the Soviet Union and is today Ukraine. Sighet had around twenty-five thousand inhabitants, roughly one-third of them Jews like Wiesel. For him, Sighet was a “typical shtetl” and a “sanctuary for Jews.”3 His childhood memories center on his home, synagogue, ritual baths, cheder, and family store; a visit from a prophetic Hasidic rabbi was a landmark event. Matching the diversity of the surrounding population, he and his family spoke Yiddish, German, Romanian, and Hungarian. But Jews held a precarious position in Sighet: antisemitism was endemic and “even seemingly well-off Jews lived on the edge of poverty.” Wiesel attended the public elementary school, where he came to know but did not befriend his Christian classmates. In 1940 the occupying Hungarians ordered Sighet’s Jews into ghettos and in 1944 deported all Jews, including Wiesel, to Auschwitz. Wiesel never again lived in his hometown, but it stayed with him: “I left Sighet, but it refuses to leave me.” This chapter lingers in Wiesel’s hometown, but it turns back the clock nearly a century. Then the town was known as Máramarossziget, or simply “Sziget,” and was the county seat of Máramaros County in the Kingdom of Hungary. The chapter’s subject is Klára Lövei, born in Sziget in 1821.4 At first glance, Lövei seems to have little in common with Wiesel. She was Calvinist, Hungarian, and of noble origin, all of which placed her among the ruling elite of her day. Still, one can find similarities between the two: both loved learning as children and worked as journalists as adults, and

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both were hurled from their hometown to distant prisons (she at least was protected by the rule of law). On a deeper level, Lövei shares with Wiesel a certain ambivalence toward her hometown. It is at once a source of pride, a seat of memories, and a storehouse for the senses (hence Lövei’s enthusiasm for the air of her homeland). But it is also a place to which she would never return for good. Lövei, one suspects, may have agreed with Wiesel’s later assessment of his relationship with Sighet: “The closer I come to my hometown, the farther away I am.”5 Lövei thus provides a perspective on the Hungarian provinces from the vantage point of someone from—but never fully of—one corner of them. As a teacher, Lövei had an unusual career. Although she made her living instructing others for much of her adult life, she worked in schools for only a few years. Her life and her writings nevertheless shed much light on the important role that schools played in the provinces. Lövei was active when education in Hungary recorded many firsts—the first kindergarten, the first school of music, and so on—and she was a pioneer in girls’ education. She also witnessed the rapid expansion of schooling.6 A key moment came in 1868, when the Hungarian government passed a law that made elementary schooling compulsory, increased state oversight of church-run schools, and expanded higher education. In the decades that followed, thousands of new village schools opened, attendance rose, and literacy climbed from around 30 percent at midcentury to roughly 60  percent by century’s end.7 Progress was uneven and determined by many factors, including region, gender, religion, ethnicity, and mobility. But some general patterns were clear: the northeastern counties lagged behind central and western parts of Hungary, just as Romanian regions trailed Hungarian ones, and girls did not keep up with boys. Schools were also a source of tension, putting state and local authorities at odds with parents, school administrators, and church leaders. In small villages, priests and schoolteachers often battled for preeminence in the school and surrounding community. In the cities and towns, educated elites linked schools to language use and national belonging. This led to sharp debates between national-minded Hungarians, who called for greater use of Hungarian as the language of instruction in all schools, and Romanian, Slovak, Croatian, and other national activists, who saw in laws passed after 1867 a plot to forcibly “Magyarize” the provinces. Lövei was active in an earlier period, but the schools she helped establish and her writings on education anticipated many of these later issues. Like Kästenbaum, she can help us

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understand why so many people saw schools as a means of remaking provincial Hungary. As a woman, Lövei faced a different set of choices than did the men we have so far examined. Lövei is a fascinating figure: privileged but poor, scholarly but unschooled, high-minded but levelheaded, and egalitarian but surrounded by aristocrats. She rarely wrote about women as such, and the “women’s question” seemingly held little interest for her. But her gender often determined the paths she followed and the ones she did not.8 Events took her far from home, and she gained national prominence as an educator in Buda-Pest in the late 1840s and as a political prisoner in Austria during the 1850s. This chapter closely studies these episodes, but it also looks at Lövei’s long, intense, and ambiguous relationship with her hometown. With Lövei, we can glimpse how one remarkable woman from a remote, small town made sense of the place in which she had been born, what she hoped to change in this region, and how she set about making a difference in her hometown and beyond.

Student, Actress, Nanny A standard reference work on Hungarian writers notes that Klára Lövei’s father was a nobleman, magistrate, and landowner, who lost his wealth and died when Klára was a teenager.9 With tantalizing brevity, it states that he was “not thrifty” (nem takarékos). What discretion! What dark secrets lie behind these two words? Did gambling or drink lead him to ruin? Did he, like many other noblemen, scorn the pursuit of wealth, even as his own slipped away? Or did he simply not have a head for numbers and estate management? Other sources bring us little closer to answering these questions. What can be said is that Lövei’s father was not alone in his lack of thrift, and that the relative economic decline of the provincial nobility had great political and cultural consequences for nineteenth-­ century Hungary. It also deeply affected younger generations, who could not maintain their parents’ way of life, even if they wanted to. We have already seen how Pál Vásárhelyi, the descendant of an old noble family, eked out an existence as an accomplished but careworn engineer. And what of the wives and daughters in these impecunious noble families? Novels of the period often depict them as passive victims of spendthrift husbands and fathers, and not without reason, since tradition and law gave women little control over family finances. At marriage, the

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husband took control of his wife’s dowry (although laws in the nineteenth century attempted to give wives some financial protection against bankrupt husbands).10 In Mór Jókai’s great Romantic novel about the 1848 revolution, Sons of the Stone-Hearted Man (A kőszívű ember fiai, 1859), we meet Edith, a modest, beautiful, young Viennese noblewoman, who is parentless and penniless. She lives with her distant relative, a cruel baroness, who treats Edith as little more than a servant. Only the love of a Hungarian hussar captain (himself a nobleman) saves her from a life over which she has little control. After many adventures and the collapse of the revolution, she and the officer marry and live happily with little money; he takes a job at a machine shop, she does all their cleaning and cooking (“we will get along with only two courses for dinner,” she vows).11 But Jókai sweetens the pot: at the end of the novel, Edith inherits an unexpected fortune from a long-dead great uncle. With a loving husband and great wealth, Edith can now do whatever she chooses. Klára Lövei was noble and poor. But no hussar captains came knocking at her door. Nor did she receive an unexpected inheritance. Instead, she had to find her own way in a world in which she, as a woman, had limited options. True, she was from a family that dated back to the 1300s on her father’s side, which gave her the right if not the resources to enter the best social circles. She also received a good education (for a girl!) and had well-to-do, influential relatives. All these factors would come in handy at key moments in Lövei’s life. But Lövei’s most important decisions were her own. A sketch of the first decades of her eventful life shows how she explored nearly all the paths open to a poor noblewoman from the provinces before settling on a profession that suited her perfectly but would turn her, improbably, into a committed revolutionary and political prisoner. Lövei was born on March 25, 1821, in a small town in Máramaros County, far from Buda-Pest and close to the Austrian provinces of Galicia and Bukovina. She had an older sister, to whom she was deeply attached, and a devoted mother, born Eszter Szatmáry. Her father’s name was József Lövey (why Klára tinkered with the spelling of her surname will soon become clear). Both parents came from noble Calvinist families with numerous branches across northeastern Hungary. Her father’s sister, who had married into the Máramaros gentry, lived in the same town. Klára was thus very close with her cousin, Gábor Várady, who was just one year older and remained a lifelong friend and sometime employer. Even as a child, Klára must have been aware of the economic and physical decline of her father,

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who died when she was just sixteen. Yet her memoirs pass over these events and describe her childhood as idyllic. School was the wind beneath her wings. Starting at age seven, she attended the local Calvinist elementary school.12 Klára was a model student; she cried if she thought she might be late for school and sometimes bought a roll on the way rather than sit through a long breakfast. She adored her teacher, Sámuel Csehi, who also served as cantor and organist for the Calvinist church. As was the case with Pál Vásárhelyi’s father, these jobs were commonly bundled in Hungary; Csehi stood out for devoting as much attention to his teaching as to his organ playing.13 Csehi instilled in his students a strong sense of regional pride. They were so well versed in local geography, Lövei later bragged, that a county magistrate reportedly joked he too should attend the classes, so he could learn something about the district in which he served! She also recalled how the children spent long hours discussing the Tatars, whose brief invasion of Máramaros County in 1717—as part of a wider war between the Habsburgs and Ottomans—­ remained deeply lodged in local memory. Decades later, Lövei claimed that she understood the region’s history and natural features with knowledge she had gained as a child.14 Klára’s formal schooling lasted just three years. Unlike boys, girls could not attend a gymnasium, the equivalent of middle and high school. Nor did her family have money for a tutor. So in her teens Klára helped out at home and threw herself into acting, a passion she had already developed during her school years, when she and her female classmates had begun to stage small plays.15 In her memoirs, Lövei displays an almost photographic memory of the plays they performed, her fellow actors, and even her lines. Her first role was the title character in “Master Puff,” about a blacksmith. Led by her cousin Gábor Várady, boys soon joined in the fun, and their productions grew more elaborate. They put on works by some of the era’s leading ­Hungarian-language dramatists (Mihály Vörösmarty, József Bajza, and András Fáy), an impressive accomplishment at a time when only a handful of Hungarian theater companies existed and none in Máramaros County. In 1837, Gábor Várady’s father (Klára’s uncle) helped found a charitable association in Sziget. With its support, the theatrical performances grew more regular and more sophisticated. Lövei took on various roles: she dressed as a boy, a beggar, and an old woman. The players often had to borrow props from friends and family. She proudly recalled that “at the beginning, we acted with such fervor and fortitude, as though it was a struggle for existence.”16

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Confident and quick-witted, Lövei was a hit on the local stage. She was pretty, with blond hair, a ready smile, and expressive blue eyes. Success opened an unexpected path: she could go to Pest, where a Hungarianlanguage theater, soon called the National Theater, had just opened. For an aspiring Hungarian actor, the National Theater had no equal. A wellconnected official in Buda, who had seen Lövei perform during a visit to his native Máramaros, promised to help her get a place in the National Theater’s company.17 This was not an empty offer or an impossible dream; a childhood friend, Cornélia Prielle, who was just a few years younger than Klára, left home at fifteen and went on to become one of the most celebrated actors in Hungary. Lövei hesitated—her recently widowed mother did not want her to leave home—and then turned down the offer. Lövei would remain devoted to the theater and to Prielle the rest of her life. And she appreciated what the stage had taught her about language and literature. But her days on the stage were numbered. “My fate,” Lövei later wrote, “was destined elsewhere.” But where? What was a lively, likeable, and poor young noblewoman to do? Opportunity knocked in 1843, when Baron Imre Sztojka generously invited her to accompany his family to Pressburg, where the Hungarian National Diet was about to open. The baron had been elected as one of ­Máramaros County’s two delegates, and he planned to take his wife and children with him. At first Lövei refused—she did not want to leave her mother and sister—but she eventually relented and accepted the offer. It took them seventeen days to go from one end of the Kingdom of Hungary to another (an average of twenty miles per day, the same pace as Gvadányi’s notary). In Pressburg, the Sztojkas treated Lövei as a member of the family but also expected her to spend part of every day with their young daughter. She was, in short, a part-time nanny. Lövei found this job irksome. In a letter to a friend, she grumbled that she simply watched the girl and had no role in her education, which was presumably left to tutors. Lövei came to resent even the long walks they took: “naturally, only in the most familiar places, which you recognized even with your eyes closed—to me this is endless, mechanical work.”18 Lövei preferred poking around Pressburg, attending the theater, reading newspapers, and listening to the speeches in the Diet. The other women she saw there disappointed her: “few women are interested in the affairs of the homeland, and many cannot grasp the questions of the day.”19 Lövei clearly saw herself as someone who did, and one senses her frustration at knowing much but having few opportunities to show it.

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Pressburg had other attractions. With the arrival of so many wealthy noblemen and their families, social life in Pressburg quickened. Men could visit the Pressburg Casino, a social club that offered food, cigars, a library, and informal conversation. Women had salons, social calls, and the theater. Dances had always been major social events, but they took on even greater importance in Pressburg, against the backdrop of a National Diet. For more than a decade, opposition politicians and their supporters had championed the Hungarian language, dances, and dress. In Pressburg, Lövei noted with approval that a countess had danced the czardas, which patriots extolled for its folkloric roots and Hungarian character (and contrasted with the waltz, which dancers loved but patriots denounced as “Austrian” and hence “foreign”).20 But balls in any season also had a more prosaic function: they were central to the nobility’s marriage market. Marriage was another path open to Klára Lövei. This should have been straightforward: she was young, attractive, and from an old family. But she could not have had much of a dowry, which made her a much less desirable partner. This may explain Lövei’s guarded references in her letters to Gyuszi (Gyula) Mihályi, a young man and good friend. Mihályi was also from Máramaros, and his presence in Pressburg helped Lövei combat her homesickness: “Among so many strange, cold faces, it was good to find one that I had known since childhood.”21 They apparently spent a lot of time together. “There is no talk of love between us,” wrote Lövei—a statement that hints at unspoken, powerful feelings. But it soon became clear that ­Mihályi would marry another young woman from Máramaros, the daughter of the Greek Catholic priest of Visó. As Lövei explained, the priest was a “very rich man,” and he wanted his daughter to marry into one of the leading noble families of Máramaros (several Mihályis held high positions in the county). Lövei worried that entry into this “web of intrigues” would ruin “every good feeling” in her friend. But Mihályi apparently had no objection to the match, and his visits to Lövei soon ceased. This was as close as she ever came to marriage. The question of how Lövei might earn a living remained. She had already explored several avenues open to young women of her class—­acting, childcare, and marriage—and turned back from all of them. A new path suddenly opened in 1846, when Countess Blanka Teleki asked her to come work in a new school for girls she planned to establish in Pest. This was a remarkable opportunity for the twenty-five-year-old Lövei. But it again took her away from Máramaros County. “My fate was decided,” she later

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recalled, “that I, who had never wanted to leave my sweet, humble home, would spend my life traveling and wandering.”22 Before we examine Lövei’s work with Teleki in Pest, then, we need to look more closely at Máramaros and how it shaped her thinking about provincial Hungary.

The Islander Klára Lövei grew up in Máramaros County, in the northeastern corner of the Kingdom of Hungary.23 It was one of the largest but most thinly populated counties. “We live in a poor, craggy, and stony land,” an official had lamented in 1603.24 Steep mountains blanketed in forests of oak, beech, and pine covered nine-tenths of the county. The highest peak, Mount ­Pietros, reached 7,556 feet. River valleys cut through the mountains, but some were so narrow that roads running through them had to be carved into the sides of cliffs (as Vásárhelyi had done on the Lower Danube). Only the Tisza River valley was broad enough to support sizeable settlements. Everywhere the unforgiving and unpredictable climate, with its snowy winters and foggy summers, made agriculture difficult, and the county had to import wheat from neighboring Galicia. Most residents instead grew hardier crops—oats, buckwheat, and rye—and kept animals, especially sheep. The geographer Elek Fényes glumly noted that beautiful landscapes were scarce in Máramaros, although he did suggest that the fresh, clean air accounted for the many long-lived people in the region.25 The most populous town in the county today appears on maps as Sighetu Marmației in Romania. Hungarian speakers like Lövei knew the town as Máramarossziget or simply “Sziget,” meaning “island.” This had a literal meaning: the town lay at the confluence of two rivers, the Tisza and Iza, and a small brook running between them created an “island” of sorts. But the town was an island in a figurative sense as well. Although it had just over six thousand residents, Sziget, with its two-story public buildings, large markets, voluntary associations, and secondary schools, was the most urban settlement in an overwhelmingly rural region (Figure 4). That many residents of Sziget were Hungarian-speaking Calvinists made them stand out in Máramaros County, where the vast majority of people spoke other languages and practiced other religions.26 Finally, Sziget’s political power as the county seat and center of the imperial-royal administration further divided the town from the surrounding county. As a native of this town, Klára Lövei was thus an “islander” and part of a small but influential

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ruling class (if one of its poorer members). We can begin to understand her thinking about Máramaros in particular and the Hungarian provinces more generally if we examine this region’s defining features: its geographic remoteness, ethnographic diversity, and Hungarian political domination. Then and now, Máramaros County was isolated (even compared with much of northeastern Hungary). It lay more than 250 miles from Buda-Pest and 400 from Vienna. Today it is divided between Ukraine and Romania, whose Maramureș County is nearly 400 miles from the capital in Bucharest, one reason Romania’s Stalinists imprisoned their political opponents here, in the infamous Sighet prison. The written history of Máramaros nevertheless stretches back nearly a millennium; documents first mentioned the county in 1199, and Hungarian kings and Moldavian princes jockeyed for power and influence here through the fourteenth century. Interestingly, only the European discovery of the New World and domestication of two of its most adaptable crops—potatoes and corn—made large-scale settlement in Máramaros viable.27 Rock salt was the county’s most valuable export; the mines at Szlatina and Rónaszék had been worked

“Greetings from Máramarossziget” reads this postcard, which offers a view of Lövei’s hometown as it appeared in 1870. “Greetings from afar,” the sender has added, underlining the town’s isolation. The imposing County Hall stands in the foreground, with the Roman Catholic church and the more distant Carpathian Mountains behind it. source: author’s collection. FIGURE 4.  

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for centuries and contained enough clean salt, Fényes enthused, “to meet the needs of the entire country for countless years.”28 Salt was a royal monopoly, and when the young Emperor Francis Joseph toured Hungary in 1852, he visited the mines at Szlatina. Salt was also Máramaros’s strongest connection with the wider world, and wagon trains filled with it rumbled westward as far as Cracow and southwest toward Pest. In good weather, huge flotillas of salt-laden rafts floated down the Tisza. But the weather was often bad, and flooding and poor roads made transportation difficult. Like much of northeastern Hungary, Máramaros was a region of great ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. Elie Wiesel’s memoirs list the languages his family used in Sighet in the early twentieth century: “At home, of course, Yiddish predominated. But we also spoke German, Romanian, and Hungarian. At the store, you might also hear Ruthenian, Ukrainian, and Russian.”29 The same patterns held in Lövei’s day as well. By one count, roughly half the population of Máramaros spoke Ruthenian and one-third Romanian; the balance spoke Hungarian (just 8 percent of the total), Yiddish (5 percent), and German (4 percent).30 Because the Ruthenian and Romanian speakers were Greek Catholics, this religion was by far the largest in the county (83 percent), followed distantly by Roman Catholicism (7 percent), Judaism (5 percent), and Calvinism (4 percent). These statistics do not include the small minority who spoke multiple languages, and anecdotal evidence suggests that speakers of diverse languages borrowed words and much else from each other. Jewish memoirs of Máramaros, to take one example, stress the piety of the largely Hasidic community, but also the many affinities between the Jewish farmers and their Romanian and Ruthenian neighbors: thin cows, barefoot children, and dinners of mămăligă (polenta).31 As we have seen in other chapters, this diversity was often a source of pride. Writing in the 1850s, a local historian bragged about the unique combination of peoples in the county.32 But he was also quick to point out that the Hungarians, however small their numbers, had a special mission: “In Máramaros the Hungarians were always the representatives and instruments of a more noble culture,” which gave them an “intellectual superiority” over the Slavs and Romanians they lived among. The confidence and chauvinism of these observations reveal an important feature of Máramaros: the domination of a small minority of ­Hungarian-speaking noble families. This group played a major role in county politics, economic life, and cultural affairs. To be sure, the county had poor Hungarian craftsmen and peasants, but not many. This had

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never been an area of sustained Hungarian settlement, and their low number led local nationalists to worry that in mixed villages the Hungarian speakers might simply “melt” into the surrounding majority of Ruthenians and ­Romanians.33 Nor were all nobles Hungarian in an ethnic or national sense; some of the leading families in Máramaros, such as the Drágfis and Mánns, were of Romanian origin. Village headmen (the cnezi in Romanian) had also been granted noble privileges in earlier centuries. When anthropologist Gail Kligman lived among Romanian villagers in the 1970s, she noted that the leading families still bragged of their “descent from freeholders rather than from serf peasants.”34 Nineteenth-century ­Máramaros thus had a large number of nobles, some 26,300 in the 1840s, who made up 15 percent of the total population, one of the highest proportions in Hungary. But a small circle of wealthy families dominated public life in Máramaros. Gábor Várady, born into one of them, opens his memoirs with a vivid illustration of how this domination could work: he describes executions he witnessed as a child in front of County Hall in Sziget. “A terrible, revolting sight!” he writes, and sixty years later, he can still hear the prisoners’ cries: “From the mouths of the suffering Ruthenians mostly came the cry, ‘dear mother, dear mother, why was I born?,’ while the Romanians mostly lessened their pain with wails of ‘oh, woe is me! woe is me!’”35 The neighbors shut their windows, but the Hungarian county officials watched stoically. Várady reads in these grim scenes “the coarse, rough prose of a patriarchal life possessing a medieval character.”36 This was how matters stood in much of northeastern Hungary, with the Hungarian officials on top and the Ruthenian and Romanian peasants on the bottom.37 Klára Lövei seems to have taken this hierarchical order for granted. Her writings contain surprisingly few references to the peoples she moved among as a child in Máramaros. The relative poverty of this region does not interest her. The few observations she does offer about the peasantry suggest views that were typical of the Hungarian elite in this era. She liked to tell an anecdote about a Romanian soldier, who, even after the 1848 Revolution had collapsed, remained “wholly Hungarian in his heart and spirit” and who praised the revolutionary leader, Lajos Kossuth, with a mixture of Romanian and Hungarian words.38 Elsewhere she recalled village festivities in which Hungarian and Romanian peasants, similarly dressed, happily danced together.39 She had little to say about Jews (unlike many of her contemporaries, who had much to say, almost all of it negative, about the Jews who came to Máramaros from Galicia).40 With Lövei, the underlying

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assumption was that Hungary’s remarkable ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity was not an obstacle to fraternal relations—nor a challenge to the leading role played by the Hungarians. Even after she left, Lövei remained deeply attached to her hometown and home county. In this she was not alone; her friend István Szilágyi, a local historian, once bragged that no other county in Hungary had such beautiful flora and fauna as Máramaros.41 For Lövei, people mattered as much as plants. Most of her friends were provincials, and her oldest friends were from Máramaros. In a series of newspaper articles on Hungary’s three leading actresses, all of them stars on the Budapest stage, Lövei identified each with the provincial town that had nurtured her talents: Kolozsvár for Mári Jászai, Debrecen for Lujza Blaha (“a true Hungarian woman of the Great Plains”), and Máramarossziget for her close friend Cornélia P ­ rielle.42 With Prielle, Lövei set aside all her doubts, all her ambivalence about the provinces. Lövei thus praised Prielle’s “devotion to her birthplace” and went so far as to say that “every quality, with which she is blessed, is due to her birthplace”—that is, to Máramaros.43 Often, however, Lövei found much to be desired in the provinces, even in a good-sized city like Kolozsvár, where she spent several years later in life. In one of the many newspaper articles she wrote about the provinces at this time, she described a new photography studio that had opened in Kolozsvár. That the studio had such a convenient location in the town center confirmed her belief that “we do not desire the excessive expansion of our towns,” suggesting a modest photography studio would be pushed to the outer edges of a larger city. But her Goldilocks-like preference for middle-sized towns quickly slips into complaints: “It would be nice if the smaller towns improved their cleanliness and order. Then one would not find, in a second-class hotel in Kolozsvár, a heap of the dog’s bones on the sofa, and a strange buffalo would not charge into a courtyard and nearly endanger the life of a peaceful family’s dear child.”44 Petty complaints? Certainly. But such is the stuff out of which collective ideas about “the capital” and “the provinces” were made. In Lövei’s writings, the latter are often found wanting. Not so Buda-Pest. Throughout her life, Lövei looked with longing to the Hungarian capital. She lived there for two years in the 1840s and again when she retired in her old age. In her eyes, the twin towns were not just the political heart of Hungary, but also a source of culture, civilization, and unity for the whole kingdom. She recalled that when Kossuth had

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launched his pathbreaking newspaper, Pest News (Pesti Hirlap) in the 1840s, it had been “the first rays of dawn after the dark of night.”45 The “gentlemen of the isolated counties,” she explained, had been forced to pay attention; the paper had created a “common spirit” in Hungary. With the theater too, Buda-Pest was the driving force for the whole kingdom. Describing the revival of Hungarian-language theater in the 1850s, Lövei wrote that “the fervor spread from the capital to the provinces.”46 Her writings rarely suggest that cultural and political forces might move in other directions. Lövei’s “imagined geography” collapsed the considerable distance between the center and the periphery, between Budapest and Máramaros County. This made her feel as if she were part of a larger community rather than a lonesome “islander.” It also strengthened her commitment to the Hungarian national cause. As we shall see, the 1848 revolution and its aftermath deeply influenced her political views. But her strong and steadfast nationalism may also owe something to her origins in Máramaros County, where Hungarians were influential but isolated, politically powerful but statistically small. Contemporaries sometimes spoke of the region as a “borderland fortress,” and Lövei appeared more than willing to serve as a “guardian of the nation,” as historian Pieter Judson has aptly described the self-appointed defenders of the Habsburg Monarchy’s many linguistic frontiers.47 For Lövei, then, regional pride sat easily alongside national pride; she felt both keenly. Her example supports the proposition that national feelings are sometimes felt most strongly far from the center. To see how she developed these views, we need to look next at her political education in Pest in the 1840s.

From School to Prison “Women’s Emancipation,” ran the title of an article in a Pest journal in 1845.48 For the author, the subject offered a source of humor and an opportunity to moralize. The humor came easily, with reports of an “emancipated” woman who was planning to publish a book titled No More Men! (Keine Männer mehr! ) and a female artist who had been seen smoking cigars in public (woe to the man who kissed a woman smoker!). The moral was simple: “Our female readers can now understand that nothing can give greater fright than an emancipated woman.” Behind these mocking words lay deeper anxieties about the place of women in Hungarian society. In the 1830s and 1840s, women of the

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middle and upper classes took on new roles in social and cultural life as avid readers, sometime writers, popular actors, and tireless organizers of charitable causes. These opportunities for women reflected wider changes that were remaking public life in Hungary: the growth of cities, a rise in literacy, an explosion of voluntary associations, and an influx from abroad of new ways of thinking. Such changes unfolded on a modest scale in the small towns and cities of northeastern Hungary. For example, in Kassa, a town midway between Lövei’s and Vásárhelyi’s birthplaces, the population had doubled over the past fifty years, approaching fifteen thousand in the late 1840s.49 To accommodate this growth, town leaders tore down the old city walls and gates, on which they laid out residential lots and a handsome promenade. The residents of Kassa had a library, three booksellers, a newspaper, and a German-language theater; in 1828 they also founded a men’s social club, which had a library and restaurant. The quicker pace of public life in Kassa and elsewhere in Hungary aided the emergence of an energetic political opposition, which began in the 1820s and hit critical mass in the 1840s. Writers of the day called on Hungarian women to do their part for the national cause, as patriotic wives and mothers, even as they admonished women not to meddle in politics. These changes put the spotlight on women’s education. Contemporaries agreed that Hungarian women were poorly educated. The literacy rate among women was much lower than among men. Like Lövei, most girls attended school for only a few years, if at all. Girls from well-to-do families studied at home with tutors or attended exclusive private schools, where they could learn foreign languages, dance, and drawing. Critics denounced these “finishing” schools and demanded more substantial, patriotic options for young women. The novelist András Fáy took up the cause; he wanted Hungarian women to “speak the national language, read and patronize its literature—in short be Hungarian women from head to toe and raise their children as Hungarians as well.”50 At the 1843–44 Diet, which Lövei attended, Fáy called for establishment of a teacher-training institute for women. This was a bold plan, in part because it would have allowed female teachers to work as assistants in all elementary schools (not just those for girls), thereby providing employment and income to many women. But educational reform in Hungary required the support of, in addition to the Hungarian Diet, the royal authorities, churches, and local governments. Nothing came of Fáy’s plan at the Diet, and his call for private subscriptions to fund the teacher-training institute also fell on deaf ears.

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Two women showed the way forward. In Miskolc (where Pál Vásárhelyi’s father had once taught), Teréz Karacs, already known for her novellas and newspaper articles, opened a school for girls in 1846; in her first year, she had sixty-nine students. In the same year, Countess Blanka Teleki opened a school for girls in Pest.51 Like Lövei, Teleki was unmarried and unimpressed with the pursuits and pastimes of many women of her class. Unlike Lövei, Teleki came from a wealthy, aristocratic family and had spent long years abroad in Paris and Munich, where she had studied drawing and painting. Back in Buda-Pest, Teleki envisioned a boarding school for the daughters of aristocratic and well-to-do gentry families. In an anonymous newspaper article published in December 1845, she vividly described the need for her school: “The aristocratic girl has hardly left childhood—has hardly learned about life . . . when she is already a woman, a mother.”52 Teleki claimed that existing schools made the students “­foreign,” in that they knew several foreign languages, could recite the history of any number of foreign lands, and dreamed of living in Paris or London. The time has come, she wrote, to educate aristocratic girls in a patriotic spirit; only this would allow liberal reforms to take root and Hungarian-language literature to flourish. Teleki’s school opened in Pest in 1846 and had fourteen students in the following year. Despite the small size, it had good teachers, an innovative curriculum, and an egalitarian spirit (all the girls wore simple, plain smocks). The obstacles Teleki faced are illuminating. The Hungarian aristocracy was suspicious of a school run by a woman, and the gentry balked at the sizable annual tuition of three hundred florins. The royal authorities would not allow Teleki to advertise the school in the newspapers, and an announcement appeared in one only after an oversight by the censor. In a private letter, Teleki made light of the situation: “The miserable [authorities] are afraid that in a few years there will be a dozen more patriotic women in Hungary!”53 The authorities’ hostility stemmed from their open mistrust of Teleki’s motives. A police informant reported that she had instilled her school with a “particular political direction,” which he identified as “a patriotic, Hungarian one, but purely oppositional in spirit and exceptionally exaggerated.”54 Reviewing the evidence, the Hungarian Chancellery in Vienna concluded that the school was extremely dangerous and that “the personality of Countess Teleki in no way offers the guarantee that is required in educational matters with regard to the common good.”55 They resolved to monitor the school closely and intercede if necessary.

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In coming to Pest to work at Teleki’s school, Klára Lövei thus found herself in a charged environment. Everything she had imagined in Máramaros and glimpsed in Pressburg—political agitation, cultural ferment, and social movements—was doubled in Buda-Pest. Teleki’s niece would later write that when she arrived, Lövei was an “exceptionally good-­ humored, industrious young woman who was eager to learn and immediately filled with boundless enthusiasm and admiration for Blanka Teleki.”56 In truth, Lövei’s actual duties at the school were something of a letdown. The countess had hired Lövei to be the school’s supervisor, which made her responsible for maintaining order and cleanliness in the school, as well as for taking the eight-to-twelve-year-old students for long walks in the city. Lövei helped the younger students with their Hungarian, but she was not part of the teaching staff. Instead, she sat in on many classes with the students, and in this way she perfected her German and heard the stirring lectures of the school’s most famous teacher, the young and charismatic history teacher (and future revolutionary hero) Pál Vasvári. Lövei seems to have chafed in this role; neither a student nor a teacher, she may well have again felt undervalued. Yet Lövei gained much, including a degree of self-understanding. In a letter from this period to Karacs, Lövei admitted that she sometimes looked back on the course her life had taken and wondered if she could remain happy. She did not linger on what she discreetly called “this almost forgotten chamber of feelings” and quickly asserted that she had neither the time nor the desire to dwell on the past. Instead, she said that she wanted only to continue learning with the students. Some lessons came harder than others: “It has happened that what others have [elsewhere] praised in me has counted against me here—I have come to understand that teaching arises from the command of a clear-headed and not a capricious mind, [and] I have voluntarily bowed my rarely bowed head to the opinions of others.”57 With this newfound humility and introspection, Lövei took the first steps on a career path she would follow the rest of her life (if sometimes with great difficulty): she would be a teacher. Before that happened, she would be revolutionary and a political prisoner, experiences that completed her political education. The revolution came in March 1848, as Europe’s “Springtime of the Nations” reached the Habsburg lands. Vienna exploded first, and on March 15 revolution broke out in Buda-Pest and soon spread to the rest of Hungary. In the weeks and months that followed, Hungary’s revolutionary leaders worked

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to sweep away the last vestiges of feudalism; to expand freedoms of speech, press, and assembly; to enroll new voters, hold elections, and establish a parliamentary government; and to set up a national guard. The revolution marked the arrival of a new political culture, one marked by mass participation in elections, public meetings, and political clubs. The revolutionary upheaval offered new possibilities to women, and in Hungary as elsewhere women took up pens, sewed banners with revolutionary slogans, and participated in political meetings and street demonstrations. The teachers and students of Teleki’s school enthusiastically supported the revolution. The few sources we have about Lövei’s experience of 1848 show that she too found it exhilarating. Writing to a friend, Lövei enthused about what the first months of revolution had brought: “We have seen great events on the present stage of history, and we can rejoice because our childhood dreams of freedom have in many respects come true.”58 In a letter to Vasvári, the teacher-turned-soldier, she addressed him as “citizen” ( polgartárs), a form of address taken from the French Revolution and for a time used by Hungarian revolutionaries.59 As another Hungarian woman recalled, “Titles came to an end; the whole world was citizen and citizeness.”60 Following the lead of the young writer Mór Jókai, Klára also changed the spelling of her last name, from Lövey to Lövei. In Hungarian surnames, the -y suffix often served as a noble predicate (like von in German or de in French); in the leveling spirit of 1848, many young Hungarians of noble origin signaled their political ideals by adopting the -i. It was a small, symbolic badge of the revolution, and one Lövei wore the rest of her life. Troubles loomed in Pest. Teleki’s school closed its doors at the end of 1848, as the students returned to their families to wait out the revolution, which had turned into open war between Hungarian forces and the Habsburg armies. In late 1848, when it became clear that the Hungarians could not defend Buda-Pest, the revolutionary government decamped to Debrecen, 140 miles to the east. Teleki and Lövei followed—just barely!— on the last train out of Pest. In Debrecen, Lövei witnessed Lajos Kossuth depose the Habsburgs and declare Hungarian independence on April 14, 1849. She must also have closely followed events unfolding across northeastern Hungary; her home county of Máramaros was largely quiet, but terrible fighting broke out between Hungarian and Romanian units in other places, and in the summer of 1849 a massive Russian army entered from the northeast to help put down the revolution.61 With what strength and

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money they had, Teleki and Lövei nursed wounded Hungarian soldiers and continued to help them even after the revolution ended in August 1849. Lövei at first stayed with Teleki at her family estate in Pálfalva, a small village in Szatmár County (less than ten miles from Nagy-Peleske, the hometown of Count Gvadányi’s famous notary). Documents from their trial four years later described Lövei as Teleki’s “servant” or “maid” (Dienerin). This is inaccurate: Teleki and Lövei apparently spent late 1849 studying Turkish (many Hungarian revolutionaries had fled to the Ottoman Empire), collecting revolutionary documents and songs, and planning a patriotic book for Hungarian children.62 Lövei would never be on equal terms with Teleki—the differences in age, wealth, experience, travel, and status ensured that—so it is plausible Lövei played a number of roles for Teleki, including companion, clerk, lady’s maid, head of household, and girl Friday. In late 1850, Lövei returned to Máramarossziget. The family of Baron Sztojka again took her in, this time as a tutor to their daughter Júlia. Klára Lövei was arrested on July 21, 1851. The arrest itself was not a surprise; several weeks earlier, two officials had searched Lövei’s quarters, possibly looking for letters from Blanka Teleki, who was already being watched.63 Lövei was taken to Pest, where one wing of a large barracks had been converted into a prison; the windows had been almost entirely bricked up, making the rooms dark and boiling hot in the summer. There she again met Teleki, who had also been arrested. In a cruel twist of fate, the prison stood right across the street from the building that had housed Teleki’s school. There they sat for two years, awaiting trial. Lövei’s account emphasizes the solidarity of the political prisoners, who sang folk songs in the evening, passed secret messages (through sympathetic jailors who delivered wood), shared food, and created their own prison slang: they called the prison “Babylon,” apparently in mockery of the warden’s wife, who did not know the word “pavilion” (used to describe the prisoners’ wing) and instead said “Babylon.”64 The jailors had the last laugh. Teleki and Lövei were sentenced on June 30, 1853. Both were found guilty of educating girls in a revolutionary spirit, distributing incendiary writings, collecting antigovernment documents and sending them to Paris (where Teleki’s sister lived), harboring deserters, and translating and distributing politically dangerous books. Teleki received ten years, and Lövei five; the Habsburg governor of Hungary lessened the sentence only in that they did not have to be in chains. They

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were then sent to Kufstein, a Habsburg prison high in the Tyrolean Alps. The women were placed in most secure tower in the most secure prison in the Habsburg Monarchy. Life in the “coffin of stone” was hard, but they endured. Under the first, kindly warden, they were allowed fl ­ owers, books, paper, and extra food, which Teleki bought from the jailors at exorbitant prices; under his successor they had none of these comforts. In her memoirs of her prison years, Lövei struggles to describe the monotony, petty injustices, boredom, and danger of prison life. She had plenty of time to reflect on the astonishing path she had traveled over the past decade. It had taken her from her remote home in the provinces to Pest, where she planned to be a teacher but ended up a revolutionary; it had led her back to the countryside, where she had witnessed the bitter end of the revolution and anxiously awaited arrest; it had carried her to harsh prisons, first in Pest and then deep in the Austrian provinces. Nearly seven hundred miles separated the Kufstein prison and Máramarossziget. It is difficult to judge the psychological toll of these experiences. “Defeat,” historian Alice Freifeld has written, was “overwhelming and crushing,” it brought “a thick, dense fog of gloom that spread over daily life.”65 But it also fostered a sense of solidarity and rewarded small acts of resistance. Lövei’s own defiance shows in a long poem she wrote in prison. It was no masterpiece, she later claimed. But it explains why she and Teleki had been imprisoned: “Because they ardently loved their homeland, / and did not bend in submission / to the bloodthirsty judge.”66 Within the cold walls of the prison, it continues, a spirit whispers “that their beautiful homeland will someday be victorious!” For Lövei, then, the dream of freedom sustained her through a difficult time. Her political education had taught her to give priority to the emancipation of Hungary. She would remain true to the liberal, nationalist principles of 1848 to the end of her life, and this is how she was remembered at her death: as a honléany, a true daughter of the homeland. But a look at her first years after release suggests she may have conceived of “emancipation” in other ways as well.

A School of Her Own Klára Lövei was released from prison on July 11, 1856.67 Although her mother, her relatives, and the town of Sziget had presented no fewer than eleven petitions to the authorities, pleading for her release, she served her full five-year sentence. Her departure from Blanka Teleki, who was

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freed the following year as part of a general amnesty of prisoners, was teary and difficult. Life on the outside was no easier. Lövei was in poor health, and the secret police watched her every move; one detective confronted her just days after her release in the Austrian city of Linz. After a friendly young merchant had directed Lövei to a good hotel, the detective burst into her room, reminding her about the high morals of this Catholic city and warning her against “doubtful relationships” with strange men; uncowed, Lövei told him off in a loud voice. But she now realized that “I was not truly free.”68 She soon learned that other impediments stood in her way: the Catholic Church had been given greater authority over education in Hungary, and the question of women’s education had fallen by the wayside. It would be difficult for the Calvinist Lövei to find a position at an established school for girls. So Lövei did what most freed prisoners do: she went home. In Sziget she was reunited with mother and sister. The decision about how to make ends meet was not difficult. She would seek employment as a teacher, a profession for which she felt “great fondness.”69 Her cousin Gábor Várady hired her to tutor his young daughter, who had just finished kindergarten. Other girls soon joined them, and Lövei converted a room in the Váradys’ house into a makeshift schoolroom. But Blanka Teleki’s release from prison and fragile health interrupted this promising start. Lövei hurried to Pest to help the countess, and later followed her to Munich, Paris, Stuttgart, and Dresden, where Teleki sought out relatives and doctors. Lövei herself fell deathly ill with typhus, and in 1858 despairingly wrote to Karacs, “After all this upheaval I do not know where I will drop anchor.”70 She was in Paris with Teleki when the countess later died, whispering her last word: “Hungary.” Only in 1859 did Lövei return to Sziget, again with the intention of teaching. Fortunately, the Váradys were again willing to help, and Lövei quickly picked up where she had left off. Her classes for well-to-do young girls were so successful that the newly founded women’s association helped her move from the Váradys’ house to a seven-room school, complete with a garden, staff room, and dining room. What had begun as tutoring for one student was now a formal school with more than thirty students. This small school is of wider significance. Lövei worked as a teacher in the late 1850s on a stage much smaller than the ones she had previously occupied in Pest and in prison with Teleki. But her work in Sziget tells us much about what she valued and to what she aspired; it reveals how she hoped to change the provinces, and it illuminates the links between educa-

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tion and language use. A careful look at these years can help us understand what “emancipation” meant to Lövei. Lövei’s school in Sziget had an ambitious curriculum. She herself taught reading, writing, literature, and poetry, as well as Hungarian, German, and French. She loved history, and she taught it using only a large map of the world and no textbooks; Mrs. Várady once observed with a smile that Lövei’s account of Hungarian history contained all its triumphs but none of its defeats.71 Guest lecturers added botany, singing, dance, and speech to the list of subjects. Lövei’s memoirs make plain her joy in teaching and devotion to her students, which they reciprocated. She approached the job with great seriousness and moral purpose, once asking rhetorically: “What is greater, what is more sublime, than to shape the soul? To give direction to thought? To instruct young people for life, for the homeland, so that they do not wander in the wrong direction on a tangled path or get lost in the wasteland of idleness?”72 Who were her students? Most seem to have been the daughters of the leading families of Sziget. At least one girl arrived at Lövei’s school knowing only a little Hungarian, meaning she was most likely a native Romanian speaker. Lövei marveled at the strides she and the other girls made in Hungarian. It also seems at least one girl was Jewish, which would not be surprising in Sziget. We have only limited information about the students in Lövei’s school, but when a permanent girls’ school was established in Sziget in the 1870s it too had a mix of students. Of the seventy-four students enrolled in the 1875–76 school year, thirty were Jewish, twenty Roman Catholic, sixteen Calvinist, and eight Greek Catholic.73 Lövei’s school likely had the same diversity, if not identical percentages. Like all good teachers, Lövei understood that much learning took place beyond the walls of the classroom. A high point of her teaching in Sziget was an overnight trip she took with six of her students into the surrounding hills.74 Pausing over details, Lövei recreates the excursion in her memoirs, stressing the girls’ good cheer in spite of the rain, the simple meals they ate, the rough comfort of the lodge that housed them, and the “painterly beauty and wonderful landscape of the Mára and Iza [river] valleys.” The botany teacher joined them the next morning, and together they studied the trees and flowers. Lövei proudly recounted a later episode, when she was at the Váradys’ summer place in the hills.75 When someone broke a leg, the others applied an herb that grew locally. The doctor who arrived was doubtful about its influence, until the young Gábriela Várady,

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one of Lövei’s students, supplied the Latin name of the plant: Symphytum officinale, common comfrey, or, as it is sometimes known, “knitbone,” for its role in helping bones to heal. Such touching episodes notwithstanding, Lövei clearly took pleasure in the day-to-day routines of being a teacher. Her admiration for her colleagues shines through her memoirs, which mention all by name and list the classes they taught. Her description of staff meetings is lyrical: “With pleasure I remember the spirited, small meetings of teachers, which I used to call regularly and when the occasion demanded it. They rank among my happiest hours. Especially gratifying was the unity that existed among us.”76 Readers who have endured dull or disputatious staff meetings may smile at these words. But what stands out here is the great satisfaction Lövei took in simply having a job and everything that went with it, including the responsibilities, colleagues, decision making, and discussions. Lövei’s satisfaction was of no concern to the authorities. By 1860, political change was in the air in Hungary, but officials still kept a close watch on all schools. In the spring of 1861, with just one month remaining in the school year, a royal commissioner and county official named Péter Dolinay appeared at Lövei’s school. She proudly showed him around; only later did she discover that he carried in his pocket the order to close her school. He delivered it the next day, and the school was immediately shuttered. Lövei and the students cried, and she felt as though “a tree in full blossom had been toppled by a storm or struck by lightning.”77 No reason was ever given for the school’s closure, and Lövei would never again work in a school. Shut out of teaching, Lövei became a tutor for the family of Count Teleki. Over the next three decades, she instructed four girls and one boy. She became a part of the aristocratic household and was treated more as a member of the family than as part of the staff. She loved the children, her garden, and the opportunity to travel (the Telekis rarely stayed put for long). Their time in Paris had put her in touch with Hungarian émigrés, and in an 1864 letter about them she mentioned her abiding interest in public affairs.78 But much of her correspondence was of a more domestic nature. In her letters to Prielle, Lövei wrote about the Teleki children, who sometimes exasperated and often delighted her. Her favorite was the youngest, fittingly named Blanka. Lövei’s observations about another sister, Emma, are revealing. Lövei praised Emma’s creativity and humor as a child; after seeing József Gaál’s theatrical adaptation of The Village Notary, the twelve-year-old Emma entertained the family with her spot-on imita-

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tion of the notary playing cards in a coffeehouse.79 When Emma reached nineteen, however, Lövei was less upbeat: “Emma has become a very beautiful young woman. A delightful creature: radiant, lithe like a young cedar tree, but with a fully developed figure. It is a pity that, as a countess, her artistic talent, playful spirit, [and] originality will dwindle in the, shall we say, stupid monotony of day-to-day salon life.”80 As if pronouncing a sentence of death on the young countess, she added, “This year she will be taken to a ball for the first time.” Lövei herself kept monotony at bay by writing. In 1865, her cousin Gábor Várady had helped launch Máramaros, the first newspaper published in their home county. Its longtime editor, István Szilágyi, was a close acquaintance of Lövei’s. Over the course of three decades, Lövei published hundreds of articles and short notices, on topics ranging from theatrical premieres in Kolozsvár to the International Exposition held in Vienna in 1873. She wrote about village schools, paintings, statues, concerts, folklore, and bicycles. Remarkably, she published her last article just months before she died, at the age of seventy-six. Few other women wrote for Hungarian newspapers at this time, and fewer still wrote on so many topics. Her activity contributed to the remarkable growth of the provincial press in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is by her short-lived school that we might best judge Lövei’s achievements. An older Romanian-language history of Máramaros County described her school (which it credited to Gábor Várady) as one of several initiatives meant “to secure [Hungarian] cultural and economic hegemony”; in particular, it aimed to “educate in a Hungarian spirit girls of the leading families.”81 This is similar to the charges hurled at Teleki’s school in the 1840s and anticipates later criticisms of the Hungarian government, which after 1867 issued a series of laws and ministerial decrees that aimed to expand the teaching of Hungarian in all primary schools (including those run by the churches) and, it was understood, to limit students’ options to pursue higher education in languages other than Hungarian. The moral and pedagogical content of such policies has long been debated, as have their outcomes. What is certain is that “Magyarization” hardened resistance among Romanian, Slovak, and other national leaders (this would come much later in a place like Máramaros, where Hungarian speakers dominated public life and much of the Romanian and Ruthenian population lived in isolated villages). Lövei’s school used Hungarian as the language of instruction, and her strong national pride surely shaped the curriculum.

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Later, in the 1870s, when she was staying with the Teleki family in Transylvania, Lövei cheered the strides the pupils at a nearby Romanian village school had made in Hungarian language, history, and geography.82 But these charges of “Magyarization” also miss the mark. Lövei’s school undoubtedly had a Hungarian spirit, but its female leadership, innovative curriculum, and enthusiastic students are much more striking. That it likely had Romanian and Jewish students may tell us less about the domination of Hungarian noble families than offer a reminder that in diverse regions, parents often took a pragmatic approach to language use, routinely sending their sons and daughters to schools in which the language of instruction was not the one spoken at home.83 And in her later writings about the Romanian school, Lövei underscored that few things pleased her more than “the progress of any village school.”84 She reserved her real scorn for the Hungarian and Romanian villagers she encountered who failed to grasp the importance of schooling. Even here her optimism about education shone through; she noted that in one village the women’s superstitious refusal to weave on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Saturdays allowed the older girls to attend school on those days. For Lövei, progress and patriotism were inseparable, but she did not let one blind her to the needs of the other. Stepping back, we can see that Lövei’s school appeared just as public life across Austria-Hungary began to stir after a cautious decade. Perhaps she acted too soon, when the political situation was still uncertain and the authorities needed no justification to close her school. But in the months and years that followed, as constitutional experiments unfolded in Vienna and parliamentary life returned (haltingly) to Hungary, a growing number of schools, newspapers, and charitable organizations were founded in Máramaros County, many of them focused on education. Romanian political and church leaders formed a cultural association to advance the cause of popular education in the villages.85 Other associations worked for the education of girls; in 1863 a Catholic school for girls opened in Sziget. Seven years later, some of the same women who had earlier supported Lövei established a nondenominational school for girls. Like Lövei, they hoped that their institution would attract students from all religions and nationalities, and that it would prepare young women for careers as teachers.86 In prison, Lövei had dedicated herself to the emancipation of her homeland. In Sziget, she worked for women’s emancipation. True, she did

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not concern herself with the issues that engaged later women reformers: divorce laws, secondary education, and professional employment, let alone the vote (women in Hungary gained partial suffrage after 1918 and full suffrage only in 1945). But if we stretch the meaning of women’s emancipation to include those who challenge social conventions and expectations, those who attempt to educate and inspire girls and young women, and those who demonstrate the value—for the individual and the collective—of women’s work, then it fits Klára Lövei perfectly.

“I Deserve That Place” “We are slaves to life’s petty worries.” So wrote Klára Lövei to Cornélia Prielle in 1894.87 Her letters to Prielle, which span the last two decades of Lövei’s life, offer a remarkable portrait of an aging but active woman. She took walks, read, and listened to music; she worried about money; she gardened; she nursed sick members of the Teleki family. She wrote her memoirs, published them in the Máramaros newspaper, and translated two books into Hungarian: Jules Michelet’s The Sea (La Mer), from French, and Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s How Mr. Pavel Got Married, and What a Match He Made ( Jak się pan Paweł żenił i jak się ożenił ) from Polish.88 The death of friends saddened her; the death of her beloved sister in 1887 filled her with a sharp grief. She patronized a young and charming actor; she saw plays and attended the circus; she spent summers at spas and the Telekis’ country estates. It was a pleasant, provincial life. But Budapest beckoned. “I wish that for once I could settle in Budapest! I deserve that place,” she wrote in 1888.89 It would take a year or two, but eventually she left the Telekis and moved to the Hungarian capital. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, she wanted “a room of her own.” She confided to Prielle: “I will be a tenant of the Tömösvárys. It has been my life’s desire to be in a family, but in a separate room, and so not alone, and in a family with whom I feel at home.”90 In Budapest, she continued to write, read widely, and took part in all national holidays, especially those with some connection to the 1848 Revolution. Although she had few visitors, she loved to debate politics and literature with her guests. But Budapest held dangers for an older woman whose hearing and eyesight were beginning to fail. On the morning of Thursday, April 8, 1897, she accidentally stepped in front of an oncoming horse-drawn trolley. At first, it seemed that she had escaped serious injury. But there was likely internal bleeding, and she died at 4:30 p.m.

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the same day. A funeral was held in Pest, but her body was then taken to Máramarossziget, where she was buried next to her mother and sister. The major Hungarian newspapers carried obituaries of Klára Lövei. Most emphasized her connection to Blanka Teleki, sometimes to the exclusion of all other facets of her life. All praised her personal qualities: “Her character was crystal-clear, in her principles she was hard as steel, in her virtues and her patriotic enthusiasm she was unfailingly rich.”91 They underlined her strong Hungarian patriotism, saying “she was a model of a Hungarian women of the old days: simple, noble, charitable and above all Hungarian.”92 In the same spirit, the literary critic Györgyi Sáfrán once observed that Lövei carried the mindset of the 1830s and 1840s into the second half of the century. By this she meant Lövei’s faith in progress, her deep attachment to Hungarian culture, her commitment to the principles of 1848, and her thin-skinned response to any perceived slight of Hungary by Austria.93 (In her unwillingness to forgive or forget, Lövei was not alone: one Szatmár County memoirist recalled that even after half a century had passed, his grandfather still refused to greet a neighbor who had helped the Austrians put down the revolution.)94 All this was certainly true, although it obscures the breadth of her interests and activities, especially following her release from prison in 1856. When seen in this light, Lövei appears more interesting and more deeply connected to the provinces. Lövei’s imagined geography had Budapest and Sziget at its edges. The two were opposites, separated by their size, history, landscape, ethnic makeup, political power, and modernity. Yet both had a clear place on Lövei’s mental map, and she linked them with a line of small cities and towns in northeastern Hungary and Transylvania. Her writings added many details to this map, and on it we can see the provincial theaters, country estates, and memorials to the 1848 Revolution that mattered so much to her. Yet Lövei’s map had some striking omissions: her “imagined geography” had little space for Romanians, Ruthenians, Jews, and other peoples who occupied Máramaros County. The blinkers of Lövei’s nationalism were typical of educated Hungarians of her class—and of many historians of Máramaros until very recently.95 But even with this narrow vision, Lövei saw a better future for the provinces, and she did more than most of her contemporaries to move toward it. Like Gvadányi, she put her hope in education and print, and she answered Gvadányi’s call to “let women write.” Her professed goal was the “emancipation” of the home-

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land, but in her work and writing she did much to emancipate herself, her students, and all others who followed her example. This imagined geography remained fixed through the end of her life. Klára Lövei spent her last years in Budapest, but she never fully left her hometown. For all her ambivalence about the provinces, she felt at home in the closed world of Sziget. There she kept a small, two-room apartment, which she had presumably inherited from her mother. She used it during summers and described it in a letter to Prielle: “What it lacks in luxury and the usual comforts it makes up for in complete independence.”96 We should not overstate the meaning of this phrase “complete independence,” tempting as that might be. But the letter reminds us of what Lövei’s hometown meant to her. It was the place to which she always returned, the home of friends and family who stood by her, the source of disappointments, and the site of professional achievements.

5 The Journalist Whatever more or less invented historical traditions of Transylvanian particularism may claim, the Romanian and Hungarian residents have, since the beginning of the modern period, preferred a separate to a common political existence, and have preferred to be closer to Bucharest or to Budapest than to each other. Sorin Mitu, “Illusions and Facts about Transylvania” (1988)1 Bihar County, or even better, ‘Bihor Land’ is full of natural beauty. . . . People from here travel to foreign lands to see picturesque regions, and they do not remember that what they seek at such great effort abroad can be found much more easily here at home. Iosif Vulcan, “The Black Forest. In Bihar” (1880) 2

ON THE NIGHT OF AUGUST 9, 1893 , thousands of people gathered in the center square of a small city two hundred miles east of Budapest.3 The town was known as Grosswardein in German and Nagyvárad in Hungarian; the subject of this chapter mostly used its Romanian name, Oradea or Oradea-Mare. Like much of northeastern Hungary, the city’s population included a mix of peoples. On this night the majority Hungarians had gathered. Most in the crowd were young and male; they were also angry and armed with stones. Standing in front of the residence of the Greek Catholic bishop, a leader of the local Romanian community, they sang, caterwauled, whistled, and chanted “Down with the traitorous scoundrel!” The crowd filled the air with stones, breaking nearly all the windows in the episcopal palace, and it then surged down side streets, seeking out the homes of other prominent Romanians. Although these sat alongside houses belonging to Hungarian-speaking Christians and Jews, the rioters struck with precision. Everywhere they smashed windows and doors as the inhabitants cowered in inner rooms (not all: one homeowner threatened

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the crowd with a revolver). At the house of the lawyer Nicolau Zigre, the crowd shouted, “Here lives the great Hungarian hater!” That some houses had Hungarian tenants or families with infants did nothing to stop the stones. Nor, initially, did the police. Only the return from maneuvers of soldiers garrisoned in Oradea put an end to the violence. The military authorities placed the city under a state of siege, and in the days that followed the police arrested thirty-five people. The violence had many causes. The most immediate was the appearance of a pamphlet, which catalogued the Greek Catholic bishop’s alleged misdeeds and charged him with “unpatriotic feelings and anti-national subversion.” The bishop, it alleged, had allowed Romanian nationalists to infiltrate the surrounding Bihor County, with the result that “agitating Daco-Romanian priests had succeeded in bringing to life a little ‘­Romania’ in the middle of our homeland.”4 The pamphlet’s charges against the bishop were largely baseless, and it soon became clear that a mistranslation of the bishop’s words had provided much of the evidence against him. But the local Hungarian-language press had been fanning the flames of mistrust for more than a year, ever since the Romanian National Party had addressed a petition (the “Memorandum”) to the Emperor-King Francis Joseph, in which it had asked for greater collective rights for Romanians living in Transylvania. The ruler had refused to read the petition, and the Hungarian state authorities later put its authors on trial. In Oradea and Bihor County the petition had awakened fears of unseen Romanian agitators who had somehow subverted churches and schools and poisoned the minds of previously loyal peasants and children. In the wake of the violence in Oradea, local Hungarian newspapers continued to heap blame on the bishop.5 This sobering episode had few precedents in Oradea, where acts of open violence were rare. Yet it fits neatly into the story historians have long told about Romanians in the Kingdom of Hungary.6 According to this narrative, relations between Hungarians and Romanians worsened markedly over the course of the nineteenth century. Tensions had long existed, born of the unequal distribution of economic power, political rights, and religious privileges in the Kingdom of Hungary. Historian Sorin Mitu’s quotation above shows the resulting division between Hungarians and Romanians. Yet common ground had remained, and thus the Revolution of 1848 and the Compromise of 1867, with their promise of greater individual liberty and meaningful political reform, are seen as missed opportuni-

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ties. The Hungarian state instead grew more intransigent and intolerant of ethnic minorities, covering increased harassment with empty promises of civic equality and loud proclamations of national pride. Romanian political leaders responded with a range of strategies, beginning with passive opposition and ending, as a younger generation took over, in a more militant stance. By 1914, Romanian leaders were calling for political autonomy within the Kingdom of Hungary, a demand that the Hungarian government rejected out of hand. The First World War only worsened an already bad situation. When viewed in this light, the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the breakup of Hungary at the end of the war are unsurprising. So too is the 1893 violence in Oradea. The journalist Iosif Vulcan, who lived from 1841 to 1907, witnessed many of these events.7 During the 1893 riot, he was living in Oradea. His house and family seem to have been spared, but it is not difficult to imagine the dismay, sadness, and anger he must have felt. Vulcan’s great-uncle had been the Greek Catholic bishop of Oradea for thirty-three years and lived in the residence that the mob targeted. Vulcan was a close friend of the lawyer Nicolau Zigre, who had retreated to the inner rooms of his house while it was under siege. Vulcan would even have known some of the younger Hungarians who were arrested following the riot. As a lifelong liberal, he had always spoken out against “blind bigotry” and insisted that “I will have respect for personal character.”8 Finally, it must have been painful for Vulcan, who wrote incessantly, not to be able to write publicly about the violence in his hometown. He edited a literary journal rather than a political newspaper, and this placed limits on what he could cover. Editors of Romanian-language publications in the Kingdom of Hungary always had to be careful. Biographers have described Iosif Vulcan as a tireless Romanian nationalist. Evidence for this claim is not hard to find. He was born into one of the most prestigious Romanian families in Hungary, and he married into one of the most intransigent (a brother-in-law had helped draft the Romanian “Memorandum” of 1892). For more than forty years, Vulcan produced one of the most widely read Romanian journals in the Kingdom of Hungary. In it he presented new poems, plays, and short stories; he documented changes to the Romanian language and introduced readers to new words and new forms of spelling. A playwright and lover of the stage, Vulcan also spent decades trying to build a Romanian theater in Hungary. Scholars have argued that Vulcan helped create cultural and linguistic unity

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among Hungary’s many Romanian speakers. Biographer Lucian Drimba has taken this a step further, claiming that Vulcan “was a fighter for national unity” and a “precursor of the political unity of all Romanians.”9 In other words, Vulcan helped pave the way for the collapse of Hungary and the transfer to Romania of Transylvania and parts of eastern Hungary, including Oradea. That his writings contain few openly political declarations is explained by the difficult circumstances faced by all Romanian activists in Hungary, which often made prudence and discretion the wisest course. But how does Iosif Vulcan appear if we see him not just as a national activist, but as a provincial one? What happens if we look more closely at the world in which he was born and the context in which he worked? He took great pride in his home county, as his words about its “natural beauty” make plain. At the same time, he often emphasized that he came from the edges of Romanian settlement in the Kingdom of Hungary. Some critics have hinted at the wider psychological and political consequences of these origins.10 Following this lead, I look closely at Vulcan’s biography and then examine key episodes from his life in Oradea and Bihor County. The point is not to deny Vulcan’s status as a Romanian activist or to diminish the significance of events like the 1893 riots. We also need to appreciate the strong local inflection of Vulcan’s worldview, the many obstacles national activists faced in places like Bihor, and the possibility that places like Oradea could produce mutual understanding as much as communal violence. As in previous chapters, Vulcan’s life shows just how creative provincial actors could be as they confronted the dilemmas produced by Hungary’s great ethnic and regional diversity.

The Matchmaker’s Nephew Iosif Vulcan’s uncle was a famous matchmaker.11 Not one who arranged marriages, but the inventor of a new friction match. Like cell phones today, the match in the nineteenth century was an everyday object with multiple uses and eager consumers. Across the century chemists, engineers, and manufacturers competed to produce a match that would light easily, burn steadily, and not injure its user (early matches tended to explode!). In 1836, Vulcan’s uncle János Irinyi used white phosphorus to create a noiseless match. Just nineteen years old, Irinyi then sold his invention to a Viennese manufacturer and pursued a career in chemistry. During the 1848 Revolution, Uncle János directed Hungarian production of cannon and gun­powder.

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His younger brother, a journalist in Pest, also joined the revolution and in later years introduced his nephew Iosif to writers and newspapermen in the capital. Their sister, Victoria Irinyi, married Iosif Vulcan’s father. The Irinyis were an old, Hungarian-speaking noble family; they belonged to the same small world that had produced the Vásárhelyis and Löveis. On his mother’s side, then, Iosif Vulcan had impeccable patriotic credentials. He grew up in a multilingual world and spoke Hungarian fluently. How did he become a Romanian national activist? The answer begins with his father’s family. The Vulcans were no less esteemed than the Irinyis but had very different origins. They came from Wallachia—in the heartland of Romania—and later moved to Transylvania. Iosif ’s father, Nicolau Vulcan was a pious, humble Greek Catholic priest who devotedly served his parishioners first in Holod and then in Leta Mare. Both were small towns in Bihor County, the former in the mountains and the latter on the plains. In Leta Mare, Nicolau Vulcan met Victoria Irinyi, whose father managed an estate in the area. That this unassuming priest and a Hungarian noblewoman married is not so surprising, given that the Irinyis were one of a small number of Hungarian-speaking noble families who belonged to the Eastern Orthodox Church (marriages between Greek Catholics and Orthodox were common).12 The wedding took place in 1831, when she was seventeen and he twenty-five. Victoria Irinyi was said to be a difficult woman. Relevant perhaps is the fact that only one of her six children survived infancy: this was Iosif, who was born in Holod on March 19, 1841. Decades later, when his mother died, Iosif was so overcome with grief that he suspended publication of his journal for two full months.13 The family member who exercised the greatest influence on Iosif was Samuil Vulcan (1758–1839), Iosif ’s great-uncle. Born to a poor Transylvanian Romanian family, Samuil had secured an education and forged a remarkable career in the Greek Catholic church. He attended seminaries in Lemberg and Vienna and was later named bishop of Oradea, an office he held for more than three decades. Samuil Vulcan knew many of the leading Romanian intellectuals of his day, including the writers of the influential “Transylvanian school,” and he echoed their call to use the Roman alphabet for written Romanian in place of the customary Cyrillic. Among Bishop Vulcan’s many achievements was the founding of a seminary in Oradea and a gymnasium in Beiuș, a small town in the mountains of Bihor County. This gymnasium was one of the few secondary schools in

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the Kingdom of Hungary to use Romanian as its language of instruction. Samuil Vulcan died when Iosif was nine years old. Iosif later celebrated his great-uncle as a self-made man, cultural benefactor, and Romanian patriot.14 Iosif aspired to be all these things, although his path would lead him to journalism rather than the church. This was typical: across the nineteenth century, leadership in Romanian communities slowly shifted from the clergy to professionals. But first came school. Vulcan’s schooling covered momentous years in Austro-Hungarian history. He was in elementary school when the 1848 Revolution broke out. The liberal and national ideals of 1848 left a deep impression on Vulcan and many of his contemporaries. Local events also mattered, and in Bihor and the surrounding counties the revolution and subsequent war witnessed desperate fighting in the mountains between Hungarian forces and Romanian units under the command of Avram Iancu (Vulcan revered Iancu and later toured many of his battlefields).15 Starting in 1851, Vulcan attended middle and high school in Oradea, where his uncle had overseen the Hungarian gunpowder works during the revolution. By the time Iosif came to Oradea, however, his uncle had been arrested, spent time in prison, and withdrawn from public life. All was not lost, and for students across the Kingdom of Hungary, the decade after the collapse of the revolution was politically stifling but culturally invigorating, as the authorities expanded the educational system, widened the study of languages, and encouraged literary initiatives that steered clear of politics. Iosif came under the spell of Alexandru Roman, a new professor at the Roman Catholic gymnasium Iosif attended. Roman was fifteen years older than Vulcan but shared much in common with his ambitious student: he too was from a small village in Bihor County, and his teaching career had started at the school founded by Iosif ’s great-uncle. In ­Oradea he taught language and literature to the school’s Romanian speakers, who formed roughly one-quarter of the total student body.16 “A people’s language,” Roman once said, “is a most precious treasure, the soul of the nation,” and he stressed the need to cultivate the Romanian language.17 His lectures were a revelation to Iosif, who recalled his conversion decades later: “For me, coming from the extreme margins of the Romanian element [din marginea extremă a elementului românesc], where our language is poorly spoken, the young professor’s lectures and readings, done in a correct, harmonious Romanian, exercised a charm over me that I had never

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before felt.”18 Vulcan soon began to play an active role in the school’s Romanian literary society, which Roman had helped found. Vulcan’s commitment to the Romanian cause next deepened in, of all places, the Hungarian capital. In 1859 Vulcan enrolled in law school in Pest, and he completed his studies in four years (he later passed the bar examination but never practiced law).19 His legal studies required Latin, German, and Hungarian, but it was to the Romanian language that Vulcan devoted more and more of his energies. Buda-Pest in those years had a small Romanian community of several hundred families and dozens of students at the university. This small “colony” (as Vulcan called it) buzzed with excitement. At its center again stood Alexandru Roman, who in 1862 became the first professor of the Romanian language at Pest University. There Roman launched Concordia, the first Romanian-language periodical to use only Roman letters (rather than Cyrillic ones), and he encouraged his students to establish a literary society and hold balls and concerts. Vulcan once more threw himself into these activities; he helped Roman edit his journal and became vice president of the literary society. In Pest, Vulcan also became a writer. In Oradea, he had already contributed to several student publications, and in Pest he published his first article in a Romanian-language journal; his first poem appeared soon thereafter. In the decades that followed, words flowed ceaselessly from Vulcan’s pen, creating hundreds of poems, dozens of plays, three novels, and countless short stories, travelogues, biographical sketches, editorials, reviews, and translations. He wrote mostly in Romanian but also contributed articles and translations of Romanian poetry to the Hungarian press. Much of his own poetry was rhyming, pastoral, and romantic; it evokes lonely landscapes, undying love, and sad episodes from history. At times it had a sharper edge. In the 1863 poem “To the Renegades!” (Cătră renegați! ), Vulcan railed against Romanians who were “false and deceived us.” It sternly promised that “In a tone as loud as a summer storm, / To one and all I will forcefully call: / Here are the traitors who have forsworn / Their brave people, the mother of us all.”20 Fortunately, Vulcan could joke as well as scold, and he often used irony and humor to poke fun at his fellow Romanians. The satirical magazine V ­ illage Voice (Gura Satului), which Vulcan edited between 1867 and 1871, cast an even wider net. Its poems, dialogues, stories, and cartoons satirized everything from the inequities of the Hungarian electoral system to the ambitions of Otto von Bismarck. Like much of his writing, Village Voice also conveyed a genuine if sometimes abstract sympathy for the Romanian peasantry.

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Critics have not been kind to Iosif Vulcan.21 A contemporary Hungarian observer, also from Bihor County, granted that Vulcan was a productive writer and translator. But he concluded that Vulcan’s novels and plays lacked imagination and compelling characters. Critics in the Romanian Kingdom likewise appreciated Vulcan’s efforts, but they deplored his journals’ poor writing, factual errors, and “bland, careless fostering of mediocrity.”22 All sides agreed that his poetry was second-rate. The Bihor publicist Teodor Neș wrote in the 1930s that much of it lacked vigorous expression, fresh imagery, and powerful emotions; it wallowed in sentimentality. More recent biographers have reached the same conclusion. ­Lucian Drimba finds Vulcan’s romantic poetry “full of banality and ­puerile naiveté,” although Drimba sees more value in the poems that venture into history or comment on the social mores of Vulcan’s contemporaries. Drimba also underlines that Vulcan’s novels reveal his development as a writer; at their best, they contain fluent writing, close observations, and realistic figures. But the general impression gained from the literary critics is that Vulcan’s main contribution to literature came by publishing the work of others rather than by producing his own. And that is what Vulcan did. In 1865, with the help of his mentor Alexandru Roman, Vulcan founded his own literary journal, which he called The Family (Familia). He was twenty-four years old. For the next forty-two years, Vulcan produced an issue of The Family almost every week. The Family bore the subtitle “Journal for the Mind, for the Heart, and for Literature,” and in it Vulcan introduced Romanian readers to enriching and elevating poetry, short stories, and novels. Nearly every significant Romanian-language writer in Hungary contributed to The Family, as did many writers from outside Hungary, including, most famously, the celebrated Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu (Vulcan not only published Eminescu’s first poem in 1865 but encouraged the young poet to change his name from the Slavic-sounding Eminovici to the more Romanian-sounding Eminescu). Vulcan’s interests ranged far beyond literature, and he published articles on history, folklore, theater, music, schools, churches, and fashions. The Family contained announcements of births deaths, and marriages; it offered illustrations and puzzles. In a typical issue, original poetry and plays sit alongside a translated Hans Christen Andersen fairytale and an illustrated report on three hyenas in the Cologne zoo.23 The journal, in short, contained something for everyone. Who were its readers? The magazine’s header showed, with some variation over the years, an illustration of a middle-class family at the table.

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Books, lamps, paintings, and even a kitten surround them. The father (sometimes the mother) reads aloud to other family members, who listen, paint, or play the piano (which might drown out the reading parent, but the point was to show the varieties of cultural expression available to educated families). The prominence of women and girls in these illustrations signaled Vulcan’s hope that The Family would reach female readers and supply what they had not learned at school. Vulcan seems to have succeeded, and within a few years The Family had more than a thousand subscribers from across Austria-Hungary and Romania. And he did this in spite of constant financial worries, the threat of censorship, changing conventions for written Romanian, and a small reading public. The illiteracy rate was high among Romanian speakers, and it has been estimated that no more than 5 percent of Romanians were involved in commerce, industry, liberal professions, or the civil service.24 Iosif Vulcan spent more than two decades in the Hungarian capital. In 1871 he married Aurelia Popovici, the daughter of a Romanian lawyer and landowner in Arad County. It was a happy marriage, and Vulcan dedicated poems to her with titles such as “Eternal Love” and “Your Eyes.” Perhaps because they had no children, Aurelia accompanied Iosif on his frequent travels, where, in Drimba’s words “she always strove to create the moral climate to allow [her husband] to perform his duties”; at home she helped her husband with editorial work and occasionally contributed articles to The Family.25 The Vulcans had many acquaintances in Pest. Contact with Hungarian-language writers led, in the same year of his marriage, to membership in the prestigious Kisfaludy Society (Kisfaludy Társaság).26 This honor came in recognition of Vulcan’s assiduous work as a translator between Hungarian and Romanian. At his inauguration into the society, Vulcan gave a lecture on Romanian folk poetry, which formed the basis of the society’s later publication of 104 Romanian poems and songs in Hungarian translation.27 Vulcan himself translated one-third of the pieces and provided an introduction, in which he argued that folk poetry offered a mirror to the character of a people. In folksongs he saw the Romanians’ attachment to forests, weapons, and horses; their belief in magic; and their love of freedom and opposition to all forms of injustice. This was a justification for educated Europeans’ “cult of the people,” as well as an argument for the moral superiority of the Romanian peasantry. At the same time, however, he recognized that Romanian folk culture existed alongside others in the

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Kingdom of Hungary. As an active member of the Kisfaludy Society, then, Vulcan helped foster mutual understanding between national groups. In return he gained a prominence in the literary world of Budapest he could not have achieved elsewhere. But this was not to last. In 1880 he and his wife moved to Oradea, where his uncle had been bishop and where Iosif had once gone to school. In his journal, Vulcan explained that the city had formerly played an important role in Romanian cultural life, and he expressed his hope that he could revive it.28 Biographer Gheorghe Petrușan has suggested that other reasons lay behind the move, beginning with the growing nationalism of Hungarian political life in Budapest (Petrușan cites Vulcan’s opposition to the school law passed in 1879, which required all elementary schools to teach Hungarian). Unlike Lövei, who was most active in the 1840s and 1850s and saw the authorities in Vienna as the greatest check on Hungarian development, Vulcan mostly worked in the years following the 1867 settlement or “compromise” that had created the Dual Monarchy of AustriaHungary. The settlement had given Hungary a large measure of autonomy and made it a constitutional monarchy, which led in the late 1860s to a raft of liberal legislation guaranteeing individuals equal rights, no matter what their religion or what language they spoke. The mood shifted in the following decade, however, under the weight of an economic slowdown throughout Europe, growing unrest in the Balkans, more conservative political leadership across Austria-Hungary, and sharpened Hungarian nationalism at home. Vulcan’s move to Oradea thus came at a time when the optimism and liberalism of the late 1860s seemed to be giving way to a more confused and confrontational era. But practical reasons also drew Vulcan to Oradea, including its proximity to Transylvania, where the bulk of his readers lived, and to Bucharest, which he often visited. The most straightforward explanation for the move was that his aging father, now a widower, had recently been transferred from his village parish to the cathedral in Oradea. Whatever the reason, Iosif Vulcan, now thirty-nine years old and a successful publisher, went home to Bihor County—to his father, to old friends, and to familiar places. For a Romanian activist, however, this was a peripheral region, one that Vulcan repeatedly referred to as “on the extreme margins of the Romanian element.” How would this uncertain environment shape his commitment to the Romanian national cause and his relations with Hungarians?

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The Pilgrim Iosif Vulcan was a great traveler. Together with his wife, every year he spent weeks on the road, often in Transylvania, where he took in sights, visited friends, and attended meetings of the many cultural societies to which he belonged. He also made several journeys abroad, to Paris in 1867 to see the International Exposition, to Bucharest in 1868 (and many times thereafter), to Bohemia and Germany in 1896, and to Turkey in 1898.29 Like many educated Europeans of his era, Vulcan placed great stock in the edifying power of both travel and travel writing, and after every trip he filled the pages of The Family with descriptions of far-flung museums, theaters, churches, writers, and statesmen, as well as with more general impressions of the people and places he had seen. He enthusiastically described the many forms of transportation that took him across Europe, among them carriages, steamships, trams, and trains. Vulcan especially admired modern cities, with their beautiful squares, wide avenues, new hotels, and public buildings, all of which, he wrote, “make a very pleasant impression on the eyes.”30 The city of Oradea, Vulcan’s home after 1880, had many modern amenities. But the surrounding countryside did not. Just a few years before moving to Oradea, he made a lengthy tour of the Apuseni Mountains to the southeast of Oradea and wrote about them in The Family. A rugged range in the larger Carpathian system, the Apuseni had peaks over five thousand feet and caverns that snaked deep underground; they were sparsely populated and heavily forested. In many ways this was familiar ground for Vulcan: he had been born in the region and, although he had moved away at a young age, maintained “childhood’s sweet memories” of his home village.31 His articles on the Apuseni also have much in common with his other travel writings, including his firm belief that travel could lead to general cultural betterment, both for him and for his readers. Yet these highlands posed challenges even for the optimistic Vulcan. This was, by any measure, a remote region, with poor roads, bad lodgings, and few signs of the modernity that enchanted him on his other trips. Most of its inhabitants spoke Romanian, something he welcomed. But it also forced him to come to terms with what nationhood meant on the “extreme margins of the Romanian element.” Vulcan’s response to these difficulties showed him to be at once a typical middle-class tourist, a creative travel writer, a steadfast Romanian patriot, and a strong booster of his home region.32 The travelogue, in short, begins to reveal his “imagined geography.”

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The region Vulcan traversed was well off the beaten path. Yet it fired his imagination, and like many writers of his era he readily looked past isolation and poverty and instead saw picturesque landscapes and colorful villagers. Over the course of the previous century, Europeans had learned to look in deep forests and high mountains for sublime scenes that could stir the senses and give wings to the mind. In all his travels, Vulcan never tired of panoramic views and enchanting tableaux, and he found much to admire in the Apuseni mountains: plunging waterfalls, ruined castles, craggy peaks, and lonesome streams. The hills circling one village thus “form around us a magical wreath full of overabundant charm,” the road that follows was “the most romantic,” and, contemplating the “colossal” cliffs at their destination, “our spirits fly freely through space.”33 At times Vulcan offered more grounded observations about the region. Arriving in Abrud, a town famous for its gold mines, at first he admires the hardy highlanders and remarks that “I have seen many markets, but I have never found one so joyful.”34 He notes, moreover, that the products of the highland forests are often shipped to cities hundreds of miles away. He also explains that although Abrud has many taverns, it has few Jewish tavernkeepers because Abrud, like other mining towns, long barred Jewish settlement. But social and economic questions of this sort rarely detained him for long. Had Vulcan lingered, he would have learned much about the changes remaking rural Hungary. In Abrud, he would have seen the town’s many miners and the taverns they frequented, noisy with Gypsy bands and brimful with booze. Even the peasants Vulcan admired in the market had stories to tell. Many could have recalled the abolition of feudalism in 1848, which had given impetus to forces already coursing through the countryside. Since then many peasants had gained control of fields they had long worked (if not of common lands, which they had to redeem from landlords); some families had prospered and amassed significant property, while others scraped by on tiny plots or hired themselves out as agricultural laborers. In the meantime, the arrival of roads and later railroads plugged more and more regions into wider economic networks. Sawmills, mines, factories, and river regulation likewise altered the ecology and economy of large swaths of rural Hungary. A geographer who traveled in Bihor County a decade after Vulcan stated that “cleared forests are legion” and observed vast tracts where “an unfortunate concession had left behind only patches of trees.”35 Not everything changed, and in one remote village in the mountains, the geographer encountered a seventy-year-old woman

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who still dreamed of visiting the nearest town, which was just one hour’s distance but seemingly unreachable. Undeterred by these changes, Vulcan dove into history. Like many educated Romanians, he subscribed to the view that a straight line led from the Roman colonists of the second century to the Romanian inhabitants of Hungary and Transylvania in the nineteenth. The Emperor Trajan, who had conquered, organized, and colonized Roman Dacia, was viewed in a positive light. Thus Vulcan’s travels include numerous asides on ­Trajan and the Dacians, and he uses Roman battlefields, artifacts, and baths to mediate on the many links between the distant past and the present. Historian Sorin Mitu has observed that educated Romanians stressed their Latin origins in part because the present “seemed to offer so little satisfaction” and because Latin descent moved Romanians “from the bottom to the top of the list in terms of civilization, freedom, political development, and national-self-assertion.”36 For Vulcan, the Roman mementos helped him turn an economically poor region into a historically rich one. The more recent past also reassured Vulcan. These mountains held a special place for him because they had produced two great Romanian figures: Horea (Vasile Nicola), a leader of a massive peasant uprising in 1784–85; and Avram Iancu, the commander of guerilla units during the 1848–49 revolution. Vulcan had already written a long poem about “The Oak of Horea,” the four-hundred-year-old tree under which Horea had called on the highlanders to rise up against their landlords and Hungarian officials. On this trip, Vulcan and his travel companions visited the tree. There they stood “in awe before this extraordinary product of nature” and reflected on Horea’s life and works. They departed “deep in the mists of the past, under the weight of a strong melancholy, ripping a few leaves as souvenirs.”37 What stands out in this account is how little space Vulcan devotes to the history behind Horea’s revolt or to the monument and its environs. Instead he documents his own emotional response to this site; his was an appeal to the heart rather than the head. The figure of Avram Iancu awakened even stronger feelings in V­ulcan. It is easy to see why: they were near contemporaries (Iancu was just seventeen years older) and both had been trained as lawyers (Horea in contrast was a peasant about whom much less was known). When Iancu died in 1872, he was buried near Horea’s Oak. Vulcan visited the grave, a simple cross, but was very agitated by the brief inscription, which struck him as wholly inadequate to Iancu’s great deeds.38 Vulcan found solace in

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Iancu’s birthplace, a small village high in the mountains. Getting there was difficult, and he recounts the zigzagging roads and heavy rains that slowed their journey. Arriving at the Iancu family house, emotions overcame him. The small, plain house, now empty, reminds him of a church, and he removes his hat when entering (Figure 5). Meditating on Iancu and what he stood for—equality, justice, and humanism—Vulcan is moved to tears. When he leaves the house, he “feels light, like someone who has performed an act of piety.”39

This postcard, mailed in 1963, shows the Iancu family house much as it would have appeared to Vulcan nearly a century earlier. Its pitched wooden roof—a good defense against snow and rain—is characteristic of vernacular architecture of the area. The Apuseni Mountains loom in the background. source: author’s collection.

FIGURE 5.  

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Vulcan’s trek across the highlands takes him through a haunted landscape. True, he delights in picturesque views and natural beauty, and he describes his guides, accommodations, meals, and routes. In this respect Vulcan’s travel writing conforms to nineteenth-century conventions. So does his depiction of the highlanders themselves, who appear two-­dimensional. Vulcan’s later criticism of a book written about these mountains could equally be applied to his own writings: “It would have been desirable had the author entered deeper into the people’s lives, had extracted from them the many constitutive parts of their being that still remain unknown: their traditions, customs, particularities of their language, folkloric collections, and much else.”40 What sets Vulcan’s work apart is his strong sense of history, adulation of great men, and emotional responses to sites. All this creates a very romantic—and Romanian—journey through the mountains. The result is patriotic pilgrimage, with its affirmation of faith and promise of spiritual awakening. Like a true believer, Vulcan sees what he wants to, and he shows a remarkable ability to look past things that might compromise his beliefs. His travelogue says little about the often grim material conditions of the highlands, where paved roads, schools, and doctors were rare. Landlords and lumber companies are largely absent. Nor does he mention the Hungarian-speaking villagers, Jewish merchants, German miners, and ­ other groups that lived in the mountains. In Vulcan’s hands, the “extreme margins of the Romanian element” begin to resemble the Romanian heartland. Far from being marginal, Bihor County and the surrounding mountains are now central. In this way, the travelogue neatly justifies his decision to move to Bihor, demonstrates his local pride, and shows his fascination with rural life. But villages could not detain Vulcan for long. At heart he was a town dweller. In Oradea, he learned that town life presented its own challenges and rewards.

The Joiner Town life suited Iosif Vulcan. He was fortunate to settle in Oradea, a booming city in a poor region. In the last decades of the nineteenth century its population surged, from around thirty thousand when he arrived in 1880 to forty-seven thousand in 1900 and sixty-four thousand a decade later.41 This growth made Oradea one of the largest cities in northeast-

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ern Hungary. As elsewhere, the scourge of infectious diseases meant that growth came through immigration rather than natural increase. Villagers from the surrounding counties came to work in the Oradea’s new mills, distilleries, and factories. Farkas Moskovits’s factory, to give one example, employed 150 workers and produced seventy thousand pairs of shoes and boots every year for buyers in Austria-Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Tall buildings sprouted up, lending Oradea’s downtown a splashy, Secessionist look. Restaurants, cafes, and hotels catered to the growing middle classes, who also supported a remarkable number of newspapers and journals. The Baedeker travel guide called it a “pleasant town” on the edge of a “monotonous plain” and took note of its interesting history museum, excellent local wines, and “tasteless Roman Catholic Cathedral.”42 Local boosters were less reserved in their judgment, calling it “Hungary’s Birmingham” for its many factories and “the city of tomorrow” for its unbounded promise. The poet Endre Ady claimed that “what happens in Nagyvárad on a small scale is inevitably and emblematically the fate of all of Hungary.”43 Oradea did not have a strong Romanian presence. Admittedly, it was home to thousands of Romanian speakers, nearly all of whom belonged to the Greek Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.44 Both confessions had handsome churches on Oradea’s main square, elementary schools with some instruction in Romanian, and influential leaders in the Greek Catholic bishop and the Orthodox archimandrite. But Romanians constituted just 10–12 percent of the city’s population and were vastly outnumbered by Hungarian-speaking Roman Catholics, Calvinists, and Jews.45 Romanians carried little weight in the city’s political and economic life; there were no Romanian-language secondary schools, theaters, or newspapers. The student literary society that Vulcan once joined had disappeared. Surveying Oradea weeks after his arrival, Vulcan saw a city in which “little by little the Romanian element has declined.”46 As evidence he cited a falling population, empty churches “whose worshippers have disappeared,” and the displacement of Romanian-owned shops by a “multitude of Jewish firms” (Vulcan does not seem to have associated with many Jews; they appear only rarely in his writings and often in a negative light). The whole made a gloomy impression, which the motley Romanian spoken in the area did nothing to dispel. In a way, all this justified and fortified Vulcan’s strong sense of mission in Oradea: he and his journal would bring light into the darkness. But it also hinted at very real obstacles an activist like Vulcan faced. What

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could he do to establish his presence, advance Romanian life, and contribute to the city as a whole? First came journalism. Vulcan became a journalist and editor at a time when small-town newspapers were beginning to flourish. By the early twentieth century, towns with as few as five thousand residents had their own weekly papers; a much larger city like Oradea had, in addition to Vulcan’s The Family, half a dozen Hungarian-language papers, ranging from thick dailies to more specialized publications aimed at specific audiences (Roman Catholics, theatergoers, teachers). Many factors made this growth possible: new telegraph lines, improved postal service, cheaper and faster printing techniques, relatively liberal press laws, and rising literacy. Most papers operated with a small staff and tight budgets; their editorial offices, the onetime journalist Sándor Márai recalled, were typically “a cramped, dim room” in which “the sour, musty odor of waste papers” mixed with the smells of printer’s ink and the editor’s cigars.47 Márai wryly noted that journalists occupied an uncertain position in provincial society, worthy of a greeting in the street but not an invitation to dinner: “On the social ladder they came just above the local theater company’s leading man.” Iosif Vulcan was nonetheless at home in this world. He spent much of his time with other editors and journalists, with whom he shared interesting articles, short stories, and poems. As a result, Hungarian and Romanian papers in Oradea often published the same material, a pattern repeated (with some variation) in other towns across the region.48 In Oradea, he built up a network of friends and acquaintances. Portraits of Iosif Vulcan show a rather grand, well-dressed man, with an impressive beard in his youth and a dapper moustache in later years. His eyes are hooded, his expression serious; he is an imposing figure. In person, however, he was much more approachable and wanted to be at the center of things. For much of their time in Oradea the Vulcans lived in a spacious, one-story house on the north side of town. There Vulcan edited The Family and his other publications. The house was on a quiet, linden-lined street but close to the theater, cafes, and restaurants that he enjoyed. He and his wife were a familiar sight on the streets of the city, where they had many close friends, including Nicolau Zigre, the lawyer attacked in the 1893 riot, as well as other influential Romanians. The Vulcans also had relatives in town; in 1897 Aurelia’s niece married a young lawyer named Aurel Lazăr, who kept Vulcan in touch with the younger generation of Romanian activists.49

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But Vulcan also knew many people outside the small Romanian community. This was not automatic and the memoirs of Margit Imrik Benda, who grew up in a Roman Catholic family, contain the revealing observation that polite society “would rather have accepted a Jew than a ­Romanian,” a point driven home with an anecdote about a clumsy Romanian military officer whose spurs tore his partner’s dress.50 The Vulcans, however, were welcome in the best circles. The director of the local theater company considered Vulcan “an old, good friend.”51 Even the poet Ady, nearly forty years younger than Vulcan, knew him and judged him “an admirable writer, a likeable gentleman.”52 None of this should be surprising. By nature a talker and joiner, Vulcan thrived when surrounded by people who shared his passion for literature, history, folklore, and the theater. That some spoke Romanian and others Hungarian was not an obstacle to ­Vulcan, who was fluent in both languages. But it also fit with his wider goal of making Romanian culture known to Hungarians (and vice versa). Vulcan, one senses, saw himself as a “translator” in everyday life and not just in his publications. Vulcan’s willingness to “cross lines”—or simply ignore them—carried into public life. Evidence of this can be found in the many local organizations he joined. The period after 1867 was a golden age for voluntary associations across Austria-Hungary, particularly in cities and towns. Oradea was no exception, and it soon had societies dedicated to everything from singing and sociability to charity and education. Historian János Fleisz has concluded that Oradea in fact had too many clubs and societies, which undercut their effectiveness, even as it demonstrated the “tremendous social energies” of the local citizenry.53 For his part, Iosif Vulcan eagerly supported numerous local causes. Soon after his arrival in Oradea, he threw himself into establishing a Romanian-language school for girls, which he hoped would be part of a wider network of new schools in surrounding towns and villages. Most Romanian girls from well-to-do families, he suggested, “lack the charm that would make them appear gracious in the eyes of young Romanians with national feelings”; that is, they cannot converse in Romanian and have little knowledge of the Romanian language and literature.54 To remedy this wrong, Vulcan published a series of editorials in The Family, presided over a new society dedicated to the cause, and issued a public appeal for funds. The society remained active for the next two decades, although its ambitions remained unrealized: a Romanian-language girls school was established only after 1918, when the city became part of Romania. Vulcan had more success in the late 1890s with organization of a savings bank, the Bihoreana, whose

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clients included Romanian merchants and farmers. Vulcan also supported another undertaking in Oradea: the Hilaria choir, which had been established in 1875 and held Romanian-spirited concerts, balls, and picnics.55 All these undertakings—the girls’ schools, bank, and choir—were meant to sustain Romanian cultural and economic life in a city in which they were a minority and in a county in which they had little political say. But the Romanian community could not contain Vulcan’s energies. Just as he had joined the Kisfaludy Society in Buda-Pest, in Oradea he became a member of many of the city’s leading “Hungarian” associations, including the Red Cross and the theater society. He also joined the county historical society, which had an exclusive membership with many prominent Roman Catholics. It had no Jewish members, again hinting at deeper fault lines among the city’s elite. But Vulcan fit right in, and not long after his move to Oradea he invited his fellow members—in Hungarian—to the ritzy Apollo Inn for a celebratory dinner, which he intended to be the first of many gatherings “for the development of social and intellectual life.”56 Vulcan was present more than a decade later, in 1896, when the society inaugurated its new history museum in Oradea. For him, there was no contradiction between his support for Romanian culture and his strong civic pride. Of course, Iosif Vulcan was also deeply involved in Romanian cultural associations beyond Oradea. This activity helped him earn his bona fides as a Romanian activist, both to his contemporaries and to historians. The Romanian Theater Society was closest to Vulcan’s heart and is discussed later in the chapter. Vulcan also cared greatly about the Romanian Academy in Bucharest, which made him a corresponding member in 1879 and a full member in 1891 (a small number of other Transylvanian Romanian writers received the same recognition). In this capacity, he often traveled to Bucharest to take part in sessions of the academy and later chaired its literary section. Closer to home, Vulcan joined the most important Romanian organization in prewar Hungary, the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People (Asociațiunea Transilvană pentru Literatura Română și Cultura Poporului Român, or ASTRA). It had branches across Transylvania and eastern Hungary; teachers, notaries, lawyers, and Greek Catholic and Orthodox priests formed the backbone of its membership. ASTRA set its sights on the villages, where the bulk of the Romanian population lived and where it organized literacy campaigns, lending libraries, and public lectures (those using magic lanterns or slides were especially popular). Vulcan often spoke at the annual

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meetings of ASTRA and other societies. At his death, one friend regretted Vulcan’s absence: “I will not see him offering praise, in a trembling voice, to the fairer sex (that was a feature of the past!). I will not see him, with tears in his eyes and in pathetic phrases, bidding farewell to his hosts. When we saw him at many general assemblies, we felt accents of the past or something similar, but they were sanctified by a voice with a clear conscience.”57 For all its influence in Transylvania, ASTRA barely had a foothold in Bihor County. Soon after its formation in 1861, Iosif Vulcan helped Nicolau Zigre found a chapter of ASTRA in Oradea. Other chapters followed in smaller towns across the county. But most soon languished, and decades later none had more than a few dozen members.58 The town of Beiuș, home to the Greek Catholic gymnasium and a sizeable number of Romanian teachers, lawyers, and merchants, did not have a branch of ASTRA until the 1890s. Even diehard Romanian activists had to check their ambitions against the realities of limited resources and a narrow social base for their undertakings. A critical Romanian nationalist newspaper nonetheless saw the belated formation of this branch as evidence of the incompetence and weak national feeling of local leaders.59 It was thus a major event when ASTRA’s central committee decided in 1898 to hold its annual assembly— attended by hundreds of Romanian activists—in Beiuș. Bihor County’s Romanians, including Vulcan, had something to prove. The assembly itself went off without a hitch. For three days, participants attended meetings, banquets, concerts, and church services.60 The county’s leading Hungarian-language newspaper described ASTRA’s assembly in very favorable terms, citing its hard work, significant achievements, and cautious speeches; its members, the paper asserted, are “soberminded, Romanian-speaking, but Hungarian citizens.”61 The same paper praised ASTRA for promoting “the progress of our Hungarian homeland.” This language stands in sharp contrast to reports on the assembly from papers based outside the county. For one Hungarian paper in Budapest, the meeting was nothing more than “a Romanian demonstration,” which promised to bring together “those elements, which, when needed, regularly trample the Hungarian flag in the mud.” “West European forms,” it continued, “play only a minor role in the Romanian national movement.”62 A visiting Romanian journalist also emphasized the national dimensions of the meeting, which, it reported, had “reawakened the spirit of national culture” among “the Romanian element in Bihor.” But the same observer expressed disappointment with local conditions, noting the isolation and

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poverty of the surrounding villagers, the large number of Hungarian words that had made their way into the local language, and the cozy relationship between the county’s Romanian and Hungarian leaders.63 From afar, Bihor County did not inspire great confidence. Vulcan sought to change this. He spoke to the ASTRA assembly, and his words again reveal the strong local coloring of his outlook. In his speech, he welcomed ASTRA’s many delegates to Bihor County. He conceded from the outset that “much has been written in our papers—and not without cause—about the languor of Romanianism in Bihor.”64 To him, this indolence was not unique to the region, and he was optimistic that the “day of awakening” would soon arrive. He saw material evidence of this already in the recent founding of the Bihoreana savings bank. No less importantly, the ASTRA assembly would give spiritual sustenance “to its sons on the extreme margins of the Romanian element.” The message at first seems to be that at its edges, Romanian national life is precarious and that assistance from outside is not just welcome but needed. But Vulcan could not help himself. He closed his speech by boasting about his home county. He spoke about its unparalleled beauty and rugged residents, which together had produced the “folk songs of the mountains and the valleys.” He cited the shining example his great-uncle, Samuil Vulcan, who had dedicated himself to the enlightenment of young men in this province. Vulcan called the region “Bihor Land” (Țara Bihorului), a name that was less a description of a specific geographic area than a poetic evocation of the region’s storied history, natural splendor, and rural inhabitants—in short, it conveyed the same sense of local belonging that the German term Heimat did. In using this term and in bragging about his home county, he came close to undermining the center-periphery model he had just described. In his telling, his home region was anything but peripheral; its land and people deserved praise, not scorn. It had something to teach the center, not the other way around. To make this claim about landscape and folklore was not controversial. But would Vulcan make the same claim about local relations between Hungarians and Romanians?

The Prince of Moldavia Iosif Vulcan loved the theater. He shared this passion with readers of The Family, which serialized plays, published reviews, and offered news from the theatrical world. His readers learned of premieres in the ­Bucharest

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National Theater, triumphs of a Romanian-born actress in Vienna, amateur performances of Romanian works in Chisinau (then in Russia), and the schedules of touring companies in Transylvania. Vulcan himself wrote nearly two dozen plays. Most were comedies with titles like Bribery with Bells (Mîță cu clopot), A Bride for a Bride (Mireasă pentru mireasă), and Sun and Rain (Soare cu ploaie). Others were more serious works, often set in the past, such as Trajan’s Awakening (Deșteptarea lui Traian). Still others were monologues with folkloric influences and moralizing aims, meant to be performed on holidays and at national-spirited cultural events.65 Vulcan was much more likely to see his works in print than on stage. He published ten of his plays, most with an Oradea press. The rest appeared in serial form in The Family, which ensured that many people had access to his work. But audiences had to try hard to see Vulcan’s plays on the stage. The Hilaria choir sometimes performed songs from his repertoire in Oradea, and touring Romanian actors occasionally staged his plays in Transylvania.66 The National Theater in Bucharest also performed several of his works, starting with the comedy White or Red? (Alb sau roșu?) in 1872 and ending with another comedy The Vagaries of Love (Gărgăunii dragostei) in 1899. This was a great but rare honor. Playwrights often have to wait a long time for their work to be staged. For Vulcan and other Romanian playwrights, it did not help that no standing Romanian-language theater company or permanent theater existed in the entire Kingdom of Hungary. Iosif Vulcan set out to fix this situation. Soon after the 1867 Compromise, a handful of Romanian delegates in the newly elected Hungarian Parliament had opposed plans to give state aid only to the Hungarianlanguage theaters. The MPs demanded that Parliament should also help establish a Romanian-language theater. When the majority of Hungarian MPs made it plain they would rather support no theaters than fund nonHungarian ones, a number of Romanian activists stepped forward to raise money through a public subscription. Vulcan made the cause his own, and his editorial “Let Us Found a National Theater!” (Să fondăm teatru național!) gained wide attention in the Romanian parts of Hungary. A trip to Bucharest, where had seen the newly founded National Theater, also stirred his imagination, as did the successful tour of a Bucharest-based theater troupe through Transylvania. All this led in 1870 to formation of what became known as the Romanian Theater Society.67 It had multiple aims: to encourage authors in Hungary to write plays in Romanian, to educate the public about the theater, and most importantly to build a

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standing Romanian-language theater—“a Romanian temple of Thalia,” in Vulcan’s enthusiastic words. He indicated that Brașov, the largest town in Transylvania, would be the home of this theater. For Vulcan, the theater was a higher calling. The theater, he explained, was not just a site of amusement or entertainment, but like churches and schools an institution of national culture. He roundly rejected the view that the theater was a luxury, even for the poor who lacked schools and other basic services. It instead emanated from the will of the people: “Schools can be created by isolated communities, but the theater can be made only with the aid of an entire nation.”68 Once established, it could influence all social groups—young and old, male and female, rich and poor—whereas schools could reach only the young. The theater was thus a “great school of morals,” which taught its audiences the virtues of generosity, humility, virtue, and honor; it showed struggles for liberty and independence, and it could cultivate powerful feelings of nationality. Vulcan was the moving force behind the Romanian Theater Society for thirty-five years. He held numerous offices: secretary, vice president, and, for the last decade of his life, president. The society originally had its offices in Budapest, but it later moved them to Brașov. Its annual assemblies likewise moved away from the Hungarian capital and took place in towns with sizeable Romanian populations. These meetings always fired up local activists, and when delegates arrived in Satu Mare, crowds met their train with “Awaken, Romanian!” (Deșteaptă-te, române), a patriotic song made popular during the 1848 Revolution (and now the Romanian National Anthem).69 The Theater Society also organized concerts, dances, and plays staged by amateurs. Donations continued to come in, and the theater fund gradually increased. But as the years turned into decades, some supporters became impatient or disillusioned. Biographer Lucian Drimba credits Vulcan with sustaining the Theater Society through fallow years. But he faults him for failing to strike the right balance between the long term-goal of building a theater and the short-term need to generate enthusiasm through more limited efforts. After 1900, with the infusion of a younger generation of activists, the Romanian Theater Society again found its direction and retained its prominence through the First World War. For Vulcan, the society was a focus of activity and a source of prestige. But it did not bring any of his plays to the stage. Vulcan must have been surprised to learn that the Szigligeti Theater in his hometown would stage one of them. Named for the native-

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born dramatist Ede Szigligeti, the theater stood just several hundred yards from Vulcan’s home. Its building was brand new, having opened in 1900 after decades of unheeded appeals and unproductive debates. But local, county, and state authorities had eventually supported the project, and as a result it moved forward when Vulcan’s efforts stalled. Designed by the architects Fellner and Helmer, who had built theaters in cities across Central Europe, the Szigligeti had twelve hundred seats, good acoustics, rich ornamentation, and electric lighting in the place of the usual smelly gas lamps.70 In this way, Oradea joined the growing ranks of provincial towns with a permanent building and standing company for Hungarian-language theatrical performances. The Szigligeti’s repertoire included comedies, dramas, musicals, and operas, most of them light, long-forgotten fare. On the week that Vulcan’s tragedy had its premiere, for example, the offerings included Hungarian operettas called Jack and Bob ( Jack és Bob) and King Uff (Uff Király), as well as The Belle of New York (New York szépe), an American production translated into Hungarian. The Szigligeti did not perform Romanian-language works, either in the original or in translation. The premiere of Vulcan’s Prince Stephen the Younger (Ștefăn-Vodă cel Tînăr) thus created a sensation. Set in sixteenth-century Moldavia, the play recounted the tragic end of a ruler who came to the throne at age eleven and struggled to defend his small country against its menacing neighbors. His forceful actions angered noblemen at home and created a great crisis, which ended only when Stephen, just twenty-one years old, was poisoned by his wife. Critics then and now agreed that this was Vulcan’s most compelling work, and they aptly labeled it “Shakespearean,” citing its innovative use of language, taut reworking of history, and high body count at the end of the play. Through the character of Magda, Stephen’s wife, Vulcan explores the competing moral claims of family and homeland. By killing her husband, Magda saves her country. But her sacrifice comes at a high cost: “My sin is great, and so too must be / my punishment . . . I do my duty,” says Magda, just before she kills herself with a dagger.71 Shorn of romanticism and melodrama, Vulcan’s play is searching and powerful. The National Theater in Bucharest performed Prince Stephen the Younger in 1892 and an Oradea press published it the following year. In 1903, a young Oradea newspaperman named Dezső Fehér commissioned a Hungarian translation of the play. Like Vulcan, Fehér was

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great lover of the theater. He worried that Hungarians knew little of Romanian literature and drama. Fehér asked a local poet to translate Vulcan’s play. Vulcan aided the translation, reportedly refusing all changes on the grounds that audiences should see the play just as it had been written and later performed in Bucharest. The play created great excitement in the city even before its premiere. In a front-page editorial, Endre Ady used it to call for a new approach to Hungarian-Romanian relations.72 Ady praised Vulcan and his play, suggesting that its production symbolized the friendship between Hungarians and Romanians. Addressing his fellow Hungarians, Ady urged them to respect the Romanians’ cultural aspirations and to embrace a real liberalism, not one that served Hungarian national interests. Hungarians, he stressed, needed to stop looking for the phantom of Romanian extremism and instead work to create a more bearable, tolerant state, one that looked after all its citizens. Importantly, Ady suggested that Vulcan’s literary work had created “the first open cultural exchange and coexistence in Nagyvárad and Bihar County between Hungarians and Romanians.” It was natural, he wrote, “that the premier would take place in Nagyvárad, where the willingness and desire for a genuine social cultural life are greatest.” For Ady, local individuals and contexts mattered greatly. The premier was a great success. The newspapers applauded the actors, staging, and translation.73 The theater’s directors immediately scheduled a second performance. The Hungarian papers compared Prince Stephen favorably to Viceroy Bán (Bánk bán), the great Hungarian historical drama written by József Katona in the early part of the nineteenth century and later turned into an opera by Ferenc Erkel (who also composed the music for the Hungarian national anthem). Yet they downplayed the political dimensions of the occasion. Calling the premier a “remarkable sensation,” one paper expressed the hope that Vulcan’s play would be understood solely in cultural terms: “Let us not bring into the temple of Thalia, this beautiful goddess, the old crone of politics.” Even Fehér, in his review, emphasized that although the play had “a Romanian national character,” its value lay in Vulcan’s depiction of “eternal human passions.” The play, in other words, soared above the day-to-day frictions between national and religious groups; it reached for higher artistic truths. But many observers readily understood the play in more prosaic terms. At a banquet held at the Black Eagle restaurant after the premiere, local luminaries toasted Vulcan in both Hungarian and Romanian. Rising

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to speak, he stated that he felt overwhelmed by the love and friendship that surrounded him. He declared that although people had many languages, there was only one literature and one poetry, and that “whoever meets here loves one another.”74 He expressed gratitude to his hometown: “The distinction that the Nagyvárad public has bestowed on me was nothing less than a spiritual handshake, which Hungarian intellectual life and culture have given to all those who create in their own language.” His nephew Aurel Lazăr was one of the last to raise a glass to Vulcan. A young leader in the Romanian National Party, Lazăr took a much dimmer view of ­Hungarian-Romanian relations than his uncle did, and his toast pointedly mentioned recent tensions in Transylvania. Yet even Lazăr allowed that Oradea was different, and he expressed his joy that in this city culture could create social contact and understanding.75 With a wish for “the beautiful future of Hungarians and Romanians,” he emptied his glass. Words spoken under the influence of alcohol, even well-intentioned ones, are sometimes best forgotten. It is tempting to do the same with the toasts directed at Vulcan after the premier. In October 1918, Lazăr would help craft the declaration expressing the desire of Hungary’s Romanians to gain autonomy and be united with the Romanian Kingdom. So much for the “beautiful future” of his toast! But Vulcan clearly considered the premiere a milestone, and so should we. It allows us to see the ways in which Hungarian and Romanian elites could come together in towns like Oradea. Their words revealed a strong local exceptionalism, a confidence that although problems existed elsewhere, solutions could still be found in this town and the surrounding county. This was a fiction, as the 1893 riot showed clearly, but a useful one, since it allowed locals to find common ground. Over the course of his career, Vulcan had devoted himself to strengthening Romanian literary and cultural life. Without meaning to, he hastened the process by which, in historian Keith Hitchins’s words, “Romanians and Magyars steadily drifted apart.”76 But in Oradea, Vulcan also helped pull the two groups back together. With the premiere of Prince Stephen the Younger, Oradea provided a model, however temporary, of how a handful of well-intentioned people (Fehér, Vulcan, Ady) could ignore or suspend ethnic and religious differences, or use them to discuss beginning anew. As many contemporaries recognized, this happened most frequently in places like Oradea, on the linguistic and national fault lines of Austria-Hungary. It turned out that being on the “extreme margins” had its advantages.

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The Death of Two Men In 1904, just a year after the premiere of Prince Stephen, Iosif Vulcan hit another milestone: the fortieth anniversary of The Family. Friends, family, fellow writers, and other well-wishers gathered in Oradea for a great celebration, which began with services in the Greek Catholic cathedral but soon turned to much more worldly entertainments: speeches, banquets, toasts, a concert, and a performance of some of Vulcan’s dramatic works. The Family devoted two double issues to the anniversary.77 The first opened with reproduction of a handwritten line of encouragement from Queen Elisabeth of Romania (herself a prolific writer under the pen name Carmen Sylva): “One does not need a vast state, one needs only men with great hearts.”78 More than fifty prominent Romanian added poems, recollections, tributes, and even handwritten sheet music (the composer Gheorghe Dima’s adaptation of a Maramureș folk song). The historian Nicolae Iorga contributed a sweeping overview of nineteenth-century Romanian literature, which he closed with a more personal, generous observation about Vulcan: “He is an honest man, a hardworking man, animated by a beautiful goal.” Perhaps the most moving tribute came from his wife, ­Aurelia, who expressed her happiness, love, pride, and fervent wish that, with God’s help, they would celebrate the journal’s fiftieth anniversary. The sun was setting on The Family. In 1902, some of Vulcan’s friends had launched a competing literary journal, The Evening Star (Luceafarul, after a poem by Eminescu of the same name), and it soon captured the attention of younger writers and the reading public. No longer timeless, Vulcan’s journal now appeared timeworn. Vulcan himself fell ill, plagued by kidney problems and other ailments. He stopped writing and no longer attended the annual meetings he so enjoyed. On December 31, 1906, he published the final edition of The Family. Like the hundreds of issues that had preceded it, this included poems, illustrations, a short story, an excerpt from a play, and notices about new books and weddings. On the final page, he added a short note, in which he explained that his declining health had forced him to cease publication, averred that his journal had broken new ground in presenting new authors and targeting women readers, and thanked everyone who had helped him over the years.79 Just eight months later, after taking his daily walk through town with his wife, he collapsed at home and did not get up again. The best doctors treated him, but to no avail. On September 8, 1907, Iosif Vulcan died. He was sixty-

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six years old. Two days later, he was buried with great ceremony in one of Oradea’s oldest cemeteries. After reading the contemporary press, one might conclude that two men were buried on that day. Romanian observers naturally cited Vulcan’s role in the development of Romanian-language literature and theater.80 They mentioned his lifelong concern with women’s education. They also focused on his membership in the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. The vice president of the academy called him “one of the most tireless fighters for the advancement of Romanian culture.” Historian Iorga stressed the importance of Vulcan’s role in Oradea: “In those isolated and imperiled lands, any Romanian publication was like a flag enduring in a fortress besieged by enemies, a flag that through its lonely fluttering awakens the sense of honor and summons the defenders.” The Hungarian press drew a very different picture of the deceased.81 It stressed his relationship with the famous Irinyi family, his years in Buda­ pest, and his work as a translator between Hungarian and Romanian. His membership in the Budapest-based Kisfaludy Society featured prominently. No longer a fighter for the Romanian cause, Vulcan in the Hungarian papers appears as a single-minded man of letters: “He did not concern himself with politics and public affairs. He lived only for his journal, for literature, and for art.” In these competing interpretations of Iosif Vulcan’s life we can hear, however faintly, echoes of the much louder and longer historical debate between Hungarians and Romanians. These separate views make sense if we look at someone like Vulcan from the perspective of Budapest or Bucharest. In this chapter, I have tried to show that Vulcan in fact moved easily between the two capitals; he was at home in both. In Budapest, he had taken a law degree, cut his teeth as a writer, and gained early distinction. Bucharest gained importance to him only later, and his frequent visits were repaid with performances of his plays and election to the Romanian Academy. But I have also tried to place Vulcan in the context of his hometown and home county. From this vantage point, we can see his life and work in new ways. Most obviously, it becomes clear that he did engage in public affairs, but they did not always have a Romanian national orientation. Instead, he was deeply involved in numerous local undertakings, which included everything from the Red Cross to the county history society. His many contacts in Oradea shaped his cultural work as well; his friendships

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with local newspapermen influenced the content of both The Family and Hungarian-language papers, just as his long support for the theater meant that Prince Stephen the Younger was translated and performed on the local stage. One might generalize and state that this is what often happens in places where different cultures, languages, and religions meet. But one wonders whether Vulcan would have played the same role had he not had one Hungarian and one Romanian parent, been so gregarious, lived in the center of town, or supported culture in all its forms, no matter what language it appeared in. And would he have acted as a “translator” between the two cultures had he not had such an attachment to his beloved “Bihor Land”?

6 The Rabbi The motion sowed the seeds of what was at first a lively yet restrained, but later a fierce religious war between the Catholic and Calvinist members of the council; it exercised an oppressive influence on the peace between the different confessions and on the more liberal and tolerant elements bearing harmony in their hearts. “Religious War in the Town Council,” Komárom Journal (1890)1 Where people split into factions attacking one other, where disunity and discord gnaw at the body of the nation, and where the strength of the best is consumed in sterile civil wars, the destroying angel already lurks; the first storm bursting in from outside will sweep away this people from the surface of the earth, and history will gain another grave. Ármin Schnitzer, Rabbi of Komárom (1896) 2

IN 1934 , Patrick Leigh Fermor reached the borders of the former Kingdom of Hungary. An Englishman, Leigh Fermor was nineteen years old and tramping from Hook of Holland to Istanbul, a journey that would take him two years to complete and forty more to write about. Entering Bratislava, Leigh Fermor meditated on his first encounter with the Slavic world and the recent transfer of this region from Hungary to the new state of Czechoslovakia. His memoirs document the enduring strength in these lands of Roman Catholicism, from the Gothic cathedral looming over Pressburg to the crucifixes and oleographs of the Immaculate Conception he spied in brothels. Observing a somber Corpus Christi procession in ­Esztergom, Leigh Fermor sensed “a spell of great beneficence and power.”3 As he ambled across Hungary, Leigh Fermor measured the Reformation’s impact in the Calvinists and Lutherans he met, and he detected an even older schism between western and eastern Christianity in the Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholics he encountered. In Transylvania,

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Leigh ­Fermor spent his last night in what had once been the Kingdom of Hungary with Hasidic Jews from Satu Mare, who were overseeing a timber concession high in the Carpathian Mountains. Leigh Fermor was an astute observer. Like few other European states, the lands of the former Kingdom of Hungary contained a wealth of religions. Roman Catholics made up the largest share, 47 percent of the population (according to 1880 census figures), followed by Calvinists (15 percent), Eastern Orthodox (14 percent), Greek Catholics (11 percent), Lutherans (8 percent); and Jews (5 percent).4 Although clustered settlement patterns characterized all these groups—most Roman Catholics, for example, lived in western and northern Hungary, regions that had felt the full force of the Counter-Reformation—religious heterogeneity defined much of the country. Even small towns often had several Christian churches and a synagogue. The small town of Belényes or Beiuș, close to Iosif Vulcan’s birthplace, had just over two thousand residents but four main churches, all built around the same time and in a similar style: the Roman Catholic (built around 1752), Calvinist (1782), Greek Catholic (1810), and Eastern Orthodox (1815). An Orthodox Jewish synagogue followed in 1858. To add further complexity, religion sometimes overlapped with ethnicity and social status, but often it did not. Historian Zoltán Tóth has observed that Hungary contained sixteen “ethnic-confessional groups” with more than a hundred thousand members; Hungarian speakers alone could be divided into Roman Catholic, Calvinist, Jewish, Lutheran, and Greek Catholic believers, each group with distinct patterns of occupation, family size, education, and cooking.5 Nor were religions in Hungary created equal. Starting in the 1860s, liberal governments championed the individual’s freedom of conscience and the rule of law to guarantee this freedom. But the welter of laws, ministerial orders, local decrees, and ad hoc agreements they used to regulate church-state relations upheld the existing hierarchy of religions, with the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches at the top and Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches at the bottom.6 Judaism occupied an inferior position: in 1867 the Hungarian Parliament emancipated Jews and gave them the same civil and political rights enjoyed by Christian inhabitants of Hungary. Yet Judaism lacked official sanction (in the terminology of the time, it was a “tolerated” but not a “received” religion), which meant that marriages between Jews and Christians could not be legally contracted and that non-Jews could not convert to Judaism. More

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generally, it signaled that Judaism remained apart from mainstream society. Gaining equal status for the Jewish religion became a rallying cry for a generation of Hungarian Jewish leaders and their liberal Christian allies, many of whom also wanted to blunt the power of the Roman Catholic church. By 1895 reformers had achieved both goals, but they also witnessed an upsurge of antisemitism and sectarian strife. Rather than fading away, religious tensions seemed to surge in late-nineteenth-century Hungary.7 Liberalism in contrast seemed to be a spent force, a view endorsed by many later historians.8 This chapter tells the story of Ármin Schnitzer, a rabbi with roots in northeastern Hungary. Schnitzer lived during the high tide of Hungarian liberalism; as a child he wore a tricolor cockade and cheered the 1848 revolutionaries, and as an older man he saluted the legislation that put Judaism on an equal footing with the Christian churches. But Schnitzer also struggled to maintain religious traditions in a rapidly changing society. One of his teachers had once described himself as “old, faithful Jewry in modern dress,” and Schnitzer made this motto his own.9 He attempted to live up to this ideal in the small town where he served as rabbi. Yet here Jews were a pronounced minority, and as the nineteenth century drew to a close Schnitzer had to contend with divisions within the Jewish community, antisemitic demonstrations, nationalist pressures, and the “religious war” described in the opening quotation. Even in his unremarkable, provincial town, Rabbi Schnitzer had to navigate a sea of faith filled with hazards. But Schnitzer did not lose his way. He loudly denounced the “­sterile civil wars” caused by religion, he immersed himself in his town’s affairs, and he confidently guided his congregation. Many of his words have come down to us. Schnitzer published his sermons, speeches, newspaper articles, a novella, and his memoirs, which are full of sharp memories about his childhood in northeastern Hungary. These sources show how Schnitzer tried to define a Jewish identity that fused Hungarian patriotism, Habsburg loyalty, and a measure of Zionism. They also reveal that the scholarly Schnitzer adapted well to the political arena, where he used the local press, the town council, and networks of friends to respond to statewide crises, including the Tiszaeszlár ritual murder case in the 1880s and the battle over civil marriage in the 1890s. Seen through the life of this rabbi, both liberalism and the political institutions of the provinces often seem fragile and friable. Yet at times they appear more vibrant and viable than is often assumed.

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The Itinerant Talmudist Ármin Schnitzer was born in a kind of ghetto—a Jewish ghetto in what was then northeastern Hungary and is today Slovakia.10 He was born on December 8, 1836, in the same alpine county as the engineer Pál Vásárhelyi (their birthplaces were just thirty miles apart). The surrounding mountains were forbidding: “Barren, fissured peaks, precipitous ridges, and bleak valleys with deep lakes are their chief features, relieved but rarely with green pastures or human habitations,” warns a travel guide.11 From afar, Schnitzer’s hometown looked like any other small village in the region. Many of its two thousand or so inhabitants were German-speaking peasants, who farmed the land and attended the gothic Roman Catholic church. These Christian villagers also worked as flax weavers at home and lumberjacks in the forests of the surrounding mountains. For Christians and Jews alike it was a precarious existence; in 1825 a terrible fire had destroyed much of the village and killed all eight members of a Jewish family.12 According to legend, the Romans and Huns had clashed here in 441, and plows still turned up old coins, weapons, and funerary urns. The battle is said to have given the village its name of Hunsdorf, or “Hun Village” (Hunfalva to Hungarians and Huncovce to Slovaks). But the more likely origin of Hunsdorf is a corrupted form of Hunds-Dorf (“Dog Village”), after the royal kennels kept here in the fourteenth century.13 Hunsdorf was also a major Jewish settlement. In the early 1800s they numbered around two hundred families and nearly one thousand residents (fully half the total Jewish population of the county), making it one of the largest concentrations of Jews in all of Hungary.14 The Jews of Hunsdorf built a handsome neoclassical synagogue in the Polish style and surrounded it with their shops, schools, baths, cemetery, and yeshiva. This rich communal life drew Jews to the village, mainly from neighboring Galicia. But so too did the chartered towns of the surrounding county, which strove mightily to keep Jews out.15 For centuries, the German burghers of northern Hungary had refused Jews permission to live in their towns. So they settled in Hunsdorf, whose noble landlords welcomed them in exchange for services and payments. Hunsdorf lay on a main road and stood just a few miles from one of the county’s largest towns, and its residents engaged in trade throughout the region. Here Schnitzer spent his childhood. Like Vásárhelyi, however, Ármin Schnitzer left for good at a young age. Once

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more we need to ask how this small town in northeastern Hungary shaped Schnitzer, and what he took from it when he departed. Schnitzer’s hometown contained a tightly knit, vibrant, and observant Jewish community. At its center was the synagogue, where Jews gathered to pray and gossip. Their rabbi, Schlomo Zalman Perlstein, had emigrated from Bialystok, in Russian Poland. He was deeply devout, genuinely learned, and (according to Schnitzer’s memoirs) nearly incomprehensible, thanks to the thick Lithuanian accent that colored his Yiddish (Hunsdorf ’s many Galician immigrants in contrast would have spoken southern or “Polish” Yiddish). Local Jews praised but disregarded Rabbi Perlstein; real power in Jewish Hunsdorf lay with the rich families of the community. But even the power­ ful were bound by Jewish tradition and public morality. In front of the synagogue stood a tall stake with iron bands that closed around the neck of Jews who had publicly violated religious prohibitions or challenged the authority of the community. Schnitzer recalled seeing a married man, caught having an affair with a widow, being led through the village on the back of a donkey. The man was forced to sit backwards and endure the mockery of the many onlookers, who clanged tin pans and shouted as he passed.16 The Hunsdorf ghetto thus had walls, just not ones visible to outsiders. Like the larger community, Ármin Schnitzer’s family was pious but poor. His paternal grandfather had been a merchant in western Galicia, and his father, Moritz, had come to Hungary to study at a yeshiva. Moritz did not become a rabbi and instead used his excellent German and beautiful handwriting—two things that most Jews in the Galician-Hungarian borderlands lacked—to become a tutor and then a teacher. In Hunsdorf he met Ármin’s future mother, whose family had little money but was wellrespected. Her father was a mohel or Jewish circumciser, and his work often took him to remote mountain villages where only a handful of Jewish families lived. Her oldest brother achieved a measure of success; as the secretary of the Jewish community of the surrounding county, he exercised great influence over local affairs. He had gained this position, Schnitzer noted, because he could read and write German (and thereby communicate with the local authorities), something the Yiddish-speaking rabbi and president of the Jewish community could not.17 From both sides of the family, then, young Ármin learned that command of languages and of German in particular could open doors. But not always. Schnitzer’s father was an educated man, yet his learning brought him few material rewards. To be a Jewish teacher in the first

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half of the nineteenth century, recalled Schnitzer, meant “denial, deprivation, and slavish work.”18 Soon after the birth of his first child, Moritz had moved his family to another town in the county (very close to Pál Vásárhelyi’s birthplace) and used the remainder of his wife’s dowry to open a tavern. It must have been difficult for a man steeped in learning and used to teaching to enter the rough-and-tumble world of tavernkeeping; the tavern soon failed, and Ármin’s father returned to his school in Hunsdorf.19 His family continued to grow (Schnitzer’s memoirs never mention how many siblings he had), and money was scarce. When hunger spread across Hungary in 1847, the family was reduced to brown bread, potatoes, and roux; milk, coffee, and meat were luxuries. Years later Schnitzer described the monotonous, gray routine that filled his parents’ days: “I saw father at his difficult work, mother at her drudgery.”20 Privation and poverty marked life in his hometown. Sickness also stalked the ghetto. Schnitzer’s father had nearly died in the cholera epidemic of 1831, and as a child Ármin himself came close to dying two times. The first scare came when he was just a year old, and a beggar (shnorer) saved him. When Ármin fell ill, his parents first turned to a doctor. After the doctor had given up on the infant, they recited psalms and prayed at the graves of pious men, but in vain. In desperation, the parents renamed and “sold” their child to a passing beggar in the hope that if the Angel of Death came for the child, he would not find the boy if he bore another name and was not with his family. Ármin soon recovered, and his parents generously rewarded the beggar.21 Ten years later Ármin again fell ill, this time from the cholera that had trailed the Russian armies into Hungary in 1849. The Jewish community did what it could to keep the cholera at bay: it married a young orphan girl and a poor boy in the graveyard! But Ármin credited his survival to a visit from his pious grandfather. After saying a prayer, the grandfather had held out his hand to Ármin and told the boy he would regain his health if he promised always to study the Talmud. Ármin took his grandfather’s hand and soon got better. “That handshake,” he wrote, “decided my entire life.”22 Education offered a path out of the ghetto. In Hunsdorf, Ármin studied under his father and at a local cheder, the traditional elementary school for boys. He learned Talmud and Hebrew from a self-styled “rebbe” in a long caftan and fur cap. Classes were held in a dark, windowless room; feathers sometimes floated in from the geese the rabbi’s wife kept. The rabbi was smiling and genial, in part because he nipped brandy

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over the course of the day. Although Schnitzer later called the rabbi’s teaching methods “a riddle,” he emerged from the cheder with a command of Hebrew and two tractates of Talmud committed to memory. Even fifty years later, Schnitzer claimed to remember much of what he had learned as a child.23 He had also mastered German and counted Schiller as his favorite writer. It was quite natural, then, that Schnitzer would leave Huns­ dorf to continue his religious studies at a yeshiva. He would return to Hunsdorf only for short visits. Decades later, Ármin Schnitzer still felt a strong connection to his northeastern hometown. His memoirs open with the declaration that just as the Romans proudly said “Civis romanus sum,” the Jews of his hometown boasted “I am a Hunsdorf Balbos” (“head of household,” a shortened form of the Hebrew baal ha-bayith).24 Hunsdorf was the compass that guided Schnitzer through key passages of life. When he arrived at the yeshiva in Moravia, friendless and disoriented, a fellow student from Hunsdorf lent a helping hand; when his pockets were empty, another Hunsdorfer gave him clothes and money; and when it was time to marry, he wed the daughter of a woman from his hometown. As an adult, Schnitzer cherished these memories of the small Jewish world from which he had emerged. Even in Schnitzer’s time, however, Hunsdorf was shrinking. Part of this had to do with Schnitzer himself. Like anyone who has traveled and spent time away from home, he later saw his hometown with fresh eyes. “Nothing had changed,” he wrote. “Only I had changed. Hunsdorf had become so very small; my horizons had widened and I could no longer feel myself at home under these conditions.”25 But Hunsdorf itself was disappearing, as much of its population left for bigger towns and cities. For Jews, the removal of most restrictions on residence and professions in 1840 had allowed them to quit ghettos like Hunsdorf. Between 1828 and 1880 the Jewish population of Hunsdorf dropped by more half, from 939 to 364.26 They joined millions of other Hungarians on the move in the middle and late nineteenth century. The census of 1880 revealed that three out of four people in Hungary remained where they had been born. But northeastern Hungary had an exceedingly high rate of migration. Particularly in mountainous regions, the combination of a high birth rate, falling mortality rate, decline in mining, and limited farmland set young people in motion.27 Their destinations varied; many settled in lowland towns and villages in the same county, others sought agricultural work on the Great Hungarian Plains, and still others struck out for more distant cities, hoping to make

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enough money to return home and buy land. The Monarchy’s army and national guards also took away young men for a few years, making them, according to an 1891 short story, either “more clever” (to an army captain) or “malicious, uncouth, conceited time-expired soldiers, filled with subversive ideas, scoffing at everything they used to love and revere” (to the worried mother of one recruit).28 The residents of Schnitzer’s home county were slightly more mobile than average, so that by the turn of the century three in ten people had moved away from their birthplace. Ármin Schnitzer was one of them. Schnitzer’s studies took him on a long, circuitous journey through the Habsburg lands. For more than a decade, he traveled from one center of Jewish learning to another, studying Torah and rabbinical literature with some of the most famous rabbis of his day. His father had denounced Hungarian yeshivas as “hotbeds of obscure zealotry” and insisted that Ármin first go to Moravia, “where one can become an able Talmudist and an educated, scholarly man.”29 Ármin left for Moravia with his prayer shawl, phylacteries, a bundle of clothes, and five gulden in his pocket. He was twelve years old. It was the first time he had left home; he would soon see his first train and much else that was new. In Moravia Ármin studied Talmud in Leipnik with the conservative, inspiring Rabbi Solomon Quetsch, and then in Nikolsburg, home to one of Moravia’s most famous yeshivas. Here Schnitzer studied with Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who was also conservative but to Schnitzer strikingly modern, with his neatly trimmed beard, dark suit, publications in German, and scholarly approach to sacred texts.30 After hearing Hirsch’s sermons, Schnitzer would retreat into the surrounding fields, reciting aloud memorable passages with the same pathos and north German accent that Hirsch employed. Hirsch did not stay long in Nikolsburg—he moved to Frankfurt, where he laid the foundations for modern Orthodox Judaism—and neither did Schnitzer, who came back to Hungary to study Torah in Gyöngyös and then ­Liptószentmiklós. In the first he obtained his rabbinical diploma; in the second he found a wife. Tireless study defined this decade of Schnitzer’s life. The motto of his last teacher (and future father-in-law), “Gehen wir lernen” (Let us go study), could have been Schnitzer’s as well. In Moravia, Schnitzer had attended classes at the local gymnasium alongside his yeshiva studies (he later completed his gymnasium degree with a tutor). His memoirs offer careful observations of the rabbis he studied with and met. They have little

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to say about his fellow students, and they rarely give a glimpse of the world beyond the walls of the yeshiva. His passage to adulthood is foremost a scholarly and spiritual one, with piety, study, denial, and hunger as its main features. During his first months in Moravia, Schnitzer recalled with pride, he existed on brown bread and rainwater. In his words, he lived on the “bread of misery” (a reference to the unleavened bread eaten during Passover), which “hammered and hardened him” and taught him that “what one can do without is superfluous.”31 His only regret was that the generations who followed were not compelled to learn the same hard lessons. Marriage came as something of a shock. Jews in the early nineteenth century married young, as did most residents of Hungary (the average age for men was twenty-three, for women nineteen).32 When Schnitzer was twenty, a family friend arranged his marriage to the daughter of a rabbi who lived in another small Hungarian town. In return he would receive a dowry of six hundred gulden and be supported by the bride’s family for three years. Schnitzer esteemed his future father-in-law and envied his ability to study Torah at all hours of the day. But his future wife and women in general remained a mystery. Schnitzer had spent his entire life surrounded by men and boys; he did not know how to talk to women, nor had he been given a chance. “I was engaged,” he recalled, “against my will, without having said more than a few words to my fiancée, without knowing even her age.”33 He dreamed of running away. For Schnitzer, a wife was an imposition, “a millstone around my neck, as the Torah calls marriage.” He knew that once his three years of support had ended, he would have to find some way to earn a living. For now, though, Schnitzer dug even deeper into his study of Torah and rabbinical literature, burying himself in sacred texts, prayers, and ritual. But the winds of change reached even this hermetic world. With hindsight, Schnitzer could see the storm brewing in Hungarian and Central European Jewry. In Nikolsburg, Schnitzer had sensed that Rabbi Hirsch, conservative yet modern, had “stood on the cusp of two eras. The new era had come, but the old, though disappearing, continued to cast its shadows on the present.”34 Schnitzer’s memoirs document the many sites of conflict: clothing, language, ritual, and attitudes toward women. Sons turned against fathers, and seemingly small matters took on outsized importance, as rabbis disagreed on whether Jewish men could take their hats off indoors. In Gyöngyös, the arrival of a Hasidic rabbi from Galicia divided the teachers of Schnitzer’s yeshiva; Schnitzer himself respected the

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Hasidic rabbi’s piety and charity but mistrusted his followers’ “zealotry” and doubted stories of the rebbe’s miracles, such as how he had cured a madman in three days.35 In Liptószentmiklós, the construction of a new synagogue in the 1840s had split the Jewish community into two camps.36 As elsewhere in Central Europe, reformers and conservatives fought over the position of the bimah and the need for latticework or curtains over the women’s gallery.37 In this case, the reformers prevailed and a kind of peace was restored. But across the region, Schnitzer wrote, “a sharp blast of air tore through the ghetto”—or, in Schnitzer’s crisp German, “Ein scharfer Luftzug war durch die Judengasse gezogen.”38 Married but with misgivings, learned but with little income, Schnitzer entered adulthood beset by uncertainty and doubt. His one attempt at business—dealing wine with the help of his father-in-law’s brother—had failed. It was nothing short of miraculous, then, when Schnitzer was invited to be a rabbi and head of the Jewish school in a small town in western Hungary: Komárom, today Komárno in Slovakia. He moved there in 1861 with his family. Schnitzer was twenty-five years old, hard-working, scholarly, and ascetic. He possessed excellent German and deep knowledge of Judaism’s holiest texts. But he was far from the regions where he had spent his childhood and his yeshiva years. How would he respond to the challenges posed by an isolated Jewish congregation, rising Hungarian nationalism, and simmering antisemitism?

The Homesick Neolog? In many ways, Schnitzer had been fortunate to end up in Komárom, a small town on the Danube, midway between Vienna and Budapest.39 A garrison town, Komárom was famed for its fortress, which dated to Roman times and had long withstood besieging Austrians during the revolution and war of 1848–49. A commercial center, Komárom had once dominated the trade in grain and timber on the Danube. And as a magnet for Jews, Komárom had a sizeable and well-established Jewish community that comprised one-tenth of the town’s population.40 When Schnitzer arrived in 1861, the community was in the midst of rebuilding its synagogue. The old one and hundreds of other buildings in Komárom had been destroyed in a great fire in 1848. Centrally located and richly appointed, the new synagogue symbolized the confidence and optimism of Komárom’s Jews. Schnitzer was no less self-assured, but during his long rabbinate fractures appeared

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within his congregation, as they did among Jews across Hungary. How he responded to these challenges shows the distance he had traveled from the northeastern counties, as well as his rootedness in the region of his youth. Success crowned Schnitzer’s first years in Komárom. His two trial sermons in late 1861 were well received, in spite of the great cold that had his listeners dancing in the pews to keep warm. “He had a wonderful, gripping eloquence,” reads a history of Jewish Komárom.41 He paid close attention to the rules of rhetoric; “a Jewish sermon,” he observed, should contain “spirit, substance, and humor,” and it should guide and instruct the congregation.42 Schnitzer also got along well with Rabbi Frieden, the elderly senior rabbi of Komárom, until the latter’s death in 1873. He taught classes on the Torah in the Jewish school and helped organize and oversee the new Jewish women’s association (founded in 1865) and charitable society (1868). In the decades that followed, Komárom’s Jews establish a dense network of communal organizations, voluntary associations, schools, and businesses. Schnitzer won wide acclaim in the mid-1860s when he challenged the longstanding practice that Jews had to take a special oath when they testified in court.43 Such “Jewish oaths” remained in force in many European states; France had ended the practice only in 1846 (as did Austria), and it continued in Prussia though 1869. In Hungary the authoritative text of the oath dated to 1514, and with it Jews pledged to tell the truth or suffer a host of Biblical punishments (“may the earth swallow me, as it did Dathan and Abiron,” a reference to two Jews who conspired against Moses). Although the practice was profitable to rabbis, who received a fee when they administered the oath, Schnitzer saw it as humiliating and unfair, since members of other religions did not need their clergymen present when they took an oath. In this he followed the lead of the great Hungarian Jewish reformer Rabbi Leopold Löw, who had called for its abolition: “Justice and progress, culture and civilization all demand it.”44 Summoned in 1867 to administer the Jewish oath to a wood dealer from Budapest, Schnitzer refused and insisted that Jews should take an oath the way Christians did. His eloquent appeal won the support of liberal-minded local officials, and Komárom became the first county to “remove this dishonor” from its people (only in the following year did a ministerial order end the practice across Hungary). In 1881 the community formally named Schnitzer its head rabbi, a position he held until his death in 1914. But troubles loomed. Schnitzer later recalled that there had always been those who “praised me to the skies,” as well as those who “watched

Rabbi Ármin Schnitzer in 1902, on the fortieth anniversary of his rabbinate in Komárom. Numerous rabbis, Roman Catholic dignitaries, a Calvinist bishop, the mayor of Komárom, the high sheriff of Komárom County, and members of Parliament took part in the celebrations. source: Mór Krausz, ed., Emlék-Lapok. Főtisztelendő Dr. Schnitzer Ármin komáromi Főrabbi Úr 40 éves rabbiságának emlékére 1902. évi junius hó 29-én megtartott jubileumi ünnepségekről (Komárom: Spitzer Sándor, 1902). FIGURE 6. 

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my every step with sharp, spying eyes and spread false rumors about me.”45 Such is life for longtime leaders in small towns! In Komárom, Schnitzer had to come to terms with a fractious Jewish community, whose problems were typical of provincial Hungary in the second half of the nineteenth century. Komárom’s Jews had quarreled long before he arrived. In the 1850s, the community had battled over the design of their new synagogue, with the now-familiar divisions between reformers and conservatives over the position of the bimah and opacity of the screen over the women’s gallery. The resulting “storms had deeply shaken” the congregation and brought only “strife and discord.”46 Tensions flared again in the late 1860s, when the Hungarian government in Budapest called on communities to elect representatives to a Jewish Congress. In Komárom, elections returned a “strongly religious but modern” delegate. When the Congress exploded and Hungarian Jewry splintered into competing organizations—the Neolog, Status Quo Ante, and Orthodox (not to mention the Hasidim)—Komárom and Schnitzer chose the Neologs, or moderate reformers. In the decades that followed, Neologs would introduce liturgical reforms, changes in synagogue architecture, sermons in the vernacular (German and Hungarian, rather than Yiddish), secular education, and state oversight of rabbinical training, without, however, departing from Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish law. This aligned with Schnitzer’s ideal (“old, faithful Jewry in modern dress”; see Figure 6), and he helped guide his congregation in this direction. In many ways Komárom exhibited all the demographic features of other Neolog Jewish communities: falling birth rate, high literacy rate, rising number of professionals, and growing use of the Hungarian language.47 In contrast, most towns and villages in the northeastern counties, including Schnitzer’s hometown of Huns­dorf, declared themselves Orthodox. In his long journey to Komárom, he left behind the traditional Judaism in which he had been raised. Yet Schnitzer understood that Jews in Komárom, as elsewhere, varied greatly in their attitudes toward belief, practice, tradition, and modernity. In his novella Election of a Rabbi (Eine Rabbinerwahl ), Schnitzer distinguished between the Intelligenz, the small but influential circle of educated, forward-looking Jews, and the Volk, the mass of poorer Jews who resisted innovations in the synagogue and changes in daily life. Schnitzer depicted both groups sympathetically; he valued piety as well as progress. His novella instead skewers extremists: the uncompromising Neolog rabbi who happily tramples tradition (he carries an umbrella on the Sabbath, to the

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horror of the older generation) and the intolerant Orthodox rabbi, whose smug self-righteousness alienates everyone. Only a rabbi who exhibits faith, tolerance, and respect for tradition can hold a congregation together. Not everyone shared Schnitzer’s views. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the town’s Jewish population had doubled to nearly twenty-three hundred and become increasingly heterogeneous. Divisions in the community were more visible. Elections to Komárom’s Jewish council, one newspaper reported in 1882, had split local Jews into two camps.48 A more lasting challenge came from Orthodox Jews, who established their own organization in Komárom. Their numbers were small; in the late 1880s they accounted for just 20 out of 270 Jewish taxpayers, but they served as a reminder of the divisions that existed even in small towns.49 In 1907 they built their own synagogue. This divide was not absolute. As historian Jacob Katz observed, the Orthodox had many family and business connections with the Neologs, and intermarriages and movement from one group to the other were not uncommon.50 For his part, Schnitzer deeply regretted the fragmentation of Hungarian Jewry: “The ravages these divisions have caused in the communities can scarcely be measured! Where once there had been a vibrant community life, a thriving school, now through the division of the unified body into two or even three parts, infirmity and decline take the place of healthy development, and strength is dispersed and wasted in fruitless battles.”51 In a speech given just a few years before his death, Schnitzer acknowledged some of the challenges he had faced in Komárom. He asked the rhetorical question, “What is the responsibility and professional duty of a religious leader, especially in our time, when antagonisms are almost unbridgeable and every individual forms and models his own views and conceptions of religion and Jewish life?”52 The answer he gave came from Midrash. But it also seemed to draw on his childhood experience in Huns­ dorf, when Jews had been unemancipated but unified: “The blessing of a people, for which it owes its vitality and unshakeable endurance, is the spirit of community, the consciousness of the togetherness that they all feel as one with the whole.” This was an inspiring vision, and doubly so coming from a rabbi who had seen divisions open in his own congregation. Throughout his life, Schnitzer had prided himself on his learning and rationality. But it only humanizes him to think that at difficult moments, reflecting on the troubles around him, he might welcome the company of the ghosts of home.

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The Hungarian Orator On August 20, 1881, Rabbi Schnitzer gave the most important speech of his life. He spoke in front of the house in which the novelist Mór Jókai had been born. Jókai had left Komárom in his teens and gone on to become one of Hungary’s most celebrated and prolific writers, widely translated into English and other languages. He was a source of pride for his hometown: “the greatest son of Komárom, the crown prince of Hungarian novelists,” one contemporary enthused (even today, only Franz Lehár, composer of The Merry Widow and other operettas, can compete with Jókai).53 In 1881, the town organized a celebration to unveil a plaque on Jókai’s birthplace. That Jókai did not return for the event did nothing to diminish the locals’ enthusiasm. Nor did the fact that the local Jewish community now owned the rather humble building, which served as a residence for several community officials and also contained mikveh or ritual baths.54 Schnitzer’s speech was one among many. Like other speakers, he lauded Jókai and congratulated the town for producing such a genius. Jókai, he said, “has brought the civilized European world closer to our homeland by conveying our unique national virtues shining in his characters.”55 Overlooking the writer’s long absence from Komárom, Schnitzer affirmed that Jókai “has roots in the soil of this town. Here he sprouted, here he grew, here his ear caught the first sounds of the language, which he shaped into enchanting music.” With these words, Schnitzer proved that he could speechify in the streets as easily as he could preach in the synagogue. When he had finished, local luminaries rushed to congratulate him. The local paper agreed, stating that his speech was the “most outstanding, the most successful point on the program.”56 What accounted for this triumph? The answer is simple: Schnitzer had delivered his speech in Hungarian. True, he struggled with Hungarian pronunciation. But he spoke with feeling and won over the crowd. It is important to recall that German had been Schnitzer’s ticket out of his Yiddish-speaking ghetto. As a y­ eshiva student in Moravia, the young Schnitzer had involuntarily corrected the elderly beadle who had summoned Jews to synagogue with the ungrammatical “In der Schul ”; as Schnitzer pointed out, it should be “In die Schul.”57 He later criticized the “Jewish pronunciation” of a rabbi’s German that made “the most beautiful phrases unbearable.” As a rabbi, he proudly delivered sermons in High German instead of Yiddish, even on the high

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holidays. And at some point in his life—the sources do not reveal when or how this happened—Schnitzer stopped using his given name Hirsch (or Herschel, as he sometimes wrote it), at least in public. Hirsch comes from the Yiddish word for deer. The name he chose instead, “Ármin,” is the Hungarian form of a Teutonic name, “Hermann.” In this name change he was not alone: other Central European Jews had made the leap from Hershel to Hermann, retaining a few consonants and signaling their alignment with German language and letters.58 In Komárom, Schnitzer was expected to leap again, from a German to a Hungarian orientation. To grasp the full significance of the speech, then, we need to look at the forces that pushed him to make this leap, as well as Schnitzer’s cautious landing on the Hungarian side. In Komárom, Schnitzer moved in a largely Hungarian-speaking world. Late-nineteenth-century censuses showed that nine-tenths of the population spoke Hungarian as their “mother tongue,” and many of those who did not were soldiers stationed in the fortress (such as Lehár’s father, a military bandmaster born in Moravia). Hungarian was widely used in shops, churches, hospitals, and social clubs; it was the language of instruction in the schools. But local elites did not rest easy, knowing that the surrounding county contained many Slovak speakers. The Komárom Town Council tirelessly championed the Hungarian national cause, and its minutes show that it subscribed funds for statues of Hungarian luminaries in the town and for Hungarian-language kindergartens in nearby Slovak villages.59 The local press was even more vociferous in its support for all things Hungarian, and it often singled out Jews, urging them to demonstrate their patriotism in daily life. In the early 1880s, as an antisemitic wave slowly broke across Hungary, shrill editorials appeared, accusing Jews of “Germanism” and urging them to banish the German language from their schools and synagogues, to adopt more Hungarian-sounding names, and to abandon work on Sundays.60 Led by Schnitzer, Jews rejected these demands, exposing their opponents’ faulty logic and denouncing their intolerance. This stout defense notwithstanding, the continued Hungarian national agitation of the town government and newspapers put strong pressure “from above” on the Jewish community of Komárom in general and on Schnitzer in particular. That Schnitzer had learned Hungarian as an adult was impressive. Contemporaries attached great meaning to his decision. A fellow rabbi later enthused that although Schnitzer had been born in “a German

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r­ egion” and lived in “a German world,” in Komárom he “became Hungarian, as he had always been in his feelings.”61 This was a simplification, but it reflected a wider trend across Hungary, as Jews who primarily spoke Yiddish and German learned Hungarian as well. As historian Viktor Karady has shown, young, urban, educated, Neolog Jews were most likely to learn to speak Hungarian (and thus become bi- or even trilingual); in this sense, only Schnitzer’s advanced age made him an outlier.62 Karady places this language shift within the framework of what he calls the “social contract of assimilation,” according to which Jews had to assimilate (that is, embrace the Hungarian language and culture) in exchange for the liberal state’s promise of emancipation and protection. Karady and other scholars have underlined that “assimilation” was in fact a very complex process of cultural change and innovation among both Jews and Christians, and they have also highlighted the limits and contradictions of nineteenth-century Hungarian liberalism, in which progress for Jews emerged within a political system that was steadfastly undemocratic and strongly nationalistic. But how did Schnitzer understand this process? What did patriotism mean to him, and how did it relate to language use? Finally, what does this tell us about his “imagined geography”? Faith was the foundation. Schnitzer long retained the habits of his years of rabbinical study. Prayer, study, teaching, and ritual filled his days. His sermons, one journalist noted, brilliantly joined the “pearls of the Torah, Haggadah, and Midrash”; they recalled medieval treasures that combined the careful craftsmanship of the West with the dazzling riches of the East.63 The wealth of Schnitzer’s learning stood in marked contrast to the simplicity of his material conditions. Addressing Schnitzer at the fortieth anniversary of his rabbinate, the president of the Jewish community marveled at his austerity: “Today you live in that ramshackle, damp hovel, which would not satisfy the poorest village priest.”64 In response, Schnitzer stated that his guiding light had always been kiddush ha-shem, Hebrew for “hallowing of the name [of God].” He explained that his task was to bring glory to his religion and God, not to himself. He gave as an example his use of Hungarian in public speeches, even when he still had imperfect command of this language: “The good Lord helped, the Jews’ honor was saved, and kiddush ha-shem was secured.” Schnitzer took it for granted that religion was a pillar of state and society. The separation of church and state was foreign to him (as it was to most Europeans), and he did not complain when the Hungarian govern-

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ment increasingly intervened in Jewish affairs, including schools and rabbinical training. He repeatedly asserted that Hungary was unique among European states: from the Middle Ages onward, it had been an oasis in “the barren desert of religious hatred.”65 If violence had occasionally crossed into Hungary, Schnitzer said, “intolerance and fanaticism did not find fertile ground in the hearts of the Hungarian people.” He thus looked to the Hungarian government to protect the rights of its Jewish citizens. He understood that not all politicians looked kindly on Jews, and he called one minister of justice the “archenemy of Jews.”66 Because the government sometimes needed to be pushed, one of his goals was “to topple those barriers that separate the believers of my religion from the other citizens of my homeland.” Rather than keep the state at arm’s length, then, he wanted to keep it close, to strengthen and improve it, so that it could better protect and benefit from its grateful Jewish citizens. A strong Hungarian patriotism defines Schnitzer’s outlook. “The Hungarian loves the homeland more than life,” he claimed.67 His use of the Hungarian language was the most obvious badge of loyalty. One newspaper later placed him in the “vanguard of Magyarization” in Komárom and commended his use of Hungarian in the synagogue and communal affairs.68 Schnitzer spoke on civic holidays celebrating the 1848 Revolution, the 1896 millennial celebrations, and the reburial in Hungary of the early-eighteenth-century freedom fighter Ferenc Rákóczi. But Schnitzer’s writings also suggest an impatience with excessive patriotism. Although he had adopted the first name Ármin (Hermann), he refused to change his German-sounding last name, even though thousands of other residents of Hungary had swapped surnames that sounded Slavic or German for more Hungarian ones. For example, the long-serving president of the Komárom Jewish community had changed his surname from Weisz (“white” in German) to Vásárhelyi (from the Hungarian word for “marketplace”). Schnitzer stated that he had been unfairly accused of lack of patriotism because of his family name. But he stood firm against pressure to change it: “a surname cannot be tossed aside like worn-out clothes.”69 Empty patriotic displays, he stressed, offered “no certain remedy to the ills of our age.” Here again was his pointed response to the local press and its obsession with Hungarian-sounding surnames. For Schnitzer, firm loyalty to the Habsburg ruler was wholly compatible with his devotion to the Hungarian state and nation. The ruler, he said, understood his Hungarian subjects: their open, chivalrous spirit, their

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love of freedom, and above all else, their unshakeable dynastic loyalty.”70 In return he gave sermons on Francis Joseph’s birthday and joined delegations to visit the king when he visited Hungary.71 Schnitzer also maintained close contacts with friends and officials in Vienna. His writings are filled with rabbis who move from one center of Habsburg Jewry to another: Hungary, Vienna, Moravia, and Galicia. Although he traveled there often, Budapest does not occupy a preeminent position in his writings. Rather, Schnitzer’s literary maps show the many roads that led from one region of Austria-Hungary to another. Even Zionism had a place. When the Budapest-born Theodor Herzl launched the World Zionist Organization in Basel in 1897, he got the attention if not the support of Hungarian Jews. In Schnitzer’s Election of a Rabbi, published in 1908, a young rabbi offers a long analysis of Zionism.72 That his words won the approval of his listeners suggest that they had Schnitzer’s endorsement as well. Zionism, the young rabbi emphasizes, is not at odds with love of the homeland. Because Zion is the land of the Jews’ prophets, kings, and ancestors, it holds a special place in all Jewish hearts. But the speaker sets aside what he calls “religious Zionism” and defines it as the belief that God’s will alone, and not man’s striving, will restore Israel to its glory. He also dismisses “national-political Zionism”—that is, creation of a Jewish state in P­alestine—as fascinating but utopian. Instead, he settles on the happy medium of “national economic Zionism,” by which he means establishment of Jewish colonies in Palestine. These colonies, he promises, will attract Jews who are “young, industrious, intelligent, and ready for military service” and who will “rebuff every attack of the Bedouins” and carve out a life in Palestine. This was in fact what most Zionist organizations had attempted to do in the late 1800s, albeit with limited success. Schnitzer spent the last fifty years of his life in the same small town. But his political outlook ranged widely. It incorporated strong civic pride, as well as devotion to Hungary, the Habsburgs, and Zionism. These layered loyalties sat easily with Schnitzer’s patriotism and political liberalism. Moderation was the key; Schnitzer rejected displays of what he considered Hungarian chauvinism and scorned ministers who did not treat all religions equally. The rabbi was not blind to the religious, economic, and national tensions around him, but his writings convey a strong sense of optimism that the passage of time and the spread of education would lessen these conflicts. When events in Komárom put his ideals to the test, Schnitzer did not hesitate to step into local politics.

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The Good Friend Something unexpected appears in Rabbi Schnitzer’s memoirs of Komárom: the blood libel. The accusation that Jews ritually murdered Christians and used their blood for Passover matzot dated back to the Middle Ages and continued to surface across Europe and across the centuries. “It is remarkable,” writes Schnitzer, “that the history of Jews in Komárom began with a ritual murder trial.”73 He then describes in detail an episode from 1788, when the murder of four Christian children shook the city. Although the evidence implicated the children’s stepmother, she accused her neighbors, a Jewish couple, of committing ritual murder to get the children’s blood. During the trial, the stepmother provided lurid details of the murder she supposedly witnessed, and her attorney promised to send a petition to the emperor, asking him to forbid Jews from living among Christians. Fortunately, the accused couple had a Hungarian nobleman as their defense lawyer, who dismissed the blood libel as a “barbaric prejudice” of “uneducated people.” The court agreed, and it found the stepmother guilty of four counts of murder. She was sentenced to one hundred years in prison, three days in the stocks, 150 lashes, and a fine of 426 gulden. A higher court upheld this verdict on appeal. Justice had triumphed over prejudice, the rule of law over false accusations, and enlightened elites over uneducated commoners. Would it do the same a century later? In 1882, Christians in the village of Tiszaeszlár hurled the blood libel accusation at their Jewish neighbors. Tiszaeszlár was a small, isolated settlement in northeastern Hungary. But a handful of politicians, journalists, and Catholic priests seized on the case and used it to broadcast their antisemitic message. They wanted to reverse Jewish emancipation, end Jewish immigration, and limit the role of Jews in the Hungarian economy. Waves of antisemitic violence washed across Hungary in 1882 and again in 1883. Komárom was far from Tiszaeszlár, but antisemitic agitation reached it too.74 Young men hung posters that read “Beat the Jews” on street corners. They fought with Jewish journeymen, broke into Jewish shops, and painted antisemitic slogans and a gallows on the side of the Catholic church. In early 1883, the discovery of a headless body on the riverbank of a nearby village threatened to raise the specter of the blood libel in Komárom. Local officials investigated and established that the unfortunate young man had simply fallen through the ice. The case ended, but what Schnitzer called “this dangerous, threatening time” did not.75

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A decade later sectarian strife again seized Komárom. The occasion this time was the Hungarian government’s intention to establish obligatory civil marriage.76 This required introduction of state registers of births, deaths, and marriages, as well as “reception” of Judaism, which would put it on equal footing with the main Christian religions. The Roman Catholic Church strongly opposed the legislation. Both houses of the Hungarian parliament, the prime minister and his cabinet, King Francis Joseph, the Catholic hierarchy, and the Vatican soon entered the resulting “culture war.” In Komárom, the Roman Catholic priest János Molnár led the opposition to civil marriage. As charismatic as he was intransigent, Molnár denounced the Hungarian government in the Komárom Town Council and in the Catholic press. Molnár also mobilized the masses. In January 1893, he collected 1,368 signatures on a petition that spelled out the Catholics’ opposition to civil marriage and called on parliament to reject it. Later that year, he organized a mass meeting of five thousand people (at a time when Komárom had roughly fifteen thousand residents), where speakers warned against the dangers of widespread irreligion, secular education, and rampant materialism. Taking aim at capitalism and Jews, one priest said that “the entire world stands under the rule of money,” explaining that under capitalism usurious Jews had replaced the feudal lords of old. Molnár could not prevent passage of laws introducing civil marriage and reception of Judaism. But he demonstrated a keen understanding of new opportunities in Hungarian political life. More surprisingly, so too did the older, liberal Rabbi Schnitzer. Newspapers were the linchpin of this new political culture. Komárom had two leading weekly newspapers, and Schnitzer wrote for both of them. In 1880, he published a long article titled “On the Antisemitic Movement” (Az anti-semita mozgalomhoz), which he used to stake out a liberal position.77 He stressed that antisemitism was foreign to Hungary and unwanted in Komárom, where “relations among the different confessions are truly fraternal.” He defended Jews against “the intolerance of religious hatred, which we long thought dead, but like a hydra springs back to life and rears its head.” Refuting accusations that Jews lacked patriotism, Schnitzer argued that Komárom’s Jews had repeatedly demonstrated their support for the Hungarian cause. He allowed that older Jews still used German in the synagogue, businesses, and homes but expressed his confidence that Hungarian-language schools would create a younger generation that spoke Hungarian. He rejected coercion of any kind, as

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well as demands that Jews change their surnames and reform their religion. Instead, he boldly called for full legal equality for Jews and their religion. Why, he asked, should Jews be denied enjoyment of the same human rights (emberjogok) that other Hungarian citizens enjoy? In this way, he deftly turned the struggle against antisemitism into something all liberal, patriotic Hungarians could support. Schnitzer also spoke directly to Jewish audiences. In 1883, as antisemitic violence shook Hungary, he delivered two powerful sermons in the Neolog synagogue in Komárom.78 In them he used passages from the Torah, Talmud, and Midrash to demonstrate the importance of the Jewish family, with its “good, loving father, the true, tender mother,” and the “burning ache in the true hearts of the children.” This was a strong defense against charges that Jews had ritually murdered Christian children. Yet Schnitzer also reflected on the wider social, political, and national conflicts that threatened European society. “The most frightful of these struggles,” he said, “is religious strife.” Jews had been singled out and made responsible for all the ills of modern society. The blood libel was thus more than a medieval accusation or the work of scurrilous politicians, he concluded. It threatened the foundations of modern, liberal society. “A murder has certainly happened,” preached Rabbi Schnitzer; “in our souls they have murdered our faith in humanity, our trust in our fellow citizens.” His patriotism never wavered during Tiszaeszlár; he urged Jews not “to answer hate with hate,” and he was confident that Hungarian Jews would “continue, as true sons of our homeland,” to offer “body and blood” in its hour of need. By publishing the two sermons in Budapest in 1883, he attempted to broadcast this message as widely as possible. Schnitzer realized that local Christians could help. The rabbi had always worked hard, if not always with success, to maintain good relations with both Catholics and Protestants. In the crises of the 1880s and 1890s, he turned to an old, good friend in Komárom, the Calvinist Bishop Gábor Pap. A decade older than Schnitzer, Pap had joined the Hungarian army in 1848, for which he spent three months in prison. He later decided to become a Calvinist minister and was made a bishop in 1874, which gave him a seat in the upper house of Parliament. In the early 1880s, as the ­Tiszaeszlár drama unfolded, Pap published newspaper articles that denounced religious hatred and insisted that Hungary’s national greatness depended on peaceful religious coexistence.79 He also delivered a series of sermons on the book of Esther, so that (in Schnitzer’s words) “his congregation could

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learn from the example of Haman what end awaited those who hated and persecuted the Jews.”80 A decade later, Pap strongly supported civil marriage and equal status for the Jewish religion. A dramatic moment came in 1895, when the terminally ill Bishop Pap traveled to Budapest to cast his vote in the Upper House in favor of Jewish equality (the bill passed by one vote).81 This anecdote closes Schnitzer’s memoirs. That a Jewish rabbi and a Calvinist bishop could stand together in friendship and piety confirmed his belief that peaceful religious coexistence was attainable and necessary. It also hints at one possible outcome of frequent Christian-Jewish encounters in a small town like Komárom.82 Both Pap and Schnitzer were members of the Komárom Town Council. The town was governed by a small number of officials, who worked together with the much larger council (it had fifty-two members in the early 1880s). As elsewhere in Hungary, half of the members of the council were elected, and the other half came from the ranks of the “virilists”—the highest local taxpayers. No more than one in five adult males had the vote. These unusual arrangements survived through the end of the monarchy, and scholars have cited them to stress the undemocratic nature of local government. Historians have also underscored the weakness of the towns in the face of the entrenched, noble-dominated counties and of an increasingly assertive government in Budapest. The result, historian Károly Vörös argued, was widespread apathy and indifference toward local politics.83 But this tells only half the story. Cities and towns may have ceded important functions to Budapest, but they continued to add officials, increase their budgets, and take on additional responsibilities. The minutes of Komárom Town Council meetings reveal an energetic local government in the late nineteenth century. The town had long been responsible for streets, markets, and the care of orphans, and it now branched out into new areas, including city-run schools, slaughterhouses, waterworks, gasworks, and a museum.84 Many Jews served on the Komárom town council, either as elected members or as virilists. Beginning in 1883, voters repeatedly elected Schnitzer to a seat on the council, where his opinions carried great weight. But the members’ commitment to unanimity and to serving the common good usually made meetings of the Town Council rather dull affairs. This changed in the 1880s and 1890s. During the crisis over Tiszaeszlár, tensions between Christian and Jewish members created “a nightmarish atmosphere” in at least one meeting.85 In the 1890s, Father ­Molnár and his Catholic supporters brought the struggle over civil marriage and

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Jewish equality into the Komárom Town Hall. Following Molnár’s salvos, acrimonious debates exploded on the town council.86 Schnitzer joined in these meetings, as did a large number of other Jewish councilors, including virilists who otherwise did not actively participate in town government. As a result, the town council repeatedly pushed back against Molnár and voted to support the liberal legislation moving through Parliament. It mattered greatly, then, that in Komárom and in other towns throughout Central Europe, local institutions allowed Jews, in the words of one historian, “to participate with equal rights in municipal life without having to deny their Jewishness.”87 The blood libel of the 1880s and the culture war of the 1890s had nonetheless left a mark. They revealed the strength of antisemitic feeling in Hungary, sharpened tensions between Roman Catholics and the Hungarian government, and introduced into the political arena a more abrasive, creative style—one that Carl Schorske evocatively called “politics in a new key.”88 In Hungary, the restrictive franchise, the small industrial sector, and governmental repression slowed, but could not prevent, the emergence of more mass-based political movements on both the left and the right. As historian Miklós Szabó has shown, in the late 1890s a new conservative grouping emerged, which found support among devout Catholics and the threatened gentry and set itself against the twin evils of liberalism and Judaism. The strength of this movement on the ground depended on a complex interplay of social groups, political traditions, economic issues, and local leaders.89 Yet its emergence is a reminder that for a significant number of Hungarians, Jewish emancipation—a cause for which Schnitzer had fought so hard—was both regrettable and reversible. This movement set the stage for the illiberal, antisemitic tendencies of Hungarian politics during the First World War and beyond. But we need to see the light as well as the shadow. Political institutions in places like Komárom were neither democratic nor representative; nor were they especially powerful or professional. Small-town leaders had little interest in drawing the masses into politics, and they reacted with alarm when men like Molnár did. Slovak speakers in the town and surrounding county had little say in local government, a situation state and local officials were more than happy to maintain.90 Yet, as historian Alice Freifeld has reminded us, “We should guard against the tendency of allowing liberal Hungary to be swallowed up in a historiography of disappointment.”91 Supported by newspapers, voluntary associations, local governments, and pub-

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lic demonstrations, Hungary (and Austria-Hungary as a whole) maintained a vigorous civic life through the end of the monarchy. Its spread was uneven and its influence varied, but it created spaces in which people could debate and discuss public issues. With Schnitzer, we can see how one local leader used a variety of forums (the town hall, local papers, and his synagogue) and personal connections to block the inroads of antisemitism and to defend the rights of Jews. Indeed, the rabbi’s political interventions suggest the vitality of small-town politics, the resilience of liberalism, and the importance of face-to-face connections. In the provinces, one could encounter political opponents in the streets and across the table. But Schnitzer’s story reminds us that in small towns one could meet friends and allies there as well.

The Proud Knight In public and in private, Rabbi Schnitzer’s last years were fruitful.92 He was elected president of the Neolog National Rabbinical Society (Országos Rabbiegyesület), which he had helped found. In this capacity he oversaw preparation of a new curriculum and textbooks for Jewish religious instruction in state elementary schools and negotiated with the Hungarian government over rabbis’ salaries. Schnitzer continued to write, and in his late sixties and early seventies he published his memoirs, a novella, and a scholarly study titled “The Dream in Jewish Literature” (Az álom a zsidó irodalomban). Friends and colleagues organized a large celebration and published a Festschrift to mark the fortieth anniversary of his rabbinate in 1902. For this the king awarded him a golden cross of merit. Ten years later, Rabbi Schnitzer was made a Knight of the Order of Francis Joseph. He wore both medals in a photograph taken in the last years of his life. In it Schnitzer appears old and bent, but he gazes confidently at the camera. He wears both cuff links and a kippah—the very picture of a Neolog rabbi! His wife sits next to him, and their children, in-laws, and grandchildren surround them: the men in stiff collars, bowties, and ties, the women in richly embroidered silk dresses. He had six daughters and two sons; one became a successful lawyer in Budapest, the other a doctor in Pest County. When one of his daughters married in 1896, the leaders of Komárom were all present. In a recent study of four generations of Hungarian Jewish intellectuals, Katalin Fenyves placed Schnitzer in the second generation, that is, among Jews born between 1811 and 1840, most of whom had come from the provinces, attended Jewish schools, been open to adopting Hungarian-

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sounding names, and accepted the necessity of learning the Hungarian language.93 She calls them the “Magyarizing” generation. This description certainly fits Schnitzer. But as this chapter has also shown, he did not think only in terms of Hungarian national loyalty. He felt part of a wider Jewish community, one that stretched beyond the borders of his homeland, and he felt deep loyalty to the Habsburg rulers. In Komárom, he also attempted to set limits on how far national loyalty should extend into daily life, forcefully rebuffing those who called on him to change his name or stop delivering sermons in German. The rabbi’s measured sense of national belonging and political loyalties, I would argue, emerged from both his long-held liberal convictions and from the context of the small town in which he lived and worked. Schnitzer’s hometown in northeastern Hungary occupied an ambiguous place in his “imagined geography.” It was at once a place to which he could not return, a ghetto of sorts that he (and his generation of Jews) had happily abandoned. His memoirs contain disparaging remarks about the poverty and ignorance of “half Polish” Jewish students from the northeastern counties (these passages skip over the fact that Schnitzer had emerged from the same region).94 At the same time, however, memories of his hometown tugged at the rabbi’s memory. The customs, food, speech, and piety of this small world always stayed with him, as did the strictures of its tightly knit moral community. For Schnitzer, Hunsdorf represented the possibility of a unified Jewry, free from the division and infighting he saw later in life. This ideal of peaceful religious coexistence could be applied more widely, in Komárom, when divisions opened between Christians and Jews. That Hunsdorf might fortify Schnitzer hints at the power of memories and the long reach of the “myth of the provinces.” A postscript can show the unraveling of this myth. Rabbi Schnitzer died on December 24, 1914. He was seventy-five years old. It was the first winter of a war that would kill forty-five Jewish soldiers from Komárom, destroy Austria-Hungary, and make the town part of Czechoslovakia. In accordance with Jewish tradition and wartime sanitary regulations, Schnitzer was buried the next day, on Christmas. Services began in his house, moved to the Jewish cemetery, and ended in the synagogue. Hundreds of mourners were present. The assistant rabbi spoke, as did several rabbis from nearby towns. Because the funeral was held on a Friday, rabbis from Budapest could not attend, since they would not have been able to return in time for Shabbat services.

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Local Christian officials had no such excuse. Although a handful of representatives of the town and county attended the funeral, most did not. At the next meeting of the Komárom Town Council, a Jewish member angrily asked why the town had not been more strongly represented.95 The mayor offered a host of excuses: the funeral had fallen on Christmas, officials deserved at least one day of rest, he had sent a letter of condolence to Schnitzer’s family, and two councilors had been present. Schnitzer’s long service to the town and tireless work for confessional cooperation seems not to have mattered. The war put a tremendous strain on social relations across Europe, and it may have been indifference more than antisemitism that kept the town leaders away. Still, the unwillingness of Komárom’s political leaders to walk across town to attend the funeral suggests that their bonds to the Jewish community had broken. Coexistence and understanding among religious groups—something for which Schnitzer had devoted his life—was an early casualty of the war. But the acrid smoke of total war may distort our view of Schnitzer’s life and work. A more fitting point of departure might come from the simple marker that stands atop his grave. Its inscription recalls his fiftythree years of service to the Jewish community and his leadership of the National Rabbinical Society, before closing with the customary “May his soul be bound up in the bond of life.” In nineteenth-century Hungary, a growing number of Jewish headstones used German and Hungarian inscriptions alongside or in place of Hebrew ones. Schnitzer, who had mastered both languages and brought them into the synagogue, could have chosen either. In the end, he chose neither, just as, one likes to imagine, he had earlier dismissed what he considered to be empty patriotic displays. The words on his gravestone are in Hebrew alone.

7 The Tobacconist Agriculture in this kingdom is in its most simple state. Robert Townson, Travels in Hungary (1793)1 Hungary is one of Europe’s largest tobacco producers, and it must exploit this position and move forward on this course, which gave birth to the dream that lives inside me still. Even if I do not, then perhaps some among you will arrive at the goal of my life’s work and activity: the golden age of Hungarian tobacco production. Vilmos Daróczi, speech given in 19102

HUNGARY HAS LONG ENJOYED a reputation as a place where people smoke readily and abundantly. Touring Hungary in the 1830s, the English­ man John Paget visited a social club in Pest. “The stranger, however, is rather astonished by the smell of tobacco, which pervades the whole establishment,” he wrote. “Whether reading, talking, or playing, scarcely a man is to be seen without a pipe in his mouth,” for which Paget offered a ready explanation: “It must be recollected, however, that Hungary is not far from Turkey.”3 Later observers echoed Paget’s claim that Hungarians loved to smoke (although they differed on why this was so), and they documented it in the countryside as well as in the city. Another English traveler, W. P. Forster Bovill, observed in 1908 that “the Hungarian is also a great smoker. Sometimes I wish he were not.” He then recounted an anecdote about “an old Magyar peasant” who had smoked the same pipe for fifty years. When his infant grandson smashed the pipe beyond repair, the old man was inconsolable. He hanged himself, leaving behind a scrap of paper in his pocket that read, “My pipe is done for, and I must go too.”4 Most Hungarians, it is safe to say, were not so morbidly attached to their tobacco rituals. Yet statistics bear out the travelers’ claims that until very recently Hungarians were heavy smokers, although no more so than most other Europeans.

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What is less known is that Hungary was once a leading grower of tobacco. At its peak, Hungary was the fourth-largest producer in the world, trailing only the United States, British India, and Russia, and well ahead of Cuba and Brazil.5 Tobacco was grown across the Kingdom of Hungary and in nearly two-thirds of Hungarian counties. Like tobacco consumption, tobacco production cut across social barriers. Noblemen grew Nicotiana tabacum on their estates, and peasants cultivated it on small plots of land. Traveling in southern Hungary in the early 1840s, J. G. Kohl observed that “the houses in the Hungarian villages were all tapestried with quantities of tobacco-leaves strung together, besides which busied in sorting and arranging them, sat the members of the household.”6 In the eyes of many tobacco experts, great economic potential lurked behind such picturesque scenes. “It is highly probable,” stated an American tobacco report from 1875, that Hungary “will, in more ways than one, become the most dangerous competitor America has in Europe. The climate, location and soil appear to favor this rivalry.”7 By the turn of the century, Hungary produced nearly one-quarter of all tobacco grown in Europe. The subject of this chapter, Vilmos Daróczi, envisioned an even brighter future for Hungarian tobacco. He gave his life to the plant: he worked as a tobacco grower, tobacco buyer, and, for the last quarter-­ century of his life, editor of a newspaper devoted to tobacco cultivation. To Daróczi, tobacco was more than a simple commodity. He saw in it a cure for the ills that plagued Hungary in the decades around 1900. A flourishing tobacco industry, he argued, could reduce emigration from Hungary, repair its balance of trade, increase government revenues, and help turn poor peasants into yeoman farmers. Tobacco, he once wrote, “has raised the Hungarian nation among the ranks of the world’s cultured peoples.”8 In more sober moments, he realized that many obstacles stood in the way of his desired “golden age of Hungarian tobacco production.” He recognized that to increase exports Hungary had to produce better quality tobacco, which in turn required meaningful changes in how Hungarians grew it. He made it his mission to improve all aspects of Hungarian tobacco cultivation. The story of Vilmos Daróczi takes us into the Hungarian countryside, where the vast majority of Hungary’s population lived and worked. It allows us to think about agriculture, the engine of the Hungarian economy, if one that sometimes raced and sometimes sputtered and stalled. Hungarian agriculture may have dismayed visitors like the English naturalist

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Robert Townson, but in the nineteenth century it drove economic growth as land under cultivation increased, production soared, exports climbed, and a sizeable milling and food processing industry emerged. The surge in agricultural production carried tobacco along with it. This chapter aims to recapture the sense of dynamism and optimism felt by people like Daróczi and in so doing, to explore the countryside free of the baggage of “backwardness” or “belatedness” that has weighed down much scholarship on provincial Hungary. For scholars such as Andrew Janos and Ivan Berend, the transformation of the countryside was “painfully limited,” with the result that Hungary “remained far behind” the West.9 Such accounts define rural Hungary in terms of the many structural problems it faced, which included grim economic indicators (low productivity and high labor inputs), a quasi-feudal social structure (landless peasants oppressed by rapacious landlords), and a corrupt political system (dominated by a declining but powerful Hungarian gentry and a suffocating Hungarian nationalism). Seen in this light, the apparent success of Hungarian tobacco—and agriculture more generally—was every bit as illusory as “the mirage of greatness” that fooled many observers of Hungary at the turn of the century.10 Vilmos Daróczi was not blind to the troubles that lurked in the countryside. But he was not paralyzed by them either. With Daróczi, we can see the possibilities and limits of the liberal vision of progress embraced by many Hungarian elites in the late 1800s. Just as Schnitzer attempted to expand rights for Jews within a flawed political system, Daróczi worked to reimagine a countryside poised uneasily between tradition and modernity. Reformers like him embraced technology and championed education, and they looked to the Hungarian state to carry out changes that would raise productivity and maintain quality. He attached great importance to northeastern Hungary, which was rapidly becoming the center of Hungarian tobacco production. He dreamed that tobacco could remake this region, even as he watched thousands of small growers abandon or be forced out of tobacco production. The limits of his vision, I argue, may have less to do with the particularities of the Hungarian case than with the dilemmas inherent in “top-down” agricultural reforms promoted throughout Europe and North America in this era. To pursue these arguments, the chapter opens with a biographical sketch of Vilmos Daróczi and then considers his optimism about Hungarian agriculture, his plans for tobacco production, and his appeals to consumers.

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From Szatmár to Budapest Vilmos Daróczi was born in April 1836 in Király-Darócz (today Craidorolț in Romania), in Szatmár County.11 This made him roughly the same age as Vulcan and Schnitzer, and like them he spent his first years in a small town in northeastern Hungary. The village of Király-Darócz sat astride the Kraszna River, which was slow-moving and prone to flooding in the spring. Downstream the river turned marshy before it eventually joined the Tisza. This was a rich agricultural region: wheat fields covered the lowlands, and vineyards, pastures, and chestnut forests blanketed the hills. The nearest sizeable town was the county seat of Nagykároly, best known for its lively markets and production of plum brandy and rye whiskey. Király-Darócz had twenty-five hundred residents, who included Romanian-speaking Greek Catholics and Hungarian-speaking Roman Catholics and Calvinists. Fewer than a hundred Jews lived in the village. They included Vilmos Daróczi’s parents. Like all Jews, the Daróczi family occupied an uncertain place in this feudal world. As in Kästenbaum’s day, their presence depended on the goodwill of the nobility, and not all noblemen were welcoming. Shortly before Vilmos was born, Ferenc Kölcsey, a landlord and celebrated poet (he penned the words of the future Hungarian national anthem), had linked the misery of the peasantry and the poverty of the county to the growing population of Jews in Szatmár County.12 Others elites were more receptive to Jews. “Király-Darócz” means “Royal Darócz,” a reminder that the Hungarian Crown had once owned the village. It later passed into the hands of Hungarian aristocrats, and in the mid-1800s Count Sándor Károlyi was the largest landowner in the village. The peasants who worked for Count Károlyi and other nobles owed a range of dues to their lords (from unpaid days of labor to lambs at Easter) and helped them raise grain and livestock; at home they tended small fields and gardens.13 A few of them may also have grown tobacco. Some Jews served as estate managers for the noble landowners, while others rented lands and raised their own crops. Vilmos’s father Sámuel chose the latter path, and he was reportedly a skilled grower. The Daróczi family had ambitions for Vilmos. He spent only a few years in local schools, and much of his education came at home, from ­tutors. He learned to speak and write Hungarian and German, and he would also have known some Hebrew and possibly Romanian. Because Szatmár County lies at the southwestern edge of what has been called

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“Yiddishland,” Daróczi may have been familiar with Yiddish as well. But it was German he needed when, at the age of eighteen, his family sent him to Prague to study chemistry. The Bohemian Polytechnic Institute in the 1850s was closely linked to the German university system, where a revolution in agricultural education was under way. With an emphasis on chemistry, research, and laboratory-based experimentation, these universities were harbingers of a standardized, scientific agriculture. In Prague, Daróczi studied chemistry with Professor Karl Balling, a leading authority on distillation and ­fermentation—important topics in beery Bohemia! Under Balling’s guidance, Daróczi worked in the laboratory and visited local breweries, distilleries, and sugar refineries. It was later said that Daróczi became Balling’s favorite student. More certain is that in 1857, after three years in Prague, unexplained family circumstance forced Daróczi to return home. Success followed, for a time. A local aristocrat, Baron Vécsey, had Daróczi build a distillery on his property. Here his studies in Prague must have come in handy. But agriculture beckoned, and Daróczi soon left the baron’s employ and rented lands in Király-Darócz and a neighboring village. Vilmos was following in the footsteps of his father, and like him he needed capital, skill, and luck. It seems that he had all three, and by the 1870s, a decade after his return from Prague, Daróczi had become the best-known tobacco grower in the county. But disaster soon struck. The sources state that “a great turning point in his life” came in 1878 but reveal only that Daróczi had “suffered great misfortune in his farming.”14 Perhaps his crops failed, prices plummeted, or a noble landowner refused to renew a contract; perhaps aftershocks of the Viennese stock market crash of 1873 reached eastern Hungary. Whatever the cause, his days of farming in ­Szatmár County were over. Daróczi then did what so many other people did in these years: he went to Budapest. With more than three hundred thousand inhabitants, Budapest in the late 1870s was booming. Its population had almost tripled in the previous thirty years, and it would nearly triple again in the next thirty. There were thousands of provincials in Budapest just like him; nearly 60 percent of the city’s population had been born elsewhere.15 Daróczi seemingly had few advantages, he was nearly forty years old, and he could not have had much money. But he had one skill that few other newcomers to Budapest possessed: he knew tobacco. And Budapest in the late nineteenth century overflowed with tobacco, which filled the

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state-run warehouses and factories, countless smoke shops and kiosks, and the lungs of hundreds of thousands of smokers. Daróczi soon found a position with the Gomperz Brothers, a firm licensed to export Hungarian tobacco. As a buyer for the firm, Daróczi visited all the tobaccogrowing regions in Hungary. Whether he also returned in this capacity to Király-Darócz is unknown. Daróczi later claimed that his travels revealed to him the “sad state” of tobacco production in Hungary. He also claimed that it gave him the idea of starting a newspaper devoted to tobacco. Daróczi was likely familiar with the pioneering German Tobacco News (Deutsche Tabakzeitung), a weekly published in Berlin, and he perhaps knew the Tobacco Trade ­Review, a monthly that appeared in London. Both papers had been founded in 1868. In Hungary, Daróczi approached the Royal Hungarian Tobacco Monopoly (since 1850 tobacco had been a state monopoly in Hungary, as it was in Austria and France), which gave its blessing if not financial support to found the Hungarian Tobacco News (Magyar Dohány Ujság).16 The paper appeared for the first time on February 16, 1884. It was small, just four pages at first, with few advertisements and fewer graphics. The paper appeared twice a month, and a yearly subscription cost four forints. It is hard to know how many subscribers or readers the Hungarian Tobacco News had, but in the early years they could not have been numerous, at most several hundred. The Hungarian Tobacco News nonetheless defined the second half of Daróczi’s life, and he in turn defined the Hungarian Tobacco News. Although he initially kept his position with the Gomperz brothers, he later resigned to give all his attention to the paper. He was not just its publisher, but also the editor and principal contributor to the Hungarian Tobacco News. Over the course of three decades, he wrote hundreds of articles and editorials on every aspect of tobacco: its history, production, treatment, sale, trade, and consumption. The paper also published letters to the editor, reports on tobacco production abroad, and the occasional tobaccorelated story. Typical of this genre was “Smoking and Womanly Whims” (Dohányzás és a női szeszély), in which Laura, a newlywed who abhors tobacco, discovers that domestic bliss will follow if she simply allows her husband Géza to smoke.17 Daróczi claimed never to have plagiarized himself, and he later admitted that his paper, “with its single, unchanging subject,” could be “rather dry.”18 Yet he never tired of the topic, and he died hoping to write a long, encyclopedic book on tobacco.

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What kind of man was Daróczi, this lover of tobacco? A grainy photograph from 1894 shows a short, serious man, who warily regards the camera. He has a high forehead, large ears, and an impressive, wax-pointed mustache. Contemporaries described him as small, selfless, humble, and calm. All this changed when tobacco was the subject at hand. An assistant editor at the Hungarian Tobacco News described what it was like to listen to him hold forth on tobacco: “As he warms to his subject, it as if he grows in stature, his face is illuminated, [and] he speaks with such great eloquence that I forget that I am sitting in a building in Budapest loud with the sounds of the city and the clanging of streetcars, and instead I am walking with him under God’s free sky, puttering about in hotbeds or out walking in the wide fields, where light breezes rock the fierce green, oily tobacco leaves.”19 Daróczi could be no less impassioned in the pages of the Hungarian Tobacco News, where he strongly defended his ideas and denounced his critics. We know little about his private life. From 1885 to the end of his life he lived and worked in an apartment building in the center of Pest. He was close with his nephew Mór Szatmári, a Budapest newspaper editor and later Member of Parliament, as well as with Mór Gelléri, a writer and state official who was as passionate about industry as Daróczi was about tobacco. Like Daróczi, both men were Jews who had come to Budapest from the provinces (as his name indicates, Szatmári was from the same county as Daróczi). The partners of the firm that employed him (the Gomperz Brothers) were likewise Jewish. Daróczi belonged to a Pest synagogue and to one of Budapest’s larger masonic lodges.20 His application to the lodge described him as “married” in 1889. We also know that on January 14, 1906, he married again, this time a Jewish woman by the name of Berta Braun. She was thirty-nine years old and fully twenty-eight years younger than her husband.21 They raised a daughter named Mária, known affectionately as Márika.22 A new marriage and fatherhood so late in life must have provided real satisfaction to Daróczi. But he seems not to have left behind private letters or a journal; the hundreds of newspaper articles he wrote make no mention of his family or domestic life. It is revealing that he regularly referred to the readers of the Hungarian Tobacco News as his “family.” In an article written shortly before his death, Daróczi took stock of his work on the Hungarian Tobacco News.23 He was proud of his achievements. At the beginning of his career, the literature on tobacco in Hungary had been an “entirely neglected, a field lying fallow” (agricultural meta-

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phors are all too common in his writing). The Hungarian Tobacco News had changed this. He also took some credit for the wider improvement in tobacco production in Hungary, and he cherished the connections he had made with the kingdom’s leading tobacco growers. He took special pride in the many forms of recognition received: the support of the Royal Hungarian Tobacco Monopoly, letters from members of the Hungarian Parliament, and, most importantly, being named a Knight of the Order of Francis Joseph on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hungarian Tobacco News. Following his death, a colleague reported, “During his sickness he often gazed happily, with tears in his eyes, at this decoration, which was a great comfort and . . . cast a glow upon the twilight of his life.”24 Daróczi’s last years also had a darker side. Traces of frustration and bitterness appear in his writing from this period. Part of this had to do with his sense that talented but modest people (such as himself ) did not always get the rewards they deserved. In one article, he drew a sharp distinction between himself and unnamed “arrogant operators,” men of average or mediocre intelligence who had made better careers and more money than he because they understood “the craft of social climbing and conformity.” To explain why he had not become wealthy or received literary recognition, he simply stated, “I am not pushy.” Daróczi also worried that his advice went unheeded. This had been a concern since the beginning of the Hungarian Tobacco News. Soon after he had launched the paper, a Roman Catholic priest in southern Hungary wrote a letter to the editor, in which he applauded the paper’s goal and enthused that “every tobacco grower must read the Hungarian Tobacco News like a book of prayer.”25 The priest nonetheless noted that Hungarians would rather talk about politics than agronomy. When he recommended the paper to local growers, he received the curt reply, “We already know how to bundle [tobacco]; we don’t need to learn it from a newspaper.” In response, Daróczi stated that he did not want his paper be a “voice in the wilderness.” He hoped his readers would accept that his ideas were born of practical experience. In a later article, however, he recognized that not all tobacco growers had welcomed his work. The paper’s pedantic tone, he conceded, may not have pleased all readers, who might have felt “like schoolchildren before a stern teacher, which is not a pleasant memory for everyone.” Many tobacco growers, it seems, did not want to submit themselves to his lessons. A contributor to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the Hungarian Tobacco News expressed this truth with yet another agri-

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cultural metaphor: “Vilmos Daróczi sowed a lot; unfortunately, however, he harvested precious little.”26 Why had his work seemingly produced such a meager harvest?

Son of Szatmár Although Vilmos Daróczi spent the last decades of his life in Budapest, he never fully left the countryside. His work, imagination, and memories drew him back to the provinces. In a 1903 article in the Hungarian Tobacco News, he took up the question of what the best tobacco growing region in Hungary was. With an autobiographical flourish, he named Szatmár County, the northeastern region in which he had grown up, learned about tobacco, and cultivated it “with devoted zeal and the best results.”27 Szatmár’s gently sloping hills and moist, humus-rich soil, Daróczi maintained, consistently produced light, thin, well-colored tobacco leaves that burned well and produced a pleasant aroma. In short, this was the “very ideal of fine Hungarian tobacco.” Indeed, he asserted that this region could become “the Havana of Hungary” and produce domestic cigar wrappers that would obviate the need for imported ones. The reality, however, was that at present Szatmár produced relatively little tobacco for the market. In Daróczi’s paean to the place of his birth, one hears more than the nostalgia of an older man looking back on his youth. His words also echo arguments made across the nineteenth century about Hungarian agriculture as a whole. Such arguments rested on two important assumptions. The first was that Hungary was blessed by nature and uniquely suited for many crops, including tobacco. Hungary’s advocates cited its climate, soil, terrain, history, and culture as evidence of its rich potential in agriculture. According to this view, Hungary should have been the breadbasket of Europe. But this “should have been” leads to the second assumption about Hungarian agriculture, namely, that Hungary had not yet realized its potential. There was no consensus on why this was the case, and writers cited a range of factors—the feudal social structure, Austrian absolutism, lack of transportation—to explain the gap they saw between Hungary’s great promise and its actual accomplishments. The growing export of certain cereal crops (led by wheat) in the second half of the nineteenth century caused some optimism, but it also shed harsh light on Hungary’s shortcomings with other agricultural products. Hungary, the story went again and again, was a land of great but unfulfilled potential.28

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Writers on tobacco shared both these assumptions. Thus a strong sense of Hungarian exceptionalism ran through nineteenth-century writing on tobacco. It was an article of faith that Hungary’s climate and soil were ideal for the weed. The problem was that Hungarian tobacco was not of good quality and that little of it could be exported. Writing in 1832, the geographer and statistician Pál Magda allowed that Hungary produced a lot of tobacco and even exported some of it. But he tartly noted that “the quantity as well as the intensity and acceptance of Hungarian tobacco has little to do with its skillful cultivation, and much more to do with the properties of the land and climate.”29 He quoted with approval an Austrian expert who had concluded that “the cultivation [of tobacco] is in its infancy.” Later observers confirmed this judgment. Johann Mandis, a leading tobacco official in Vienna, described Hungarian tobacco production in 1866: “Although the mode of cultivation and preparation is still to a great extent in a very backward state, the quality and quantity of the produce satisfy the internal wants.” In other words, most tobacco in Hungary was grown for local, domestic consumption. Exports would come, Mandis added, only if the state stepped forward: “Here also a large share in the reform to be brought about must devolve on the action of the government, and the principal obstacle is the ignorance and want of agricultural skill and capital among the tobacco planters.”30 With his emphasis on the state as a vehicle for social and economic reform, Mandis stood in the mainstream of continental European political thought, which saw the state as the “motor of modernization.”31 And by emphasizing the deficiencies of tobacco growers rather than social structures, inefficient markets, or the wretched infrastructure, Mandis repeated an argument heard throughout the nineteenth century. Vilmos Daróczi largely concurred with Mandis’s assessment, although he could not entirely discard arguments about Hungarian exceptionalism. “Our climatic conditions and special soil,” Daróczi wrote, “are such that Hungary should produce world-famous tobacco.”32 And even as he bemoaned the deplorable methods and obstinacy of Hungarian growers, he praised their hard work and devotion. He admitted that the tenant farmers who grew much of Hungary’s tobacco worked under conditions that were “not glorious.” But he contrasted Hungary’s small farms and family production with the massive plantations and coerced labor that for him defined overseas production of tobacco. Tobacco laborers in the tropics, he alleged, “were from the lowest ranks of humanity: depraved, exhausted,

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stunted, sickly, lazy, drunken, miserable creatures wrapped in rags.”33 That exports from places like Sumatra and Brazil threatened Hungarian tobacco added force to his condemnation. Hungarian workers, he suggested, were morally superior to their foreign counterparts. The challenge was to ensure that Hungarian growers were economically superior as well. Daróczi fully shared Mandis’s opinion of the “ignorance and want of agricultural skill” among Hungarian tobacco growers. At times, it seemed that Daróczi had nothing but scorn for most growers. He mocked them for wrongly believing that their tobacco was the best in the world. He denounced their lack of quality control, their primitive methods, and their conservatism. In a speech given in 1910, he decried “the backwardness of our growers, who cling to old traditions.” We must fight, he continued, “with a social class that in its stubbornness, backwardness, and suspicion of unfamiliar teachings [resembles] a peasantry strongly lacking self confidence.”34 Missing here is recognition that growers may have had good reason to be cautious about setting aside familiar, local methods for the one-size-fits-all solutions that come from “book farming.” Many growers trusted their own experience, local knowledge, and established practices—in a word, “traditions”—more than they did the printed page. Vilmos Daróczi placed great hopes in provincial Hungary. Yet paradoxes lurk in his thinking. He takes pride in Hungary’s long history of tobacco growing but denounces the methods and mistaken self-confidence that this history has produced. He likewise asserts the superiority of Hungarian growers over their foreign counterparts but despairs at their caution and conservatism. In his lexicon, “tradition” is neither a guarantor of continuity nor a storehouse of folklore, but an obstacle to be overcome. Those who have farmed the longest, it seems, have the most to learn—or perhaps the most to unlearn. What is clear from all this is that, like so many other nineteenth-century reformers, he saw the countryside as a problem in need of a solution. And Vilmos Daróczi had no shortage of solutions.

The Expert Daróczi saw himself first as a tobacco grower, and only second as a newspaper editor and journalist. Even when he lived and worked in Budapest, he continued to raise tobacco on the outskirts of Pest. There he spent long hours studying tobacco plants. This led in the 1890s to two major

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discoveries. The first was that the tobacco plant was a perennial and not an annual, as had long been thought, which meant that tobacco plants could produce fresh leaves for several years. The second was that tobacco cuttings would take root and flourish. These findings earned him wide attention; one Australian newspaper called the discovery that tobacco was a perennial “epoch making in its character.”35 As it happened, neither finding fundamentally changed the cultivation of tobacco in Hungary or elsewhere. Yet the image of Daróczi working in the fields is arresting. It shows plainly how much importance he attached to the proper methods of tobacco cultivation. It also made him a close observer of the agricultural laborers who actually tended the tobacco fields. These observations helped him imagine how tobacco production in Hungary could enter a new golden age. It would not be easy. Hungarian agriculture made impressive strides in the second half of the nineteenth century, as a “belated agricultural revolution” transformed the countryside.36 The causes of this revolution were many and included rising capital investment, imported breeds of livestock, an expanding network of railroads, and new methods of farming. Productivity rose, transportation costs dropped, and exports boomed; Hungary sent abroad twelve times as much grain in 1913 as it had in 1850. The milling industry of Budapest was the envy of the world. Yet these gains could not disguise deep problems in the agricultural sector: grossly unequal distribution of land, a restive rural proletariat, steady emigration from the countryside, and growing competition from abroad. The same gains in productivity and transportation that had helped Hungary were also making themselves felt in the Americas, Russia, and Romania, which put increasing pressure on Hungarian exports. These challenges were pronounced with tobacco, which had long been a global crop. Alarmed observers called for drastic measures, for Hungarian growers to adopt wholesale Dutch or American methods of tobacco production.37 Daróczi was no alarmist. But he too offered a sweeping plan of how tobacco production should change. It all started with seeds. According to him, different regions in Hungary had once produced distinctive, superior varieties of tobacco. In recent decades, however, these varieties had intermixed, with the result that types of tobacco that had once grown only in the south could now be found in the northeast, and vice versa. Daróczi called on his fellow growers, agricultural associations, and state officials to stop and even reverse the degeneration of the seed stock. Success in the future meant learning from the past: “We must therefore insist on going back to the

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seed’s origins and to the proper place, to that special land, from where our ­ancestors—surely with great thought and effort and proper observation— derived the seed.”38 The result would be not just more bountiful harvests, but more readily identifiable and marketable Hungarian tobacco products. Daróczi had no shortage of advice on what tobacco growers should do once they had the proper seeds in hand. The pages of the Hungarian Tobacco News are filled with detailed instructions for every stage of tobacco cultivation. The twenty-fifth anniversary issue gave the paper credit for improvements across the board: Careful selection of fields for production of tobacco and assignment of deep tillage; sowing in rows of purebred, reliable, not-yet-germinated seeds into abundantly prepared and well kept hotbeds; preparation of cold frames, from which the best developed seedlings are to be used for late planting and repair; early, dense planting of seedlings with strong, thick roots; placement and pricking out of seedlings; improvement of seeds; employment in dissolved form of the proper fertilizer at planting; removal of leaves that are completely ripe and at all stages of development; picked leaves’ regular “green sweating”; sparse and circular tying of leaves; uniform drying of the entire crop in a shed or at least a half-roofed shelter; construction of the most practical drying sheds; careful smoothing and bundling of well-dried leaves instead of forcible flattening; handling of exchanged tobacco in the warehouse; and best methods for fermentation.39

This list gives an indication of how seriously Daróczi took his mission to inform Hungary’s growers about the best methods, and how exhaustive his approach to the topic was. He hoped to change not just the growers’ methods, but their morals as well. Tobacco smuggling brought this issue to the surface. In Hungary, it had long been common practice for many growers to sell tobacco directly to buyers, thus circumventing the Royal Hungarian Tobacco ­Monopoly.40 Growers received ready cash if not always good prices; buyers apparently liked the unprocessed weed. Smuggled tobacco even enjoyed a certain cachet among urban consumers, who otherwise had ready access to the tobacco monopoly’s products. Yet smuggling infuriated Daróczi, who estimated that it siphoned 10 percent of the entire tobacco crop in the 1880s. He opposed the practice in part because it took revenue away from the state. But what really pained him was that the smuggled tobacco was not treated properly; it was often picked too early, improperly dried, and poorly bundled. Much of this tobacco, he conjectured, could have

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been high-quality, export-ready product. He concluded that the success of Hungarian tobacco could be achieved “not through rational production alone; its ascent must be aided by moral means.”41 By this he presumably meant education and instruction, and in the other contexts he called for use of surveys, traveling teachers, model farms, and local committees to help growers understand the benefits of advanced, lawful methods. But he also applauded when the Hungarian state cracked down on small growers. In the 1880s and 1890s the Royal Hungarian Tobacco Monopoly reduced by nearly one-third the total land in Hungary on which tobacco was grown. As part of this measure, the monopoly withdrew licenses to sell tobacco from thousands of small growers and outlawed the practice of growing tobacco for home consumption, reasoning that such tobacco was often sold illegally. The aim was to take inefficient fields out of production, and in so doing to cut into smuggling and limit the amount of low-quality tobacco brought to the monopoly’s warehouses.42 In terms of production, the monopoly’s move was remarkably successful; the remaining growers were much more productive and their fields more profitable, with the result that by the mid-1890s the drastic reduction in tobacco fields was hardly perceptible in crop statistics. The human cost was higher. The tobacco monopoly’s decisions reduced the number of tobacco workers by one-half, coming down hardest on the poorest smallholders and the migrant families who wandered from field to field to cut tobacco.43 These workers likely switched to other crops when possible or left the countryside for the city when it was not (few products demanded as much labor as tobacco). Daróczi hailed their departure. Noting in 1894 that recent changes had made several thousand tobacco-growing families “superfluous,” he coolly explained that “the corrupted, useless element has been nearly all mustered out.”44 He put his hope in the younger generation of “qualified, teachable workers,” who could be counted on to fulfill the terms of their contracts. All laborers, he said, had to be treated with a firm paternalism, and unreliable, immoral workers had to be dismissed. Because workers who were “rooted in old, bad habits” were by definition unreliable, he effectively condoned release of anyone who refused to adopt new methods. The “requirements of modern progress,” demanded it, he wrote. This was a callous justification, to say the least. These regulations helped shift the geography of tobacco growing in Hungary. In the late 1800s regions that had long produced distinct,

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flavorful tobaccos—places as far-flung as Fadd (Tolna County), Kapuvár (­Sopron County), and Verpelét (Heves County)—had largely abandoned the crop.45 These had been the “terroirs” of tobacco production, places where microclimates, soils, modes of production, and customs had created the rich tapestry of Hungarian tobacco that mesmerized Daróczi, with his long memory of regional varieties. The state’s moves in the 1880s and 1890s greatly simplified the map of tobacco-growing areas, as production increasingly shifted to the northeastern counties. His beloved Szatmár County grew more tobacco, but the fastest growth came in neighboring Szabolcs County, where large estates built on flat land and sandy soil (much of it reclaimed through regulation of the Tisza River) nurtured long-leaved, high-yield tobacco plants. In the mid-nineteenth century, Szabolcs had lagged far behind other tobacco regions. By 1891 it had surpassed them, and by the turn of the century it produced three times as much tobacco as the second-ranked county. Its tobacco lacked subtlety and history, but it was reliable, saleable, and abundant. Labor conditions on the large estates were often grim, and many growers had difficulty keeping workers. Daróczi had wanted to bring more tobacco production to the northeastern counties, but not in this way. Daróczi had hoped that tobacco could transform the provinces and that it could turn (some) poor peasants into yeoman farmers. In pursuit of this dream, he was willing to endorse the state’s coercive measures and turn a blind eye to their adverse effects on many families and regions. In his defense, it should be said that this vision of modernity—outwardly forward-looking and confident, privately anxious and uncertain—was characteristic of the era. It brings to mind the agricultural reforms of the Russian leader Pyotr Stolypin (prime minister, 1906–1911), who placed his “wager on the strong” and encouraged creation of a prosperous, enterprising class of peasant cultivators. It also recalls the Progressives in the United States, who in the decades around 1900 paid lip service to the family farm but in practice supported larger enterprises that could employ the more rational, scientific methods they championed.46 Productivity—that is, yields per acre—trumped all other measures of rural society. In Hungary, Daróczi could harden his heart to dispossessed smallholders and jobless field hands and instead point with pride to the rising levels of productivity in the tobacco fields. But the success of Hungarian growers forced him to confront another question: What would happen to all this tobacco?

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The Patriot To commemorate its tenth anniversary, the Hungarian Tobacco News published individual photographs and biographical sketches of its leading contributors. All thirty-one are middle-aged men, all wear dark suits and ties, and only one, the priest József Ambrus, is clean-shaven. The men’s professional backgrounds are no less uniform. Many are officials with the tobacco monopoly, and the balance are landowners, leaders of agricultural associations, university professors, and managers of the state tobacco factories.47 There are no small tobacco growers or farmhands; nor are there merchants. The focus is squarely on production. In the last years of the paper, however, Daróczi increasingly paid attention to sale and consumption of tobacco. As might be expected, he looked to the state to support sale of Hungarian tobacco. Here he could count on his many connections in official circles. But he also placed his hopes on Hungarian consumers to purchase domestic tobacco products, and in this area he suffered more disappointment than success. The state and its officials figured prominently in Daróczi’s thinking about the future of tobacco. Tellingly, he once asserted that his “dear family” included not just tobacco growers but members of “official circles” as well. By this he meant members of Parliament, the leadership of the Royal Hungarian Tobacco Monopoly, and other state officials who concerned themselves with tobacco. He claimed that the Hungarian Tobacco News did not meddle in politics. But he cheered when Sándor Wekerle was appointed prime minister in 1906. A colorless bureaucrat but longtime survivor in Hungarian politics, Wekerle headed a coalition of opposition parties that came into power with a sizeable electoral mandate and even greater expectations. For Daróczi, what mattered was that Wekerle was “an old tobacco grower, who knows the domestic tobacco industry from firsthand experience.”48 That Wekerle had probably not stepped into a tobacco field in decades did not temper Daróczi’s enthusiasm. Daróczi hoped for a lot from Hungarian officials. He wanted the tobacco monopoly to encourage production of high-quality tobacco, he wanted Parliament to pass legislation in support of tobacco growers, and he wanted state officials to stop skilled workers from emigrating. And he wanted all these groups to push for greater exports of Hungarian tobacco. This last point was of particular importance. He understood that exports were both a significant source of government revenue and a guarantor of

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the continued stability and growth of the tobacco industry. In 1892 the tobacco monopoly established a quasi-independent trading company to promote exports, which had some success in selling Hungarian tobacco in Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark. Daróczi knew that Hungarian exports faced many challenges abroad. Austria had long been the leading consumer of Hungarian tobacco, but by the late nineteenth century expanded tobacco cultivation in Galicia and imports from other parts of the world had cut into Hungary’s market share. Growing tobacco production in the Americas (the United States, Cuba, and increasingly Brazil), combined with a dramatic reduction in global shipping costs, posed another grave threat to the Hungarian tobacco industry.49 Daróczi thus looked for new markets for Hungarian tobacco. In particular, he called on Hungarian diplomats to work for removal of customs barriers between Hungary and states in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. In this hope he was not alone; in an age of European overseas empires, many Austro-Hungarians spoke openly of their civilizing mission to the south and the east, regions that would also form a convenient dumping ground for manufactured goods and agricultural products. All this belonged, perhaps, to the future. For now, there was little hope of a dramatic increase in exports of Hungarian tobacco either to western or southeastern Europe; at best, Hungary could hope to send more high-quality products abroad, thus making up in higher prices what it might lose in volume to American imports. But limited growth in exports placed even more weight on domestic tobacco consumption. To be sure, the population of Hungary was growing rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it included many avid consumers of tobacco in all its forms: cigars, pipes, cigarettes, and plug. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a growing number of young boys and women used tobacco in the years around 1900.50 One memoirist from Szatmár County recalled his shock on the first day of kindergarten when he came across the principal as she coolly smoked a cigarette outside the school.51 Women also made up the largest part of the workforce in Hungary’s tobacco factories. Yet few stories in Daróczi’s Hungarian Tobacco News mentioned women. Those that did often described foreign, aristocratic women who had taken up the habit of smoking. The purpose of such stories seems to have been to amuse or shock the paper’s readers. But if aristocrats could influence the public’s tastes, as he believed, such stories may have had the opposite effect and in fact encouraged some women to take up smoking!

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The question was whether Hungarian men and women would continue to consume large quantities of tobacco grown domestically, given the ready availability of imported products. Writing in 1896, Daróczi stated that Hungarian smokers responded to the things that consumers everywhere valued: price, quality, selection, and availability. “With the purchase of consumer goods,” he wrote, “people are neither patriots nor politicians. Everyone buys what is good and cheap.”52 The challenge, it seemed, was simply to produce good-quality tobacco products at reasonable prices. Daróczi recognized that reputation also mattered. He grumbled that Hungarian consumers preferred Austrian cigars to Hungarian ones, even though both were often made of the same tobacco leaves. With this in mind, he called on the Royal Hungarian Tobacco Monopoly to market its products more aggressively. He thought this could be accomplished in part by recruiting aristocrats and other trendsetters to use Hungarian tobacco. At the same time, Daróczi showed growing appreciation of the tools of mass marketing, including advertisements with images and captions displayed in newspapers and on posters. Even a monopoly selling an addictive product, he understood, needed to persuade consumers to purchase its products. In the early 1900s, increasingly haunted by the specter of overproduction, Daróczi looked again at something he had earlier dismissed: patriotism. Setting aside his earlier statements that consumers cared only about quality and price, he now argued that the tobacco monopoly should appeal to Hungarians’ patriotism to convince them to purchase domestic products. It is not difficult to see how he came to this conclusion; the little we know about his biography suggests that Hungarian patriotism had a very personal meaning for him. The tobacconist had been born with the surname Gottlieb.53 The records do not indicate when Vilmos or his father changed the family name from Gottlieb to the more Hungarian-sounding Daróczi, which simply means “from Darócz,” the family’s hometown.54 At some point, however, Vilmos would have had to unlearn his old name and get used to the sound of his new one. Thousands of other families, including many Jews, also took Hungarian-sounding names over the course of the nineteenth century. As in István Szabó’s film Sunshine (1999), in which members of a Jewish family changed their name from Sonnenschein (“sunshine” in German) to the Hungarian-sounding Sors (meaning fate or destiny), a mixture of patriotism, career ambitions, and a desire to break with the past likely lay behind the Daróczis’ name change.55

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A name change is exceptional and enduring, whereas lighting up a pipe or cigar is ordinary and fleeting. How could people demonstrate their patriotism with tobacco? To this question Daróczi had a simple answer: smoke a pipe. Pipe smoking had a long history in Hungary, and it joined peasants, who used clay, wooden, and corncob pipes, to the nobility, whose manors were likely to contain a pipatórium, a Hungarian neologism from Latin that meant a rack of pipes. In his memoirs, Baron Frigyes ­Podmaniczky fondly recalled his collection of meerschaum and Turkish pipes, which he later sold to another aristocrat to pay for his move to Pest.56 Hungary, moreover, produced very good pipe tobacco, the best in the world according to Daróczi. The problem was that smokers in Hungary increasingly turned to other forms of tobacco. By 1900 cigars had the largest market share in Hungary, and they included expensive products made with imported Cuban tobacco and cheap cigarillos produced for the working classes. The most rapidly growing product was cigarettes, and Hungarians smoked so-called Turkish or Egyptian cigarettes. By the First World War the tobacco monopoly had introduced Ibis, Sphinx, Cleopatra, and Nilus cigarettes.57 The Hungarians’ taste in tobacco, in short, closely resembled those of other European smokers. This worried Vilmos Daróczi. Swimming against the tide, he called for a return to pipe smoking: “The public must be somehow convinced to develop a taste and then take up pipe smoking, if for no other reason than patriotism.”58 He mused that if just a few leading members of fashionable society took up pipes—and smoked them ostentatiously in the streets of Pest—then pipe smoking might become a fad. Finishing the thought, he proposed that “we could return to the typical ancient Hungarian pipe, especially when it makes full use of a domestic commercial crop and its sale increases the national wealth.” The Hungarian Tobacco News also provided evidence that pipes, whose stems cooled the smoke going into the mouth and throat, were healthier than cigars or cigarettes. But even Daróczi conceded that pipes would be a hard sell. Stories in the Hungarian Tobacco News repeated the popular refrain that pipe smoking was out of step with the modern era; it was too slow, cumbersome, and old-fashioned to appeal to fast-paced urban dwellers. Cigarettes were seen as the tobacco product of modernity. He thus placed his hopes in the Hunnia, a cigarette introduced around 1900 by the tobacco monopoly. As a rule, cigarettes sold in Hungary had a blend of domestic and imported tobacco. The Hunnia in contrast was made entirely of Hungarian tobacco.

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Its name emphasized its Hungarian character: “Hunnia” can refer to the legendary homeland of the Huns (then widely seen in popular imagination, if not among scholars, as the forebears of the Hungarians) or to the allegorical female representation of the Kingdom of Hungary (the Hungarian equivalent of the French Marianne). The Hunnia was an imperfect product; smokers found it dry and complained that it tended to crack and crumble in their hands. Ever resourceful, Daróczi called on owners of spas and baths to stock Hunnias, reasoning that the moist air would hold the cigarettes together! But he also appealed to his fellow countrymen to recall that “at question here is not some ordinary consumer good, but a higher principle: the sacred idea of Hungarianness.”59 As evidence that patriotism could drive consumer behavior, Daróczi often cited France and Italy. Both countries had long imported tobacco from Hungary. In recent decades, however, their imports had dropped as domestic production in both states increased. Daróczi knew that in the wake of the phylloxera epidemic the French and Italian states had encouraged tobacco growing to improve their balance of trade and increase revenues. He found it remarkable that Frenchmen and Italians could bring themselves to smoke the homegrown weed, which he considered far inferior to Hungarian products. The French, he wrote, “greatly love Hungarian tobacco, but renounce it from a patriotic unselfishness, because they love their homeland more than our tobacco.”60 For Daróczi, the patriotism he saw abroad contrasted sharply with the situation at home: “We avoid and scorn our own excellent products and more readily consume foreign-made goods.” Hungarians, he said, refused to see that consumption of domestic goods enriched the country and its population. His fears were realized with the Hunnia. At first, Hunnia cigarettes sold rapidly. But sales soon fell as swiftly as they had climbed, and the Hunnia never became the best seller that the tobacco monopoly and Daróczi had hoped it would. Daróczi was wrong, then, to believe that Hungarians would readily link their political and patriotic convictions to consumer goods. His failure is understandable; tobacco had been a global product for centuries, and wider patterns of production, trade, and consumption had shaped smokers’ tastes and habits. This episode is also a useful reminder of the limits of nationalism in determining everyday behavior. But he was right to see that consumer choices mattered greatly for the Hungarian tobacco industry. Although he did not use terms such as supply and demand, comparative advantage, and marketing, he understood their importance for

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Hungarian tobacco. A careful reading of the Hungarian Tobacco News reveals he sensed that global economic forces posed a serious challenge to the industry he had done so much to foster. Yet Daróczi’s view of globalization was not wholly negative. The Hungarian Tobacco News regularly reported on tobacco production and consumption around the world; its readers learned about research on nicotine in France, women smokers in Russia, the close link between chewing tobacco and automobiles in America (early cars and cigars had not gone well together), and the prospects for tobacco production in places as far removed as Cuba, Ireland, and South Africa. Even as he called on Hungarian consumers to act patriotically, he also allowed them to understand the world and their place in it through tobacco. Reading Daróczi’s paper, a smoker in Szatmár or a grower in Szabolcs could imagine people around the world with surprisingly familiar occupations, economic ambitions, scientific curiosity, and social conventions.

“My Little Wealth” Vilmos Daróczi died on November 11, 1912.61 He was seventy-three years old. He was buried on November 14 in the Jewish section of Budapest’s main cemetery. His wife and daughter were joined by many mourners, among them representatives of the Hungarian Tobacco News, Royal Hungarian Tobacco Monopoly, the Gomperz Brothers, and Daróczi’s masonic lodge. Rabbi Simon Hevesi, chief rabbi of the Dohány Street synagogue in Pest, spoke first, and he praised Daróczi’s public service, patriotism, and “puritan rectitude.”62 He was followed by Mór Gelléri, who addressed his words to the deceased: “Hard work filled your life. . . . Your activity brought great benefits to those for whom you worked and to those who took your advice, but you never enjoyed the fruits of your learning, you stayed poor to the end.” Even at the grave, agricultural metaphors were inescapable. Dároczi had made a will in early 1912.63 In it he left what “little wealth” and moveable property he had to his wife and daughter (Figure 7). He hoped they could live on the interest from his savings. He also left them the Hungarian Tobacco News, adding that “if a buyer for the paper should appear, my wife can sell it, but can also continue to publish it with the current or other employees.” This was a remarkably dispassionate handling of the paper that had been his life’s work.

Last will of Vilmos Daróczi. Written in his final year, the will left “my little wealth,” moveable property, and the Hungarian Tobacco News to his wife and daughter. His signature appears near the bottom, last name first, as is customary in Hungarian. The clerk’s note, added later, attests that the will was promulgated in early 1913. source: Budapest Capital City Archives (Budapest Főváros Levéltára). Reprinted with permission. FIGURE 7.  

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In this paper, as well as in other publications and speeches, Daróczi had revealed a complex “imagined geography” of nineteenth-century Hungary. Globalization stretched his map, and perhaps more than any other figure studied in this book, Daróczi thought and wrote in terms of the wider world, from Brazil to Sumatra, from Italy to Russia. Urbanization had also influenced him; he spent the last thirty-four years of his life in Budapest and understood the enormous political and economic weight of the capital. But the Hungarian provinces—and the northeastern counties in particular—also held deep importance for him. The ethnic and religious makeup of the region did not interest him; its soil, sun, and growing conditions did, and he saw in them the basis of a thriving tobacco industry. Daróczi championed a rational, scientific approach to agriculture, yet his belief that tobacco could transform economic and social relations in the countryside rested on a mythic foundation, namely, that Hungary had great, untapped potential. At such times his language became optimistic and prophetic, with the result that he called the region around his birthplace the “Canaan” of Hungarian tobacco.64 By asserting that Hungary’s hope lay in the northeastern counties, Daróczi showed that the “myth of the provinces” was alive and well. This too easily passed over complexity and coercion, and yet it sustained men like Daróczi, who rejected out of hand the equally mythic view that rural Hungary was hopelessly “backward” and perpetually “late.” What caused Daróczi’s death? Writing in the Hungarian Tobacco News a year before he died, he himself mentioned a “prolonged, painful illness” that had kept him bedridden.65 No further clarification appeared in the paper; nor would one expect to find such, given the attitudes toward illness and privacy of the era. One is tempted to state simply that at seventy-three Daróczi died of old age: at a time when the life expectancy for Hungarian males was just thirty-six (it was forty-eight in the United States), he had already outlived most of his contemporaries. Still, it is difficult not to wonder whether cancer or some other smoking-related illness contributed to Daróczi’s death. Hungarians in 1900 were well acquainted with cancer. The Hungarian word for cancer is rák (it also means “crab”), and it had been used to describe the deadly illness since the sixteenth century. The Pallas Encyclopedia, published in Hungary in the 1890s, defined cancer as a “tissue-destroying, malevolent tumor, which can spread through the entire system by means primarily of the lymphatic vessels and secondarily the blood, and if left alone, following the development

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of cancerous cachexia it leads to death.”66 The entry hints at a possible connection between smoking and cancer, noting that in men cancer occurred most frequently in the lower lip, and in the breast and uterus in women. It also observed that one frequently cited cause of cancer was continuous pressure on a body part, such as “the continuous pressure of the mouthpiece of the pipe on the lower lip.” This could be read as a warning of sorts against smoking, but the main impression left by the encyclopedia entry is how little was known about the causes, transmission, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. That Daróczi would have been at risk for certain kinds of cancer was probably not obvious to his contemporaries. From our perspective, however, the possibility that cancer killed Daróczi is not far-fetched. He was a lifelong pipe smoker and must have spent much of his time in smoke-filled rooms. His advanced age, moreover, made it more rather than less likely that he might die of cancer, which is an age-related disease. So too did the time in which he lived. With smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, and other killers increasingly kept in check, cancer emerged from the shadows. As the historian of cancer Siddhartha Mukherjee has written, “Nineteenth-century doctors often linked cancer to civilization: cancer, they imagined, was caused by the rush and whirl of modern life, which somehow incited pathological growth in the body. The link was correct, but the causality is not: civilization did not cause cancer, but by extending human life spans—civilization unveiled it.”67 If Vilmos Daróczi died of cancer it would add an element of tragedy to his life. Like Marie Curie with radium, he would have been killed by the very substance to which he devoted his life’s work. But in the absence of clear evidence, we cannot state for certain that tobacco caused his death. What we can say is that when he died, something of his ideas and the world they had helped create died with him. His obituary stated that he was “not a child of our modern age. He was a devoted figure of older times, who lived and died for his ideas: he lived in them and for them.”68 Certainly, when he passed on, others were there to carry on his work. They called for use of rational methods of tobacco cultivation, education of tobacco growers, export of Hungarian tobacco, and consumption in Hungary of domestic tobacco products. Daróczi’s greatest accomplishment, the Hungarian Tobacco News, would continue publication until 1944. But the Hungarian tobacco industry did not long survive Daróczi, at least not in the form he had envisioned. The First World War brought to an end the Hungarian tobacco industry, as it did to the Kingdom of

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Hungary as a whole. The war drained the countryside of male laborers and horses, disrupted transportation networks, and sent the lion’s share of the tobacco harvest to the army. With the new borders drawn after 1918, many of Hungary’s prime tobacco-growing regions, including much of Daróczi’s beloved Szatmár County, lay outside the borders of Hungary. That Hungary had once been among the world’s leading producers of tobacco was soon forgotten.

8 The Writer Those who know only this county also know greater Hungary and can produce a clear conception of the whole. Introduction to Szatmár County (1908)1 “It’s an impossible situation, just impossible!” stormed [Péter], wholly pouring out his heart to Jeno ˝. “Believe me, you don’t know how rotten our country is! All of it, but especially this region. The county should be undermined, blown to bits! It’s all families and friends—a clique reinforced by tangled marriages that disguise its laziness, ignorance, and tyrannical depravity.” Margit Kaffka, Colors and Years (1912) 2

an imposing book on Szatmár County appeared. It was the fifteenth volume of The Counties and Cities of Hungary (Magyarország vármegyei és városai), a wonderful, exhaustive, unfinished series that began in 1896 and eventually covered nearly one-third of Hungary’s counties. Like the other volumes in the series, Szatmár County was handsomely bound in embossed green leather and lavishly illustrated with engravings, photographs, and watercolors. A glance at them reveals tranquil villages, model farms, somber clergymen, and costumed peasants, as well as the county nobility’s peaceful manors and combative coats of arms, with their stags, lions, cranes, and, harkening back to the Ottoman wars, swords on which a Turk’s head has been skewered. Long chapters on Szatmár’s history elaborate on the county’s violent past, whereas chapters on agriculture, public health, water engineering, and the larger towns describe a more settled present. A strong local pride suffuses this volume. ­Szatmár County, one reads again and again, contains untold riches, from the wealth of its flora and fauna to the earthy humor of its Hungarian peasantry. And as the opening quotation makes plain, Szatmár County IN 1908

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saw itself as exemplary rather than exceptional; it was the Kingdom of Hungary in miniature. Margit Kaffka could not have agreed more, if for very different reasons. A poet and novelist, she had been born and raised in Szatmár. She later made her way to Budapest and there, during a sabbatical from teaching at a girls’ school, wrote Colors and Years (Színek és évek). Serialized in 1911 and published in 1912, the novel drew heavily on the experiences of Kaffka’s family; its lead character closely resembled her mother. Thinly disguised references to actual places, events, and noble families from ­Szatmár County only added to the book’s documentary value. But Kaffka had much more in mind when she wrote Colors and Years. With its intense focus on the life of one woman, the novel tried to expose—in the words of one of its characters—the “laziness, ignorance, and tyrannical depravity” of an entire social class, the provincial nobility. She seems to have succeeded. An approving reviewer concluded that Colors and Years “could be the story of thousands and thousands of small-town Hungarian women from the noble classes: increasingly poor and degenerate, internally weakened, and drained of social and moral reserves.”3 Kaffka is today remembered as “the” woman writer of modern Hungarian literature.4 This distinction carries with it a whiff of faint praise. But it does hint at the barriers that existed to women becoming writers in Hungary, to her many accomplishments in spite of these obstacles, and to her uniqueness in a literary world dominated by men. In Budapest, she joined a small but celebrated circle of writers associated with the journal The West (Nyugat), which was launched in 1908 and soon became the flagship of modernist literature in Hungary. She began her career as a poet and carried a poet’s sensibility into her prose works. Her writings both dazzled and divided critics. The fellow poet Miklós Radnóti argued that acoustics rather than grammar determined the structure of her sentences, and he stressed the psychological qualities of Kaffka’s writing. Other critics have praised the use of multiple perspectives in her stories, her work’s insights into the fragility of memory, and her attention to the larger questions of truth in fiction. Still other critics have been less kind, complaining about her “stylistic slovenliness,” her “excessive love of subjective adjectives,” and the flimsy construction of some of her novels.5 But all agree that Colors and Years was a landmark in Hungarian literature. Colors and Years has been read, rightly, as a novel of social criticism. It examines what the disintegration of the provincial nobility meant for girls

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and women. What Klára Lövei lived through, Margit Kaffka wrote about, with genuine empathy and dispassionate analysis. The novel’s protagonist, Magda Pórtelky, is trapped on a sinking ship (an old, moribund noble family), but at first she dreams only about being in first class: “Here, in Szinyér, I want to be someone. The wife of a leading man, whom nobody would dare to disparage.”6 Later, when she decides to abandon ship, she realizes that she lacks the skills and courage to take her elsewhere. The result is grim: “I lived a life, a miserably small, creak-wheeled, dull and hard, grinding life” (here one can see Kaffka’s affection for adjectives!).7 In time, Magda’s suffering brings self-awareness, and her tribulations offer the lesson that women could find fulfillment, however painful or partial, on their own rather than through a husband.8 For this reason, scholars have long found in Kaffka an astute observer of the condition of women in the early twentieth century. The bitter lessons of Colors and Years seem light years away from the stolid complacency of Szatmár County. But something may be lost if we divorce Kaffka and her work entirely from her home county. The literary critic Mihály Szegedy-Maszák has observed that most Hungarian writers of modernity in fact came from, drew inspiration from, and wrote about the provinces; a “a backward glance” dominated their poetry and prose.9 Certainly this was the case with Kaffka, whose strong sense of her origins exhibits little of the “radical homelessness” that Mary Gluck has identified in the succeeding “generation of 1914.”10 If we read Colors and Years alongside Szatmár County, many points of intersection soon emerge. In what follows, I look closely at Margit Kaffka’s life to understand why she left Szatmár and what she saw when she looked back. Using key scenes from her novel and essays from the county book, I then think about what the two sources can tell us about the places, people, and politics of this corner of northeastern Hungary. This unlikely pairing, I argue, reveals a widespread sense of crisis in the countryside. It also shows that her work offers a path forward, a roadmap to modernity that led through—rather than away from—the provinces. In this way, she retained something of the “myth of the provinces,” even as she insightfully diagnosed its woes.

The Escape Artist In 1913 Margit Kaffka published a brief autobiographical sketch. At once playful and serious, it conveys basic biographical information while poking fun at the genre: “I was born in Nagykároly, 32 onerous

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and u ­ ndeniable years ago,” it begins.11 It then depicts in broad strokes her parents, childhood, writing career, and plans for the future. Two clear patterns emerge in this sketch. The first is a sense that her parents have given her a double heritage, which has deeply marked her character and produced, as she writes, “the constant and struggling duality inside me.” This inheritance sits uneasily with the second idea, that of escape or exiting. Kaffka suggests that her life has been an unending series of escapes, and her writing little more than snapshots taken midflight. To understand Margit Kaffka’s complex relationship with the provinces, then, we need to examine the sources of these contradictory impulses of inheritance and innovation, rootedness and rootlessness.12 Kaffka’s father is a familiar figure: the good-hearted, ineffectual, provincial nobleman. Like the fathers of Pál Vásárhelyi and Klára Lövei, he reminds us that many noble families experienced downward rather than upward social mobility. The second of six children, Gyula Kaffka studied law and later served as an official in Szatmár County. Sober and serious, he collected old books and drawings, and, to hear his daughter tell it, never felt at ease among the hard-drinking, coarse, county nobility.13 He died at age thirty-five, as result of a long illness (according to Kaffka’s autobiography) or suicide (according to her biographers). Either way, he left his young wife with two small children and little else. Yet Margit later claimed to have gained much from her father. The Kaffkas, she wrote in her autobiography, had originally come from Moravia, where they were “peaceful and useful” servants of the court. Hard work and strict morals continued to define them even after they migrated to Hungary. She claimed that they were craftsmen and teachers and noted with pride that her grandfather was the first member of the family to attain a degree in law.14 The family’s one affectation was to add a second “f ” to its name after it received a patent of nobility, and in this way the Moravian Kafkas became the Hungarian ­Kaffkas. For Margit, the labels she hung on her father’s family—­ immigrants, petty bourgeois, and outsiders—were bright medals. Her mother’s family was different. The Urays were one of the oldest families in Szatmár County; written sources mention them in 1347 and tradition held that they stood alongside Árpád when the Hungarian tribesmen entered the Carpathian Basin.15 They remained warriors, and the family’s coat of arms shows a knight with a sword in one hand and a decapitated Turk’s head in the other. Members of the family held the highest county offices, fought against the Habsburgs in 1848, and were elected

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to Parliament in the late 1800s; one branch even attained the rank of baron and held sprawling estates across the northeastern counties. At marriage, Margit Uray was young (just eighteen), lively, attractive, and used to comfort. Her daughter later remembered her as “full of defiance, haughty, and rebellious against everything,” both the embodiment and the victim of her social class’s failings.16 Mother and daughter had a difficult relationship, and one can only speculate what the mother thought when her life, only slightly altered, served as the inspiration for Colors and Years. For her part, Margit Kaffka continued to visit and write to her mother long after she left Szatmár County. Their letters mostly address safe topics, such as clothes, servants, travel, and the deaths of relatives. At times exasperation creeps into the daughter’s letters, as when she explains to her ailing mother that her husband, a medical doctor, cannot make a diagnosis from hundreds of miles away without seeing his patient. But that lay in the future. Margit Kaffka had a difficult childhood and was by her own admission a difficult child. She was born in 1880, and a sister, Ibolya (meaning “Violet”), followed three years later. Their father’s death in 1886 ruptured the family. Unable or unwilling to support two young children, the young mother gave Ibolya to her in-laws to raise. She then married again, less than a year after the death of her first husband. This marriage proved to be a disaster; the couple quickly had three children, but the father neglected them and his legal practice, preferring instead cards, tobacco, drink, and his fiddle. In this unhappy household, her mother had little time for Margit. This gave the girl freedom to pursue her own interests; she wrote that at age twelve she could not tell time or distinguish coins, but she did know everything about medieval knights and guilds. Mostly, though, Margit was miserable: “I was an unhappy, awkward, helpless child.”17 School provided no relief. She attended a number of schools, including two girls’ schools in her hometown of Nagykároly. But the bulk of her education came in Roman Catholic convent schools in the neighboring town of Szatmár-Németi. There she received a solid education, and the contrast between Kaffka and Lövei, whose schooling ended after three years, is striking. By the late nineteenth century, most girls regularly attended elementary schools, and confessional and state-run middle schools offered further educational opportunities. Kaffka was a good student, and letters written in her teens reveal that she understood the need to conform outwardly, even as she maintained a skeptical, cynical attitude with friends.

FIGURE 8.   Aladár Székely’s photograph of Margit Kaffka, from her years in Budapest. It originally appeared in an anthology of Hungarian writers published just before the First World War, and after she had made her name with poetry, criticism, novellas, and Colors and Years. source: Ede Kabos, ed., Az Érdekes Ujság dekameronja. Száz magyar iró száz legjobb novellája, vol. 2 (Budapest: Légrády, 1913).

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She found the convent schools oppressive and stultifying, and she often returned to them in her writings. She recalled the “awful monotony” of the convent, with its grayness and daily assault on the senses: “That smell of incense was nauseating in the dim corridors of the main building, where a cheerless blend of other smells, caraway soup, acorn coffee and washing-up lingered in the cramped passage from the convent chapel to the refectory door by the huge kitchen.”18 The intellectual atmosphere was no less oppressive, and she railed against the hostility of the nuns (and by extension the Catholic Church) to all aspects of modern life: science, sexuality, Jews, democracy, and higher education for women. Kaffka’s decision to become a teacher was pragmatic. She had few good alternatives. Always short of money, her parents had first thought of sending her out as an apprentice glover or dressmaker; Margit’s bad eyes, the result of a childhood illness, saved her from this fate. The family instead secured scholarships to allow her to attend teacher-training schools, first in Szatmár-Németi (from age fourteen to eighteen) and then in Budapest (from nineteen to twenty-two). At twenty-two, she attained a teaching post in a girls’ school in Miskolc, a sizeable town halfway between her hometown and Budapest. She taught Hungarian, German, geography, penmanship, health, and economics. Biographer Anna Földes has argued that Kaffka approached her job with great seriousness; she wrote textbooks and defended the teaching of Latin, even as she spoke out against pedagogical practices she disagreed with, including what she saw as an overemphasis on grammar in the study of poetry and literature.19 One student remembered her as young, tall, slender, and graceful in her movements. She added that Kaffka was kind, full of humor, and wholly unconcerned with her appearance. A fellow writer later remarked that he once saw her dressed “as if she were in a Carnival parade.” He likened her hat to a miniature agricultural exhibit and noted that she carried an umbrella under cloudless skies.20 This anecdote may be apocryphal—in most pictures ­Kaffka wears staid dresses—but it hints at her disregard for conventions and at the readiness of her male colleagues to judge her (Figure 8). She soon grew restless in Miskolc. Her paternal grandparents lived there, and she cared deeply for them, describing her grandfather as an oldfashioned nobleman who had once “hunted, smoked, [and] caroused” but now called his wife “my angel” and played cards with his grandchildren.21 Kaffka also spent time with her roommates, all of them other young teachers; in their free time they gossiped, took walks, and ate ice cream. In one

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letter she noted that they went to the train station to see if anyone interesting had arrived on the express train from Budapest—a quintessentially “provincial” pastime, since it is difficult to imagine residents of a metro­ polis having the same curiosity!22 These small-town diversions could not hold her attention for long. “I have grown so sick of this limited, vulgar, backward, and wretched backwater,”23 she wrote. Digging deeper into her bag of adjectives, she also called Miskolc a “boring, cobwebby, book­makers’ town.”24 Teaching too lost its charms. She complained that her job had become monstrous and mechanical, exhausting and unrewarding. Perhaps that is why she married Brunó Fröhlich. “Fröhlich” means “joyful” in German, but little happiness came from this marriage. Young women of Kaffka’s social class were expected to marry and to do so at a young age. She had long resisted the idea; at eighteen she vowed never to marry and denounced the “misery of the housewife.”25 In Miskolc, however, she fell for Fröhlich, an intelligent, reserved forestry official, who soon proposed to her. Her family disapproved of the match, and Margit got cold feet. But the wedding went ahead in February 1905 and the couple had a son, László, born in June 1906. She had always liked children—one of her best-known poems was about a child’s first steps—and motherhood was a powerful experience for her. But she took little pleasure in her marriage or domestic life. The need to cook, clean, and care for their son while still teaching overwhelmed her. In Colors and Years, she described the “pointless, petty drudgery that begins again each day, the machinery of housekeeping! Just for a man!”26 The marriage soon dissolved. The couple separated and in 1910 formally divorced. Kaffka’s one anchor was writing. She had begun writing seriously at twenty, and she published her first poem in a Nagykároly newspaper in 1901 (conveniently, the editor was an acquaintance of her stepfather).27 Often folkloric and mythological in inspiration, her early poems soon appeared regularly in provincial newspapers. Her proud mother sent some of them to Gusztáv Lauka, a relative and well-known writer. His response spoke volumes about the obstacles women writers faced: “Your daughter’s poems are not bad, my niece, indeed some are beautiful and quite good. But what good is writing for a woman? For a good housewife, as you are, it would be a pity if your daughter did not stay in the kitchen. More’s the pity that she is a teacher!”28 Such criticism from an older writer only seemed to spur Kaffka, who set her sights on Budapest. Her poetry began to appear in newer, more experimental literary journals in the capital. She

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published her first volume of poetry in 1903, and her first novella followed two years later. Kaffka’s early literary success sharpened her desire to move to Buda­ pest. She had visited the capital before; “it filled me with some anxious restlessness,” she wrote at nineteen.29 But what she called the “sinful, divine metropolis” drew her. In 1907 she, her husband, and infant son moved to Budapest. Life in the capital was hard, and they lived on the edge of town in a sooty industrial quarter, near the girls’ school where she taught. With the collapse of her marriage, Kaffka was effectively a single mother; servants helped with the childcare and housecleaning, but money was tight and time was short. She was “always on the treadmill,” often lonely and sometimes depressed.30 But Budapest brought her into contact with likeminded writers and artists. They encouraged her writing, published her work, and sometimes even paid her (she once observed that her income from writing did not even cover the price of paper and stamps!). Step by step, Kaffka gained a foothold in the literary world. In its first year alone, the journal The West published four of her short stories, three poems, and two book reviews. Even then, barriers remained, and when the journal’s writers gathered for dinner, she had to sit at the wives’ table. In 1910 she secured a hard-won sabbatical from teaching. It had required intervention of the lord-mayor of Budapest, and Kaffka received no pay during her year off. For her, this break from teaching was, in a sense, only her latest escape. As she wrote in her autobiography, her entire life had been a series of escapes: from hometown, family, social class, religion, family, marriage, and material worries. During her sabbatical, she traveled to Paris, her first trip abroad. She also finished Colors and Years. In it she “glanced backwards” and took stock of the world from which she had seemingly escaped. The novel took her back to Szatmár County. What did she find there?

Places We have encountered Szatmár County before. Here Count Gvadányi found inspiration for his village notary, Pál Vásárhelyi’s grandfather owned an estate, Klára Lövei summered with the Telekis, and Vilmos Daróczi discovered the best conditions for tobacco cultivation. Szatmár closely resembled the counties described in previous chapters. Like them, it contained both fertile, often flooded plains and forested, inaccessible mountains.31

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Agriculture predominated, and most of the county’s 340,000 residents lived in small towns and villages. The exceptions were the county seat, Nagykároly (Carei to Romanians), with 15,000 inhabitants; and SzatmárNémeti (Satu Mare), with 27,000. Railroads from Debrecen had reached here in 1871 and slowly branched out across the county; by the early twentieth century, the station in Szatmár-Németi counted more than 320,000 riders a year. But there was little industry and not much trade. The aristocracy and gentry, a mixture of Roman Catholics and Calvinists, dominated local politics and generally supported the political opposition in Parliament (meaning they were wary of cooperating too closely with Austria). Szatmár County, in short, was a typical northeastern Hungarian county. Both Kaffka’s Colors and Years and the Szatmár County volume touch on many of these features, if with different emphasis and interpretations. Both also offer overlapping “imagined geographies” of Szatmár County; that is, they attach certain qualities to the region and use them to draw its boundaries. By examining scenes from Kaffka’s novel and placing them next to the county volume (and other contemporary sources), we can discover many areas of common concern. The place to begin is in Nagykároly, Kaffka’s birthplace and the setting of Colors and Years. In the novel, Magda Pórtelky grows up in the townhouse of her maternal grandmother. Centrally located, expansive, and adjacent to County Hall, the house embodies the family’s wealth and prestige. During Magda’s lifetime, however, the house is diminished (the grandmother has sold off parcels of the property) and ultimately destroyed, symbolizing the decline of the family and of the provincial nobility as a whole. Real, undiminished power in town instead lies with the aristocratic Károlyi family, which holds the rank of count, owns vast estates in the surrounding countryside, and for the past four hundred years has occupied a castle in center of town. (The novel does not name the Károlyi family, but the house in which Kaffka grew up was just a stone’s throw from the grounds of their castle.) The count and his family rarely appear in Colors and Years; presumably they are off in Budapest or Vienna. An air of menace nonetheless emanates from the castle: “There they live,” observes Magda bitterly, and “their coarse, cold, and narrow way of life spreads with ever greater influence over this wretched town.”32 Colors and Year tells the story of the decline of the gentry, but it also warns against the continued domination of the feudal classes (here represented by the count) in the provinces.

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Szatmár County does surprisingly little to challenge this assertion. A chapter devoted to Nagykároly offers a fuller picture of the town, with descriptions of its long history, schools, churches, statues, parks, county buildings, newspapers, and savings banks. We learn that it burned its last witch in 1730, that a massive earthquake struck the town in 1834, and that two-thirds of its streets were paved by 1900. The author of the chapter glumly concludes that “the blows of fate have struck Nagykároly one after another, and had the Károlyis had not looked after it, and had the county seat not been here, today it would perhaps be an unimportant village.”33 The Károlyis, he adds, established the town’s hospital and preside over many local associations. Yet the author indirectly criticizes them when he contends that the town’s commercial role would be much greater if well-to-do peasant smallholders filled the surrounding countryside rather than the count’s vast estates, with its tenant farmers and day laborers. In reality Szatmár County as a whole has little commerce and industry to brag about. Nagykároly, we read, has noteworthy leatherworkers, carpenters, locksmiths, and makers of rough woolen overcoats (the guba, worn by the poorer classes)—all trades that would have been recognizable in Gvadányi’s day. Larger enterprises are rare; “there is no industry here” concludes the chapter on Nagykároly.34 Even the more dynamic Szatmár-­ Németi belonged “to the more humble industrial towns, particularly because of its undeveloped large industry.”35 Things were not much better in the countryside, where the gentry held sway. In Colors and Years, Magda often visits relatives in the countryside. Her aunt’s family, we learn, live in rustic simplicity. Food is plentiful, but cash, pencils, paper, manufactured goods, and news from the wider world are not. This village holds some charm, but it is also a time capsule, where “everything continued unvaryingly as it did one hundred years ago.”36 The mood turns darker when Magda goes to stay with her uncle Ábris (Abe), who lives in the Pórtelky family’s isolated ancestral home at the edge of the marsh. “Untamed waters, marshy streams, and forests of reeds” gird the manor. Immobility and inflexibility are its defining features: “Everything was old, so old, perhaps centuries old; this hard, small noble clan had ruled, rebelled, and persisted in the uncertain expanse of time.”37 The uncle invites Magda to be his housekeeper, since both have recently lost their spouses. She sees the signs of a recent project to drain the marshes in the uncle’s windfall from the sale of formerly neglected marshland and a new road that crosses reclaimed lands. But “progress”

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has brought little change for the marsh’s inhabitants. Magda’s uncle is old, cruel, and brutal, both to his laborers and to Magda. He paws at her, expecting that she will share his bed. When she refuses, he banishes her to a miserable, dirt-floored outbuilding. The local peasants live in similar misery, and to Magda they appear sullen and suspicious, full of bitter anger at the nobility. Stripped of its charm, Kaffka’s countryside reveals the violence and moral decay of the gentry.38 The Szatmár County volume at first appears to paint a brighter picture of the countryside. It contains entries on each settlement in the county, highlighting the historical events, noble landowners, population, and landmarks. A later section on the county’s leading noble families proudly recounts their origins, lists the offices they have held, and displays their coats of arms. But the volume also hints at the declining fortunes of many nobles. The chapter on agriculture thus describes the economic woes of many middle and small landowners who have been forced to lease or sell their estates.39 A related work—Austria-Hungary in Words in Pictures—was even more direct. It too praised Szatmár’s gentry, with its openhanded hospitality, dogged defense of its rights, and relatives scattered across the northeastern counties. But it also described, in Szatmár’s villages, the “neglected” manors of this “wholly spent” class.40 The lower nobility, it continued, had fared even worse, and was gradually disappearing into the surrounding peasantry. Local newspapers could be equally pessimistic. One offered a ready diagnosis of the problem: the nobility’s lack of regard for bourgeois values and undertakings. “The middle class [ polgári osztály], by means of its strength, education, and prosperity, has today risen far above the classes of old,” read one editorial.41 It claimed that members of the local gentry had “called for the wholesale suppression of middle-class elements.” The paper’s appeal for the nobility and the middle classes to reconcile offers more hope than Colors and Years, which is gloomy about the prospects for both groups. But Szatmár County shares with the novel a sense that the status quo was untenable and that the nobility could not live in the past. Kaffka astutely understood the psychological and spatial dimensions of this crisis. Colors and Years brilliantly sketches the limited horizons of the provincial nobility, which result in rapidly alternating feelings of superiority and inferiority. As someone who grew up “in town,” Magda looks down at her country cousins, with their thick accents and barbaric beauty secrets (before a ball, they whiten their skin with leeches). But when she

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attends a ball in Debrecen, a much bigger but still provincial town, she marvels at the sophistication of the locals’ fine dress, refined speech, and graceful movements. Later she visits Budapest, where the city’s shouts and smells at first disorient her. The theater soon enchants her: “Lord, how the provincial superiority and certainty shrink away here!”42 Magda feels adrift in Pest, however, and recalls her hometown: “They knew my past and family, but here a person is lost in the crowd, and here I am torn from my natural surroundings, tossed to the winds like a small, insignificant flower.”43 She returns to the provinces, and there she stays. But in her movements across Hungary, she reveals a clear hierarchy of places, stretching down from the capital city to small villages. Wholly absent is the notion, put forward by Gvadányi a hundred years before, that the provinces are equal (if not superior) to the capital. Indeed, the people of the provinces seem to shrink the farther they stray from home. Szatmár County had no ready answer to this charge. It boasted of the county’s outsized contributions to Hungarian politics and culture. It asserted that everything to be found in Hungary, from landscapes to livestock, could be found in Szatmár. But it also described Nagykároly, the county seat, in this way: “With its acacia-lined and often village-like streets, it evokes a friendly impression and a homey feeling; it has no bleak tenement buildings and tall public or private buildings only here and there. The houses are predominantly one-story, with large, shaded courtyards and even larger gardens, and are all spread out, so that from a tower the entire town looks like one big garden.”44 The very picture of provincial life, and again one not so different from that presented in Colors and Years. The difference was that Colors and Years saw a society in the middle of a profound crisis, whereas Szatmár County puts a brave face on it and emphasizes the virtues of the provinces (there may be no industry, but there are no “bleak tenement buildings” either). Not all contemporaries were so complacent. In 1896, an editorial in a Szatmár newspaper took up the question of “the provinces’ backwardness in relation to the capital.”45 Budapest, it states, is flourishing and modern; provincial towns are not. The causes of this problem stem, plausibly, from the weakness of regionalism in Hungary and, less plausibly, from the Hungarian “racial character,” which always shunned town life. Some steps have been taken to remedy the problem, including building schools, bridges, and other infrastructure, but political and social divisions in the countryside have been an obstacle to progress. The editorial adds that the “extraordinary indolence”

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of provincial towns is also to blame. This explanation is as incomplete as Kaffka’s, but it again communicates a sense of provincial inferiority in the face of the capital. Yet local sources were not always so despairing. The newspaper in Kaffka’s hometown, for example, published any number of low-spirited articles about the town’s missed opportunities and unmet expectations. But it also suggested that the town was neither indolent nor isolated. It had an active town council that worked hard to improve public health (mainly by providing cleaner drinking water), build up the local infrastructure, and expand economic prospects. Its citizens were linked to the wider world in many ways. An otherwise unremarkable issue of the Nagykároly paper from the late 1880s contained a report on grape vines brought from America in the wake of the phylloxera epidemic, an advertisement for stoves and farm equipment from Budapest, and a call for investors for a new railroad line. The memoirs of Antal Dániel, who grew up in Szatmár County, confirm that news and goods moved swiftly through the provinces. His uncle, we learn, lives in a village but is a “great gourmet” who favors Moravian cucumbers and Italian cheeses, and who orders coffee, chocolate, ­oranges, and dried figs from Julius Meinl in Vienna.46 With its references to ball dresses from Vienna, the sudden popularity of lawn tennis, and cook books from France, Colors and Years likewise hints at how well-to-do provincials saw themselves as part of cultural networks that extended far beyond their small towns. With this in mind, it may not be so surprising to encounter passages of fierce local pride in Colors and Years. Early in the novel, Magda declares, “Nowhere else in the wide world do they know how to love with such beautiful play-acting, so impulsively, woefully, turbulently, and festively, as they did long ago in this part of the world.”47 Her memories then turn to Szatmár’s language and landscape: “Nowhere do words have so many shades and scents, so many hidden meanings, as when they burst out, tersely and expressively, from a thousand strangled emotions . . . than here, among the ancient marshland, the land ringed by undisturbed reeds and streams.”48 Such sentiments give the novel a mood of nostalgia. They also add poignancy to the protagonist’s tragedy, as she looks back on a world that irrevocably shaped her but is violently disintegrating before her eyes. And they recall similar declarations in the Szatmár County volume. It too heaps praise on the Hungarian spoken in Szatmár: “It contains the people’s true spirit, sparkling humor, and—in every single sentence—something

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original, unique, or flavorful. Entire pictures, similes, personifications, and higher poetic figures hide in their speech.”49 In her writing Kaffka sometimes used phrases particular to Szatmár County, and she did so not to sound “peasantlike” or archaic, but because she liked these words’ associations and strength. Like its protagonist (and, I would argue, like its author), Color and Years is deeply rooted in Szatmár County. The novel never mentions the county by name, although its references to people, places, and events in Szatmár are not difficult to decode. In his analysis of “the idea of Galicia,” Larry Wolff has shown how everything from studies of flora and fauna to reports of masked balls helped define where Galicia was and what it meant to be Galician.50 The Szatmár County volume shared this aim, even if its message was not as upbeat as one might expect. Kaffka’s novel is less downbeat than one might expect, even as it takes direct aim at the social order of the provinces. In Colors and Years, Kaffka brilliantly uses depictions of daily life—of houses, clothes, amusements, and forms of address—to show the ambitions and failings of the gentry. But the same details also seem to insist that this county formed a discrete whole, with its own customs, landscapes, and language. Kaffka may have “escaped” from Szatmár County, but she took a small piece of it with her when she left.

Peoples Both Colors and Years and Szatmár County focused much of their attention on the top of the social pyramid. But they also looked downward, at the bulk of the population. This took them into the villages and raised larger questions. Like much of provincial Hungary, Szatmár County faced serious problems in the years around 1900. Many fell under the broad heading of what contemporaries called “the social question” and used as shorthand for the host of demographic, economic, and social problems faced by the mass of the population. In the Kingdom of Hungary, the “­social question” invariably overlapped with the “national question,” which in Szatmár meant the living conditions, educational opportunities, and political aspirations of more than a hundred thousand Romanian speakers, one-third of the total population. Kaffka and the authors of the county book took up these two questions. The answers they provided show significant overlap but also a parting of ways in how they made sense of the remarkable diversity of the county.

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Both texts documented the difficult conditions endured by most residents of Szatmár County. The county book lists Szatmár’s sobering demographic indicators, including high infant mortality, widespread alcoholism, poor housing, and steady emigration. Diseases such as cholera, scarlet fever, measles, and tuberculosis stalked town and country alike.51 Nearly a third of all children died before they reached their first birthday. Poor housing sped the transmission of disease, and many Szatmár families lived in just one room. The diet of most peasants was unchanging and simple (meat was eaten only on holidays and during harvest). They wore the same clothes year round. Doctors routinely declared one-third to onehalf of all young men unfit for military service. In one district to the north of Nagykároly fully 65.6 percent were rejected, which the county medical officer blamed on widespread alcoholism.52 He also linked the consumption of brandy to crime, lower life expectancy (“25 year-olds already look 50”), and schools filled with scrawny, listless children. Other writers in Szatmár County described the difficult economic conditions in the countryside, where low wages and high land prices prevailed. Large landowners such as the Károlyis had introduced modern farming methods, machinery, and fertilizer. But most landowners had little capital and less know-how, resulting in what one character in Colors and Years called a “wasteful, non-market-oriented, haphazard, and negligent system of production.”53 When global markets pushed grain prices down, landowners simply lowered wages. The result was a series of labor disturbances, as agricultural workers struck for better pay. Szatmár County quickly blamed these protests on a handful of “agitators” and avoided searching for the root causes of peasant anger. But it could not ignore the problem of emigration. In the years around 1900, thousands of people left Szatmár County, “leaving not a trace behind,” in Kaffka’s words.54 Contemporary observers viewed these social problems in light of the region’s diverse population. A local writer once claimed that the railroad neatly divided Szatmár County into two distinct groups, with Romanians to the east, in the hills, and Hungarians to the west, on the plains.55 But the ethnographic map was much more complex, and Szatmár’s linguistic and religious diversity in fact defied easy description. A Hungarian speaker in Szatmár might be the expected Calvinist peasant or nobleman, but also a “Swabian” (a descendant of eighteenth-century German immigrants), ­Hasidic Jew (the Satmar Hasidic dynasty took its name from here), or Greek Catholic (historically, a “Romanian” religion). One trend was clear:

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more and more people spoke some Hungarian. The decennial census revealed that residents who listed Hungarian as their “mother tongue” increased from 57 percent in 1880 to 62 percent in 1900.56 Of the remainder, nearly one in four also had some knowledge of the language, with the result that roughly 70 percent of the population could speak Hungarian (with varying degrees of fluency) by the turn of the twentieth century. Not all learned it in school, and only 47 percent of adults could read and write. Behind these numbers lay wider social changes, as well as the hopes and fears of local elites. Emigration was especially worrisome for the authors of the county volume. The departure of peasants from Hungarian-speaking regions, it stated, upset the county’s already “unfavorable national conditions.”57 By this Szatmár County meant the large Romanian population, whom they blamed for many of the county’s social problems. The novelist Zsigmond Móricz, who wrote the chapter on “The People of Szatmár County,” characterized Romanians as poor, ill-fed, gloomy, dirty, and halfcivilized.58 In his telling, most are illiterate, many are alcoholic, and all are superstitious; Móricz cites the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who was “possessed” and on awakening became a much sought-after seer. Colors and Years offers similar images of Romanian villages, with their reed-thatched roofs, icons, and “imbecile patience and destitute, half-animal poverty.”59 Yet to Móricz, the very presence (and low emigration rate) of these poor Romanians somehow posed an existential threat to Szatmár’s Hungarian population. He thus warns of the “flood” of Romanians washing over the county.60 In the mountains, he writes, a few Hungarian “border fortresses” remain in this “besieging sea of Romanians.” For Móricz, the danger of “Romanization” (eloláhosodás) is very real, and just as pressing as other social problems. For the Szatmár County authors, the solutions to the social question and the national question went hand-in-hand; to improve the lot of the peasantry in the region meant dealing with the “problem” of Romanians. To many local notables, the best tool for this job was the Széchenyi Society (Széchenyi Társulat), an educational association formed in 1882.61 This society had the support of the rich and powerful in Szatmár; its first president was Lőrincz Schlauch, the respected Roman Catholic bishop, and its officers included county officials and mayors. In a remarkable gesture—the first of its kind in Hungary—the Szatmár County Assembly approved a small surtax to fund the work of the Széchenyi Society. The society in turn gave prizes to Romanian teachers who enthusiastically taught the Hungarian language; established a series of foster homes, kindergartens, and

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l­ibraries; and published books for early readers. In this way, it sought to provide basic social services and to improve the level of elementary education in the poorer regions of Szatmár County, if not for all of northeastern Hungary.62 But the society also wanted to monitor “Romanian agitators” and encourage Romanian children to learn Hungarian, with the clear aim of raising the percentage of Hungarian speakers in Szatmár County. The success of these undertakings is doubtful; the sociologist Viktor Aradi concluded in 1914 that the goals of such societies were “antediluvian and wrapped in empty slogans,” and that their activities amounted to little more than empty posturing before “chauvinist elements of the public.”63 Yet the Széchenyi Society’s linkage of civilization and nationalization resonated powerfully with local elites around the turn of the century, and its actions spurred Romanian activists to step up their own educational initiatives.64 Here Kaffka decisively parted ways with the county book. In Colors and Years, she attempted to break this link by demonstrating the hollowness of the Hungarian national idea. This emerges as part of her wider indictment of the provincial nobility. In the novel, the brutality, condescension, and indifference of the gentry toward the peasantry—no matter what language they speak, Hungarian or Romanian—gives lie to the claim of national unity. Narrow-minded class interests trump high-minded national solidarity. But Kaffka takes her criticism of the Hungarian gentry a step further. The demise of this class, she hints, may also lead to its own denationalization. In Colors and Years, the recently widowed Magda encounters a woman her own age who is also from a distinguished noble family. The woman too was once rich but now works as a postmistress in a remote village. Magda is shocked to learn that the postmistress will soon marry a well-to-do but unpolished local peasant—and not for love, but because she has few other good choices. To make matters worse (from a Hungarian nationalist point of view), the peasant’s name is Trajan, clearly indicating his Romanian background. This is not the only case in Colors and Years of social decline leading to loss of Hungarianness. Magda’s brother, a drunken cavalry officer, abruptly leaves the army to marry the daughter of a Serbian landlord and move in with her parents. In these cases, the Romanian and Serbian commoners appear much more vital and confident than the drifting, déclassé Hungarian gentry, ostensibly the backbone of the nation. Kaffka’s anger at the gentry is like Móricz’s fear of the “besieging sea of Romanians,” blinding them to more interesting forces at work in places like Szatmár County. In a recent study of schools in Transylvania

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and eastern Hungary, historian Ágoston Berecz has revealed the gap that often existed between educational policies promulgated in Budapest and changes in language use on the ground.65 Hungarian language instruction in Romanian-speaking schools, he concludes, was largely a story of failure. His research suggests that organizations like the Széchenyi Society had a very limited impact on actual patterns of language use (even if they had a significant impact on public opinion). However, he does highlight a case from Szatmár County in which a minority rapidly adopted the Hungarian language: that of German-speaking Swabians, who lived in villages in the southern part of the county. Kaffka’s novel mentions them in passing, and she describes marketplaces filled with “dusty countryfolk, the Börvely Hungarians in their white linen trousers and the Erdöd Swabs in their broadcloth jackets.”66 As Kaffka noted, Swabian villages had distinctive features, from the layout of their houses to their wedding festivities. Yet their residents also borrowed practices from other groups in the region, and by 1900 younger Swabians had begun to shed their traditional costumes and speak more and more Hungarian.67 Berecz argues that schools had relatively little to do with this language shift, and he points instead to long traditions of bilingualism, local economic relations, the absence of German-language cultural institutions, and the willingness of priests and teachers to use Hungarian. In the end, what makes Kaffka’s work valuable is the compassion it shows for the downtrodden and the underlying message it offers about diversity in provincial Hungary. Kaffka’s attention to the medley of peoples who lived in Szatmár County and her refusal to single out any one group as a “threat” situate her within a wider tradition of ethnographic writing in Hungary. In the late nineteenth century an integrative, egalitarian, multiethnic model of the Kingdom of Hungary competed with a more exclusive, hierarchical model based on claims of ethnic Hungarian purity and dominance.68 Evidence suggests that the integrative ethnographic tradition was surprisingly resilient. Certainly, Kaffka’s writings place her in the this camp, whereas the Szatmár County writers are balanced uneasily between the two, pulled in one direction by their sense of local pride and in the other by their fears of Romanians. When it appeared, Kaffka’s book angered many elites in Szatmár County. But its subtle narration of what we have called the “myth of the provinces” (namely, that ethnographic diversity was something to be welcomed, not feared) might instead have heartened them.

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Politics The trappings of modern life embellish Colors and Years. Freshly married, Magda and her husband rent an entire house, which they fill with new furniture and surround with gardens. Servants, tutors, and horses soon follow. Magda plays the piano, tries tennis, attends tea parties, and joins the new women’s club—the very model of a modern, bourgeois woman! But the less tangible sides of modernity—the rapid pace of change, the blurring of social boundaries, and the rule of money—disorient her. Following the death of her first husband, Magda has to pay attention to household finances for the first time: “A wholly new matter for me, and it seemed to me horribly wrong, ugly, and not genteel.”69 Straitened circumstances eventually teach Magda to pinch pennies. But Magda’s tragedy—and that of her social class—is how unsuitable her “premodern” upbringing and skills are in the modern world. The originality of Colors and Years lies in part in its careful analysis of how this process affected women. It also suggests that modernity contained the possibility for emancipation of the younger generation, even in the provinces. Meaningful changes would not come through existing political institutions. Previous chapters have shown how some provincial thinkers looked to county officials (Kästenbaum), town leaders (Schnitzer), and state officials (Daróczi). Kaffka in contrast highlights the shortcomings of Hungary’s political system, as did many of her contemporaries. Colors and Years thus pivots on a county election. Magda’s first husband, Jenő Vodicsa, shares her ambition to “be someone” in their town. Egged on by Magda, he decides to run for vice sheriff of the county. True, he was a commoner, but laws passed in 1867 had broken the hold of the nobility on county offices. As a lawyer, he had the qualifications for the job and, importantly, connections with both the Károlyis and the county nobility. But the election does not go as planned. Unseen forces mobilize against him. In wining and dining the electors he burns through money, so much, in fact, that he has to borrow from an otherwise kindly Jewish broker, and (we later learn) he begins to steal money from his clients. Election day itself begins with a disaster, when Jenő loses to Count Károlyi’s candidate, and ends with a tragedy, when Jenő shoots and kills himself rather than face the consequences of defeat and embezzlement. So begins Magda’s long descent into poverty and powerlessness. But why did Jenő seek political office? In Kaffka’s telling, social and economic issues are wholly absent from the election. Ambition drives Jenő, and

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the perpetual struggle between rival factions in the county motivates the opposition. As a result, the county’s many problems never intrude into the electoral campaign. The election looks no different from the one described in József Eötvös’s great reform novel The Village Notary, written in the 1840s. The Szatmár County volume leaves a remarkably similar impression about county politics. A chapter titled “History of the Last Forty Years” demonstrates the vibrancy of political life in Szatmár County, at least among the nobility. On one side stood the liberals, many of them Roman Catholics and supporters of the 1867 Compromise, and on the other side the opposition, which drew its support from Calvinists and demanded revision of the 1867 settlement. Both groups contested county and national elections, which often hinged on questions of statewide importance, including the limits of central power, establishment of a wholly separate Hungarian army, and introduction of civil marriage. In the 1880s and 1890s, the most burning issue was whether the county seat should be moved from its traditional home in Nagykároly to the larger, more centrally located Szatmár-Németi. This issue split local politics along geographic rather than party or religious lines and resulted in curious scenes, including erection in both towns of competing statues of the Szatmár-born poet Ferenc Kölcsey. The county occasionally addressed questions of infrastructure and public health. But its debates and elections largely revolved around issues with little connection to the lives of most inhabitants of the county. Not surprisingly, the Szatmár County volume is silent on the fundamental problems with county politics: the low rate of suffrage, the sometimes corrupt elections, and exclusion of Romanians from the political process.70 If political change were to come, it would have to be through different means. Earlier chapters have stressed the role of the press and voluntary associations as vehicles of change. Kaffka mentions both in passing in Colors and Years but does not dwell on them. Perhaps this is because, unlike many of her fellow writers in Budapest, she did not supplement her income as a journalist. And although some of her earliest poems appeared in Szatmár newspapers, she had little connection to the provincial press. As a woman, moreover, she could not participate in the many societies and clubs that occupied her male contemporaries. Kaffka frequently had guests over for large, informal dinners on Sundays, but these lacked the permanence and prominence of the societies someone like Iosif Vulcan joined. Kaffka’s way forward instead ran through schools. This is unsurprising, given that education had been crucial to her own “escape” from her

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hometown and that she later remained in the classroom as a teacher. It is also unsurprising in that many contemporaries saw in schools the surest path to individual and collective development. In Colors and Years, Magda’s formal schooling was incomplete: she briefly attended a private girls’ school, where she learned some German and observed subtle differences between the daughters of the nobility (who addressed the teacher as “Aunt”) and the daughters of shopkeepers and craftsmen (who called her “Madam”—­gnädige Frau). As a parent, however, Magda does everything to ensure that her three daughters are educated: she takes boarders, does her own housework, and pleads with relatives and officials to secure scholarships for her children. “From those times,” she recalled, “no memories remain except that in every season three new pairs of children’s shoes and some small dresses were needed for school, and at all costs I wanted to send them looking nice and proper.”71 The last page of the novel shows that her sacrifices have not been in vain. The oldest daughter is “an excellent teacher” in Pest (and friends with the daughter of the Jewish broker from Magda’s hometown), the middle daughter lives in a large provincial town and has become a pharmacist (one of the few professions open to women in those days), and the youngest teaches piano and may take a position at a school in Pest. One daughter is engaged, but none are in a rush to marry, since they have realized that they do not need a husband to support themselves.72 In other novels, K ­ affka examined the difficulties women had in balancing career and family. But the “happy ending” of Colors and Years offers the lesson that with an education anyone—even the children of the doomed gentry—can escape and become useful members of society. This was a curiously conventional moral. But it was of a piece with Kaffka’s wider worldview: secular, modern, emancipated, and egalitarian. Nationalism, the panacea for the ­Szatmár County writers, has little place here. Nor do formal political structures. Just as she “escaped” from everything that held her back, Kaffka holds out the hope that other women (and perhaps men too) can use education to embrace, rather than run away from, the modern world.73 The destinations of Magda’s daughters show plainly that the paths through modernity could run through and not just away from the provinces.

No Escape? For Kaffka herself, all roads led to Budapest. The Hungarian capital drew other figures in this book, but none had the same level of attachment

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to Budapest as she did. With gentle irony, Colors and Years describes the city’s appeal: “All of them dreamed of town, of Pest, with its noisy streets, theaters, idle domesticity—its loitering, cheap, easy, famished life.”74 For Kaffka the Hungarian capital meant all these things and more. In Budapest she raised her son, taught, and wrote. She met fellow writers and artists in editorial offices, coffeehouses, and her small apartment in Buda, where she held informal “salons” on Sunday afternoons. These were productive years for her, and she turned out a steady stream of poems, short stories, novels, and reviews. The year 1914 brought world war. It also brought the greatest happiness Kaffka had known for a long time. She fell in love with Ervin Bauer, a medical doctor and the younger brother of Béla Balázs (this was the name he published under), a poet, writer, and, like Kaffka, contributor to the journal The West. Ervin was twenty-four, fully ten years younger than Margit, which started tongues wagging. They were on vacation in Italy when the First World War broke out. She and Ervin returned to Hungary, and they quickly married before he rejoined the army as a medical officer. Ervin was sent to the front two times, and both times returned very ill. Otherwise they stayed in Budapest when he had leave, or in the small towns where he was stationed. His diary and letters from these years describe the unreality of the war; in Budapest, they spent quiet mornings in bed, lounged in coffeehouses, and dined with other writers, while at the front he was stationed in a “filthy Ruthenian village,” where he combated loneliness by endlessly rereading her poems and wishing that they could communicate through telepathy!75 Ervin was later stationed in Temesvár, in the south of Hungary, and Margit resigned her teaching post so she could stay with him. There she continued to write (prose, but little poetry) as best as she could amid growing shortages, inflation, and cramped living conditions. The income from the publication of a short story, she said, was not enough to buy a pair of shoes, and she had to beg her editors for train tickets to allow her to return to Budapest.76 The war years were a trial for Kaffka, but they also gave a sharp edge to her writing. Openly avowing socialism and pacifism, she opposed the war from the start, and she bravely published antiwar poems and essays. Her essay “I Tried to Pray” (Imádkozni próbáltam), written at Christmas 1914, gave voice to the anguish of women on the home front: “O Lord! No prison is more cruel than this time.”77 Near the end of the war Kaffka released The Ant Heap (Hangyaboly), which attacked the growing

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c­ onservatism of public life. In 1918, as the war ground down, she was hard at work on a novel about Flavius Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian. With this topic, she clearly intended to push back against the growing power of antisemitism in Hungary. “Nobody hated the war with such vehement indignation as she did,” a contemporary newspaper concluded.78 Kaffka remained firm in her convictions about the provinces. In a letter written to her mother at the end of the war, she dryly noted that the “revolution was not pretty” in Temesvár: “too nationalistic, too much mutual suspicion, more disturbances than elsewhere.”79 And she worried that disputes over Pressburg meant her husband could not take a research position he had been promised there. She then lashed out at her mother: “Those ‘noble families’ you mention are pitiable, that’s true, but all the same a centuries-old sin is beginning to exact revenge on them. Did they ever think, even once, that a peasant is a human being, that their servants require orderly, healthy, clean, and pleasant houses of their own, that every estate needs a school, hospital, doctor, pharmacy, and library?” Kaffka wrote these lines knowing full well that she too had come from one of these “noble families.” But unlike her mother, she had escaped, and she had taken it as her mission to lay to rest the “myth of the provinces.” Two decades later, the poet and critic Miklós Radnóti put it simply: “Kaffka was an ambitious soul who hated the provinces.”80 Did she really? Following the publication of Colors and Years, ­Kaffka wrote proudly that “my home county had sent word that I would be ruthlessly ridiculed should I ever set foot on its wounded ground.”81 But the novel itself offers a more ambiguous message. The opening and closing chapters of Colors and Years frame the much longer narrative of Magda’s childhood and two marriages. In these chapters, Magda is fifty years old and lonely; her daughters write but rarely visit. Still, Magda has learned that “what is done is done” and has found “beautiful, great tranquility” in the small town in which she grew up.82 She lives in a tiny apartment with elderly German neighbors; she gardens, attends church, and replays scenes from her life. Her daughters urge her to move, but she resolves that “I will never leave this small town, this small corner. Here my life ran its course, everyone knows me and knows about me; I do not need to explain to anyone who I am and how I live.”83 In these chapters, Kaffka acknowledges the power of place and the importance of origins. The provinces, she understood, had shaped her in countless ways. The writer and editor Aladár Schöpflin, who visited her in late November 1918, fondly recalled that she

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offered him food “in the manner of a provincial Hungarian housewife.”84 A small part of the “myth of the provinces” lingered in her writing. This was the last time Schöpflin saw Margit Kaffka. In 1918, the global influenza pandemic—the Spanish flu—reached Central Europe. Kaffka had taken precautions: she avoided crowded streetcars, washed her hands with disinfectant, and took aspirin (not that this helped against the flu). She also brought her son home from his school in Transylvania. But Buda­ pest was one of the worst places to be. In late November, she fell ill. She died on December 1, 1918, age thirty-eight. Her twelve-year-old son died two days later. They were buried together in a cemetery in the Buda Hills. The Hungarian provinces did not long survive her. On the day that Margit Kaffka died, a Romanian National Assembly met in Transylvania and called for unification of all Romanian-occupied territories with the neighboring Romanian Kingdom. Romanian troops had already crossed the Carpathians, and in early 1919 they reached Szatmár County. In 1920 Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon, which assigned all but a small fraction of the county to Romania. Nagykároly became Carei, and it now stood just kilometers away from a new international boundary between Hungary and Romania. The changes on the map were matched by changes on the ground. The Szatmár County Kaffka had known and documented was gone for good. One of her obituary writers linked her death to the passing of this provincial world: “Old Hungary, as if after an earthquake, is now sinking before our eyes. It lives on, perhaps, in no truer form than in the poetic, dazzling, romantic, aching, classic Colors and Years.”85 Her book, in other words, ensured that the memory of the doomed gentry and their world “would not disappear, for in this book they received a piece of eternity.” Kaffka and the provinces were forever bound together.

Conclusion What country, friends, is this? Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Act 1, Scene 2

THE FIRST WORLD WAR spelled the doom of Austria-Hungary and with it the world described in this book. In 1914 Russian troops steamrolled the Austro-Hungarian defenders and pushed into Galicia and northeastern Hungary. The fighting created thousands of refugees and destroyed scores of villages. The Russians were soon pushed back, and northeastern Hungary remained free of enemy armies for the remainder of the war. This respite came at a heavy cost, a point driven home by war memorials visible throughout the region. The memorial in the small Hungarian village of Szatmárcseke lists thirty-six men who died in the war; the one in Valea Stejarului, an even smaller Romanian village in Maramureș, lists thirty-two, including nine with the same surname, Mihnea. In spite of such losses, the Hungarian home front proved surprising resilient in the face of hunger, shortages, and looming defeat. But the ties that bound Hungary together strained under the tremendous pressures of total war, which brought mobilization of much of the population, increased state control of the economy, growing polarization and antisemitism in public life, and louder demands for democratic reforms and national rights. The end came suddenly, with immediate consequences for the northeastern counties. In October 1918 Romanian leaders in Oradea/Nagyvárad (with Iosif Vulcan’s nephew prominent among them) signaled their readiness to leave Austria-Hungary and join an expanded Romanian Kingdom, even as Slovak national leaders were making a similar declaration about the new Czechoslovak Republic. Districts with large Ruthenian populations spun out of Budapest’s gravitational pull. The end of the war in ­November 1918

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did not settle things, and the next year brought Hungary two revolutions (one liberal, one communist), fighting in the north between Czechoslovak and Hungarian units, and occupation of Budapest by Romanian forces. In June 1920 Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon, confirming its new and much-reduced borders. The region that had once been northeastern Hungary now belonged to four states: Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. These borders mattered, and they endured. They shaped the lives of the region’s residents and of outsiders. Soon after the war Béla Bartók turned down an invitation from an old Romanian friend to collect folk songs in the Apuseni Mountains, now in Romania, noting that the authorities would not allow him to bring phonographs or notebooks across the border. “No, the curtain has been drawn over that work,” wrote Bartók.1 To mark their territory, the postwar states ushered in new place names, official languages, property laws, and educational policies. Some patterns of village and small-town life remained unchanged, but the upheaval of war and revolution had changed much. Writing about Bihar County, an interwar sociologist declared: “The world war widened horizons, demonstrating that another life existed beyond the narrow and meager village life; importantly, the postwar economic upturn made possible the satisfaction of increased wants. [The rural masses] were not only better dressed and nourished, but purchased tractors and radios, in short, they settled into a new life in the realm of material and spiritual existence.”2 The new borders remained unchanged until the late 1930s, when Hungary, with the aid of Nazi Germany, pulled together much of what had once been northeastern Hungary. Some residents welcomed these changes, but many did not. For most locals, and especially for those caught on the wrong side of a border, the Second World War yielded a harvest of sorrow.3 Much of the region’s Jewish population perished in massacres or in Auschwitz; many of its ethnic Germans were later expelled or fled. The net effect of war, genocide, and other population movements greatly altered the demographic makeup of this area. The population of Klára Lövei’s hometown of Sziget, for example, was roughly 40 percent Jewish between the wars but less than 5 percent by the 1950s (today only a handful of Jews live there). Two of the states in the region—Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union—have since disappeared. But the borders created in 1920 and largely restored in 1945 are essentially the same today. Crossing them is no longer difficult, thanks in part

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to the European Union, although obstacles remain; villagers in one Ukrainian town have referred to the nearby border with Slovakia as “the last barbed wire fence in Europe.”4 Many of the towns described in this book likewise sit on borders, sometimes near border crossings and sometimes not. Here and there residents have embraced opportunities to reach across state boundaries, but since northeastern Hungary was more a “no place” than “someplace” (that is, a region like Transylvania or even Galicia), history has often provided little guidance. What did it mean to come from a “no place”? In 1924, not long after the war ended and new borders descended, the Hungarian writer Dezső Kosztolányi published the novel Skylark (Pacsirta in the original Hungarian). He had ties to some of the subjects of this book, having read Gvadányi with care and seen his poetry reviewed by Kaffka in the journal The West. Like them, he was from the provinces (although his hometown was in the south, not the northeast), and in Skylark he wrote about a small, provincial town at the turn of the twentieth century. The novel works on several levels, offering an insightful psychological portrait of its protagonist, an elderly genealogist; a meditation on the fraught relationship between parents and children; and a eulogy for a lost civilization. It is considered a classic in Hungary and has received favorable attention abroad. “Quiet, shattering, perfect,” is writer Deborah Eisenberg’s recent verdict on the novel.5 Skylark can also be read as an encapsulation of the small-town world described in the previous chapters. On the surface, Kosztolányi’s portrait of the provinces is devastating. The novel takes place in fictional Sárszeg, which literally means “mud corner” and was modeled on his hometown of Szabadka (today Subotica in Serbia). Kosztolányi once described Szabadka as a “poor, grey, boring, dusty, bored, comical, provincial town.”6 The novel contains brilliant sketches of everything from Hungarian cooking to second-class railroad carriages. Locals entertain themselves by attending the shabby, smoky theater; by engaging in all-night drinking binges; and by going to the train station to watch the express arrive from Budapest (as Kaffka did as a young woman in her provincial town).7 Their houses, Kosztolányi tells us, are filled with “tiny china dogs, silver-plated goblets, gold-plated angels, all the ghastly icons of provincial life.” Political opinions are ill-formed and uninformed. It is hard not to empathize with one character, a journalist and poet who longs to leave the town behind: “What a miserable wilderness this is,” he says. “How can people bear to live here? If only I could get to

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Budapest. I was there last week . . . Ah, Budapest!” Skylark, it seems, leaves no doubt about the meanings of the word “provincial.” But with Kosztolányi’s novel—as with provincial Hungary—things were never so simple. He lived in Budapest, and there he had witnessed the war, revolution, Romanian occupation, and conservative takeover. Like one of his characters in Skylark, Kosztolányi “knew that the world was a vale of tears.”8 Yet he also knew that our thoughts, actions, words, and hopes matter. So too do our origins, and he had a keen sense of where he had grown up. Before the war he had written: “The countryside is the land of miracles. Those who grow up there have wider horizons than those who awaken to life in a calm, wisely-ordered capital.”9 With some exaggeration, he credited the provinces with his development as a writer: “For me the mystery concealed in Hungarian small towns, the mystique concealed in provincial people, troubled my writing, and I feel myself a writer only to the extent that I received strength from the forces working in the provinces. There, where nothing happens, but only wine, cards, and deep, deep sadness, the life of the spirit is affected: it is not broadened but deepened; it becomes dense, intense, different.” Another Hungary has taken seriously Kosztolányi’s words, both good and ill, about the provinces. In it I have attempted to imagine the “wider horizons” of the people of the provinces and to “deepen” our understanding of their lives. I have tried to uncover places that gave rise to “dense, intense, different” ways of looking at the world. The goal has not been to imagine northeastern Hungary as a “land of miracles”—a peaceful, prelapsarian paradise that existed before the wars of the twentieth century. Habsburg Hungary was never that. But I have aimed to filter out the disdain and disappointment that permeates much writing about the provinces. I have tried to document the crises, tensions, and paradoxes that permeated the countryside, as well as the hopes and possibilities that the same conditions encouraged. A crucial argument in this book is that a close link exists between places and people. Like Kosztolányi, the eight men and women studied here “received strength from working in the provinces.” The eight (as I will call them) all came from the same part of the provinces: northeastern Hungary. But common origins do not necessarily mean shared experiences. The subjects of this collective biography are separated in time and space, by social status and occupation, by their faith and families, and by their economic views and political loyalties. Yet we can easily find areas where their lives intersected and overlapped. Geo-

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graphic proximity helped make this possible; five of the eight spent time in the same corner of Szatmár County, and many of them crossed paths in Budapest. It is nice to imagine an elderly Klára Lövei pausing on a wide avenue in Pest to admire the tobacco plants blooming on Vilmos Daróczi’s balcony. But if we dig deeper, more interesting connections among the eight can come to light. First, they were mobile. Across Europe and around the world, an unprecedented number of people were on the move during the nineteenth century. This alone should warn us against thinking of the Hungarian provinces in terms of immobility, of lives spent in one place. Seasonal work, trade, and marriages had long set people in motion. Even so, the eight were unusual in the distance and frequency of their travels. Dramatic cases of mobility pepper this book, with Lövei being hurled into a distant Austrian prison and Vásárhelyi blasting rocks on the borders of Serbia. But more prosaic reasons often set these men and women on the road, among them the search for work, the needs of family, and opportunities to study (as Schnitzer’s tour of Moravian and Hungarian yeshivas well illustrates). One trend seems clear: over time, the draw of Budapest was stronger and stronger. That Gvadányi might turn his back on the capital and Kästenbaum ignore it was hardly possible by the end of the nineteenth century, as the economic, cultural, and political weight of Budapest soared and railroads made it accessible even to remote regions and poorer travelers. At the same time, the eight were just as likely to move among provincial towns and villages, and they also spent time in the countryside as tourists, hunters, and summer guests. These multiple forms of mobility, I have argued, widened horizons, encouraged unscripted encounters, and subtly shifted mental maps. These men and women were also multilingual. Again, this made them exceptional (but hardly unique) in nineteenth-century Hungary. Once more there is a clear trend, toward acquisition and use of the Hungarian language. Examples of this can be found in the early nineteenth century with Vásárhelyi, whose pamphlets in German and Latin gave way to journalism in Hungarian, as well as later in the century, with Schnitzer, who willingly set aside his fluent German for a more halting Hungarian. But the eight sometimes moved in surprising directions, as when Lövei, who felt a strong Hungarian national loyalty, sat down to translate works from Polish and French. These men and women were not indifferent to the wider political meanings of language use, but they were not handcuffed by

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them either. A similar pattern holds with their names. As the Gvadányis (formerly the Italian Guadagnis), Daróczis (the Germanic Gottliebs), and Kaffkas (the Slavic Kafkas) signaled, more and more families were adopting Hungarian-sounding names. Politics motivated someone like Lövei, who tinkered with the last letter of her name, exchanging an aristocratic -y for an egalitarian -i during the 1848 Revolution. But the causes in other cases were more ambiguous, with social aspirations an important factor. Not all of the eight were willing to drop their given names, and several pragmatically used different names in different contexts; thus Kästenbaum could be Márton or Ráfáel and Vulcan Iosif or József. Changes in language use, it is worth underlining, do not always mean wholesale changes in culture.10 Emancipation also defined the lives of the men and women considered here. Emancipation was a Europe-wide phenomenon, albeit one with successes as well as failures.11 In Hungary the struggle for Jewish emancipation spanned the life of Rabbi Schnitzer, who was born in a kind of ghetto but helped achieve equal status for Jews. Women’s emancipation was less conspicuous in Hungary and showed fewer gains. The one exception was in education, as illustrated by the difference between Lövei’s three years of schooling and Kaffka’s completion of a teaching degree. The most consequential emancipation in nineteenth-century Hungary, that of the peasantry in 1848 from feudal dues and obligations, had an indirect but powerful impact. As historian Catherine Evtuhov has written about the Great Reforms in Russia, “Emancipation created a whole set of needs for mediation between the state and the peasantry—needs that were filled by the growing numbers of doctors, clergy, statisticians, agronomists, lawyers, and zemstvo politicians.”12 In Hungary, Vulcan tried to capture these peasants as readers, Daróczi offered them advice on farming, and Kaffka taught some of their children (her novel Colors and Years also shows the importance of peasants to small-town lawyers). Kaffka is a pivotal figure, and she made it her life’s work to expose how domination continued to work in the provinces through the gentry, church, and patriarchal families. This pointed to the limits of nineteenth-century emancipation but also to the possibilities for further change. As Kaffka’s efforts make plain, the protagonists of this book engaged in politics. This may be unsurprising, given that they were for the most part educated and outspoken. But we need to recall that northeastern Hungary was far from the centers of political power, that Hungary’s political system was never democratic or representative, that a narrow class of landowning

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families held the key positions on the state and county levels, and that town governments (outside Budapest) could be toothless. Most of the eight were broadly liberal, in the nineteenth-century sense of the term, although this label does not apply in every case. The issues that mattered to them also varied widely. What instead holds them together was their active participation in the realm of informal politics. Thus the importance attached here to discussions and debates that helped shape public opinion, to associations and clubs that quickened the pace of civic life, and to campaigns and causes that drew more people into the political process. But we also need to recognize that change usually came through local political coalitions, such as the Zemplén County noblemen and Jewish elites who worked together to launch Kästenbaum’s school, or the alliance of liberal Jewish and Christian town councilors who supported Jewish equality and civil marriage in Komárom. Then, as now, successful political engagement often meant working within as well as outside of existing structures of power (exclusion of Romanians from political power thus meant that Vulcan, in spite of his best efforts, was unable to build Romanian-language theater). In these small towns, politics were often personal. In Komárom Schnitzer could turn to his good friend, the local Calvinist bishop, to help lower antisemitic pressures. Like Schnitzer, the other men and women studied here had dense social networks of friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers, and fellow townspeople. These networks were displayed most spectacularly in the celebrations given to Schnitzer (to mark forty years of his rabbinate), Vulcan (forty years as editor of The Family), and Daróczi (twentyfive years of the Hungarian Tobacco News). But they can also be glimpsed in the dinners Vásárhelyi had at Count Széchenyi’s house and those Kaffka had with other writers in Budapest (that she was relegated to the wives’ table is no less illuminating). Some friendships were epistolary, as in the case of Klára Lövei and the actress Cornélia Prielle. These social networks helped the eight through difficult times, advanced their careers, and made possible events that otherwise might seem unlikely, such as the performance of Iosif Vulcan’s Romanian-language play in the local Hungarian theater. Familiarity can breed contempt, as the saying goes, but in small towns it can sometimes enhance feelings of trust, reciprocity, and mutual respect. The attributes just identified—mobile, multilingual, emancipated, politically engaged, and networked—are positive ones. A full accounting would also tally the eight’s shortcomings and blind spots, their prejudices and follies. And there are other common features we could identify. It may

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be more useful to identify a common denominator in these biographies, namely, that they allow us to see connections—the many relationships that shaped the lives of people in the provinces. These connections could be spatial (between the city and the countryside, Hungary and the wider world), sociological (men and women, Jews and Christians, Hungarians and Romanians), political (Austria and Hungary), and economic (producers and consumers). Northeastern Hungary was a remote region with a hierarchical society and many religious and ethnic groups. These conditions, however, seemed only to inspire the eight men and women to think about, create, and imagine manifold connections. At the same time, this book has attached great importance to place. I have argued that the experience of growing up in northeastern Hungary left a mark on the eight—that they took something substantial with them when they left. I have also identified moments when they cast a “backward glance” on their home region. This approach has emphasized the role of families, communities, natural landscapes, and local economies in shaping identities; less attention has been given to individual psychological factors or wider social processes, such as class formation. I have tried to understand people’s complex and ambiguous feelings about where they came from, and to see how they used the same places to focus their ideas on how to bring change to the provinces. For these eight men and women, the northeastern counties were both the world they had left and the inspiration for a world they wanted to live in. The eight were thus mapmakers, each in his or her own way. By this I mean they closely observed conditions in provincial Hungary and represented their findings, sometimes in literary form but often in speeches, sermons, newspaper articles, travelogues, and agricultural reports. The scale of their maps varied, from Kästenbaum’s narrow focus on Zemplén County to Schnitzer’s attempts to pull together his hometown, Hungary, Moravia, and Palestine. The many features on these maps are striking; schools, roads, county halls, and historical monuments interested these men and women, as did local cuisines, customs, and costumes. At the same time, there was much that they overlooked, and the lives of peasants were almost always viewed from a distance. Yet their imagined geographies can help us understand much about the nineteenth-century Hungarian provinces. They explained to whom this region “belonged,” and here we can see the mixed feelings of state patriotism, local pride, social status, and national loyalty that shaped the political outlooks of many people from the

Conclusion 239

provinces. In some ways the eight conform to what anthropologist Tomás Hofer has identified as the dominant “eastern” features of Hungarian national identity, with its traditional mistrust of the Habsburgs, attachment to the countryside, and strong sense of Hungarian exceptionalism.13 But this book has also highlighted the many moments when these categories did not apply: when the eight looked past linguistic, ethnic, religious, and social boundaries, as well as when local practices and language did not align with state-level actions and ideologies. The eight, I have also argued, were mythmakers. That is, they tried to think about how northeastern Hungary could be made anew. This encompassed everything from Vásárhelyi’s plans to tame its rivers to Lövei’s dreams for a girls’ school in her hometown. Contemporaries likewise took the performance of Vulcan’s play as an opportunity to rethink relations between Hungarians and Romanians. These “myths” did not add up to a coherent ideology; they were too local, contingent, and undeveloped to constitute a clear program of reform. But to focus only on outcomes would blind us to what were at the time bold acts of imagination. Writing about another “no place,” historian Kate Brown called it “a synthesis and fusion where unlikely partners have come together in explosive creativity.”14 The same could be applied to northeastern Hungary. At the risk of piling metaphors on metaphors, we might emphasize the region’s role as a laboratory for generating new ideas about the economy, national loyalties, and relations between Jews and Christians. These ideas could be conflicting and inconsistent, but they could also be inspiring and illuminating. Crucially, they acted as a powerful counterweight to the always-ready argument that the provinces were mired in irredeemable backwardness, lowering conflict, and suffocating politics. The afterlives of these men and women were no less interesting than their lives. The deaths of all eight received notice in the contemporary press. Several had elaborate memorial services, whereas others were buried more simply. Only three of them (Kästenbaum, Lövei, and Vulcan) have graves in northeastern Hungary. Gvadányi and Schnitzer lie in western Slovakia, where they spent the last part of their lives. The remaining three (Daróczi, Kaffka, and Vásárhelyi) were buried in Budapest. The eight have since been remembered in many ways. Much of this has involved traditional forms of commemoration. Already in the nineteenth century, plaques were placed on the school Kästenbaum founded and on the house in which Vásárhelyi was born (on centenary of his birth); Sziget erected a small monument to Klára Lövei on the grounds of the

240 Conclusion

Calvinist church. Similar markers continue to appear even today: in 2003 a plaque was unveiled on the site of a school in Budapest where Kaffka taught. Statues of the eight have also risen. Most famously, the Hungarian city of Szeged erected a large bronze statue of Vásárhelyi not long after a great flood on the Tisza had devastated the town. Fittingly, the statue sits on Széchenyi Square, and it shows the engineer directing flood protection work with an outstretched arm; the statue’s base holds a doughty male digger with a shovel and wheelbarrow, as well as a mother and child resting on sheaves of wheat to show what is being protected. Two decades after her death, Margit Kaffka also received a statue, albeit a quieter one, placed on her grave and showing the writer with hands turned in supplication. As a modernist writer, Kaffka has also enjoyed the longest literary afterlife, with scholarly studies and translations of her work published frequently since her death. The second most studied figure is likely Vásárhelyi, whose work continues to inspire the more specialized field of the history of engineering. These two, along with Vulcan, have even appeared on stamps. The remainder have received less attention, philatelic or otherwise. In some cases, we can speak of a nationalization of memory. This is perhaps clearest with Vásárhelyi. When he died in 1846, he was buried in a cemetery in Buda, where a gravestone remembered him as “the best husband and father.” In 1971, however, on the 125th anniversary of his death, Vásárhelyi was reburied in the Kerepesi Street cemetery in Pest, Hungary’s national pantheon. The site includes a monumental statue, in which the engineer kneels, one hand clutching a telescope and the other balled into a determined fist. Lines of poetry from his contemporary M ­ ihály Vörösmarty link him to the distant Tisza River, and block letters cut in high relief name him “the great water engineer of the Reform Era.” Curiously, the original gravestone has been incorporated into this ensemble, but the strongly Hungarian national context has overshadowed its emphasis on family ties. A similar process is at work in Oradea, in Romania. The building in which Iosif Vulcan spent his final years has been turned into a charming house museum, with original furniture, old newspapers, grainy photographs, and manuscripts in his hand.15 The story the museum tells is a decidedly Romanian national one; a plaque outside calls Vulcan “a great animator of Romanian culture.” His many contributions to the civic life of the surrounding town are much harder to see. Other forces have played with the afterlives of the eight. The leaders of the town of Rudabánya installed a portrait bust of Gvadányi in

Conclusion 241

1925, to mark the bicentennial of his birth there (its sculptor also worked on the Vásárhelyi statue in Szeged). In the 1950s, however, the town’s new communist leaders declared that they wanted to get rid of “this exploiter of the people, this filthy count.”16 Fortunately, the statue was spared, although it was moved from its prominent position in front of the Roman Catholic church (Gvadányi was Roman Catholic), to a less visible site near the Calvinist church, where it remains today. Around the same time the communist authorities in the Czechoslovak town of Spišské ­Vlachy removed the Hungarian-language plaque from the house in which Vásárhelyi had been born (whether it was because he was Hungarian or “bourgeois” is not known). Less openly ideological decisions led to other acts of removal and destruction. In the 1970s, as its population and traffic grew, Komárno (then in Czechoslovakia) widened the main road leading to Bratislava. One casualty of this development was the old Jewish cemetery, in which Rabbi Schnitzer was buried and which now shrank by one-third, forcing the transfer of 858 graves. The cemetery now sits, forlornly, between concrete apartment blocks and an elevated section of the highway. More encouraging signs have appeared in recent years. A portrait bust of Kaffka has been installed in her Romanian hometown. In the same spirit, Vásárhelyi’s Slovakian hometown has installed a bilingual S­ lovak-Hungarian plaque to commemorate his birth. In Komárno, also in Slovakia, the Jewish community has opened the Ármin Schnitzer Micro-Museum, which has exhibits dedicated to Jewish culture and everyday life, to photographs of the community today, and to the deportation of the town’s Jews in 1944.17 New media have given new life even to Ráfáel Kästenbaum, whose grave disappeared long ago and whose school building now holds a glum-looking “entrepreneurial center” supported by the European Union. A cheerier development can be found online, where the descendants of Zemplén Jews have translated the 1896 history of the Kästenbaum school into English and posted information on other Jews from the region.18 Even Daróczi has had a second life. The Hungarian Tobacco News, which he founded and which ceased publication in 1944, began again in the 1950s and continued to appear in magazine format through the early twenty-first century. He would also have welcomed the new online Hungarian tobacco museum, which proudly displays old cigarette packages, cigar boxes, and rolling papers (where else can one see the communist-era “Worker” cigarettes or “Plan” rolling papers?).19

242 Conclusion

These rich afterlives reflect the fullness of the lives described in earlier chapters. Through a collective biography, I have tried to tell a different story about nineteenth-century Hungary. My aim has not been to replace one master narrative about the Hungarian past (the provinces as “backward” sites of antisemitism and national antagonism) with another (the provinces as generators of economic innovations and a nascent multiculturalism). If I have sometimes emphasized the brighter features of the provinces, it has been in response to history writing that has too often presented them in a dim light. The larger goal of this work has not been to rediscover a lost paradise, “the land of miracles” in Kosztolányi’s happy phrase. In a very different historical work, Simon Schama wrote that his book was not about “what we have lost, it is an exploration of what we may yet find.”20 The same hope has guided me in Another Hungary. This book is an invitation to look at other provincial lives, and to look for the unexamined and unexpected in unlikely places.

Notes

Introduction 1.  Dave Kehr, “Tony Curtis, Hollywood Leading Man Dies at 85,” New York Times, Sep. 20, 2010, www.nytimes.com (accessed Aug. 10, 2011). 2.  Gregor von Rezzori, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in Five Stories, trans. Joachim Neugroschel and Gregor von Rezzori (New York: New York Review Books, 2008), 6. 3.  Dezső Kosztolányi, Skylark, intro. Péter Esterházy, trans. Richard Aczel (New York: New York Review Books, 1993), 188. 4.  Krista Cowman, “Collective Biography,” in Research Methods for History, ed. Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 83–101, makes the case for the study of “linked lives.” 5.  David Nasaw, “Historians and Biography: Introduction,” American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (2009): 573. 6.  Lois W. Banner, “Biography as History,” American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (2009), 579. My thinking about the possibilities of biography has been influenced by many works, including Mary Gluck, George Lukács and His Generation, 1900–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); Deborah R. Coen, Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Mark Cornwall, The Devil’s Wall: The Nationalist Youth Mission of Heinz Rutha (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); György Kövér, Biográfia és társadalomtörténet (Budapest: Osiris, 2014), esp. 17–53, 373–87. 7.  On periodization: David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xiii–xv; György Kövér, “Inactive Transformation: Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to World War I,” in Social History of Hungary: From the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. Gábor Gyáni, György Kövér, and Tibor Valuch, trans. Mario Fenyo (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2004), 26–36.

244  Notes to Introduction

8. Some of the groups I have missed appear in Kövér’s masterful Biográfia és társadalomtörténet. 9.  Describing a similar group in Russia, Catherine Evtuhov calls them the “purveyors of the provinces.” Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 15. 10.  Kövér, “Inactive Transformation,” 76. 11.  See the exemplary studies: Alice Freifeld, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848–1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848– 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); as well as the synthesis in Gary B. Cohen, “Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Civil Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914,” Central European History 40, no. 2 (2007): 241–78. 12. Some examples: the influential Hungarian-language Great Pallas Encyclopedia, published in sixteen volumes between 1893 and 1897, contains articles on the “Northeastern Dialectical Region” and “Northeastern Railway,” which describe overlapping but not identical areas. A Pallas nagy lexikona, vol. 6: Elektromos hal—Fék (Budapest: Pallas, 1894), 493–94. Aladár György, ed., A föld és népei. Népszerű földrajzi és népismei kézikönyv, vol. 5: Magyarország, ed. Aladár György (Budapest: Franklin-Társulat, 1905), 441, equated “The Northeastern Highlands” with the valleys of the Tisza River and its tributaries. In an interwar study, geographer Jenő Cholnoky identified “Northeastern Upper Hungary.” Although Cholnoky could distinguish the region’s western border (the Tapoly or Top’la River, which matches the boundaries I have described), he struggled to find an eastern boundary in the Carpathians. Cholnoky, Magyarország földrajza (Budapest: Danubia, 1929), 113–14. 13.  I have followed the lead of scholars such as László Szabolcs Gulyás, who locates northeastern Hungary’s western border on the “Fülek-Pásztó-Hatvan line” and its southern border on the “Várad-Túr-Tiszavarsány line” (the northern and eastern borders were identical with the kingdom’s borders). Gulyás reminds us that northeastern Hungary “never existed as an autonomous and unified region.” László Szabolcs Gulyás, “Megjegyzések az északkelet-­magyarországi mezővárosok középkori fejlődésének jellemzőihez,” Századok 147, no. 2 (2013): 319. 14.  Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 15.  Kálmán Mikszáth, Szent Péter esernyője (Budapest: Révai, 1903), 82. 16. The region possessed a variety of settlements, including market towns, mining towns, royal free towns, and ecclesiastical towns. Gulyás, “Megjegyzések az északkeletmagyarországi mezővárosok,” 319–20. 17.  Martin v. Schwartner, Statistik des Königreichs Ungern, vol. 1 (Ofen: Königl. Universitäts Schriften, 1809), 165. 18.  John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (London: John Murray, 1850), 2: 250. 19.  Endre Ady, “Levelek a hazátlanságból,“ in Ady Endre publicisztikai írásai, ed. Erzsébet Vezér, vol. 3 (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1977), 412; on emigration: Kövér, “Inactive Transformation,” 56–58.

Notes to Introduction  245

20.  R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 236. 21.  Johann v. Csaplovics, Gemälde von Ungern (Pest: Hartleben, 1829), 201. 22.  On Romanian peasants: Gail Kligman, The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). On Jewish communities: Tamás Csíki, Városi zsidóság Északkelet- és Kelet-Magyarországon (Budapest: Osiris, 1999). On ethnic boundaries: Patrik Tátrai, Az etnikai térszerkezet változásai a t­ örténeti Szatmárban (Budapest: MTA Földrajztudományi Kutatóintézet, 2010). On symbolic geography: Elena Mannová, “Southern Slovakia as an Imagined Territory,” in Frontiers, Regions and Identities in Europe, ed. Steven G. Ellis and Raingard Eßer, with Jean-François Berdah and Miloš Řezník (Pisa: Plus-Pisa University Press, 2009), 185–204. The individual chapters indicate further scholarship on the region. 23.  For classic accounts of this view: István Bibó, “The Misery of Small European States,” in Bibó, Democracy, Revolution, Self-Determination: Selected Writings, ed. Károly Nagy, trans. András Boros-Kazai (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1991), 13–86; Jenő Szűcs, “Three Historical Regions of Europe (An Outline),” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29, nos. 2–4 (1983): 131–184. For nuanced approaches to Hungarian “backwardness”: Andrew Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945 (Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press, 1982); László Kontler, A History of Hungary (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Gyáni, Kövér, and Valuch, Social History of Hungary. 24.  See especially Katherine Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Gyáni, Kövér, and Valuch, Social History of Hungary; András Gergely, Magyarország története a 19. században (Budapest: Osiris, 2003). 25. Kontler, A History of Hungary, 311. 26.  See the important study Zoltán Tóth, “Die kulturelle Integration der ungarischen Ethnika in einer Kleinstadt um die Jahrhundertwende,“ in Etudes historiques hongroises 1990, ed. Ferenc Glatz, vol. 2: Ethnicity and Society in Hungary (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 191–223. I have also been guided by recent work on the Austrian half of the Monarchy: Pieter Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). 27.  The literature on nationalism in Hungary is vast. Works that have shaped this book include Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers; Viktor Karády, “Egyenlőtlen elmagyarosodás, avagy hogyan vált Magyarország magyar nyelvű országgá?” Századvég 2 (1990): 5–37; László Szarka, “Magyarosodás és magyarosítás a felső-magyarországi szlovák régióban a kiegyezés korában,” in Polgárosodás Közép-Európában, ed. Éva Somogyi (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi ­Intézet, 1991), 35–46; Sorin Mitu, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania, trans. ­Sorana Cornea (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001); Joachim von Puttkamer, “Kein europäischer Sonderfall: Ungarns Nationalitätenproblem im. 19. Jahrhundert und die j­üngere Nationalismusforschung,” in Das Ungarnbild der deutschen Historiographie, ed. Márta Fata (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2004), 84–98; Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt,

246  Notes to Introduction and Chapter 1

Jon Fox, and Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 28.  János Demény, ed., Béla Bartók Letters, trans. Péter Balabán et al. (London: Faber & Faber, 1971), 113. 29.  Michael K. Silber, “The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition,” in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 23–84; Viktor Karády, Zsidóság, modernizáció, polgárosodás. Tanulmányok (Budapest: Cserépfalvi Kiadó, 1997); János Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon: Politikai eszmetörténet (Budapest: Osiris, 2001); Paul Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–1944 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). 30. Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province, 21. 31.  Joseph Roth, The Emperor’s Tomb, trans. John Hoare (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1984), 17. 32.  On “imagined geography”: Edith W. Clowes, Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 4–5, who usefully combines Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” with Edward Said’s “imaginative geographies.” See Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006), 6–7; Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 49–73. 33. Said, Orientalism, 55. 34.  Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 7. Other works that have inspired me include Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization in the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); László Kürti, The Remote Borderland: Transylvania in the Hungarian Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Ábraham Barna, “Szlovákok és szlovjákok: a nemzet határai,” Limes 16, no. 3 (2003): 55–66; Maciej Janowski, Constantin Iordachi, and Balázs Trencsényi, “Research Dossier: Symbolic Geographies,” East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre-Est 35, nos. 1–2 (2005): 5–58; David Blackbourn and James Retallack, eds., Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Places: German-­Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 35.  Jack R. Dukes and Joachim Remak, eds., Another Germany: A Reconsideration of the Imperial Era (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988), x.

Chapter 1 1.  József Kármán, “The Embellishment of the Nation,” in Margaret C. Ives, Enlightenment and National Revival: Patterns of Interplay and Paradox in Late 18th Century Hungary (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1979), 216–17. 2. József Gvadányi, A mostan folyo ország gyűlésének satyrico criticé való leírása . . . (Leipzig: Wéber Simon Péter, 1791), 63, mek.oszk.hu/10600/10603. Unless noted, all translations of Gvadányi’s writing are mine. When possible, I have labored to reproduce Gvadányi’s agile, twelve-syllable, rhyming verses. 3.  “Gvadagni vagy Gvadanyi (Jósef. Gróf ),” in Jean-Baptiste Lavocat, Lavocat His-

Notes to Chapter 1  247

toriai Dictionariuma, ed. and trans. Sámuel Mindszenti, vol. 3 (Komárom: Weinmüller, 1795), 427. 4. József Gvadányi, Verses levelezés, a’ mellyet folytatott Gróf Gvadányi József Magyar Lovas Generális Nemes Fábián Juliánnával (Pozsony: Wéber Simon Péter, 1798), 11–12. 5. “1729. évi XXII. törvénycikk. A vadászat és madarászat szabályozásáról,” 1000 év törvényei, CompLex Kiadó Kft. 1000 év törvényei internetes adatbázis, http://www.1000ev.hu. 6.  Kármán, “The Embellishment of the Nation,” 229. 7. Ibid., 216, 220. 8.  One literary example from among many: in Miklós Bánffy’s great historical novel from 1934, They Were Counted, hunting symbolizes the provincial nobility’s limited horizons. “As far as most of the upper classes were concerned, politics were of little importance, for there were plenty of other things that interested them more. There were, for instance, the spring racing season, partridge shooting in the late summer, deer-culling in September and pheasant shoots as winter approached.” Miklós Bánffy, They Were Counted, trans. Patrick Thursfield and Kathy Bánffy-Jelen (London: Arcadia, 1999), 314. 9.  On the nobility’s collective mentality: Zoltán Tóth, “A rendi norma és a ‘keresztyén polgárisodás,’” Századvég 2–3 (1991): 75–130; Gábor Vermes, “Eighteenth-Century Hungary: Traditionalism and the Dawn of Modernity,” Austrian History Yearbook 37 (2006): 121–40; Vermes, Kulturális változások sodrában. Magyarország 1711 és 1848 között (Budapest: Balassi, 2011). On politics: István M. Szijártó, Nemesi társadalom és politika. Tanulmányok a 18. századi magyar rendiségről (Budapest: Universitas, 2006); Peter Schimert, “The Early Modern Hungarian Nobility,” in The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, vol. 2: Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, ed. H. M. Scott, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 210–48; R. J. W. Evans, “The Nobility in Hungary in the Eighteenth Century,” in Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities, 249–65. 10.  Schimert, “The Early Modern Hungarian Nobility,” 223. For the number of counties, which does not include Transylvania (with eleven) or Croatia (seven): Antal Szántay, “Regionális igazgatás a 18. századi Magyarországon,” Történelmi Szemle 50, no. 3 (2008): 314–19. 11.  On Gvadányi: Károly Széchy, Gróf Gvadányi József, 1725–1801 (Budapest: FranklinTársulat, 1894); Antal Szerb, Magyar irodalomtörténet, 5th ed. (Budapest: Magvető, 1972), 218–20; Zoltán Csaba, Gvadányi József élete és munkái (Miskolc: Megyei Könyvtár, 1975); Viktor Julow, “Gvadányi József,” in József Gvadányi, Egy falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása. Rontó Pál, ed. Julow (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1975), 7–71; Tibor Klaniczay, ed., A History of Hungarian Literature (Budapest: Corvina, 1982), 134; Ferenc Bíró, “Egy régi jó konzervatív,” Új irás 29, no. 9 (1989): 97–105. 12.  Bíró, “Egy régi jó konzervatív,” 98. 13.  Julow, “Gvadányi József,” 10. 14.  My use of the term literary map, meaning an imaginative geography that emerges from fictional narratives, follows Israel Bartov, “Imagined Geography: The Shtetl, Myth, and Reality,” in The Shtetl: New Interpretations, ed. Steven A. Katz (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 179–92. 15. “1687. évi XXVIII. törvénycikk,” 1000 év törvényei, http://www.1000ev.hu.

248  Notes to Chapter 1

16. Széchy, Gróf Gvadányi József, 66, 76, 122; also see László Négyesy, “Bevezetés,” in Gróf Gvadányi József és Fazekas Mihály, ed. Négyesy (Budapest: Franklin-Társulat, 1904), 7–11; Szerb, Magyar irodalomtörténet, 220. 17.  Schimert, “The Early Modern Hungarian Nobility,” 237. 18.  Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, Urbaria et Conscriptiones, Regestrata. UC 69: 25, “Conscriptio,” Dec. 17, 1720, www.arcanum.hu/mol. 19.  József Gvadányi, Únalmas órákban vagy-is a’ téli hoszszú estvéken való időtöltés (Pozsony: Wéber Simon Péter, 1795), 144. 20. Endre Pantó et al., eds., Rudabánya ércbányászata (Budapest: Országos Magyar Bányászati és Kohászati Egyesület, 1957), 25–30. 21.  Dénes Kovács, Gróf Gvadányi József élete és munkái (Budapest: Neuwald Illés, 1884), 6. Nearly two centuries later, about 40 percent of children born in Borsod County (and in Hungary as a whole) still died in infancy: A magyar korona országainak halandósági ­táblázata az 1900. évi népszámlálási és az 1900. és 1901. évi népmozgalmi adatok alapján, ed. A Magyar Kir. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1906), 260. 22. Kovács, Gróf Gvadányi József élete és munkái, 7–8. 23. Vermes, Kulturális változások sodrában, 51–54. On the “mediocre knowledge of Latin displayed by lesser noblemen, who muddled the simplest of Latin words”: István György Tóth, Literacy and Written Culture in Early Modern Central Europe, trans. Tünde Vajda and Miklós Bodóczky (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), 130–40. 24.  József Gvadányi, Pöstényi Förödés a’ mellyet Egy Magyar Lovas Ezeredbül való százados az ottan történt mulatságos dolgokkal ([Pozsony: Wéber Simon Péter], 1787), 11. 25. Széchy, Gróf Gvadányi József, 114–15. 26.  Méltóságos gróf Gvadányi József magyar Lovas Generálisnak Donits Andráshoz irt levelei válaszaikkal (Nagy-Szombat: Wachter Bódog, 1834), 45–46. 27. Kovács, Gróf Gvadányi József élete és munkái, 17. Gvadányi encouraged other Hungarian women to do the same in A’ nemes magyar dámákhoz és kis aszszonyokhoz szólló versek . . . (Pozsony: Wéber Simon Péter, 1790). 28. Széchy, Gróf Gvadányi József, 292. 29. He wrote “Author nem vagyok,” using the English word: Gvadányi, Únalmas órákban, 207. 30.  János Arany, Arany János összes művei, ed. Dezső Keresztury, vol. 11: Prózai művek 2, 1860–1882 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1968), 484–95. 31. Gvadányi, Pöstényi Förödés, 33. 32. Csaba, Gvadányi József élete és munkái, 47. 33.  Dezső Kosztolányi, Látjátok feleim (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1976), 78. 34.  See Gvadányi’s letters from January and February 1789 to József Péczeli in Széchy, Gróf Gvadányi József, 292–94; also Csaba, Gvadányi József élete és munkái, 6. 35. Gvadányi, Únalmas órákban, 3–39. 36.  Julow, “Gvadányi József,” 40–42. 37.  Gregor von Berzeviczy, Ungarns Industrie und Commerz (Weimar: Gädicke, 1802), 36–37. 38. Miklós Kamody, Észak-Magyarország hírközlésének története (Miskolc: Borsodi

Notes to Chapter 1  249

­Nyomda, 1985), 45–46; Andrew Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 33. 39.  Robert Townson, Travels in Hungary with a Short Account of Vienna in the Year 1793 (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797), 195–96. 40.  On building materials: Johann v. Csaplovics, Gemälde von Ungern (Pest: Hartleben, 1829), 148. 41.  József Gvadányi, Egy falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása. Rontó Pál, ed. Viktor Julow (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1975), 113. 42. In 1787 Gvadányi’s Borsod County had 10,367 noblemen and Zajtai’s Szatmár County 9,549, whereas Pest County in the center of the kingdom had just 2,956; Gusztáv Thirring, Magyarország népessége II. József korában (Budapest: A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Kiadása, 1938), 57–60. Historian Henrik Marczali explained that “the greatest proportion of nobles was to be found in those Magyar-speaking counties which had escaped the Turkish conquest.” Marczali, Hungary in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 226. 43.  Zita Horváth, “Örökös és szabadmenetelű jobbágyok a 18. századi Magyarországon,” Századok 143, no. 5 (2009): 1086–95. 44. Marczali, Hungary in the Eighteenth Century, 188. 45. Gvadányi, Egy falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása, 89. 46. Ibid., 97. 47.  In the town of Mátészalka (Szatmár County), for example, roughly 70 percent of its 790 houses still had thatched roofs in 1900. Only the drainage of a nearby wetlands and the disappearance of reeds, a traditional roofing material, led to the wider use of shingles and roof tiles; Péter Takács, “Mátészalka története 1850–től 1945-ig,” in Mátészalka története, ed. Zoltán Ujváry (Debrecen: Ethnica, 1992), 232. 48.  László Kósa, “Hét szilvafa árnyékában”: A nemesség alsó rétegének élete és mentalitása a rendi társadalom utolsó évtizedeiben Magyarországon (Budapest: Osiris, 2001), 78–108; Marc­zali, Hungary in the Eighteenth Century, 69, 137. On eyeglasses: Tóth, Literacy and Written Culture, 111–17. On the peasant inventory: Péter Hanák, ed., Hogyan éltek elődiek? (Budapest: Gondolat, 1980), 108. 49.  John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (London: John Murray, 1850), 1: 86. 50. Berzeviczy, Ungarns Industrie, 10. 51. Gvadányi, Egy falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása, 104. 52. Ives, Enlightenment and National Revival, 51–58; Gvadányi, Egy falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása, 130–72; for a similar judgment on the virtues of “serene” villages and “corrupt” cities: Gvadányi, Únalmas órákban, 144–45. 53. Gvadányi, Egy falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása, 85. 54. Ibid., 190. 55. Ibid., 204. 56. Ibid., 199. 57.  Patrik Tátrai, Az etnikai térszerkezet változásai a történeti Szatmárban (Budapest: MTA Földrajztudományi Kutatóintézet, 2010), 40–43, 48.

250  Notes to Chapter 1

58.  Antal Szirmay, Szathmár Vármegye fekvése, történetei, és polgári esmérete, vol. 1 (Buda: A’ Kir. Magyar Universitás, 1809), 256. 59. Gvadányi, A mostan folyo ország gyűlésének satyrico criticé való leírása, 168; also see Bíró, “Egy régi jó konzervatív,” 100. 60. Gvadányi, A mostan folyo ország gyűlésének satyrico criticé való leírása, 167. “Seller of lemons” may be a derogatory reference to Italians, something one might not expect from Gvadányi. “Magyar” means an ethnic Hungarian. 61. Ives, Enlightenment, 140. 62.  Julow, “Gvadányi József,” 28–30. 63.  Bíró, “Egy régi jó konzervatív,” 100–103. 64. Gvadányi, Egy falusi nótáriusnak budai utazása, 144–47. Gvadányi spelled the Serbian words phonetically, using Hungarian orthography. 65. Gvadányi, A mostan folyo ország gyűlésének satyrico criticé való leírása, 112–15. 66.  János Péntek, “Román eredetű elemek Gvadányi munkáiban,” Nyelv- és Irodalomtu­ dományi Közlemények 11, no. 1 (1967): 13–23. 67.  Gvadányi also wrote, in a 1788 letter, “If in any corner of our homeland someone publishes a good Hungarian work (but not about theology), I would happily purchase it.” His letters are reprinted in Széchy, Gróf Gvadányi József, 300, 309. 68. Gvadányi, A mostan folyo ország gyűlésének satyrico criticé való leírása, 153. 69. Thirring, Magyarország népessége, 50–54, 121–22. 70. Gvadányi, Pöstényi Förödés, 30. 71.  József Gvadányi, Rontó Pálnak egy Magyar lovas Köz-Katonának és Gróf Bernyovszki Móritznak életek’, . . . (Pozsony: Wéber Simon Péter, 1793), 22–25. 72.  Bíró, “Egy régi jó konzervatív,” 102; Julow, “Gvadányi József,” 20–21. 73. “Hungary,” The Times (London), Aug. 4, 1790, 3. 74.  István Szijártó, “The Diet: The Estates and the Parliament of Hungary, 1708–1792,” in Gerhard Ammerer et al., Bündnispartner und Konkurrenten des Landesfürsten? Die Stände in der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2007), 119–39. 75.  Négyesy, “Bevezetés,” 48. 76.  Julow, “Gvadányi József,” 58. 77. Gvadányi, A mostan folyo ország gyűlésének satyrico criticé való leírása, 29. 78. Ibid., 7. 79.  László Kósa, “The Age of Emergent Bourgeois Society, from the Late 18th Century to 1920. I. Everyday Culture,” in A Cultural History of Hungary in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. László Kósa, trans. Tim Wilkinson (Budapest: Corvina, 2000), 46. 80.  Evans, “The Nobility in Hungary in the Eighteenth Century,” 257. On family networks: Szijártó, Nemesi társadalom és politika, esp. 19–37. On the Diet: István M. Szijártó, A diéta. A magyar rendek és országgyűlés 1708–1792, 2nd ed. (Keszthely: Balaton Akadémia Kiadó, 2010), 129–34, 186–209. 81.  G. F. Cushing, “Books and Readers in 18th-Century Hungary,” Slavonic and East European Review 47, no. 108 (1969): 57–77; Domokos Kosáry, Művelődés a XVIII. századi Magyarországon (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980), 129–37.

Notes to Chapter 1  251

82. Georg von Gyurikovits, “Geschichte der Buchdruckereyen in der königl. freyen Stadt Preßburg,” Archiv für Geographie, Historie, Staats- und Kriegskunde, Mar. 30, 1827, 222. 83.  Bíró, “Egy régi jó konzervatív,” 104. 84. Tóth, Literacy and Written Culture, 123–30. 85. Gvadányi, Rontó Pálnak, iv. Gvadányi feared that the poem’s scenes of battle and bloodshed might otherwise deter female readers. He made a nearly identical appeal in the preface to his biography of Charles XII, claiming that his book would be “both more beautiful and more useful than Pamela, Candide, and other such sentimental books.” József Gvadányi, Tizen- tizenkettődik Károly’ Svétzia ország’ királlyának . . . (Pressburg: Wéber Simon Péter, 1792), vi. 86.  Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Levéltár, Gróf József Gvadányi to Gróf Fekete Jánosnak, n.d. [1794]. 87. Gvadányi, Verses levelezés, 4; also see Gvadányi, Únalmas órákban, 154–56. 88. Tóth, Literacy and Written Culture, 118. 89.  Méltóságos gróf Gvadányi József magyar Lovas Generálisnak Donits Andráshoz irt ­levelei, 59. 90. Gvadányi, Rontó Pálnak, 39. 91. Ibid., 46. 92.  On Locke and Hungarian educational reform: Kosáry, Művelődés, 447–450. 93.  András Gergely and János Veliky, “A politikai közvelemény fogalma Magyarországon a XIX. század közepén,” Magyar Történelmi Tanulmányok 7 (1974), 5–42; Philip Nord, “Introduction,” in Civil Society Before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2000), xiii–xxii. 94. Csaba, Gvadányi József élete és munkái, 55. 95. Gvadányi, Únalmas órákban, 203; also see Kovács, Gróf Gvadányi József élete és munkái, 17. 96. “Magyar-Ország,” Magyar Hirmondó, Jan. 5, 1802, 20. 97.  Magyar Kurir, Feb. 19, 1802, 236–37. 98.  Ibid., 240. 99.  Négyesy, “Bevezetés,” 64. 100.  Sándor Petőfi, “Üti levelek Kerényi Frigyeshez,” in Petőfi Sándor összes prózai művei és levelezése, ed. András Martinkó (Budapest: Magyar Helikon, 1967), 371. 101. Kosztolányi, Látjátok feleim, 79. 102.  My thinking about myths draws on Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012). Barthes’s attention to how myths can distort and impoverish complex realities is significant, as is his demonstration of how many forms myth can take. My use of the term myth also signals a kinship to scholarship that has examined how the meanings attached to numerous regions are constructed and contested. A good definition of myth comes from Mary Fulbrook: “At their most basic, myths are stories which are not necessarily true, nor even believed to be true, but which have symbolic power. They are constantly repeated, often re-enacted. Myths are, in other words, essentially propagated for their effect rather than their truth value.” Fulbrook,

252  Notes to Chapters 1 and 2

“Myth-Making and National Identity: The Case of the GDR,” in Myths and Nationhood, ed. Geoffrey Hosking and George Schöpflin (London: Hurst, 1997), 73. 103.  József Gvadányi, A’ falusi nótáriusnak elmélkedései betegsége, halála, és testamentoma (Pozsony, Wéber Simon Péter, 1796), 80, www.mek.hu.

Chapter 2 1. “Circulare,” Anhang zur Wiener Zeitung, no. 82 (1806): 5105–6. 2.  Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén Megyei Levéltár, Sátoraljaújhelyi Fióklevéltár (hereafter SFL) IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897, p. 1. 3.  “Country Statistical Profile: Hungary,” OECD iLibrary, http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org /economics/country-statistical-profile-hungary-2011_csp-hun-table-2011-1-en (accessed Mar. 13, 2013). 4.  “Orbán: EU Should Not Build Its Future on Immigration,” Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, http://ethicsculture.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive .html/ (accessed Mar. 13, 2013). 5.  On immigration: Imre Wellmann, “Die erste Epoche der Neubesiedlung Ungarns nach der Turkenzeit (1711–1761),” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum 26, no. 3–4 (1980): 242–307. Population figures: Zita Horváth, “Örökös és szabadmenetelű jobbágyok a 18. századi Magyarországon,” Századok 143, no. 5 (2009): 1071. Reasons for the success of foreign merchants: Traian Stoianovich, “The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant,” Journal of Economic History 20, no. 2 (1960): 265–67. 6.  Henry Marczali, Hungary in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 211. 7.  Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfű, Magyar történet, vol. 4, 2nd ed. (Budapest: Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1935), 442. 8. Andrew C. Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 10; László Kontler, A History of Hungary: Millennium in Central Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 192–94; Horst Haselsteiner, “Cooperation and Confrontation Between Rulers and the Noble Estates, 1711–1790,” in A History of Hungary, ed. Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák, and Tibor Frank (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 142–43. 9.  I have used the 1825 version of the will. It and an 1829 copy are located in SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897. The latter was reprinted in Izsák Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai. Életrajz,” Első Magyar-Izraelita Naptár és Évkönyv 2 (1861): 63–77, as well as in German translation as “Rafael Kästenbaum und seine Stiftungen,” Ben-Chananja 3, no. 8 (1861): 380–85. Copies of the will can also be found in Sándor Knopfler, A sátoraljaújhelyi statusquo izr. anyahitközség népiskolájának története (Sátoralja-Ujhely: Landesmann Miksa, 1896), and János Kőbányai, ed., Zsidó reformkor (Budapest: Múlt és Jővő, 2000), 164–77. 10.  Rosenmeyer notes that Kästenbaum used several names: Jews knew him as Refoel Plechesits (from his adopted village), Christians called him Márton Kästenbaum. I have used the name that appears in his will, Ráfáel Kästenbaum. 11.  SFL IV. 1005/f. Nemtelenek és zsidó bérlők összeirása. 1792–1822. 1. doboz. Ezen Megye-

Notes to Chapter 2  253

béli Zsidóknak őssze irássa Conscriptziója a Gaál-Szétsi Járás részéről. November 21, 1806. This census lists Kästenbaum’s age as fifty-six, whereas reports of his death in 1829 gave his age as eighty. See “Magyar-Ország,” Magyar Kurir, Feb. 23, 1830, 126. 12.  For the eighteenth-century context: Rachel Manekin, “Galicia,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. David Hundert Gershon (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2008), 1: 560–67; Michael K. Silber, “Hungary before 1918,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia, 1: 770–74; Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 14–36. 13.  The Memoirs of Ber of Bolechow (1723–1805), ed. and trans. M. Vishnitzer (London: Oxford University Press, 1922). 14.  Silber, “Hungary before 1918,” 1: 771. 15.  For contemporary fears: Martin v. Schwartner, Statistik des Königreichs Ungern, vol. 1 (Ofen: Königl. Universitäts Schriften, 1809), 142–47; also see Walter Pietsch, “A zsidók bevándorlása Galíciából és a magyarországi zsidóság,” Valóság 31, no. 11 (1988): 46–69. 16.  SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897, p. 5. 17.  Matthiae Bel, Compendium Hungariae Geographicum, 3rd ed. (Posonii: Joannis Michaelis Landerer, 1779), 200–201. 18.  Elek Fényes, Magyarország leirása (Pest: Beimel, 1847), 2: 303–4. 19.  Silber, “Hungary before 1918,” 1: 772; also see Michael Laurence Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 31–34. 20.  Martin Kukučín, Seven Slovak Stories, trans. Norma Leigh Rudinsky (Cleveland: Slovak Institute, 1980), 22–23. 21.  Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai,” 63. 22.  “Rafael Kästenbaum und seine Stiftungen,” 381. 23. Tamás Dobszay, “A művelődés és a műveltség polgárosodása,” in Magyarország ­története a 19. században, ed. András Gergely (Budapest: Osiris, 2003), 155. 24. Csaba Csorba, Zemplén vármegye katonai leírása (1780–as évek) (Miskolc: BAZ Megyei Levéltár, 1990), ii–iv, 47. 25.  SFL IV. 1005/f. Nemtelenek és zsidó bérlők összeirása. 1792–1822. 1. doboz. Lista taxalis J. Cottus Zemplenensis Arendatorum Judeorum pro Anno 1811, p. 23. 26.  Silber, “Hungary before 1918,” 1: 772. 27.  Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai,” 64. 28.  “Ragged”: Ferenc Kazinczy to Antal Mocsáry, Feb. 12, 1830, in Kazinczy Ferencz levelezése, ed. János Váczy, vol. 21: 1829. Január 1.–1831. Augusztus 20. (Budapest: A Magyar Tud. Akadémia Kiadása, 1911), 210. “Half Polish”: Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai,” 64. 29.  Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai,” 65. 30. Ibid., 65. 31.  Raphael Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), 261–62. 32.  Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 75.

254  Notes to Chapter 2

33.  Thomas Capek, The Slovaks of Hungary, Slavs and Panslavism (New York: Knickerbocker, 1906), 161. 34. Kukučín, Seven Slovak Stories, 29. 35.  SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897, p. 1; Sámuel Fodor, ed., Sátoraljaújhelyi Status­ quo Izraelita Anyahitközség “Kästenbaum” elemi fiú és leányiskolájának 100 éves története (Sátoraljaújhely: Vajda, 1938), 4. Also see Lajos Venetianer, A magyar zsidóság története (Budapest: Könyvértékesitő Vállalat, 1986), 133; Tamás Csíki, Városi zsidóság Északkelet- és KeletMagyarországon (Budapest: Osiris, 1999), 367–68. 36.  Izidor Goldberger, “Zemplénvármegyei zsidó az 1811–12. években,” Adalékok Zemplénvármegye Történetéhez 17 (1911): 215. 37.  SFL IV 2001/p. 2. csomó, No. 171. Adósságlevelek és végrehajtások a megyei hatóság részéről 1701–1817. Simon Hoer bacskói lakos kötelezvénye. July 21, 1817. On this era’s distilling practices: Árpád Csiszár, “Adatok a felső-tiszavidéki pálinkafőzésről és –felhasználásról a XVIII–XIX. század fordulóján,” Agrártörténeti Szemle 27, nos. 1–2 (1985): 247–54. 38.  SFL IV. 1005/f. Nemtelenek és zsidó bérlők összeirása. 1792–1822. 1. doboz. Lista taxalis Arendatorum Judeorum et Ignobilium Ai 1821, p. 29. 39. Michael K. Silber, “A Jewish Minority in a Backward Economy: An Introduction,” in Jews in the Hungarian Economy, 1760–1945, ed. Silber (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), 3–25; Vera Bácskai, A vállalkozók előfutárai. Nagykereskedők a reformkori Pesten (Budapest: Magvető, 1989), 140–70; Csíki, Városi zsidóság, 122–40. 40.  For a useful comparative study, see Howard N. Lupovitch, Jews at the Crossroads: Tradition and Accommodation during the Golden Age of the Hungarian Nobility (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007). 41.  On Jews in Zemplén County: Goldberger, “Zemplénvármegyei”; Meir Sas, Vanished Communities in Hungary: The History and Tragic Fate of the Jews in Újhely and Zemplén County, trans. Carl Alpert (Toronto: Artistic, 1986), 32–64; Anna Gábor, “Zsidók betelepülése Zemplén megyébe a XVII. század végétől a XVIII. század elejéig,” in Otthonkeresők, otthonteremtők. Zsidó társadalomtörténeti tanulmányok, ed. György Gábor et al. (Budapest: Universitas, 2001), 18–43; Csíki, Városi zsidóság, 135–40. 42.  SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897, p. 1. 43. Sas, Vanished Communities, 41–52. 44.  Silber, “Hungary before 1918,” 1: 774. 45.  On the expulsion: Izidor Goldberger, “Zsidók kiutasitása az újhelyi járásból 1807ben,” Adalékok Zemplénvármegye Történetéhez 17 (1912): 115–19. On the census: SFL IV. 1005/f. Nemtelenek és zsidó bérlők összeirása. 1792–1822. 1. doboz. Lista taxalis J. Cottus Zemplenensis Arendatorum Judeorum pro Anno 1811, pp. 13–14. 46. Sas, Vanished Communities, 59. 47.  Iván Balassa, “Adatok a zsidók szerepéhez Tokaj-Hegyalja vidékének szőlőművelésében és borkereskedésében (1791–1841),” Évkönyv (1981–82): 5–47. 48.  Etele Matolay, “A legújabb kor, 1815–1849,” in Borovszky, Zemplén Vármegye, ed. Samu Borovszky (Budapest: Apollo, [1905]), 441–43, 462. 49.  The Memoirs of Ber of Bolechów, 122.

Notes to Chapter 2  255

50.  On the proverb: Ferencz Virter, “Zemplén Vármegye népe,” in Borovszky, Zemplén Vármegye, 161. 51. Imre Ferenczi, “Bodrogszentesi mondák és legendák,” in Néprajzi tanulmányok a zempléni-hegyvidékről, ed. József Szabadfalvi and Gyula Viga (Miskolc: Herman Ottó Múzeum, 1981), 271–82. 52.  Virter, “Zemplén Vármegye népe,” 162. 53.  Matolay, “A legújabb kor, 1815–1849,” 462–69. Lajos Kossuth, later the leader of the 1848 Revolution, helped maintain order and care for the ill in the Zemplén County seat: Istvan Deak, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848–1849 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 21–22. 54. Paget, Hungary and Transylvania, 1: 452. 55.  Kazinczy to Antal Mocsáry, Feb. 12, 1830, in Kazinczy Ferencz levelezése, 21: 212. 56. Ibid. 57.  Kazinczy to László Szalay, Feb. 12, 1830, in Kazinczy Ferencz levelezése, 21: 210. 58.  Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai,” 73. 59.  SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 284/No. 1515, Zemplénvármegyei közgyűlésnek jegyző könyve, Nov. 30, 1829. 60. “Magyar-Ország,” Magyar Kurir, Feb. 23, 1830, 126. The same report appeared in K[azinczy?]. F[erenc?], “Kaestenbaum Testamentoma,” Tudományos Gyüjtemény, 14, no. 3 (1830): 132–34. 61. Lupovitch, Jews at the Crossroads, 161–85. 62. “Magyar-Ország,” Magyar Kurir, Feb. 23, 1830, 126. 63.  SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897, p. 3. 64.  József Eötvös, The Village Notary: A Romance of Hungarian Life, trans. Otto Wenckstern, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850), 118. 65.  SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897, p. 3. 66. Ibid. 67.  Ibid., pp. 3–4. 68.  Kazinczy cited in Sas, Vanished Communities, 46. 69. The Ratio Educationis of 1806 built on the foundations laid by the Hungarian Diet in the 1790s and by Maria Theresa’s first Ratio Educationis in 1777: Károly Vörös, “A magyar nép kulturális élete,” in Magyarország története 1790–1848, ed. Gyula Mérei és Károly Vörös (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980), 2: 1119–23; also see Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 123–37. 70.  Kazinczy to István Sárkőzy, May 25, 1811, in Kazinczy Ferencz levelezése, ed. János Váczy, vol. 8: 1810 Július 1.–1811. június 30. (Budapest: A Magyar Tud. Akadémia Kiadása, 1898), 559. 71.  Antal Zichy, ed., Gróf Széchenyi István beszédei (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1887), 353. 72. Patai, The Jews of Hungary, 230. 73.  “Rafael Kästenbaum und seine Stiftungen,” 381. On electoral practices: Deak, The Lawful Revolution, 54–58; András Cieger, Politikai korrupció a Monarchia Magyarországán (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2011), 19–24. 74.  SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897, Regestrum.

256  Notes to Chapters 2 and 3

75.  SFL IV. 2001/h. Loc. 311/No. 1897, Magyar Királyi Helytartó Tanács to Zemplén Vármegye, Sep. 29, 1834. 76.  Matolay, “A legújabb kor, 1815–1849,” 460, 469–70. 77.  György Kerekes, “Zemplén-vármegye követi utasitásai,” Adalékok Zemplénvármegye Történetéhez 5, nos. 5–6 (1899): 178. 78.  On the link between the events of 1831 and support for Jewish emancipation: Lupovitch, Jews at the Crossroads, 105–31. 79.  Kerekes, “Zemplén-vármegye követi utasitásai,” 208. Not all noblemen had changed their minds. A newspaper in the 1840s reported that “since emancipation has sounded, the gentlemen [of this region] have felt very little sympathy toward the people of Israel.” Geyza Éles, “Sátoralja-Ujhely,” Pesti Divatlap, Oct. 6, 1844, 11. 80.  “Kleine Berichte,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, Nov. 1, 1838, 330. 81. Sas, Vanished Communities, 65–78. 82.  On Kossuth: ibid., 72; Armin Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder (Aus meinem Leben) (Vienna: L. Beck, 1904), 156. 83.  For this paragraph: Knopfler, A sátoralja-újhelyi statusquo izr. anyahitközség népiskolájának története, 5, 10–11. 84. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 154–56. 85. Knopfler, A sátoralja-újhelyi statusquo izr. anyahitközség népiskolájának története, 18– 38. This book has been translated into English by Agi and Steve Casey, who left Hungary for Australia after the 1956 Revolution. Agi’s ancestors attended the Kästenbaum school. For the translation and Knopfler’s original, see the wonderful website http://www.kaeszten baum.com/. The school survived through 1944, when the vast majority of Sátoraljaújhely’s Jews were deported to Auschwitz. 86.  Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai,” 72–73. 87. Knopfler, A sátoralja-újhelyi statusquo izr. anyahitközség népiskolájának története, 18–38. 88.  Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai,” 63. 89.  Kästenbaum was not the only commoner with a deep attachment to his home county. “The nationalization of Slovak-speakers,” Elena Mannová has observed, “was challenged by their identification with strong local and regional outlooks associated with the historic counties.” Elena Mannová, “Southern Slovakia as an Imagined Territory,” in Frontiers, Regions and Identities in Europe, ed. Steven G. Ellis and Raingard Eßer, with JeanFrançois Berdah and Miloš Řezník (Pisa: Plus-Pisa University Press, 2009), 194. 90.  Rosenmeyer, “Kästenbaum Ráfáel és alapitványai,” 66.

Chapter 3 1.  John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (London: John Murray, 1850), 2: 27. 2.  Béla Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei (Budapest: A Magyar Mérnök- és ÉpítészEgylet, 1896), 105. 3. Paget, Hungary and Transylvania, 2: 38. 4.  On the “land of wild water”: István Süli-Zakar, “Az élő Tisza,” Historia 23, no. 2 (2001), 16–22. On the “windings of the Danube”: Michael J. Quin, A Steam Voyage down the Danube (New York: Theodore Foster, 1836), 67.

Notes to Chapter 3  257

5. In 1938 the Ministry of Agriculture published Woldemar Lászlóffy’s iconic “blue map,” so called because of the extensive pre-river-regulation flood zones it marked: Zsolt Pinke and Beatrix Szabó, “Analysis of the Map of the Ministry of Agriculture,” in 8. országos interdiszciplináris Grastyán konferencia előadásai, ed. Virág Rab and Melinda Szappanyos (Pécs: PTE Grastyán Endre Szakkollégium, 2010), 194–203. 6.  For Vásárhelyi’s biography and writings: Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, which reprints Vásárhelyi’s letters and studies; Ferenc Fodor, Magyar vízimérnököknek a Tiszavölgyben a kiegyezés koráig végzett felmérései, vízi munkálatai és azok eredményei (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1957); Imre Botar and Zsigmond Károlyi, Vásárhelyi Pál a Tisza-szabályozás tervezője (Budapest: Vízügyi Dok. és Tájékozt. Iroda, 1970); Antal András Deák and László Eperjesi, Vásárhelyi Pál és a reformkori mérnökgeneráció (Budapest: Aduprint, 1995); Antal András Deák, A háromszögeléstől a Tisza-szabályozásig. Tanulmányok és válogatott dokument­ umok a Tiszavölgyi Társulat megalakulásának és Vásárhelyi Pál halálának 150. évfordulójára (Budapest: Vízügyi Múz., Lvt. és Kvgyűjt., 1996). 7.  Writing three decades before Paget, Martin Schwartner asked, “Which European land of comparable size is watered and fructified by so many rivers, and crossed by so many rivers that are navigable or could be made navigable?” Schwartner, Statistik des Königreichs Ungern, vol. 1 (Ofen: Königl. Universitäts Schriften, 1809), 72. 8.  On Vásárhelyi’s home town and early years: Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 5–10. 9. Until 1772 it had been one of the “sixteen Zipser towns,” which were in Hungary but under the rule of the Polish king. This curious position dated to the early 1400s, when the Hungarian king, in desperate need of money, had pawned the towns and their revenues to his Polish counterpart. The First Partition ended the Polish king’s possession of the towns, which nonetheless retained a separate corporate status within Hungary until 1876. 10. Paget, Hungary and Transylvania, 1: 424, 455. 11.  Samuel Bredetzky, Reisebemerkungen über Ungern und Galizien (Vienna, 1809), 307; Carl v. Szepesházy and J. C. v. Thiele, Merkwürdigkeiten des Königreiches Ungern . . . , vol. 1 (Kaschau: Carl Werfer, 1825), 37. 12.  The Hernád flowed into the Sajó, which flowed into the Tisza, which flowed into the Danube. Like towns, rivers have multiple names. In Slovak the names of these rivers are the Hornád, Slaná, Tisa, and Dunaj; in German they are called Hornád, Sajó, Theiss, and Donau. Following Vásárhelyi, I have used the Hungarian names here. 13.  In the late 1800s the town was renamed Szepes-Olaszi, to distinguish it from the other Olaszis in the Kingdom of Hungary. On the town: Elek Fényes, Magyarország geographiai szótára (Pest: Kozma Vazul, 1851), 3: 160; also see Matthiae Bel, Compendium Hungariae Geographicum, 3rd ed. (Posonii: Joannis Michaelis Landerer, 1779), 184; Zuzana Krempaská and Miroslav Števík, Sixteen Scepus Towns from 1412 to 1876 (Spišská Nová Ves: Múzeum Spiša, 2012). 14.  Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, E 210a. Oppida et municipialia, 160. t. Olaszi (Wallendorf ), 1786–1789, pp. 8–10. 15. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 57. 16.  Johann v. Csaplovics, Gemälde von Ungern (Pest: Hartleben, 1829), 16. On the ice cave: David Kuntz, Die Zipser Gespanschaft in Ober-Ungarn (Vienna: H. F. Müller, 1840), 50.

258  Notes to Chapter 3

17.  S. v. Ludvigh, Reise in Ungarn im Jahre 1831 (Leipzig: Weygand, 1832), 61. 18.  Iván Nagy, Magyarország családai czimerekkel és nemzékrendi táblákkal, vol. 12: V. és W. (Pest: Ráth Mór, 1865), 71–78. 19.  The daughters of Mária’s brother Pál Bekk married the counts. A man of uncertain loyalties but undeniable ambition, Pál Bekk began as a surveyor and ended as a large landowner. See “bökönyi Beck Pál,” http://csaladfakonyv.hu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ Beck-Pal.pdf (accessed Apr. 12, 2013). 20. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 8. 21.  Sándor Márai, Egy polgár vallomásai (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 1: 22; also see Mária M. Kovács, Liberal Professions and Illiberal Politics: Hungary from the Habsburgs to the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 12. 22.  Ken Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), shows that French military engineers enjoyed more political success than technical. As Vásárhelyi would do in unguarded moments, “the engineers promised a utopian scheme to remake the world in light of present circumstances” (p. 346). 23. Deák, A háromszögeléstől a Tisza-szabályozásig, 126; also see Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 8–10. 24.  Gary B. Cohen, Education and Middle-Class Society in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996), 14. Technical schools also opened in this era in Prague (1807) and Vienna (1815). 25. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 57. 26.  Gróf Széchenyi István naplói, ed. Gyula Viszota, vol. 4: 1830–1836 (Budapest: Sylvester Irodalmi és Nyomdai Intézet, 1934), 446, 455, 470. 27.  Zoltán Fónagy, “Széchenyi, a barát,” Történelmi Szemle 52, no. 4 (2010): 529–41. 28.  He was thus part of the imperial-royal administration. But in his writings and his work, he rarely strayed beyond the borders of Hungary. 29.  His wife’s name was Mária Sebők Szentmiklósy, and her father was the head medical officer for several northeastern counties. The sources differ on how many children they had. At the time of Vásárhelyi’s death, they had four living daughters. See the death notice reproduced at http://www.rakovszky.net/E1_LSG_ObitsIndex/GYJ-NevIndex.shtml. 30.  Mór Jókai, The Man with the Golden Touch, trans. H. Kennard and Elisabeth West (Budapest: Corvina, 1963), 13. 31. Ibid., 48. Jókai later revealed that he had modeled “Nobody’s Island” on the island of Ada Kaleh in the Lower Danube. 32.  And not just Hungary: on the connections between war, revolution, and river regulation on the Rhine, see David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (New York: Norton, 2006), esp. 78–119. 33.  Staniszló, “Honismerete. I. Folyók,” Természet, Aug. 7, 1838, 146. 34. Fodor, Magyar vízimérnököknek a Tisza-völgyben, 149–68; Klára Dóka, “Mérnökeink a XVIII. század végétől a polgári forradalomig,” in Deák and Eperjesi, Vásárhelyi Pál és a reformkori mérnökgeneráció, 18–21. On eighteenth-century mapping: Madalina-Valeria Veres, “Putting Transylvania on the Map: Cartography and Enlightened Absolutism in the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2012): 141–64.

Notes to Chapter 3  259

35. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 105. 36.  Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 29. 37. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 181. 38. Hans Christian Andersen, A Poet’s Bazaar: Pictures of Travel in Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Orient (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1871), 277–331 (quotation at 298). 39. Ibid., 280. 40. George Barany, Stephen Széchenyi and the Awakening of Hungarian Nationalism, 1791–1841 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 244–69; Zsigmond Pál Pach, “István Széchenyi’s Plan for the Regulation of the Lower Danube,” in Etudes historiques hongroises 1990, ed. Ferenc Glatz, vol. 3: Environment and Society in Hungary (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 185–206. 41.  The U.S. consul cited in Barany, Stephen Széchenyi, 249 n15. 42. Quin, A Steam Voyage, 75. 43. Ibid., 77. Andersen also liked the road, which he credited to Széchenyi and (alas!) to “Basarhety”: Andersen, A Poet’s Bazaar, 302. 44. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 164–178. 45.  Gróf Széchenyi István levelei, ed. Béla Majláth, vol. 1 (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1889), 320. 46. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 149. 47.  Antal András Deák, “A reformkor mérnöke—Vásárhelyi Pál,” in Deák and Eperjesi, Vásárhelyi Pál és a reformkori mérnökgeneráció, 13–14. 48. Viszota, Gróf Széchenyi István naplói, 4: 549. 49.  In an 1830 diary entry, Széchenyi ruminated on “the establishment of traffic between Pest and Constantinople” and promotion of “Hungarian commerce aimed at the Orient.” See Pach, “István Széchenyi’s Plan for the Regulation of the Lower Danube,” 189. 50.  “Wenn die Noth ist am höchsten, ist die Hilfe am nächsten.” Gróf Széchenyi István levelei, ed. Béla Majláth, vol. 2 (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1890), 694. 51.  László Bendefy, “Vásárhelyi Pál és családtagjainak arcképei,” Vizgazdálkodás 13, no. 5 (1973): 189–91. 52. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 27. 53. Majláth, Gróf Széchenyi István levelei, 2: 87. 54.  The address is reprinted in Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 262–274. 55. Ibid., 263. 56. Ibid., 264. 57.  Pál Vásárhelyi, “Vizépités,” Figyelmező, Aug. 13, 1839, 524. 58. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 57, 115, 218. 59. On Vásárhelyi and the Tisza: Fodor, Magyar vízimérnököknek a Tisza-völgyben, 168–77; Botar and Károlyi, Vásárhelyi Pál a Tisza-szabályozás tervezője, 24–49; Deák, A háromszögeléstől a Tisza-szabályozásig, 17–71. Like Vásárhelyi, Lányi was from the Zips region of northern Hungary (his birthplace was just a dozen miles from Vásárhelyi’s), was born in the 1790s, and attended the Institutum Geometricum in Buda.

260  Notes to Chapters 3 and 4

60.  Széchenyi quoted in Botar and Károlyi, Vásárhelyi Pál a Tisza-szabályozás tervezője, 30. 61. Fodor, Magyar vízimérnököknek a Tisza-völgyben, 160. 62. Deák, A háromszögeléstől a Tisza-szabályozásig, 67. 63. Fodor, Magyar vízimérnököknek a Tisza-völgyben, 9, refers to “very serious opposition” from peasants to regulation efforts on the Körös and Berettyó Rivers in eastern Hungary. 64.  Miklós Domokos, “A Historic Survey of the Danube Catchment,” in Rivers and Society: From Earliest Civilization to Modern Times, ed. Terje Tvedt and Richard Coopey (London: Taurus, 2010), 386. 65. Schwartner, Statistik des Königreichs Ungern, vol. 1 (Ofen: Königl. Universitäts Schriften, 1809), 71. A century later, the writer Kálmán Mikszáth changed this formulation to the “slothful Hungarian Nile.” 66.  József Attila, “A Dunánál,” in Attila, A Transparent Lion: Selected Poems of József Attila, trans. Michael Castro and Gabor G. Gyukics (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2006), 103. Related is the claim that the Danube was the “imperial ribbon” that bound together the Habsburg Monarchy’s many peoples. 67. István Széchenyi, Eszmetöredék, különösen a Tisza-Völgy rendezését illetőleg (Pest: Trattner és Károlyi, 1846), 9, 12. 68.  Pál Vásárhelyi, “Vizépités,” Figyelmező, Aug. 6, 1839, 510. 69.  Gróf Széchenyi István naplói, ed. Gyula Viszota, vol. 6: 1844–1848 (Budapest: Sylvester Irodalmi és Nyomdai Intézet, 1939), 446, 455, 470. Széchenyi too came to grasp the potential of railroads, and he made a strong case for them in Javaslat a magyar közlekedési ügy rendezésérül (Pozsony: Belnay, 1848). 70.  Pál Vásárhelyi, “Felvilágitások,” Figyelmező, Oct. 29, 1839, 712. 71.  Emil Dessewffy, Alföldi levelek (1839–1840) és nehány toldalék (Buda: A Magyar Királyi Egyetem, 1842), 199. 72. Viszota, Gróf Széchenyi István naplói, 6: 356. 73.  “Pester und Ofner Courier,” Pester Zeitung, Apr. 10, 1846, 1159. Other reports: “A tiszaszabáolozást tetemes csapás érte!” Hetilap, Apr. 10, 1846, 503; Pesti Hirlap, Apr. 10, 1846, 1; Jelenkor, Apr. 12, 1846, 1. 74.  József Bajza, Toldy Ferenc irodalmi beszédei (Pozsony: Wigand, 1847), 167–68. 75. Gonda, Vásárhelyi Pál élete és művei, 44–45. 76. Ibid., 72. 77. Quin, A Steam Voyage, 75. 78. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 28.

Chapter 4 1.  Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (New York: Knopf, 1996), 31. 2.  Lövei to Teréz Karacs, Aug. 13, 1856, in Györgyi Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1963), 541. 3.  Quotations in this paragraph: Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, 4, 14, 32. 4.  This chapter relies on these studies of Lövei: “Leővey Klára (lövői és lövőpetrii),” in Magyar írók élete és munkái, ed. József Szinnyei, vol. 7: Köberich-Loysch (Budapest:

Notes to Chapter 4  261

Hornyánszky Viktor, 1900), 1104–5; László Görcs, Minden a hazáért! Leőwy Klára és iskolánk (Pécs: Szikra, 1955); István Taba, “Lövei Klára. A nőnevelés helyzete a reformkorban,” in Magyar neveléstörténeti tanulmányok, ed. László Felkai (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1959), 5–44; Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 27–35, 401–571. Although Lövei’s family name sometimes appears with different spellings, she consistently used “Lövei” in her later publications, and I have followed her example here. 5. Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, 32. 6.  On nineteenth-century education: Gary B. Cohen, Education and Middle-Class Society in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1996); Keith Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860–1914 (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 1999), 197–219; Ágnes Deák, “Nemzeti egyenjogúsítás.” Kormányzati nemzetiségpolitika Magyarországon, 1849–1860 (Budapest: Osiris, 2000), 248– 87; Joachim von Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn. Slowaken, Rumänen und Siebenbürger Sachsen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der ungarischen Staatsidee 1867–1914 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2003); Ágoston Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the late Dual Monarchy (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2013); Adriana Kičková and Mária Kiššová, “Nineteenth Century Female Education in the Slovak Region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” History of Education & Children’s Literature 8, no. 1 (2013): 503–22. 7.  László Kontler, A History of Hungary: Millennium in Central Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 285. 8.  On women and gender in nineteenth-century Hungary: Katalin Szegvári Nagy, A nők művelődési jogaiért folytatott harc hazánkban (1777–1918) (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1969); Gábor Gyáni, “Női munka és család Magyarországon (1900–1930),” Történelmi Szemle 30, no. 3 (1987–88): 366–78; Marsha Lampland, “Family Portraits: Gendered Images of the Nation in 19th Century Hungary,” Eastern European Politics and Society 8, no. 2 (1994): 287–316; Susan Zimmermann, Die bessere Hälfte? Frauenbewegungen und Frauenbestrebungen im Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (Budapest: Napvilág, 1999); Judith Szapor, “Sisters or Foes: The Shifting Front Lines of the Hungarian Women’s Movements, 1896–1918,” in Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective, ed. Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 189–205. 9. Szinnyei, Magyar írók élete és munkái, 1104. 10. “Hozomány,” A Pallas nagy lexikona, vol. 9: Hehezet—Kacor (Budapest: Pallas, 1895), 415. On the legal norms, everyday practices, and confessional differences that shaped marriage in nineteenth-century Hungary: Mónika Mátay, “The Adulterous Wife and the Rebellious Husband: A Marital Dispute in a Calvinist City,” Social History 34, no. 2 (2009): 145–62; Anna Loutfi, “The Family as a Site of Cultural Autonomy and Freedom: Anxieties in Legal Debates over State Regulation of Marriage in Hungary, 1867–1895,” Women’s History Review 20, no. 4 (2011): 599–613. 11.  Maurus Jókai, The Baron’s Sons: A Romance of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 (London: Walter Scott, [1908]), 336.

262  Notes to Chapter 4

12.  Klára Lövei, “A máramaros-szigeti mükedvelő jótékony-egyesület kezdete s első éveire való visszemlékezés,” Máramaros, July 10, 1889, 1–2. 13.  István György Tóth, Literacy and Written Culture in Early Modern Central Europe, trans. Tünde Vajda and Miklós Bodóczky (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), 5–10. 14.  Lövei, ”Besztercze-Bánya,” Máramaros, Feb. 6, 1884, 2. 15. On the theater: Klára Lövei, “A máramaros-szigeti mükedvelő jótékony-egyesület kezd­ete s első éveire való visszemlékezés,” Máramaros, July 17–Aug. 21, Sep. 18, and Oct. 2–23, 1889. 16.  Ibid., Aug. 21, 1889, 1. 17.  On this episode: ibid., Oct. 2, 1889, 1. 18.  Lövei to Teréz Karacs, Apr. 1, 1844, in Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 529. 19.  Lövei to Teréz Karacs, Mar. 5, 1844, in ibid., 533. 20.  Lövei to Teréz Karacs, Mar. 5, 1844, in ibid., 534. 21.  Lövei to Teréz Karacs, Apr. 1, 1844, in ibid., 528. 22.  Lövei, “A máramaros-szigeti mükedvelő jótékony-egyesület,” Máramaros, Oct. 9, 1889, 1. 23.  On Máramaros and Sziget: Elek Fényes, Magyarország leirása (Pest: Beimel, 1847), 2: 366–77; János Hunfalvy, Magyarország és Erdély eredeti képekben, vol. 2: Magyarország (Darmstadt: Lange Gusztáv György, 1860), 284–87; Gábor Várady, “Máramarosmegye,” in Az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia írásban és képben, vol. 18: Magyarország VI. kötete (Budapest: A Magyar Királyi Államnyomda, 1900), 437–61; “Maramurěș,” in Enciclopedia română, ed. Corneliu Diaconovich, vol. 3: Kemet–Zymotic (Sibiu: W. Krafft, 1904), 197; Alexandru Filipașcu, Istoria Maramureșului (Bucharest: Universul, 1940); Vilmos Bélay, Máramaros megye társadalma és nemzetiségei (Budapest: Sylvester, 1943); András S. Benedek, ed., Máramaros megye. Honismereti írások a Monarchia korából (Budapest: Mandátum, 1997); Vasile Iuga, ed., Maramureș. Vatră de istorie milenară, vols. 2–3 (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Dragoș Vodă, 1997). 24.  Official cited in László Glück, “A máramarosi só kereskedelmének útvonalai a 16. század közepén,” Történelmi Szemle 50, no. 1 (2008): 33. 25. Fényes, Magyarország leirása, 2: 366–67. 26.  Schematismus venerabilis cleri almae dioecesis Szathmariensis pro anno Jesu Christi 1838 (Eger: Typis Lycei Archi-Episcopalis, 1838), 58, lists 1,924 Roman Catholics, 1,671 Greek Catholics, 16 Lutherans, 1,547 Calvinists, and 753 Jews for the parish of Sziget. Few of the surrounding settlements had many Calvinists. 27. Benedek, Máramaros megye, 1. 28. Fényes, Magyarország leirása, 2: 370; also see Glück, “A máramarosi só kereskedelmének útvonalai a 16. század közepén.” 29. Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, 22. 30. Fényes, Magyarország leirása, 2:371. 31.  Elieser Slomovic, ed. Readings on Maramarosh (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2013), 189–91, 200. 32.  Gusztáv Wenzel, Kritikai fejtegetések Máramaros Megye történetéhez (Pest: Emich

Notes to Chapter 4  263

Gusztáv, 1857), 1; identical views are expressed in István Szilágyi, Máramaros Vármegye egyetemes leirása (Budapest: A Magy. Kir. Egyetemi Könyvnyomda, 1876), 262. 33. Szilágyi, Máramaros Vármegye, 262. 34.  Gail Kligman, The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 31. Diaconovich’s Enciclopedia română claimed that fully fifty thousand of seventy-five thousand Romanians in the county had noble privileges. See Enciclopedia română, 3: 197. 35.  Gábor Várady, Hulló levelek, vol. 1 (Máramaros-Sziget: Máramaros, 1892), 4. The Romanian phrase he heard was “Vai de mine și de mine!” 36. Ibid., 1: 6. 37.  Surveying Sziget sixty years later, the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga complained that Romanians remained “on the margins, remote, poor, and unknown.” Iorga, Neamul românesc în Ardeal și Ţara Ungurească la 1906 (Bucharest: Minerva, 1906), 2: 562. 38. Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 403, 461. 39. Ibid., 472. 40. Negative views of Máramaros Jews were widespread among nineteenth-century Christian writers: Fényes, Magyarország leirása, 2:371, blamed Jews for bringing brandy from Poland and harming the peasants; Várady, “Máramarosmegye,” 443–44, warned that their numbers were growing quickly and that they “rigidly cling to their Eastern customs”; and so on. Filipașcu (writing in 1940) and Bélay (1943) are even more openly antisemitic. 41. Szilágyi, Máramaros Vármegye, 262. On the close link between regional ecology and “imagined geography”: Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 61–62, 220. 42. Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 503–13. Before 1880 the vast majority of leading actresses came from the provinces. See Csilla Kiss, “‘Királynő vagy te a művészet országában!’ A színésznői szerepkör változásai a 19. századi Magyarországon,” in A nők világa. Művelődés és társadalomtörténeti tanulmányok, ed. Anna Fábri and Gábor Várkonyi (Budapest: Argumentum, 2007), 101. 43. Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 511. 44.  Klára Lövei, “Tárcza-levél Kolozsvárról,” Máramaros, June 1, 1870, 3. 45. Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 494. 46. Ibid., 499. 47.  “Borderland fortress”: Wenzel, Kritikai fejtegetések Máramaros Megye történetéhez, 1. Just who might besiege this fortress was rarely made clear, which gave the term a defiant and menacing quality. Also see Pieter Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 1–18. 48. “Frauen-Emancipation,” Der Ungar, Aug. 26, 1845, 1–2. 49. Hunfalvy, Magyarország és Erdély, 2: 255–63; Gábor Czoch, “The Transformation of Urban Space in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century in Hungary and in the City of Kassa,” Hungarian Historical Review 1, nos. 1–2 (2012): 104–33. 50.  Fáy cited in Fehér, “Reformkori sajtóviták,” 255. 51.  On the school and education in the 1830s and 1840s: Emőd Farkas, Az 1848–49-iki szabadságharcz hősnői (Budapest: Rózsa Kálmán, 1910), 2: 79–97; Lajos Orosz, A ­magyar

264  Notes to Chapter 4

nőnevelés úttörői (Budapest, Tankönyvkiadó, 1962), 46–132; Nagy, A nők művelődési jogaiért ­folytatott harc, 23–49; Katalin Fehér, “Reformkori sajtóviták a nők művelődésének kérdéseiről,” Magyar Könyvszemle 111, no. 3 (1995): 247–63. 52.  Teleki, “Szózat a magyar főrendű nők nevelése ügyében,” Pesti Hirlap, Dec. 9, 1845, 377. 53.  Blanka Teleki to Franciska Gyulay Wass, Aug. 15, 1846, in Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 365. 54.  Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár A 105 Informations-Protokolle, Mar. 4, 1846. 55.  Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Kabinettsarchiv, Staatsconferenz-Akten a. 1846/1181. 56.  Antonia de Gerando, Gróf Teleki Blanka élete (Budapest: Légrády, 1892), 21. 57.  Klára Lövei to Teréz Karacs, Mar. 3, 1848, in Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 535–37. 58.  Klára Lövei to Ocsvai Ferencné, May 18, 1848, in ibid., 540. 59.  Klára Lövei to Pál Vasvári, Mar. 31, 1848, in ibid., 539. 60.  [Mária Csapó] Mrs. Sándor Vachott, Rajzok a múltból. Emlékiratok (Szemelvények) (Budapest: Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1935), 72. 61. On Máramaros during the revolution: József Solymosi, “Adalékok Máramaros vármegye 1848–49–es történetéhez,” Ad Acta. A Hadtörténelmi Levéltár Évkönyve 4 (2002): 62–66. 62. Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 401. 63.  On prison: Károly P. Szathmáry, Gróf Teleki Blanka életrajza Lővey Klára jegyzetei nyomán (Budapest: Révai, 1883), 72–137; de Gerando, Gróf Teleki Blanka élete, 36–69; Taba, “Lövei Klára,” 20–27; Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 401–41. 64. Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 410. The warden’s wife did have a point, given the long association of the word “Babylon” with captivity. 65.  Alice Freifeld, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848–1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 101. 66.  The poem “Két testvérbörtön” is reprinted in Görcs, Minden a hazáért! 6. 67.  On Lövei after prison: de Gerando, Gróf Teleki Blanka élete, 70–80; Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 441–56; Taba, “Lövei Klára,” 27–36. Lövei wrote about this period in a series of articles titled “Régi idők,” Máramaros, Apr. 4–June 13, 1894, which are reproduced in Orosz, A magyar nőnevelés, 357–73. 68.  Lövei, “Régi idők,” Máramaros, Apr. 4, 1894, 2. 69. Ibid. 70.  Klára Lövei to Teréz Karacs, July 8, 1858, in Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 543. 71.  Lövei, “Régi idők,” Máramaros, Apr. 4, 1894, 3. 72.  Ibid., June 13, 1894, 2. 73. Szilágyi, Máramaros Vármegye, 371. 74.  On the excursion: Lövei, “Régi idők,” Máramaros, May 9, 1894, 1–2. 75.  Ibid., May 16, 1894, 2. 76.  Ibid., June 6, 1894, 2. 77.  Lövei, “Régi idők,” Máramaros, June 13, 1894, 2. 78.  Ráday Levéltár, C/93. Török Pál levelezése, 2192. sz., Klára Lövei to Pál Török, Mar. 30, 1864.

Notes to Chapters 4 and 5  265

79.  Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Kézirattár (hereafter OSzKK). Lövei to Prielle, Dec. 28, 1883. 80.  OSzKK. Lövei to Prielle, Jan. 20, 1891. 81. Filipașcu, Istoria Maramureșului, 198. 82.  Klára Lövei, “Vajdahaza,” Máramaros, Oct. 30, 1872, 2; Lövei, “Levelezés,” Máramaros, June 23, 1875, 2–3. 83. Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn, stresses the pragmatic approach of many families to language use. 84.  Lövei, “Levelezés,” Jan. 1, 1873, 2; and June 23, 1875, 2–3. 85.  On the Romanian society: Filipașcu, Istoria Maramureșului, 191–98; Valeriu Achim, Nord-vestul Transilvaniei. Cultură națională, finalitate politică 1848–1918 (Baia Mare: Gutinul, 1998), 106–9. 86.  “A nő hivatása, képzése és a szeretetház,” Máramaros, Mar. 15, 1871, 2–3; Szilágyi, Máramaros Vármegye, 369–75; Dániel Bökényi, Máramaros Vármegye tanügyének multja és jelene (Máramaros-Sziget: Máramarosi Részvénynyomdában, 1894), 96–102. 87.  OSzKK. Lövei to Prielle, 1894. 88.  Lövei saw the ocean for the first time when she was fifty-seven, in Fiume on the Adriatic Coast, a decade after she had translated Michelet. See J. Michelet, A tenger, trans. Klára Lövei (Pest: Emich Gusztáv, 1868); József Ignácz Kraszewski, Hogyan házasodott meg Pál úr? trans. Klára Lövei (Budapest: Pallas, 1886). 89.  OSzKK. Lövei to Prielle, Mar. 28, 1888. 90.  Ibid., Oct. 11, 1889. 91.  “Leővey Klára,” Máramaros, May 5, 1897, 1. 92.  “Leövey Klára és Teleki Blanka grófnő,” Budapesti Hirlap, Apr. 10, 1897, 7. 93. Sáfrán, Teleki Blanka és köre, 33–34. 94.  Antal Dániel, Család és szolgálat. Önéletírás (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1971), 17–18. 95.  The appearance of a work like Ion Petrovai’s Multiculturalism in Țara Maramureșului. Valori culturale ucrainene (Cluj-Napoca: Academia Română, 2007) is encouraging. 96.  OSzKK. Lövei to Prielle, May 23, 1888.

Chapter 5 1.  Sorin Mitu, “Illusions and Facts About Transylvania,” Hungarian Quarterly, 39, no. 152 (1998): 72. 2.  Iosif Vulcanu, “Padurea Négra. In Biharia,” Familia, Aug. 17/29, 1880, 394. I have retained the original, nineteenth-century spelling and orthography of Romanian names and titles. In this passage, Vulcan used both names for the county, Bihar (the Hungarian form) and Bihor (the usual Romanian form). He used Bihor much more commonly, and I have followed his example in this chapter. 3.  “Tüntetés az oláhok ellen. Izgalmas éjszaka,” Nagyvárad, Aug. 10, 1893, 5; “Sĕlbatecii din Oradea-Mare,” Tribuna, July 31/Aug. 12, 1893, 1–2; “Escese selbatice contra Românilor din Oradea Mare,” Unirea, Aug. 12, 1893, 261; Teodor Neș, Oameni din Bihor 1848–1918 (Oradea: Diecezană, 1937), 172; János Fleisz, Város, kinek nem látni mását (Nagyvárad: Charta, 1997), 77–78.

266  Notes to Chapter 5

4. Béla Pituk, Hazaárulók. Országunk kellő közepén a jelen korunkban eloláhositott huszonnégyezer tősgyökeres magyarjainkról. Leleplezések a nagyváradi görög katholikus oláh egyházmegyéből (Arad: Bloch, 1893), 37. 5.  Márton Hegyesi, “A mult heti heccz,” Nagyvárad, Aug. 15, 1893, 1–2; “Pyrrhusi gyözelem,” Nagyvárad, Oct. 28, 1893, 1. 6.  Keith Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860–1914 (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 1999) offers a nuanced view of this period. On Bihor County: Neș, Oameni din Bihor; Gheorghe Blaj, “Județul Bihor în contextul istoriei patriei,” Anale de istorie 23, no. 6 (1977): 88–115; Viorel Faur, “Aspecte ale luptei românilor din Crișana pentru afirmare culturală între 1848–1919,” Revista de istorie 33, no. 5 (1980): 873–87; Tereza Mózes, Zona etnografică Crișul Repede (Bucharest: Editura Sport-Turism, 1984); Liviu Borcea and Gheorghe Gorun, eds., Istoria orașului Oradea (Oradea: Cogito, 1995); Fleisz, Város, kinek nem látni mását; Robert Nemes, “Obstacles to Nationalization on the Hungarian-Romanian Language Frontier,” Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2012): 28–44. 7.  On Vulcan and his works: Neș, Oameni din Bihor, 225–49; Pál Köteles, ed., Iosif Vulcan a Kisfaludy Társaságban (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1970); Lucian Drimba, Iosif Vulcan (Bucharest: Minerva, 1974); Lucian Drimba, ed., Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 4 vols. (Bucharest: Editura Minerva and Academia Română, 1987–2002); Gheorghe Petrușan, Iosif Vulcan și revista Familia (Budapest: Uniunea Românilor din Ungaria, 1996). 8.  Vulcan, “Programa mea,” in Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 1: 29–30. 9. Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 74; also see Petrușan, Iosif Vulcan și revista Familia, 7–17. 10. Neș, Oameni din Bihor, 248. 11.  Vulcan’s biography: “Vulkán József meghalt,” Nagyvárad, Sep. 10, 1907, 3–4; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 15–132; Petrușan, Iosif Vulcan și revista Familia, 19–39. 12. József Szabó, “Egy felfedezés története,” Biharország, Mar. 13, 2012, http://biharmegye.ro/node/1200. On marriages: Mircea Brie, “Ethnic Identity and the Issue of Otherness Through Marriage in Northwest Transylvania (Second Half of the XIX–Early XX Century),” in Ethno-Confessional Realities in the Romanian Area: Historical Perspectives (XVIII–XX centuries), ed. Mircea Brie, Sorin Șipoș, and Ioan Horga (Oradea: University of Oradea, 2011), 101. 13.  “Victoria Vulcanu n. Irini,” Familia, Sep. 9/21, 1873, 1–2; also Köteles, Iosif Vulcan a Kisfaludy Társaságban, 7–8. 14.  Iosif Vulcanu, Panteonulu romanu. Portretele și biografiele celebrităților române (Pest: Alesandru Kocsi, 1869), 55–60. 15.  On the role of the revolution in illuminating and intensifying collective mentalities: Ioan Bolovan, “Romanians and Hungarians in the Revolution of 1848 in Transylvania (Contributions to the Study of the Social Imaginary),” Transylvanian Review 7, no. 2 (1998): 160–81. 16.  Vasile Bolca, “‘Lepturiștii’ din Oradeai. Un capitol din vieața culturală româneasca din Bihor, 1851–1875,” Transilvania 75, no. 2 (1944): 136 n1. 17.  Gelu Neamțu, Alexandru Roman, marele fiu al Bihorului (Oradea: Fundația Culturală “Cele Tri Crișuri,” 1995), 24–25. 18.  [Iosif Vulcan], “Alesandru Roman,” Familia, Jan. 31/Feb. 12, 1893, 49. 19. Petrușan, Iosif Vulcan și revista Familia, 24, 181.

Notes to Chapter 5  267

20.  Iosif Vulcan, “Cătră renegați!” in Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 1: 13–14. 21. Sándor Márki, Bihari román irók (Nagyvárad: Hollósy Jenő, 1880), 85–86; Titu Maiorescu, Critice, 1866–1907 (Bucharest: Minerva, 1915), 3: 75–83; Neș, Oameni din Bihor, 232–34; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 268–308. 22.  Titu Maiorescu, “Against Some Tendencies in Romanian Culture,” trans. Natalia Dimitriu, Romanian Sources 3, no. 1 (1977): 8. 23.  Familia, June 3/15, 1890. 24. Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed, 106. 25. Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 95–96. 26. Köteles, Iosif Vulcan a Kisfaludy Társaságban; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 248–56. 27.  József Vulcanu, ed., Román népdalok, trans. György Ember, Julián Grozescu, and József Vulcanu (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1877). 28.  Iosif Vulcanu, “Dupa dóue-dĭeci de ani,” Familia, Apr. 27/May 9, 1880, 204; also see Petrușan, Iosif Vulcan și revista Familia, 60–61; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 104–6. 29. Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 288–93. 30.  Iosif Vulcan, “La Cluș,” in Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 3: 160. On Romanian intellectuals and urbanization: Ábraham Barna, “Urbanizáció, urbanitás az erdélyi románoknál a dualizmus korában,” in Erdélyi várostörténeti tanulmányok, ed. Judit Pál and János Fleisz (Csíkszereda: Pro-Print, 2001), 225–53. 31.  Iosifu Vulcanu, “La Holodu,” Familia, Oct. 2/16, 1877, 470. 32.  For related studies of travel and tourism: Patrice M. Dabrowski, “‘Discovering’ the Galician Borderlands: The Case of the Eastern Carpathians,” Slavic Review 64, no. 2 (2005): 380–402; Pieter Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 141–76. 33.  Iosif Vulcan, “Transylvania,” in Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 3: 172–87. 34. Ibid., 3: 178. 35.  Aladár György, “A Bihar alján,” Földrajzi Közlemények 24, no. 6 (1893), 298. 36.  Sorin Mitu, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania, trans. Sorana Corneanu (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001), 178, 192. 37.  Vulcan, “Transylvania,” 3: 210. 38. Ibid., 3: 210–11; also see Silviu Dragomir, Avram Iancu (Bucharest: Editura Științifică, 1988), esp. 17–22, 296–301. 39.  Vulcan, “Transylvania,” 3: 198–99. 40.  Iosif Vulcan, “Zarandul și Munțiı˘-Apusenı˘ aı˘ Transilvanieı˘,” Familia, Aug. 15/27, 1899, 393. 41.  A magyar szent korona országainak 1910. évi népszámlálása, ed. Magyar Kir. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, vol. 6: Végeredmények összefoglalása (Budapest, 1920), 102–3, 116–17. 42.  Karl Baedeker, Austria-Hungary Including Dalmatia and Bosnia: Handbook for Travellers, 10th rev. ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1905), 375–76. 43.  Ady cited in Fleisz, Város, kinek nem látni mását, 5. 44. Corneliu Diaconovich, ed., Enciclopedia română, vol. 3: Kemet-Zymotic (Sibiu: W. Krafft, 1904), 486. 45.  The percentage of Romanians in Oradea (and in the Kingdom of Hungary more

268  Notes to Chapter 5

generally) was a source of contention between Hungarian and Romanian nationalists. Both sides took as their starting point the decennial censuses. But Hungarians used “mother tongue” as an indicator of nationhood and thus counted as “Hungarians” the many Greek Catholics and Eastern Orthodox in Oradea who listed Hungarian as their first language. By this measure, only 5 percent of the city’s population was Romanian. Mistrusting the census linguistic data, Romanian nationalists gave primacy to religion and estimated that 12 percent of the city was Romanian. For the figures: Fleisz, Város, kinek nem látni mását, 180–81; and for competing interpretations of them: Orbán Sipos, Biharvármegye a népesedési, vallási, nemzetiségi közoktatási statisztika szempontjából (Nagyvárad: Szent László, 1903), 57–97; Valeriu Popa and Nicolae Istrate, Situația economică și culturală a teritoriilor românești din Ungaria: Transilvania, Banatul, Crișana și Maramureșul (Bucharest: F. Göbl, 1915), 11–27. 46.  Iosif Vulcanu, “Dupa dóue-dı˘eci de ani,” 204. 47.  Sándor Márai, Egy polgár vallomásai (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 1: 56–57; also see Géza Buzinkay, Magyar hírlaptörténet 1848–1918 (Budapest: Corvina, 2008), 58–89. 48.  Márton Nagy, Régi nevek-régi regék (Nagyvárad: Szent László, 1927), 106–7; Ottó Indig, Váradi parnasszus. Irodalmi és sajtóélet a századfordulón (Nagyvárad: Literator, 1994), 26. For evidence of the close links between Jewish newspapers (published in Yiddish and Hungarian) and other papers in Máramaros: Menachem Keren-Kratz, “The Newspaper Industry in Maramureș—A Hungarian, Romanian and Jewish Joint Venture,” in Lumea evreiască în literatura română, ed. Camelia Crăciun (Iași: Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza, 2013), 375–88. 49.  Ion Zainea, Aurel Lazăr (1872–1930). Viața și activitatea (Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 1999), 22–24. 50. Magda Sebős, ed., Egy váradi úrilány. Benda Gyuláné Imrik Margit emlékezése (­Budapest: Noran, 2006), 51. 51.  “Vulkán József ünneplése,” Nagyvárad, Mar. 5, 1903, 3. 52.  [Endre Ady], “Egy premiér,” Nagyváradi Napló, Mar. 4, 1903, 1. 53. Fleisz, Város, kinek nem látni mását, 121. 54.  Iosifu Vulcanu, “Școli pentru fete!” Familia, July 10/22, 1880, 329; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 107–12. 55. Ioan Chira, ed., Reuniunea de Cîntări “Hilaria” din Oradea, 1875–1975 (Oradea: Crișana, 1975), 95–100. 56.  Iosif Vulcan, “Către ‘Societatea de Arheologie și Istorie’ Oradea,” in Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 4: 296; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 124. 57.  Horia Petra-Petrescu, “Iosif Vulcan,” Tribuna, Sep. 2/15, 1907, 3. 58.  [Antal Huszár], A magyarországi románok egyházi, iskolai, közművelődési, közgazdasági intézményeinek és mozgalmainak ismertetése (Budapest: Uránia, 1908), 311. 59.  “Din Bihor,” Tribuna, Nov. 29/Dec. 11, 1897, 1059; also see Viorel Faur, “Istoricul constituirii despărțămîntului Beiușean al ‘Astrei’ (1897–1898),” Crisia 7 (1977): 389–419. 60.  Ioan Popovici et al., eds., Bihor: Permanențe ale luptei naționale românești, 1892– 1900. Documente (Bucharest: Arhivelor Statului, 1988), doc. 167, 169, 196–204. 61. “Az Astra,” Nagyvárad, Aug. 26, 1898, 5–6; and “Román világ Belényesben,” ­Nagyvárad, Aug. 28, 1898, 6–7.

Notes to Chapter 5  269

62.  “Udvariasság, udvariatlanság,” Országos Hirlap, Aug. 23, 1898, 4; E. Dăianu, “Dela Beiuș,” Tribuna, Aug. 28/Sep. 9, 1898, 750–51. 63.  Elie Dăianu, “Dela Beiuș,” Tribuna, Aug. 26/Sep. 7, 1898, 742. 64.  Iosif Vulcan, “Salutăm asociațiunea în Bihor!” Familia, Aug. 16/28, 1898, 391. 65.  On Vulcan and the theater: Márki, Bihari román irók, 145–46; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 215–48, 293–306; Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 2: 246–70; Petrușan, Iosif Vulcan și revista Familia, 148–68; Valeriu Achim, Nord-vestul Transilvaniei. Cultură națională, finalitate politică 1848–1918 (Baia Mare: Gutinul, 1998), 269–79. 66. Chira, Reuniunea de Cîntări “Hilaria” din Oradea, 102–9. 67.  Its full name was Society for the Creation of a Fund for Romanian Theater in Transylvania (Societății pentru crearea unui fond de teatru român în Ardeal). The Hungarian Ministry of the Interior approved its statutes in 1871. 68.  Iosif Vulcan, “Să fondăm teatru național!” in Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 2: 248. 69.  Iosif Vulcan, “Societatea Pentru Fond de Teatru,” in Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 2: 255. 70.  Zoltán I. Péteri, Mesélő képeslapok. Nagyvárad 1885–1915 (Budapest: Noran, 2002), 90–91; Edit Rajnai, “Színházi élet vidéken,” in Magyar színháztörténet 1873–1920, ed. Tamás Gajdó (Budapest: Magyar Könyvklub, 2001), 287–301. 71.  Iosif Vulcan, Ștefan Vodă cel Tînăr. Tragedie istorică în 5 acte și 3 tablouri, in Drimba, Scrierilor lui Iosif Vulcan, 1: 443. 72. [Ady], “Egy premiér,” 1. On the wider context: György Konstantin Mihaiescu, “Ady Endre kapcsolatai az erdélyi román szinházmozgalommal,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények, 71, no. 2 (1967), 176–78; Péter Hanák, “The Start of Endre Ady’s Literary Career (1903–1905),” in Études historiques hongroises (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980), 1: 711–30. 73. For reviews: Dezső Fehér, “István Vajda,” Nagyváradi Napló, Mar. 5, 1903, 1–2; “Vulkán József ünneplése,” Nagyváradi Napló, Mar. 5, 1903, 6; “István Vajda,” Nagyvárad, Mar. 5, 1903, 3; “Noutăți,” Tribuna Poporului, Feb. 23/Mar. 8, 1903, 3. 74.  “Vulkán József ünneplése,” Nagyvárad, Mar. 5, 1903, 3. 75.  “Vulkán József ünneplése,” Nagyváradi Napló, Mar. 5, 1903, 6. 76. Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed, 10. 77.  “Numer jubilar. Patru-zecea aniversare 1865–1904,” Familia, May 27/June 9, 1904; “Serbarea jubileului ‘Familia’ în Oradea-Mare,” Familia, June 10/23, 1904; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 78–81. 78.  Familia, May 27/June 9, 1904, 1. Queen Elisabeth’s dedication read: Nu trebue țermurı˘ marı˘, trebue numai inimă mare! For Vulcan’s response to these honors: “Discursul președintelui Iosif Vulcan,” Tribuna, Aug. 22/Sep. 4, 1904, 3. 79.  Iosif Vulcan, “Încheiere,” Familia, Dec. 31, 1906/Jan. 13, 1907, 1. 80.  “Iosif Vulcan,” Tribuna, Aug. 28/Sep. 10, 1907, 3; Horia Petra-Petrescu, “Iosif Vulcan”; “Ședința dela 31 August 1907,” Analale Academiei Romane 30 (1907–08): 27–29; At. Marienescu, Cuvântare funebrală rostită la înmormântarea lui Iosif Vulcan în Oradea-Mare la 10 Septemvr. 1907 (Sibiu: Tiparul tipografiei arhidiecezane, 1907); Nicolae Iorga, Oameni cari au fost, ed. Ion Roman (Bucharest: Editura Pentru Literatură, [1907] 1967), 2: 186–89; Drimba, Iosif Vulcan, 126–31.

270  Notes to Chapters 5 and 6

81.  “Vulkán József meghalt,” Nagyvárad, Sep. 10, 1907, 3–5; “Vulkán József temetése,” Nagyvárad, Sep. 11, 1907, 3; “Vulcanu József halála,” Ethnographia 18, no. 5 (1907): 316; “Halálozások,” Vasárnapi Ujság, Sep. 29, 1907, 788.

Chapter 6 1.  “Felekezeti harcz a város közgyülésében,” Komáromi Közlöny, May 14, 1890, 2. 2.  Ünnepi beszédek melyek Komárom sz. kir. városnak a haza ezer éves fennállása örömére 1896. május 11-én tartott diszközgyülésén és melyik a hitfelekezetek lelkészei által a május 9. és 10-iki hálaadó istentiszteletek alkalmávala templomokban mondattak (Komárom: Rónai Frigyes, 1896), 43. 3.  Patrick Leigh Fermor, Between the Woods and the Water, intro. Jan Morris (New York: New York Review Books, 2005), 13. 4. The figures exclude Croatia-Slavonia. Moritz Csáky, “Die römisch-katholische Kirche in Ungarn,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch, vol. 4: Die Konfessionen (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985), 282–83, 302. 5.  Zoltán Tóth, “Die kulturelle Integration der ungarischen Ethnika in einer Kleinstadt um die Jahrhundertwende,” in Etudes historiques hongroises 1990, ed. Ferenc Glatz, vol. 2: Ethnicity and Society in Hungary (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 191–92. 6. László Péter, “Hungarian Liberals and Church-State Relations (1867–1900),” in Hungarian and European Civilization, ed. György Ránki (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1989), 79–138; Michael K. Silber, “Hungary before 1918,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. David Hundert Gershon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 1: 774–78. 7.  Miklós Szabó, “Új vonások a századfordulói magyar konzervatív politikai gondolkodásban,” Századok 108, no. 1 (1974): 3–64; János Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon. Politikai eszmetörténete (Budapest: Osiris, 2001); Paul Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–1944 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 10–46. 8.  László Péter, “Hungarian Liberals and Church-State Relations,” thus calls the religious reforms of the 1890s “the last fling of liberal legislation” (p. 101). 9.  Ármin Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder (Aus meinem Leben) (Vienna: Beck & Son, 1904), 60; also see Gábor Schweitzer, “Dr. Schnitzer Ármin, Komárom híres főrabbija,” Dunatáj, May 18, 2012, 5. 10.  For Schnitzer’s biography: “Schnitzer Ármin,” in A magyar zsidó lexikon, ed. Péter Újváry (Budapest: A Magyar zsidó lexikon kiadása, 1929), 774; Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder; Ferenc Raab, A komáromi zsidók múltja és jelene (Komárno: KT Kiadó, 2000); Katalin Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció? Négy zsidó értelmiségi nemzedék önképe (Budapest: Corvina, 2010), 81–172; Tamás Paszternak and András Paszternak, eds. Mozaikok a komáromi zsidóság történetéből (Komárom: Komáromi Zsidó Hitközősség, 2013), 52–77. 11.  Karl Baedeker, Southern Germany and Austria, including the Eastern Alps, 3rd, rev. ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1873), 474. 12.  “Inländische Nachrichten,” Lemberger Zeitung, July 25, 1825, 1.

Notes to Chapter 6  271

13. On Hunsdorf: Johann v. Csaplovics, Topographisch-statistisches Archiv des Königreichs Ungern (Vienna: Anton Doll, 1821), 348–49; David Kuntz, Die Zipser Gespanschaft in Ober-Ungarn (Vienna: H. F. Müller, 1840), 30; Elek Fényes, Magyarország leirása (Pest: Beimel, 1847), 2: 261–73; Elek Fényes, Magyarország geographiai szótára (Pest: Kozma Vazul, 1851), 2: 125; “Huncovce,” in Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities: Slovakia, ed. Yehoshua Robert Buchler, Ruth Shachak, and Aryeh Fatran (Jerusalem: Ahva Cooperative Press, 2003), 161–63, www.jewgen.org. 14. Kuntz, Die Zipser Gespanschaft, 11, gives a total of 1,979 Jews for the entire county; Fényes’s slightly later Magyarország leirása lists 2,043 (2: 266). 15.  Hunsdorf did not have gates or walls, but the surrounding towns did, and they closed them at night. The nearest town to Hunsdorf was called Käsmark, after the German words for “cheese market,” and was called Késmárk in Hungarian and Kežmarok in Slovak. 16. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 5–8; Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció? 127–28. 17. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 16–31, 79; Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció? 97. 18. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 16–19, 30. 19.  On taverns: Glenn Dynner, “Legal Fictions: The Survival of Rural Jewish Tavernkeeping in the Kingdom of Poland,” Jewish Social Studies 16, no. 2 (2010): 28–66. 20. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 82. 21. Ibid., 80–81. 22. Ibid., 35–36. 23. Ibid., 24–27. 24. Ibid., 5. 25. Ibid., 5. 26. “Huncovce,” 161. 27.  Dezső Dányi, “A 19. század végi hazai belső vándorlás néhány jellemzője,” in Történeti Demográfiai Évkönyv 2000, ed. Tamás Faragó and Péter Őri (Budapest: KSH Népességtudományi Intézet, 2000), 21–121; György Kövér, “Inactive Transformation: Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to World War I,” in Social History of Hungary: From the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. Gábor Gyáni, György Kövér, and Tibor Valuch, trans. Mario Fenyo (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2004), 76–83; Tamás Dobszay and Zoltán Fónagy, “Magyarország társadalma a 19. század második felében,” in Magyarország története a 19. században, ed. András Gergely (Budapest: Osiris, 2003), 427–30. 28.  Martin Kukučín, “The Recruits,” in An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature, ed. and trans. Paul Selver (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1929), 90, 97. 29. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 88. 30.  On Hirsch: Michael Laurence Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 177–218. As Miller observes (pp. 186–87), Schnitzer was critical of some of Hirsch’s heavy-handed moves in Moravia. 31. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 51. 32.  Kövér, “Inactive Transformation,” 52. 33. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 136.

272  Notes to Chapter 6

34. Ibid., 72. 35. Ibid., 116–17. 36.  Emil Herzog, A zsidók története Liptó-Szt.-Miklóson (Budapest: Brozsa, 1894), 174. Herzog’s proud description of the new building is a useful reminder that for all the acrimony caused by its construction, the synagogue symbolized the growth, prosperity, and security of the Jewish community in this small town in northern Hungary. 37.  The bimah is a platform used for sermons and reading the Torah. Traditionally the bimah was placed in the center of the synagogue; nineteenth-century reformers wanted to move it to the front, next to the Torah ark. Among other things, this would make synagogues more closely resemble Christian churches. Reformers also favored removing or limiting the size and opacity of screens that surrounded the women’s gallery. For the wider context of these changes: Raphael Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), 293–301; Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, esp. 80–85. 38. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 140. 39.  On Komárom and its Jews: Samu Borovszky, ed., Komárom Vármegye és Komárom Sz. Kir. Város (Budapest: Apollo [1907]); Ferenc Szijj, Komárom a XIX. század végén (Komárom: Unio, 1941); Raab, A komáromi zsidók múltja és jelene; Emma Kelemen, “A Komárom-Esztergom Megyei zsidóság története,” in Holocaust emlékkönyv. A vidéki zsidóság deportálásának 50. évfordulója alkalmából, ed. Csaba Králl (Budapest: Teljes Evangéliumi Diák- és Ifjúsági Szövetsége, 1994), 92–95; Elena Mannová, “Nemzeti hősöktől az Európa térig. A kollektív emlékezet jelenetei Komáromban, a szlovák-magyar határon,” Regio 13 (2002): 25–44; Paszternak and Paszternak, Mozaikok a komáromi zsidóság történetéből. 40.  The population of Komárom grew from around eleven thousand in 1850 to seventeen thousand in 1900. Roman Catholics made up the largest share of the population (60 percent), followed by Calvinists (25 percent) and smaller communities of Lutherans and Eastern Orthodox. 41. Raab, A komáromi zsidók múltja és jelene, 14. 42. Schnitzer, Eine Rabbinerwahl. Ein Kulturbild der Gegenwart (Vienna: L. Beck, 1908), 34–35. 43. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 188–91. 44.  Leopold Löw, “Der Eid ‘more judaico’ in Ungarn,” Ben Chananja, Mar. 25, 1863, 213. This long article, which appeared in multiple installments in Ben Chananja in 1863, cogently analyzes the Jewish oath in Hungary and the surrounding lands. Also see Vilmos Voigt, “A zsidóeszkü körül,” Múlt és Jövő 22, no. 2 (2011): 55–60. 45.  Mór Krausz, ed., Emlék-Lapok. Főtisztelendő Dr. Schnitzer Ármin komáromi Főrabbi Úr 40 éves rabbiságának emlékére 1902. évi junius hó 29-én megtartott jubileumi ünnepségekről (Komárom: Spitzer Sándor, 1902), 65. 46. “Komorn,” Die Neuzeit, May 8, 1863, 226. 47.  Victor Karady, “Religious Divisions, Socio-Economic Stratification and the Modernization of Hungarian Jewry after the Emancipation,” in Jews in the Hungarian Economy 1760–1945, ed. Michael K. Silber (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), 161–78. 48. “Különfélek,” Komáromi Lapok, Jan. 14, 1883, 3.

Notes to Chapter 6  273

49. Raab, A komáromi zsidók múltja és jelene, 21, 25. 50.  Jacob Katz, “The Identity of Post-Emancipation Hungarian Jewry,” in A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry, ed. Yehuda Don and Victor Karady (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990), 25–29. 51. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 214–15. 52.  Armin Schnitzer, Rede zur Aufstellung des Grabsteines für den verewigten Oberrabbiner in Érsékujvár Rabbi Sigmund Richter am 27. August 1911 (Székesfehérvár: Singer Ede, 1911), 8. 53.  Gyula Alapi, “Irodalom, tudomány, művészet,” in Borovszky, Komárom Vármegye és Komárom, 288. 54.  Rovács, “Komárom,” 155. 55.  “A Jókai ünnep,” Komáromi Lapok, Aug. 10, 1880, 8. 56. Ibid., 8. 57. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 44, 47, 53, 191. 58.  Dietz Bering, The Stigma of Names: Antisemitism in German Daily Life, 1812–1933, trans. Neville Plaice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 40–41, 172; also see Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció? 82–94. 59.  Štátny okresný archív v Komárne, Komárom város közgyűlési jegyzőkönyvei, June 9, 1880, and Dec. 13, 1882. On the wider link between municipal institutions and national movements: Jeremy King, “The Municipal and the National in the Bohemian Lands, 1848– 1914,” Austrian History Yearbook 42 (2011): 89–109. 60.  “Germanism” and Sunday work: “A vásárnapi munka,” Komáromi Lapok, Dec. 1, 1880, 1–2. Name changes: “Magyarosodjunk!” Komáromi Lapok, Jan. 22, 1881, 1; Soma Neumann, “Komárom városa izraelita polgáraihoz,” Komáromi Lapok, Jan. 29, 1881, 1–2. N ­ agyvasvári, “Az antisemitamozgalomhoz,” Komáromi Lapok, Dec. 18, 1880, 2, called on young Jewish men in Komárom to marry “Hungarian-speaking, Hungarian-spirited girls.” 61. Krausz, Emlék-Lapok, 17–18. 62. Viktor Karády, “Egyenlőtlen elmagyarosodás, avagy hogyan vált Magyarország magyar nyelvű országgá?” Századvég 2 (1990): 5–37; also see Miklós Konrád, “Jews and Politics in the Dualist Era, 1867–1914,” East European Jewish Affairs 39, no. 2 (2009): 167–86. 63.  Samu Haber, “Dr. Schnitzer Armin,” Egyenlőség, Jan. 16, 1887, 5. 64. Krausz, Emlék-Lapok, 17–18. 65.  Ünnepi beszédek, 46. 66.  The reference is to Tivadar Pauler, minister of justice from 1875 to 1877 and from 1878 to 1886. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 214. 67. Schnitzer, Emlékbeszéd, 7. 68.  “A nagyváradi zsidóság jóléti bizottsága,” Egyenlőség, Jan. 3, 1915, 9. 69.  Ármin Schnitzer, “Egy cs. k. rendelet századik évfordulója,” Magyar Zsidó Szemle 4 (1887): 624. 70. Schnitzer, Emlékbeszéd, 8. 71.  Birthday sermon: “Komorn,” Pester Lloyd, Aug. 19, 1900, 3. Deputation: “Der Empfang des Deputations,” Abendblatt des Pester Lloyd, Sep. 18, 1893, 1. 72. Schnitzer, Eine Rabbinerwahl, 50–54.

274  Notes to Chapter 6

73. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 173–78. 74.  On the agitation in Komárom: “Éretlen heccz,” Komáromi Lapok, July 1, 1882, 3, as well as the three subsequent issues of the same paper; Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 219– 20; Robert Nemes, “Hungary’s Antisemitic Provinces: Violence and Ritual Murder in the 1880s,” Slavic Review 66, no. 1 (2007): 20–44. More generally: Kövér, A tiszaeszlári dráma. Társadalomtörténeti látószögek (Budapest: Osiris, 2011); Petra Rybářová, “Emancipation and Assimilation of Jews at the Time of Expansion of Political Anti-Semitism in Hungary,” in Overcoming the Old Borders: Beyond the Paradigm of Slovak National History, ed. Adam Hudek et al. (Bratislava: Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 2013), 59–69. 75. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 220. 76.  Robert Nemes, “The Uncivil Origins of Civil Marriage: Hungary,” in Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 313–35; Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary, 10–28. 77.  “Az anti-semita mozgalomhoz,” Komáromi Lapok, Dec. 24, 1880, 5, and Jan. 1, 1881, 2. 78.  A. Schnitzer, Zwei Predigten vor und nach dem Tisza-Eszlarer Prozess gehalten (Budapest: Franklin, 1883). Quotations in this paragraph on pp. 6, 8, 30. 79.  Gábor Pap, “Karacsony ünnepén,” Komáromi Lapok, Dec. 24, 1880, 1–2; and idem, “Az antisemita ellen,” Nemzet, Sep. 24, 1883, 1. 80. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 221. 81. Ibid., 223–24; also see József Schweitzer, “A hazai református-zsidó dialógus előfutárai (Pap Gábor dunántuli református püspök és Schnitzer Ármin komáromi főrabbi),” Confessio 7, no. 1 (1983): 101–2. In 1891 Schnitzer had used his influence with the visiting Kolos Vaszary, about to be appointed bishop of Esztergom and prince-primate of Hungary, to have an antisemitic teacher removed from the Catholic gymnasium in Komárom: “Fürstprimas Vassary und der Rabbiner von Komorn,” Prager Tagblatt, Nov. 5, 1891, 6. 82. On Christian-Jewish friendships: Daniel Jütte, “Interfaith Encounters between Jews and Christians in the Early Modern Period and Beyond: Toward a Framework,” American Historical Review 118, no. 2 (2013): 378–400. 83.  Károly Vörös, “Die Munizipalverwaltung in Ungarn im Zeitalter des Dualismus,” in Die Habsburger Monarchie 1848–1918, vol. 7/2: Verfassung und Parlamentarismus, ed. Helmut Rumpler and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990), 2345–82. 84.  Albin Rovács, “Komárom,” in Borovszky, Komárom Vármegye és Komárom, 155–63. 85.  “A lidércznyomás alatt,” Komáromi Lapok, Oct. 13, 1883, 1–2. 86.  Štátny okresný archív v Komárne, Komárom város közgyűlési jegyzőkönyve, May 7, 1890; Dec. 14, 1892; and Feb. 21, 1893. 87. Till van Rahden, Jews and Other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity, and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860–1925 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 13. 88.  Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1981), 116–80. 89.  Szabó, “Új vonások”; Kövér, A tiszaeszlári dráma; Nemes, “Hungary’s Antisemitic Peripheries”; Miloslav Szabó, “‘Because Words are Not Deeds’: Antisemitic Practice and

Notes to Chapters 6 and 7  275

Nationality Policies in Upper Hungary around 1900,” in Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History 3 (2012), http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/. 90.  On Slovak political culture: Ľubomír Lipták, Changes of Changes: Society and Politics in Slovakia in the 20th Century (Bratislava: AEP, 2002), 124–37. 91.  Alice Freifeld, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848–1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 22; also see Gary B. Cohen, “Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Civil Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914,” Central European History 40 (2007): 241–78. 92.  On Schnitzer’s later years: Ármin Schnitzer, “Az álom a zsidó irodalomban,” Évkönyv 23 (1907): 173–96; Krausz, ed., Emlék-Lapok. 93. Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció? 81–172. 94. Schnitzer, Jüdische Kulturbilder, 95–97. 95.  Štátny okresný archív v Komárne, Komárom város közgyűlési jegyzőkönyve, Jan. 13, 1915.

Chapter 7 1.  Robert Townson, Travels in Hungary with a Short Account of Vienna in the Year 1793 (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797), 230. 2.  Daróczi Vilmos előadása a magyar dohányügyről. Felolvasta a Magyar Szakirók Országos Egyesületének szabad iskolájában, 1910 februán 14-én (Budapest: Márkus Samu, [1910]), 42. 3.  John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (London: John Murray, 1850), 1: 232. 4.  W. B. Forster Bovill, Hungary and the Hungarians (New York: McClure, 1908), 245–46. 5.  Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture 1912 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), 625–26. Today Hungary ranks forty-eighth in the world. On the history of Hungarian tobacco: Vilmos Daróczi, “Dohány,” in Magyarország közgazdasági és közművelődési állapota ezeréves fennállásakor és az 1896. évi ezredéves kiállitás eredménye, ed. Sándor Matlekovits, vol 6: Mezőgazdaság. Állattenyésztés. Vizépités. Erdészet. Gazdasági gépipar (Budapest: Pesti Könyvnyomda, 1897), 103–200; Fülepp Dezső Remethey, A nagy szenvedély. A dohányzás története (Kalocsa: Árpád, 1937); Lajos Takács, A dohánytermesztés Magyarországon (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1964); Ferenc Levárdy, Pipázó eleink (Budapest: Pauker, 1993). For related case studies: Alison Fleig Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Mary C. Neuberger, Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). 6.  J. G. Kohl, Austria. Vienna, Prague, Hungary, Bohemia. . . . (London: Chapman and Hall, 1843), 332. 7.  [Southern Fertilizing Comp’y], Tobacco: The Outlook for America for 1875; Production, Consumption and Movement in the United States, the German Empire, Hungary, Turkey . . . (Richmond: Clemmitt & Jones, 1875), 15. Italics in original. 8.  Daróczi, “Dohány,” 124. 9.  Quotations from Ivan T. Berend, History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 179. Also see Andrew C. Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). For a more positive assessment of Hungarian economic develop-

276  Notes to Chapter 7

ment: John Komlos, The Habsburg Monarchy as a Customs Union: Economic Development in Austria-Hungary in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); David Good, The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 135–46; and the nuanced but revealingly titled “Inactive Transformation” by György Kövér, which appears in Gábor Gyáni, Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century, trans. Mario Fenyo (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2004), 3–267. 10.  “Mirage of greatness” comes from László Kontler, A History of Hungary (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 279. 11. For biographical details: “A mi szerkesztőnk,” Magyar Dohány Ujság (hereafter MDU), Feb. 16, 1909, 6–7; “Daróczi Vilmos élete,” MDU, Nov. 16, 1912, 2–3; “Daróczi Vilmos,” in Magyar írók élete és munkái, ed. József Szinnyei, vol. 2: Caban—Exner (Budapest: Hornyászky Viktor, 1893), 635. On the village: Elek Fényes, Magyarország geographiai szótára (Pest: Kozma Vazul, 1851), 1: 241. 12. Ferenc Kölcsey, “A szatmári adózó nép állapotáról,” in Kölcsey Ferencz minden munkái, vol. 6: Törvényszéki és politikai beszédek, ed. Ferencz Toldy, 2nd rev. ed. (Pest: Heckenast Gusztáv, 1861), 41–51. 13.  Zita Horváth, “Örökös és szabadmenetelű jobbágyok a 18. századi Magyarországon,” Századok 143, no. 5 (2009): 1093–95. 14.  “Daróczi Vilmos élete,” MDU, Nov. 16, 1912, 2. 15.  Károly Vörös, “A fővárostől a székesfővárosig 1873–1896,” in Budapest története a márciusi forradalomtól az őszirózsás forradalomig, ed. Vörös (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1978), 378. 16.  Some sources emphasize the Hungarian government’s role in the founding of the paper: “Die Niedergang des ungarischen Tabakbaues,” Wiener Landwirthschaftliche Zeitung, Nov. 7, 1885, 2–3. 17.  “Dohányzás és a női szeszély,” MDU, Sep. 18, 1885, 2–3. 18.  Vilmos Daróczi, “A szakirodalom küzdelme,” MDU, June 16, 1911, 1. 19.  “A mi szerkesztőnk,” MDU, Feb. 16, 1909, 6. 20.  Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, P 1106 Demokrácia Páholy, 1887–1920, 5, no. 29, Gottlieb (Daróczi) Vilmos. Both Szatmári and Gelléri also belonged to this lodge. 21.  Budapest Főváros Levéltára. Állami anyakönyvek. V. kerület házassági anyakönyve, 1906/14, p. 5. 22.  Several obituaries noted that Daróczi’s daughter was seven years old when he died in late 1912. This would put her birth one year before Daróczi’s marriage to Berta Braun. The sources do not comment on this math. 23.  Vilmos Daróczi, “A szakirodalom küzdelme,” MDU, June 16, 1911, 1. 24.  Gyula Bokor, “Daróczi Vilmos,” MDU, Nov. 16, 1912, 1–2. 25.  József Ambrus, “Vidékről,” MDU, Feb. 16, 1885, 3–4. 26.  Ahmed, “Daróczi Vilmos jubileuma,” MDU, Feb. 16, 1909, 4. 27.  Vilmos Daróczi, “Magyarország legkiválóbb dohánytermő talajai,” MDU, Sep. 16, 1901, 1–2. 28.  Contemporaries made similar claims about the untapped potential of Galicia as they

Notes to Chapter 7  277

did of Hungary: Frank, Oil Empire, 12–13, 47; Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), esp. 14–36. 29.  [Pál Magda], Neueste statistisch-geographische Beschreibung des Königreichs Ungarn, Croatien, Slavonien und der ungarischen Militär-Grenze (Leipzig: Weygand, 1832), 61. 30.  The translation of Mandis’s German-language work comes from Forbes Watson, Report on the Cultivation and Preparation of Tobacco in India, With an Appended Manual of Practical Operations Connected With the Cultivation, etc. of Tobacco in Hungary (London: India Museum, 1871), 3. 31.  “Motor of modernization” is from David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 79. 32.  Vilmos Daróczi, A dohány Magyarországban (Budapest: Márkus Samu, 1890), 9. 33.  Daróczi, “Dohány,” 124. 34.  Daróczi Vilmos előadása a magyar dohányügyről, 40. 35.  “Tobacco as a Perennial,” Queensland Agricultural Journal, Oct. 1, 1898, 269; also see “Eine Neuerung auf dem Gebiete der Tabakspflanzungen,” Pester Lloyd, Dec. 12, 1896, 1. 36.  For the phrase “belated agricultural revolution” and material in this paragraph: Berend, History Derailed, 158–67. 37. An advocate of the Dutch model: Ernst von Schwarzer, Gelt und Gut in Neu-­ Oesterreich (Wien: Wallishausser, 1857), 26; of American methods: “Die Niedergang des ungarischen Tabakbaues,” 2. 38.  Daróczi, “Dohány,” 131. 39.  “A ‘Magyar Dohányujság’ huszonötéves története,” MDU, Feb. 16, 1909, 9. 40.  Ethnographers in a small Hungarian village found similar patterns of smuggling in the 1950s and 1960s: Edit Fél and Tamás Hofer, Proper Peasants: Traditional Life in a Hungarian Village (Budapest: Corvina, 1969), 243 n16. 41.  Vilmos Daróczi, “A csempészet,” MDU, July 1, 1887, 1–2. 42.  These policies were codified in Law 1887: XLIV, which among other provisions required state and local officials, along with the gendarmes and police, to combat smuggling at every turn. 43.  On migrant workers: László Kálnay et al., “Szabolcs Vármegye népe,” in Szabolcs Vármegye, ed. Samu Borovszky (Budapest: Apollo [1900]), 170. 44.  Vilmos Daróczi, “A termelő és a kertészek közötti viszony,” MDU, Aug. 1, 1894, 1. 45. Takács, A dohánytermesztés Magyarországon, 144–51. Takács (pp. 149–50) sees Daróczi’s paper as closely allied to the interests of large landowners. There is some truth to this, especially in Daróczi’s support of the state regulations on tobacco production, but Daróczi himself betrayed a deep ambivalence about large-scale agriculture and the changes it produced. 46.  On American Progressives and agriculture: Christopher R. Henke, Cultivating Science, Harvesting Power: Science and Industrial Agriculture in California (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 27–29. 47. “A Magyar Dohányujság munkatársai,” MDU, Apr. 16, 1906, 5–7. 48.  “Kormány változás,” MDU, Apr. 16, 1906, 1. 49.  On global trade: Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller (Princeton: Princeton University

278  Notes to Chapters 7 and 8

Press, 2014), 724–29. Producers of Hungarian wheat and flour faced similar pressures from global competition but could count on the common Austro-Hungarian market to absorb their goods. See Berend, History Derailed, 167. 50. On women and youth smokers: Elek Kerékgyártó and Mihál Herczegh, “A dohányzás korai és mohó élvezése ellen,” Fővárosi Közlöny, Feb. 19, 1901, 248–49. 51.  Antal Dániel, Család és szolgálat. Önéletírás (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1971), 24. 52.  Daróczi, “Dohány,” 168. 53.  Budapest Főváros Levéltára. Állami anyakönyvek. V. kerület házassági anyakönyve, 1906/14, p. 5, indicates that his parents’ names were Sámuel Gottlieb and Eszter Práv. 54.  The tobacconist’s nephew Mór Szatmári was also born Gottlieb in a village not far from Daróczi’s home. The use of a home village (for Daróczi) and home county (for Szatmári) is perhaps evidence of regional pride. 55.  Viktor Karády and István Kozma, Név és nemzet. Családnév-változtatás, névpolitika és nemzetiségi erőviszonyok Magyarországon a feudalizmustól a kommunizmusig (Budapest: Osiris, 2002). 56.  Frigyes Podmaniczky, Egy régi gavallér emlékei, ed. Ágota Steinert (Budapest: Helikon, 1984), 134, 147. 57.  Examples of these brands can be seen at the online Dohány Múzeum, dohanymuzeum .hu. 58.  Daróczi, “Dohány,” 196. 59.  Vilmos Daróczi, “Mégegyszer a ‘Hunnia’ szivarkáról,” MDU, June 1, 1900, 4–5. 60.  Daróczi, “Dohány,” 156; Vilmos Daróczi, “Küzdjünk a közlöny ellen!” MDU, Apr. 1, 1900, 1–2. 61.  Brief obituaries: “Gyászrovat,” Budapesti Hirlap, Nov. 13, 1912, 13; “Halálozás,” Pesti Hirlap, Nov. 13, 1912, 17. 62.  “Daróczi Vilmos élete,” MDU, Nov. 16, 1912, 3. Daróczi was likely a member of the Dohány Street synagogue. Indeed, it is hard to imagine him praying elsewhere, since Dohány Street means “Tobacco Street.” 63. Budapest Főváros Levéltára, VII.9.d. Kihirdetett végrendeletek—Daróczi Vilmos (1913). 64.  Daróczi, “Dohány,” 166. 65.  Vilmos Daróczi, “Néhány szó bétegségemről,” MDU, Dec. 1, 1912, 4. 66. “Rák,” A Pallas nagy lexikona, vol. 14: Pillera—Simor (Budapest: Pallas, 1897), 369–70. 67.  Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (New York: Scribner, 2010), 44. 68.  Gyula Bokor, “Daróczi Vilmos,” MDU, Nov. 16, 1912, 1–2.

Chapter 8 1. István Bársony, “Előszó,” in Szatmár Vármegye, ed. Samu Borovszky (Budapest: Apollo, [1908]), ix. The volume had a separate section on the city of Szatmár-Németi. 2.  Margit Kaffka, Színek és évek (Budapest: Osiris, 1999), 44, www.mek.hu. All translations of Kaffka’s book are mine, although with this and other passages I have consulted

Notes to Chapter 8  279

a fine translation: Colours and Years, trans. George F. Cushing, intro. Charlotte Franklin (Budapest: Corvina, 2008). 3.  György Schöpfin, “Kaffka Margit,” Nyugat 5, no. 24 (1912): 939. 4.  On Kaffka’s life and work: Miklós Radnóti, Kaffka Margit művészi fejlődése (Szeged: Fiatalok Művészeti Kollégiuma, 1934); Dalma H. Brunauer, “A Woman’s Self-Liberation: The Story of Margit Kaffka (1880–1918),” Canadian-American Review of Hungarian Studies 5, no. 2 (1978): 31–42; József Molnár, “Kaffka Margit (1880–1918),” Szabolcs-Szatmár Szemle 15, no. 2 (1980): 73–78; Margit Rolla, A fiatal Kaffka Margit (Budapest: MTA Könyvtára, 1980); Rolla, Út a révig (Budapest: MTA Könyvtára, 1983); Anna Földes, Kaffka Margit. Pályakép (Budapest: Kossuth, 1987); Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, “Margit Kaffka and Dorothy Richardson,” Hungarian Studies 11, no. 1 (1996): 77–95; György Bodnár, Kaffka Margit (Budapest: Balassi, 2001); Ivan Sanders, “Out of Old Hungary,” Hungarian Quarterly 45, no. 174 (2004): 133–36; Nóra Séllei, “A Hungarian New Woman Writer and a Hybrid Autobiographical Subject,” in New Woman Hybridities: Femininity, Feminism and International Consumer Culture, 1880–1930, ed. Ann Heilmann and Margaret Beetham (London: Routledge, 2004), 37–48. 5. Lajos Hatvany’s “stylistic slovenliness” cited in Radnóti, Kaffka Margit művészi fejlődése, 25; “excessive love” is from Lóránt Czigány, “Women in Revolt: Margit Kaffka,” in A History of Hungarian Literature: From the Earliest Times to the mid-1970’s, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 3, www.mek.oszk.hu. 6. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 43. 7. Ibid., 100. 8. Földes, Kaffka Margit. Pályakép, 118. 9.  Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, “Conservatism, Modernity, and Populism in Hungarian Culture,” Hungarian Studies 9, nos. 1–2 (1994): 19. Three of Hungary’s most prominent writers in the early 1900s—Endre Ady, Gyula Krúdy, and Zsigmond Móricz—were all born within forty miles of Kaffka’s birthplace, and all were born within three years of her. The left-wing sociologist and editor Oscar Jászi, just five years her senior, was from the same town as Kaffka. 10.  Mary Gluck, George Lukács and His Generation, 1900–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 23. 11.  Margit Kaffka, “Önéletrajz,” in Az Érdekes Ujság dekameronja. Száz magyar iró száz legjobb novellája, ed. Ede Kabos, vol. 2 (Budapest: Légrády, 1913), 163. 12. In Egy polgár vallomásai (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 1: 62–107, Sándor Márai (Kaffka’s near contemporary) brilliantly explores his parents’ similarly mismatched marriage and the many ways in which their two families have shaped him. 13.  See Kaffka’s sympathetic portrait of her father in “Apám,” in Az élet útján. Versek, cikkek, naplójegyzetek, ed. György Bodnár (Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1972), 100–102. 14.  It was likely her great-grandfather. See Rolla, A fiatal Kaffka Margit, 20–21. 15.  On the Uray family: Ede Reiszig and Bertalan Gorzó, “Szatmár Vármegye nemes családai,” in Borovszky, Szatmár Vármegye, 609; Rolla, A fiatal Kaffka Margit, 22–25; Földes, Kaffka Margit. Pályakép, 29–35. One Uray carefully reconstructed the family tree, completing his research in the spring of 1918, just as the world that had sustained such families was

280  Notes to Chapter 8

nearing collapse. See the “Monumenta Urayana”: Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, P 1566 Uray család, 5. tétel, Leszármazási táblázatok, 401–5. 16.  Kaffka, “Önéletrajz,” 163–64. 17.  Margit Kaffka, “Diadal,” in Csendes Válságok (Budapest: Neumann, 2001), 88, www .mek.oszk.hu. 18.  Margit Kaffka, The Ant Heap, trans. and intro. Charlotte Franklin (London: Marion Boyars, 1995), 29, 31. 19. Földes, Kaffka Margit. Pályakép, 64–69; also see Bodnár, Kaffka Margit, 28–31. 20. Földes, Kaffka Margit. Pályakép, 25–26. 21.  Margit Kaffka to Hedvig Nemestóthy Szabó, Jan. 4, 1898, in A lélek stációi. Kaffka Margit válogatott levelezése, ed. Zsuzsanna Simon (Budapest: Nap Kiadó, 2010), 38. 22.  Ibid., Sep. 31, 1898, in A lélek stációi, 29. 23.  Kaffka to Miksa Fenyő, Nov. 7, 1905, in A lélek stációi, 115. 24.  Kaffka to Oszkár Gellért, n.d., in A lélek stációi, 103. 25.  Gusztáv Lauka cited in Földes, Kaffka Margit. Pályakép, 56. 26. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 30. 27.  Károly Nyéki, “Adatok Kaffka Margit pályakezdéséhez,” Szabolcs-Szatmár Szemle 15, no. 2 (1980): 79–86; Földes, Kaffka Margit. Pályakép, 71–79; Bodnár, Kaffka Margit, 103–20. 28.  Kaffka to Hedvig Nemestóthy Szabó, Dec. 13, 1898, in A lélek stációi, 32. 29.  Ibid., Apr. 15, 1899, in A lélek stációi, 46. 30.  Charlotte Franklin, “Introduction,” in Colours and Years, 8. 31.  On Szatmár County, see the volume in The Counties and Cities of Hungary, as well as Kálmán Géresi, “Nagy-Károly és Szatmár vidéke,” in Az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia írásban és képben, vol. 7: Magyarország II. kötete (Budapest: A Magyar Királyi Államnyomda, 1891), 353–73; László Cservenyák, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Megye monográfiája, vol. 1: Történelem és kultúra (Nyíregyháza: Nyírségi Nyomda, 1993), 321–54; Valeriu Achim, Nord-Vestul Transilvaniei. Cultură națională—finalitate politică 1848–1918 (Baia Mare: Gutinul, 1998); Patrik Tátrai, Az etnikai térszerkezet változásai a történeti Szatmárban (Budapest: MTA Földrajztudományi Kutatóintézet, 2010); Anders E. B. Blomqvist, Economic Nationalizing in the Ethnic Borderlands of Hungary and Romania: Inclusion, Exclusion and Annihilation in Szatmár/ Satu-Mare 1867–1944 (Stockholm: Department of History, Stockholm University, 2014). 32. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 70. Outsized aristocratic castles dominated many other small towns and villages, including most famously Geszt, the Bihar County seat of the powerful Tisza family. 33.  Amadil Ujfalussy, “Nagykároly,” in Borovszky, Szatmár Vármegye, 172. 34.  Ujfalussy, “Nagykároly,” 172. 35.  Ferencz Ágoston “Közgazdasági viszonyok,” in Borovszky, Szatmár-Németi sz. kir. város, 11. 36. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 23. 37. Ibid., 89. 38.  On the increasingly negative connotations of the word “gentry”: György Kövér, “Inactive Transformation: Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to World War I,”

Notes to Chapter 8  281

in Social History of Hungary: From the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. Gábor Gyáni, György Kövér, and Tibor Valuch, trans. Mario Fenyo (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2004), 233–34. 39. Sándor Domahidy, “Szatmár Vármegye mezőgazdasága és állattenyésztése,” in Borovszky, Szatmár Vármegye, 298. 40.  Géresi, “Nagy-Károly és Szatmár vidéke,” 360. 41.  Celestin, “Egy pár szó a nemesi és polgári osztályról,” Szatmár, Feb. 29, 1896, 1. 42. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 78. 43. Ibid., 79. 44.  Ujfalussy, “Nagykároly,” 169. 45.  “A vidék és a főváros,” Szatmár, Oct. 17, 1896, 1–2. 46.  Antal Dániel, Család és szolgálat. Önéletírás (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1971), 17–18. 47. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 14. 48. Ibid., 14. 49. Zsigmond Móricz, “Szatmár Vármegye népe,” in Borovszky, Szatmár Vármegye, 268. On Kaffka’s use of local language: Bodnár, Kaffka Margit, 194. 50.  Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 61–62, 140–41. 51.  Sándor Aáron, “Egészségügy,” in Borovszky, Szatmár Vármegye, 331–34. 52.  Aáron, “Egészségügy,” 333. 53. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 44. 54.  This translation of “itt csapot-papot” comes from Cushing’s Colours and Years, 210. 55.  Géresi, “Nagy-Károly és Szatmár vidéke,” 365. 56.  A Magyar Szent Korona Országainak 1900. évi népszámlálása, ed. Magyar Kir. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, vol. 10: Végeredmények összefoglalása (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1909), 112–13, 135, 142–43; also see Tátrai, Az etnikai térszerkezet, 45–55, who stresses that ethnic and religious changes in the late nineteenth century paled in comparison with earlier (Ottoman) and later (post–World War Two) periods. 57.  Ernő Vende, “Irodalom, tudomány és művészet,” in Borovszky, Szatmár Vármegye, 350. 58.  Móricz, “Szatmár Vármegye népe,” 269–70, 274–77. 59. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 83. 60.  Móricz, “Szatmár Vármegye népe,” 256. 61.  On the Széchenyi Társulat: Reiszig, “Az utolsó negyven év története,” in Borovszky, Szatmár Vármegye, 544, 546; Kornél Marosán, ed., A Szatmármegyei Széchenyi Társulat emlékkönyve (Szatmár: Nemes András, 1907); Blomqvist, Economic Nationalizing, 89–92. 62.  On the society’s cultural and national role “in Hungary’s northeastern parts” (Magy­ arország északkeleti részén): “Szatmárvármegye székhelykérdéséről,” Szatmár, Aug. 3, 1889, 1. 63. Victor Aradi, “Kulturegyesületeinek kulturmunkája,” Huszadik Század 30, no. 1 (1914): 24. 64.  Viorel Ciubotă, ed. Lupta Românilor din Județul Satu Mare pentru făurirea statului național unitar Român: Documente, 1848–1918 (Bucharest: Editura Direcția Generală a Arhivelor Statului din Republica Socialistă România, 1989), doc. 122, 129, 138; Achim, Nord-Vestul Transilvaniei, 176–85; Blomqvist, Economic Nationalizing, 114–34.

282  Notes to Chapter 8 and Conclusion

65.  Ágoston Berecz, The Politics of Early Language Teaching: Hungarian in the Primary Schools of the Late Dual Monarchy (Budapest: Pasts Inc., Central European University, 2013), 13–19, 181–219; also see Bálint Varga, “Multilingualism in Urban Hungary, 1880–1910,” Nationalities Papers 42, no. 6 (2014): 965–80, for similar arguments; and Blomqvist, Economic Nationalizing, 99–105, which identifies the high social costs of these policies. 66. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 42. 67.  Bernadette Baumgartner, “Kisebbség a kisebbségben. A Szatmár megyei németek a két világháború között 1918–1940” (Ph.D. dissertation, Pécsi Tudományegyetem, 2010), 17–27. 68.  Emese Lafferton, “The Magyar Moustache: The Faces of Hungarian State Formation, 1867–1918,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38, no. 4 (2007): 707–32. 69. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 79. 70.  Ioan Tomole, Românii din Crișana, Sălaj și Sătmar în luptele național-electorale de la începutul secolului al XX-lea (Baia Mare: Gutinul, 1999), 135–59; Blomqvist, Economic Nationalizing, 134–44. 71. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 105. 72. Ibid., 124. 73.  Kaffka expressed similar sentiments in a 1918 short story, in which a poor peasant woman sacrifices everything to educate her children, hoping that her son will become a doctor, engineer, or lawyer and her daughter a piano-playing teacher. See “Vasúton,” in Bodnár, Az élet útján, 378–83. 74. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 118. 75.  Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Kézirattár. Quart. Hung. 3645. Bauer Ervin naplója és levelei Kaffka Margithoz, Feb. 23, 1915, p. 54. On Bauer: Miklós Müller, “A Martyr of Science: Ervin Bauer (1890–1938),” Hungarian Quarterly 46, no. 178 (2005): 123–31. Small worlds: Bauer was born in Szepes County, less than twenty miles from the birthplaces of Vásárhelyi and Schnitzer. 76.  Kaffka to Lajos Hatvany, Apr. 13, 1918, in A lélek stációi, 221–22. 77.  Margit Kaffka, “I Tried to Pray,” in Lines of Fire: Women Writers of World War I, ed. Margaret R. Higonnet (New York: Penguin, 1999), 460. 78.  “Kaffka Margit (1880–1918),” Vasárnapi Ujság, Dec. 8, 1918, 675. 79.  Kaffka to Almásy Ignácné, Nov. 20, 1918, in A lélek stációi, 178–79. 80.  Miklós Radnóti, Kaffka Margit művészi fejlődése (Szeged: Fiatalok Művészeti Kollégiuma, 1934), 11. 81.  Kaffka, “Önéletrajz,” 164. 82. Kaffka, Színek és évek, 2, 4. 83. Ibid., 3. 84.  Aladár Schöpflin, “Kaffka Margit most tíz éve halt meg,” Nyugat 21, no. 23 (1928), 710. 85.  Ernst Lorsy, “Kaffka Margit gestorben,” Pester Lloyd, Dec. 3, 1918, 7.

Conclusion 1.  Bartók quoted in János Demény, ed., Béla Bartók Letters, trans. Péter Balabán et al. (London: Faber & Faber, 1971), 154.

Notes to Conclusion  283

2. Gyula Kállai, “Bihar-vármegye szociográfiája,” in Bihar-Vármegye, ed. Zoltán Nadányi (Budapest: A Magyar Városok Monografiája Kiadóhivatala, 1938), 83. 3.  On the importance of wartime borders, both for diplomats and for people on the ground: Holly Case, Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 4.  Jessica Alina-Pisano, “From Iron Curtain to Golden Curtain: Remaking Identity in the EU Borderlands,” East European Politics and Societies 23, no. 2 (2009): 267. 5.  Dezső Kosztolányi, Skylark, intro. Péter Esterházy, trans. Richard Aczel (New York: New York Review Books, 1993), 31; Deborah Eisenberg, “Quiet, Shattering, Perfect,” New York Review of Books, Aug. 10, 2010, 62–66. 6.  Quotations in this paragraph: Kosztolányi, Skylark, vii, 31, 106. 7.  At least the express train came to Kosztolányi’s town. In Stephen Leacock’s wonderful 1912 novel about small-town Canada, the express train passes through but does not stop. The townspeople, he tells us, nonetheless feel a great sense of pride: “The joy of being on the main line lifts the Mariposa people above the level of their neighbours . . . into the cosmopolitan atmosphere of through traffic and the larger life.” Leacock, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, ed. Carl Spadoni (Peterborough: Broadview, 2002), 11–12. 8. Kosztolányi, Skylark, 15. 9.  Dezső Kosztolányi, Egy ég alatt, ed. Pál Réz (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1977), 583. 10.  Zoltán Tóth, “Die kulturelle Integration der ungarischen Ethnika in einer Kleinstadt um die Jahrhundertwende,” in Etudes historiques hongroises 1990, ed. Ferenc Glatz, vol. 2: Ethnicity and Society in Hungary (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 201. 11.  On emancipation and mobility: Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 907–19. 12.  Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 12. 13.  Tamás Hofer, “Construction of the ‘Folk Cultural Heritage’ and Rival Versions of National Identity in Hungary,” Ethnologia Europaea 21, no. 2 (1991): 145–70. 14.  Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 3. 15.  The museum was founded in 1964; see Casa Memorială Iosif Vulcan, http://case memoriale.ro/bihor-1/. 16. Gyula Viktor, “A rudabányai Gvadányi-szobor története,” Az Érc- és Ásványbányászati Múzeum Közleményei 1 (2004), 66. 17.  Schnitzer Ármin Mikromúzeum, http://kehreg.com/schnitzer-armin-mikromu zeum/. 18.  The editor of the translation claims Kästenbaum as a “distant ancestor”; the grandfather of one of the translators attended the Kästenbaum school. See Kaesztenbaum Iskola (School) Website, http://www.kaesztenbaum.com/. 19.  Dohány Múzeum, http://dohanymuzeum.hu/. 20.  Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage, 1996), 14.

Index

Abrud (also known as Abrudbánya), 132 Adriatic Sea, 67, 84, 88, 265n88 Ady, Endre, 7, 9; and Iosif Vulcan, 138, 145–46; on Oradea, 136 agriculture, 6, 49, 67–68, 86, 100, 102, 139, 154, 179–81, 183, 187–93, 277n45; 277n46; in Szatmár County, 201, 205, 214–16, 220 Agriculture, Hungarian Ministry of, 68, 257n5 alcohol, 18, 49–50, 52, 182, 220, 221, 263n40 Andersen, Hans Christian, 78, 128, 259n43 Anderson, Benedict, 10–11, 246n32 antisemitism, 3, 7, 9–10, 31–32, 228, 231, 242; interwar, 53, 93, 263n40; in Komárom, 153, 166, 170–75, 177, 237, 274n81; in Zemplén County, 53–54 Apuseni Mountains, 131–35, 232 aristocracy, 13–15, 17, 26–27, 32, 34, 56–57, 84, 95, 107, 182, 195–96, 214, 280n32 army, Habsburg, 17, 19, 21–22, 32–33, 38, 72, 80–81, 122, 158, 166, 203, 220, 222, 225, 227, 231 Árpád (early Hungarian military leader), 208 associations, 84, 88, 99–100, 106, 109, 138, 174, 179, 215, 224–25, 237; agricultural, 190, 194; educational, 116; Jewish, 161; Romanian, 138–39. See also ASTRA; Kisfaludy Society; Romanian Theater Society; Széchenyi Society ASTRA, 139–41 Attila, József, 87

backwardness: in agriculture, 181, 188–89; of the provinces, 8, 39, 91, 201, 212, 217, 239, 242 Balaton, Lake, 67 balls and dances, 23, 99, 103, 127, 139, 143, 216–17, 219 Bánffy, Miklós, 247n8 Barabás, Miklós, 82 Barthes, Roland, 251n102 Bartók, Béla, 9, 232 Bauer, Ervin, 227–28, 282n75 Beiuș (also known as Belényes), 125, 140, 152 Ber of Bolechów, 44, 51–52 Berlin, 19, 48, 184 Bihor County (also known as Bihar), 122, 124–26, 128, 130, 140–41, 149, 265n2; nobility, 280n32; landscape, 121, 125, 132–35, 141; population, 232. See also Oradea biography, 3–8, 10–12, 21, 213, 234–38, 242 Bíró, Ferenc, 15–16, 30, 31, 35 Bismarck, Otto von, 127 Black Sea, 78–79, 87–88 Bohemia, 131, 183 Borsod County, 17–18, 23, 24, 31, 248n21, 249n42 Bratislava, 151, 241. See also Pressburg Brazil, 90, 180, 189, 195, 201 Brown, Kate, 6, 239 Bucharest, 101, 121, 130, 131, 139, 141–42, 144–45, 148 Budapest (also known as Buda-Pest), 11, 40, 285

286 Index

66, 89, 130, 163, 169, 190, 218, 231–32; bridge in, 73, 84;, as capital city, 2, 27, 32–33, 74, 83–84, 91–92, 104–5, 121, 148, 173, 201, 211, 217–18, 223, 233–35; cemeteries in, 199, 229, 239, 240; cultural life in, 84, 98, 104–5, 127–29, 143, 148, 185, 206, 212–13, 217; population growth of, 41, 83, 183; schools in, 72, 76, 90, 107–9, 211, 240; visitors to, 4, 24, 27–28, 30, 117–18, 187, 226–27 Bukovina, 5, 96 Bulgaria, 78, 136 Calvinists, 4, 30, 47, 57–58, 112, 113, 151, 214, 272n40; churches of, 28, 152, 240–41; Hungarian-speaking, 28, 100, 102, 136, 152, 182, 220, 225, 262n26; nobles, 25, 54, 93, 96–97; schools, 25. See also Pap, Bishop Gábor Canada, 41, 283n7 cancer, 201–2 Carpathian Mountains, 6, 17, 44, 69, 77, 85, 101, 131, 152, 208–9, 244n12. See also Apuseni Mountains Carpatho-Rusyn language, 28. See also Ruthenian language censorship, 9, 34, 37, 107, 129 censuses, 17, 28, 47, 51, 166, 221, 252n11, 267n45; of 1880, 4, 152, 157, 221 Chain Bridge, 73, 84 chederim, 62–65, 93, 156–57 cholera, 54, 156, 202, 220 Christianity, 7, 15, 41, 62, 151, 152–53 classical world, 15, 18, 38, 85 clothing, 2, 13, 26–30, 47, 53, 64–65, 99, 128, 153, 159, 168, 211, 217–20, 232; foreign, 27, 29, 60 Colors and Years (novel), 205–7, 209–13, 214–26, 227–29, 236 Compromise of 1867, 9, 94, 115, 122, 130, 138, 142, 152, 224–25 county nobility, 15, 22–23, 32, 34, 52, 59, 64, 107, 174, 181, 214–16, 205, 208, 219, 222, 224–26, 229, 236–37 Cracow, 69, 102 craftsmen, 4, 6, 25, 30, 32, 44, 48, 52, 56, 70–71, 102, 208, 226 Cuba, 180, 187, 195, 197, 199 Curtis, Tony, 1–2, 5

Czechoslovakia, 151, 175, 231–32, 241 Danube River (also known as Donau, Duna, Dunaj, Dunărea), 6, 67–68, 69, 84, 85, 87, 257n12, 258n31; as Habsburg river, 260n66; mapping of, 73–78; regulation of, 78– 83, 90–92; trade on, 27, 78–79, 88, 160 Daróczi, Vilmos: and agriculture, 179–81, 183, 188–93; death and burial of, 186, 199–202; as editor, 184–87, 194–99, 202; and home county, 183, 187, 201, 203; wife and daughter of, 185; youth and education of, 182–83. See also Hungarian Tobacco News Debrecen, 4, 5, 24–25, 38, 69, 104, 109, 217, and railroads, 228 deforestation, 6, 75–76, 132 disease, 4, 26, 70, 86, 136, 202, 220, 229. See also cholera; malaria; tuberculosis divorce, 47, 117, 212 Drava River (also known as Drau, Dráva), 67 Drimba, Lucian, 124, 128, 129, 143 Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 30–31, 58, 80, 87, 125, 136, 151–52, 267n45, 272n40 elections, 9, 60, 127; county, 224–25; parliamentary, 98, 109, 194, 208–9, 225; town, 173 emancipation: of Jews, 43, 59–62, 152, 167, 170, 174, 236, 256n79; of peasants, 236; of women, 105, 111, 113–17, 118–19, 224, 226, 236 Eminescu, Mihai, 128, 147 engineers and engineering, 68, 72–78, 79–80, 83–84, 86–90, 124, 205, 258n22, 282n73 England, 2, 13, 72–73, 88. See also London Eötvös, József, 57, 225 Evtuhov, Catherine, 10, 48, 236, 244n9 Family (literary journal), 128–29, 131, 137–38, 141–42, 147, 149, 237 Fáy, András, 97, 106 Fehér, Dezső, 144–45, 146 Felső-Bánya (also known as Baia Sprie, Mittelstadt), 28 Fényes, Elek, 100, 102, 263n40 Fenyves, Katalin, 175–76 Ferdinand, Emperor, 81 Fermor, Patrick Leigh, 151–52

Index 287

Fiume (also known as Reka, Rijeka), 88, 265n88 folk culture, 37, 53, 66, 115, 128, 135, 138, 141–42, 189; dances, 99; poetry, 129–30, 212; songs, 110, 141, 147, 232; stories, 48, 54, 67 food, 2, 11, 26–28, 54, 75, 80–81, 110–11, 181, 215, 238; Hungarian, 38; Jewish, 176; Romanian, 30, 220; Slovak, 30 forests, 6, 46, 54, 72, 100, 129, 132, 154, 182. See also deforestation France, 2, 19, 41, 72, 78, 86, 161, 198, 218, 255n22; revolution in, 3, 15, 29, 32, 109; and tobacco, 184, 198, 199 Francis Joseph, Emperor-King, 102, 122, 169, 171, 175, 186 Francis, Emperor, 81 Freifeld, Alice, 111, 174 French language, 21, 27, 29, 70, 109, 113, 117 Fulbrook, Mary, 251n102 Galicia, 5, 51–52, 96, 100, 159, 169, 195, 219, 231, 233, 276n28; as source of Jewish immigrants, 42–45, 47, 50, 60, 62, 63, 103, 154–55 Gelléri, Mór, 185, 189, 276n20 gentry. See county nobility German language, 4, 21, 28, 35, 39, 44–46, 58, 70, 73, 84, 93, 102, 106, 127, 155, 158–60, 163, 165–67, 176–77, 183, 235; in schools, 108, 113, 157, 166, 211, 226 German speakers, 19, 28, 32, 69, 102, 135, 154, 220, 223, 228 Germany, 11, 13, 42, 53, 70, 76, 131, 195, 232 Gomperz Brothers (tobacco exporters), 184–85, 189 Greek Catholics, 4, 30, 45, 47, 57–58, 99, 113, 125, 139–40, 151, 152, 220, 267n45; in Oradea, 121–23, 125–26, 136, 147; Romanian-speaking, 102, 136, 182; Ruthenian-speaking, 28, 102. See also Vulcan, Bishop Samuil Greek merchants, 24, 32, 42 guba, 33, 215 Gulyás, László Szabolcs, 244n12 Gvadányi, József, 14–16, 49, 59, 66, 91, 217, 233, 235–36, 239–41, 248n27; as army officer, 19–20; marriage and children of, 19–20, 38; origins of, 4, 16–18, 22–23; polit-

ical views of, 15–16, 22, 33–37, 39, 118; and provincial society, 23–28, 30–32, 39, 215; as writer, 21–22, 23–24, 85, 251n85; youth and education of, 18. See also hunting; Paul Rontó; Village Notary’s Journey to Buda Gypsy musicians, 21, 30. See also Roma Hasidism, 7, 10, 60, 63–64, 93, 102, 152, 159–60, 163, 220; in Poland, 63 Hebrew, 44, 46, 58, 62, 65, 156–57, 167, 177, 182 Heilprin, Mihály, 65 Heimat, 141 Hernád River (also known as Hornád), 69, 257n12 Herzl, Theodor, 169 Hirsch, Rabbi Samson Raphael, 158–59, 271n30 Hitchins, Keith, 146 Horea (Vasile Nicola), 133 Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 29, 82, 84, 89–90, 91 Hungarian Diet, the (also known as the Diet), 14, 16, 18, 68, 72, 77, 83, 88; of 1790–91, 32–34, 37, 44, 51, 255n69; of 1832–36, 61–62, 88; of 1843–44, 98–99, 106. See also Parliament, Hungarian Hungarian language, 1, 4, 15, 28–30, 64, 98, 102, 103, 129–30, 138, 235–36; government support for, 9, 33, 46, 94, 99, 130, 142, 144, 166; publications, 21–22, 30, 35, 38–39, 84, 97, 107, 110, 115, 117, 122, 137, 206; in schools, 58–59, 63, 94, 108, 113, 115–16, 166, 211, 221–23 Hungarian Tobacco News (journal), 184–87, 191, 194, 195, 197, 199–202, 237, 245 Hungarian speakers, 7, 14, 19, 28, 39, 45, 69–70, 87, 121–22, 135, 145, 166, 218–21, 223, 267n45; among nobility, 25, 32, 94, 102–3, 118, 125, 145–46, 152, 182. See also Calvinists; Jews; Roman Catholics Hunsdorf (also known as Huncovce, Hunfalu, Unsdorf ), 154–58, 163, 164, 176, 271n15 hunting, 13–16, 18, 19, 23, 33, 211, 235, 247n8 Huszár, Mátyás, 72–74 Iancu, Avram, 126, 133–34 immigration, 41–43, 44, 208, 220. See also Galicia; Poland

288 Index

infant mortality rate, 4, 26, 39, 220, 248n21 informal politics, 5, 37, 84–85, 88–89, 237 Iorga, Nicolae, 147, 148, 263n37 Ireland, 43, 73, 199 Irinyi family, 124–25, 126 Italian language, 4 Italy, 2, 16–17, 70, 218, 227, 250n60; river regulation in, 86; and tobacco, 198, 201 Jászi, Oscar, 279n9 Jews, 9–10, 28, 31–32, 41–49, 50–54, 93–94, 102–3, 118, 132, 135–36, 138–39, 152–53, 154–57, 161–64, 167–68, 172, 181–82, 185, 196, 211, 232, 236–38, 272n36; and education, 10, 44, 51, 52, 58–59, 62–66, 113, 154, 156, 158–61, 171, 175, 220–21, 241, 256n85; and Hungarian language, 46, 163, 165–68, 171, 175–76, 177, 182, 273n60. See also chederim; Galicia; Hasidism; Neolog Judaism Jókai, Mór, 74–75, 77, 91, 96, 109, 165, 258n31 Joseph II, Emperor, 27, 32, 34, 44, 51, 58 Judson, Pieter, 105 Julow, Viktor, 15–16, 27, 29, 33 Kaffka, Margit: and Budapest, 213, 216–17, 226–27, 233; death and burial of, 229, 239–41; marriages and son of, 212–13, 226–28, 229; origins of, 207–9, 236, 279n9; and provinces, 205–7, 214–20, 222–23, 225–26, 228–29, 282n73; as teacher, 211–13, 236; as writer, 206–7, 212–13, 233, 237; youth and education of, 209–11. See also Colors and Years Karacs, Teréz, 107, 108, 112 Kármán, József, 13–15, 35, 39 Károlyi family, 89, 182, 214–15, 220, 224 Kassa (also known as Cașovia, Kaschau, Košice), 106 Kästenbaum, Ráfáel, 41, 43, 235–36, 252n10; as benefactor, 54–61, 62–66, 94, 256n85, 283n18; and Christians, 41, 52–54, 57–58, 61–62, 182, 224, 237; death and burial of, 65, 239, 241; marriages of, 47; as merchant, 45–48, 49–50, 60–61; origins of, 43–45, 253n11 Kazinczy, Ferenc, 35, 54–55, 58–59, 64 Király-Darócz (also known as Craidorolț), 182–84, 196

Kisfaludy Society, 129–30, 139, 148 Kölcsey, Ferenc, 182, 225 Kolozsvár (also known as Cluj, Cluj-Napoca, Klausenburg), 104, 115 Komárom (also known as Komorn, Komárno), 35, 165–66; administration, 166, 173–75, 176–77, 237; grain trade, 35, 160; Jews, 160–64, 166–69, 170–75, 176–77, 241; population, 171, 272n40 Komárom County (also known as Komorn, Komárno), 160, 162, 166 Kossuth, Lajos, 10, 63–64, 90, 103, 109, 255n53; and Pest News, 104–5; and railroads, 88 Kosztolányi, Dezső, 2, 22, 24, 39, 233–34; and Skylark, 233–34, 242 Krúdy, Gyula, 279n9 Kukučín, Martin, 46, 49 laborers, 41, 78–82, 181, 188–89; agricultural, 132, 190–93, 203, 215–16; disturbances of, 220; dues of, 16–18, 25, 49, 182; factory, 136 landscape, 6–7, 10, 35, 100, 113, 127, 132, 135, 217–18, 238 Latin, 18, 25, 28, 35, 70, 72, 84, 114, 127, 197, 235, 248n23 lawyers, 26–27, 56, 65, 72, 90, 129, 133, 139–40, 170, 175, 209, 224, 236. See also Zigre, Nicolau Lazăr, Aurel, 137, 146 Lehár, Franz, 165, 166 Leopold II, 32–33 liberalism, 3, 59, 61, 107, 123, 126, 130, 145, 151, 181, 225, 232, 237; and the press, 137; and religion, 152–53, 161, 167, 169, 171–75, 270n8 libraries, 11–12, 13, 34, 99, 106, 139, 222, 228 life expectancy, 4, 26, 201, 220 Liptószentmiklós (also known as LiptauSankt-Nikolaus, Liptovský Mikulá, Liptovský Svätý Mikulá), 158, 160, 272n36 literacy, 15, 36, 94, 106; among Jews, 46, 163; among Romanians, 129, 137, 139, 221 London, 2, 29, 32, 73, 184 Lövei, Klára, 130, 232, 261n4, 265n88; death and burial of, 117–18, 239–40; and home county, 93, 103–5, 118–19; as journalist, 115, 117; origins of, 95–97, 100–101,

Index 289

207–8; as political prisoner, 110–12, 235; and Revolution of 1848, 108–10, 117, 118, 236; as teacher, 94, 108–9, 112–16; youth and education of, 97–100, 208, 236 Löw, Rabbi Leopold, 161 Lupovitch, Howard, 56 Lutherans, 4, 10, 63, 74, 151–52; churches of, 28, 71; German-speaking, 28, 70–71; schools of, 25 Mád, 53 Magyarization, 9, 94, 115–16, 168, 176 malaria, 79 Mandis, Johann, 188–89, 277n30 Mannová, Elena, 256n89 Márai, Sándor, 72, 137, 279n12 Máramaros County (also known as Maramureș, Maramorosh), 93, 97, 99–100, 105, 109, 110, 115–16, 118; administration, 98; economy, 101–2; landscape, 100; population, 102–4. See also Máramarossziget Máramarossziget (also known as Siget, Sighet, Sighetu Marmației, Sziget), 93, 97, 100–104, 110, 111–12, 118–19; schools in, 112–16 Marczali, Henrik, 42, 249n42 Maria Theresa, Empress, 33, 44, 51, 72, 255n69 marriage, 17, 95–95, 99, 125, 128, 261n10, 279n12; age of, 7, 159; among Jews, 47, 159, 164; civil, 152–53, 171, 173, 225, 237 material conditions: in the provinces, 16, 26–27, 70, 91, 135, 167, 217, 219, 233 Mátészalka, 1–2, 5–6, 249n47 Meinl, Julius, 218 merchants, 6, 26, 28, 69, 78, 135, 139–40, 194. See also Greek merchants; Kästenbaum, Ráfáel Metternich, Prince, 73, 81 Mikszáth, Kálmán, 6, 260n65 mines and mining, 6, 17–18, 34, 70, 80, 101–2, 132, 157 Miskolc, 56, 72, 107, 211–12; and railroads, 212 Mitu, Sorin, 121–22, 133 mobility: in the provinces, 4, 157–58, 235; social, 9, 37, 39, 208 Molnár, Father János, 171, 173–74 moneylending, 43, 60–61, 66 Mongols, 71

Moravia, 14, 42, 47, 51, 166, 169, 208, 218; yeshivas in, 157–59, 165, 235, 238 Móricz, Zsigmond, 221–22, 279n9 museums, 4, 131, 136, 139, 173, 240–41 myths, 90, 212, 251n102; of the provinces, 11, 39–40, 66, 176, 201, 207, 223, 228–29, 239 Nagy-Peleske (also known as Peleș), 23, 38, 110 Nagykároly (also known as Carei, Grosskarol), 182, 207, 209, 212, 214–18, 220, 225, 229 name changes: of first names, 10, 166. 236; of surnames, 16, 96, 109, 168, 172, 196–97, 236 Napoleonic Wars, 50–51, 72, 75 nationalism: Croatian, 30, 94; Hungarian, 9, 94, 99, 103, 105, 106–9, 111, 115, 118, 122–23, 130, 145, 153, 166–68, 176, 196–98, 221–22, 235–36, 238–39, 240; Romanian, 9, 30, 94, 115, 122–25, 130, 133–35, 139–41, 143, 145–48, 222, 229, 231, 240; Serbian, 9; Slovak, 9, 94, 115, 231. See also Zionism Neolog Judaism, 163–67, 172, 175 Nikolsburg (also known as Mikulov), 158–59 northeastern Hungary, 10–11, 16, 38–40, 94, 106, 109, 153–55, 163, 176, 214, 231–33, 234–39; borders of, 5–6, 244n12, 244n13; economy of, 6–8, 25–26, 68, 86–87, 91–92, 101–2, 181, 187, 193, 201; landscape of, 6, 100; nobles of, 31–33, 36, 71, 96, 103, 209, 216, 258n29; people of, 7, 8–10, 22–23, 28–31, 35, 43, 50, 102–3, 121, 157, 176, 222; transportation in, 24, 48–49, 68–69, 86–87, 91–92 oath, Jewish, 161, 272n44 obituaries, 1, 38, 118, 202, 229 Oradea (also known as Grosswardein, Nagyvárad, Oradea Mare), 125–27, 130–31, 135–46, 147–48, 231, 240, 267n45; violence in, 121–24. See also Vulcan, Bishop Samuil; Vulcan, Iosif Orbán, Viktor, 41 Orsova (also known as Adakale, Oršava, Orschowa, Orșova), 80–81 Ottomans, 16–17, 28, 42, 70, 74–75, 78–79, 87, 97, 110, 205, 281n56 Paget, John, 54, 67–69, 179

290 Index

Pap, Bishop Gábor, 163, 172–73, 237 Paris, 2, 29, 48, 73, 90, 107, 110, 112, 114, 131, 213 Parliament, Hungarian, 5, 109, 116, 142, 152, 162, 171–72, 174, 185–86, 194, 209, 214. See also Hungarian Diet Paul Rontó, 22–23, 31, 33, 35–36, 38 peasantry, 4, 7, 21–22, 48–49, 52, 70, 103, 122, 127, 132, 154, 182, 189, 193, 205, 215, 222, 228, 282n73; dues owed by, 17–18, 25, 45, 59, 61, 80, 132, 182, 236; material culture of, 26, 45–46, 47, 197, 220–21; and schools, 36; and violence, 7, 54, 133, 220 Pelejte (also known as Plechotice), 46–47, 49–50, 65 Petőfi, Sándor, 38 phylloxera, 198, 218 Poland: immigrants from, 42–45, 65, 154–55, 263n40; nobility in, 15, 16; partition of, 44, 70; trade with, 42–44, 63 Polish language, 4, 70, 117 postal service, 24, 137, 222 potatoes, 101, 156 Prague, 183 Pressburg (also known as Bratislava, Pozsony), 33–35, 68, 83, 88, 98–99, 151, 228. See also Bratislava Prielle, Cornélia, 98, 104, 114, 117, 119, 237 prisons, 94, 103, 126, 172, 227; Kufstein, 110–12, 116, 235; in Pest, 110; in Sighet, 101 Prussia, 19, 161 publishers, 35, 128, 130, 184, 213, 222 quarantine, 78 Radnóti, Miklós, 206, 228 railroads, 3, 6, 7, 49, 73, 131–32, 158, 190, 227; and river regulation, 87–89, 92, 260n69; in Szatmár County, 214, 218, 220; and trainspotting, 2, 212, 233, 283n7 Rákóczi, Ferenc, 168 readers and reading, 18, 19, 21, 25, 34–37, 46, 59, 62, 89, 117, 123, 128–30, 141–42, 179, 184–86, 199, 222, 236; women, 14, 35–37, 98, 105–6, 113, 129–30, 147, 251n85. See also literacy Revolution of 1848, 3, 7, 65, 90, 96, 103, 108–11, 117–18, 122, 124–26, 133, 160, 208, 255n53, 266n15; commemorations of,

117–18, 168; symbolic displays in, 109, 143, 153, 236. See also Kossuth, Lajos Rezzori, Gregor von, 2 ritual murder charge, 170. See also Tiszaeszlár ritual murder charge river regulation, 68–69, 75–76, 82–83, 132, 257n5, 258n32, 260n63; of the Danube, 73, 76–82, 90–91; in Szatmár County, 215–16; of the Tisza, 85–89, 193 roads and road building, 6, 8, 24, 27, 44, 46, 48–49, 69, 72, 75, 78–82, 86, 91, 100, 102, 131–35, 215, 241, 259n43 Roma, 28, 30, 31. See also Gypsy musicians Roman Catholics, 4, 15, 17, 22, 30, 45, 70, 102, 113, 137–39, 152, 162, 171–74, 182, 186, 211, 214, 221, 225; churches of, 101, 136, 151, 152, 154, 170, 241; German-speaking, 28; Hungarian-speaking, 28, 136, 272n40; privileges of, 31, 57–58, 61, 112, 152–53, 171; schools of, 18, 116, 126, 209, 211, 274n81; Slovak-speaking, 47 Roman, Alexandru, 126–27 Romania, 2, 5, 9, 12, 41–42, 90, 93, 101, 125, 146, 147, 190, 231–32. See also Bucharest; Wallachia Romanian Academy of Sciences, 139, 148 Romanian language, 4, 28, 30, 39, 93, 113, 115, 123, 125–26, 142–45, 148, 182; press, 127–30, 137, 142, 147; in schools, 125–27, 136, 138, 223, 265n2 Romanian National Party, 122–23 Romanian Theater Society, 139, 142–43, 148, 237, 269n67 Romanian speakers, 7, 28, 30, 80, 87, 102–3, 109, 113, 118, 131–35, 136–37, 182, 219–23, 263n34, 267n45; associations of, 126–27, 138–41, 143–44, 237; cultural life of, 9, 94, 121–28, 129–30, 141–49; and schools, 115–16, 126–27, 136, 138 Rosenmeyer, Izsák, 43, 46–48, 60, 64–66 Roth, Joseph, 10 Royal Hungarian Tobacco Monopoly, 184, 186, 191–92, 194–98, 199 Rudabánya, 17–18, 240 Russia, 2, 9, 10, 22, 43, 88, 109, 142, 155, 156, 180, 190, 193, 231, 236, 244n9 Russian language, 28, 102 Ruthenian language, 28, 45, 70, 102. See also Ukrainian language

Index 291

Ruthenian speakers, 7, 28, 102–3, 115, 118, 227, 231 rye, 100, 182 Said, Edward, 10–11, 246n32 Sajó River (also known as Slaná), 257n12 salt, 26, 87; trade in, 68, 87, 101–2 Satmar Hasidim, 220 Sátoraljaújhely (also known as Nové Mesto pod Šiatrom, Uhely): economy, 45; Jews, 51, 58, 62–65; population, 62 Sava River (also known as Save, Száva), 67 savings banks, 138–39, 141, 215 Schnitzer, Ármin, 151, 153; death and burial of, 176–77, 241; and hometown, 157, 164, 165, 176; and local politics, 170–75, 181, 224, 236–37, 274n81; origins of, 154–57; as rabbi, 161–64, 165–69, 175–76; youth and education of, 154–60, 235, 271n30 schools, 5, 8, 10, 36–37, 93, 94, 97, 122, 128–29, 135, 143, 173, 182, 211, 217, 225–26, 238; for girls, 97, 99, 106–10, 112–16, 206, 209, 211, 213, 236; language of instruction in, 9, 28, 94–95, 107, 113, 115–16, 166, 222–23; laws concerning, 59, 94–95, 130; technical, 72, 76, 90, 258n24; village, 94, 115, 228. See also Calvinists; Jews; Lutherans; Roman Catholics; teachers Schorske, Carl, 174 Schwartner, Martin, 6, 87, 257n7 Serbia, 2, 42, 74, 79–80, 85, 136, 233, 235 Serbian language, 30, 39, 42, 70, 222 sermons, 4, 72, 153, 158, 161, 165, 167, 169, 172, 176, 238, 272n37 Seven Years’ War, 19, 37 shepherds, 24, 25–26, 30, 49 Silber, Michael, 45, 47, 51 Slovak language, 3, 28, 45, 70, 241 Slovak speakers, 9; 19, 26, 47, 69, 87, 94, 115, 166, 174, 231; culture of, 30; housing of, 26, occupations of, 30, 48–49, 70 Slovakia, 2, 5–6, 12, 19, 46, 69, 154, 160, 233, 239, 241 smuggling, 191–92, 277n40, 277n42 socialism, 3, 227 statues, 115, 166, 215, 225, 239–41 surveyors and surveying, 192, 258n19; of forests, 72; of rivers, 68, 72–78, 85, 86 Swabians, 220, 223

synagogues, 5, 51, 53, 62, 93, 152, 154–55, 164– 66, 168, 171–72, 175–77, 185, 199, 272n36; design of, 154, 159–60, 163, 272n37 Szabolcs County, 86, tobacco production in, 193, 199 Szatmár County (also known as Sathmar, Satu Mare), 23–25, 110, 118, 195, 199, 205–7, 229, 235, 249n42; administration, 208, 224–26; economy, 187, 193, 215–18, 220–22; Jews; 31, 182–83, 185; landscape, 86, 213; local pride, 187, 203, 205–6, 216, 218–19, 278n54; population, 28, 213, 219– 23. See also Nagykároly; Szatmár-Németi Szatmár-Németi (also known as Sathmar, Satmar, Satu Mare), 143, 152, 214–15, 225, 278n1; schools, 209, 211 Szatmárcseke, 231 Szatmári, Mór, 185, 276n20, 278n54 Széchenyi Society, 221–23 Széchenyi, István, 60; and river regulation, 73 Szegedy-Mazsák, Mihály, 207 Szekfű, Gyula, 42 Szepes-Olaszi (also known as Spiśské Vlachy, Villa Latina, Wallendorf ), 69–71, 257n13 Tatars, 97 taverns, 10, 11; and Jewish tavern keepers, 44, 51, 66, 132, 156 teachers, 9, 36, 46, 90, 211; in Jewish schools, 58, 62–63, 65; women, 94 Teitelbaum, Rabbi Mózes, 63–64 Teleki, Blanka, 99–100, 107–12, 114–16 thatched roofs, 26, 221, 249n47 theaters, 97, 99, 106, 118, 131, 233; Bucharest, 142, 144; Budapest, 98, 105, 217, 227; Oradea, 136–38; 141–46, 149. See also Romanian Theater Society Tisza River (also known as Theiss, Tibisque, Tisa), 5–6, 23, 67–68, 90–92, 100, 182, 240, 244n12, 257n12; regulation, 76–77, 83–92, 193; trade, 83, 85–86, 88, 102 Tisza Valley Society, 85, 87, 89, 91 Tiszaeszlár ritual murder charge, 153, 170, 172–73 tobacco: and cigarettes, 195, 197–98, 241; and cigars, 99, 105, 137, 187, 195–97, 199, 241; Hungarian production of, 68, 88, 180–81, 183, 185–93, 201–3, 213, 275n5, 277n45; and pipes, 23, 38, 53, 179–80, 195–97, 202

292 Index

Tokaj wine, 6, 48, 52, 61 Toldy, Ferenc, 89 Torah, 62, 158–59, 161, 167, 172, 272n37 Tóth, Zoltán, 152 trains. See railroads Transylvania, 5–6, 116, 118, 124–25; Romanians in, 122, 124–25, 133, 139 Treaty of Trianon, 229, 232 tuberculosis, 202, 220 Turkey, 131, 179, 259n49. See also Ottomans Ukraine, 2, 5–6, 43, 93, 101, 232–33 Ukrainian language, 116. See also Ruthenian language United States, 1, 41, 44, 78, 92, 180, 190, 193, 195, 201 urbanization, 9, 201, 211 Valea Stejarului (also known as Disznópataka, Schweinstal), 231 Várady, Gábor, 96–97, 103, 112–13, 115 Vásárhelyi, Pál, 237, 239–41; as engineer, 67–69, 72–74, 76–82, 85–90, 95; marriage and children of, 74, 90, 258n29; origins of, 69–71, 95, 97, 106, 154, 208, 213; and the provinces, 82–83, 86, 88, 91–92, 239, 258n22; as writer, 84–85, 235; youth and education of, 71–72 Vasvári, Pál, 108–9 Vermes, Gábor, 15 Vienna, 6, 7, 40, 76, 78, 83, 101, 107, 116, 125, 142, 160, 214, 218; International Exhibition of 1873 in, 115; Jews in, 169; officials in, 24, 41–42, 59, 72, 81–84, 87, 108, 130, 169; Ottoman siege of, 16; as seat of dynasty, 33, 68, 81; tobacco in, 188 Village Notary’s Journey to Buda, 22–28, 30, 38, 40, 86, 98, 110, 114, 213; and dress, 29–30 Vulcan, Bishop Samuil, 123, 125–26, 130

Vulcan, Iosif, 123–24, 236; death and burial of, 147–48, 239–40; and home region, 121, 130–35, 136–141, 148–49, 225, 265n2; as journalist, 115, 123, 128–29, 130–31, 136–37, 147–48, 236–37; marriage of, 129, 131, 137, 147; origins of, 124–26, 130, 182; as poet and playwright, 127–28, 129–30, 142–44, 237; youth and education of, 126–27. See also Family Wallachia, 42, 74, 78, 125 War of Austrian Succession, 19 West (journal), 206, 213, 227, 233 wheat, 45, 100, 182, 187, 277–78n49 Wiesel, Elie, 93–94, 102 wine, 6, 24–26, 38–39, 45, 48, 51–52, 61, 63, 69, 136, 160, 234. See also Tokaj wine Wolff, Larry, 11, 219 women, 95, 98–99, 109, 112, 159–61, 206, 224, 226–27; education of, 106–8; emancipation of, 95, 105–6, 116–17, 211–12, 236; and fashion, 27, 29; as readers and writers, 35, 37, 115, 118, 129, 147–48, 207, 251n85; and tobacco, 105, 184, 195, 199, 202 Yiddish, 4, 28, 44–46, 56, 70, 93, 102, 155, 163, 165–67, 183, 268n45 Zemplén County (also known as Semplin, Zemplín), 86; administration, 55–56, 57, 60–62, 237; economy, 45, 50, 60–61; Jews, 47–54, 56–59, 62–65, 241; landscape, 45; population, 45; wine trade, 61–62. See also Sátoraljaújhely Zigre, Nicolau, 122–23, 136, 140 Zionism, 3, 153, 169 Zips region (also known as Spiš, Szepesség), 257n9, 259n59