Exploring Transylvania: Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories in a Multiethnic Province, 1790-1918 [1 ed.] 9789004303058, 9789004303041

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Exploring Transylvania

National Cultivation of Culture Edited by Joep Leerssen (University of Amsterdam) Editorial Board John Breuilly – Ina Ferris – Patrick J. Geary John Neubauer – Tom Shippey – Anne-Marie Thiesse

VOLUME 10

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ncc

Exploring Transylvania Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories in a Multiethnic Province, 1790–1918

By

Borbála Zsuzsanna Török

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Hermannstadt: Chromolithograph by Alois Leykum, based on a drawing by A. Trichtl. In: Johann Michael Ackner and Johann Karl Schuller, eds. Der Hermannstädter Stuhl im Großfürstenthum Siebenbürgen (Land der Sachsen) : mit einer Karte und fünf Chromolithographien (Vienna: Müller, 1840, 28). Reprinted with the permission of the Bavarian State Library, Munich.

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1876-5645 isbn 978-90-04-30304-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30305-8 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

To the Memory of My Professor Éva Cs. Gyimesi

∵

Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Illustrations xi List of Geographical Names in Transylvania xiii Introduction 1 Nineteenth-Century Transylvanian Intellectual Milieus 1 Science in the Composite Monarchy 11 Interlocking Scientific Cultures in the Province 23 1 Landeskunde, honismeret—Patriotic Scholarship and Vernacular Languages 27 The Heritage of Josephist Politics: Impulses to Historiography 30 Language Politics and Education: Synchronizing Transylvania with the Polite World 34 Stages of National Improvement: Diagnosing Backwardness 42 The Regional Particularities of Landeskunde: Hierarchy of Civilizations 46 The Hungarian Language Society: Fencing off Vernacular Culture 50 2 The Friends of Progress in the Transylvanian Age of Reform 58 Grassroots Scholarship: Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 62 Regional or National Science? A Saxon-Hungarian Dispute at the Transylvanian Diet 76 Learned Sociability and Projects of National Improvement 84 The Image of Transylvania in Foreign Travelogues 99 3 The Nationalization of Landeskunde and Civic Ethos after 1848 107 Politics, Public Life, and Self-Formation during the Neo-Absolutist Decade 109 The Consolidation of the Landeskundeverein under Austrian Auspices 117 Saxon Landeskunde between Erudition and Popularization 125 The Transylvanian Museum Society: historia magistra vitae 136 Magyar honismeret: An Appendage of Pest? 149 ASTRA and Romanian Cross-Border Scholarly Communication 156

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4 Uneven Development during the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867–1914) 163 Landeskunde: Virtual Collection of the Transylvanian Saxon Past 164 “The Border between History and Political Essay is Difficult to Draw”: Public Landeskunde 177 The Museum Society: Facing Professionalization 188 Musealization of honismeret: National History in Context 194 Middle-Class Academics against Aristocratic Amateurs? The Case of the Torma Collection 205 “Our Leading Hungarian Race”: The National Edge of honismeret 212 5 Conclusion 231 Geographies (and Temporalities) of Polymath Learning 231 What was Landeskunde? 237 The Transformation of the Republic of Letters in the Nation-State 240 Bibliography 247 Index 281

Acknowledgements The idea of this book has its roots in my cultural experience while an undergraduate student at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj/Kolozsvár in Romania in the early 1990s. Arriving from a provincial small town of the Magyarspeaking Székely parts of Transylvania, I was awed and overwhelmed not only by the tumult of the city, but also the rigorously theoretical curriculum at the Hungarian Department of the Philology Faculty. Somewhat later I discovered a highly respectable and rather distant-looking scholarly institute, which had great authority in sanctioning whatever research was done in the humanities on Transylvanian Hungarian themes, despite its aloofness from the university. It was the Erdélyi Múzeum Egyesület (Transylvanian Museum Society). The ensuing discussions with my professor of literary theory, the late Éva Cs. Gyimesi, about the politics of cultural and scholarly canon formation, the moral and aesthetic compromises harbored by minority existence, triggered my passion for the critical investigation of texts and their political hinterlands of my narrower homeland and also made me wonder about the curious cultural entanglements of its multiethnic setup. The idea further matured during my graduate studies at the History Department of Central European University, Budapest, and I am particularly indebted to professors László Kontler, Viktor Karády, and Mária Kovács for their insightful comments and moral support throughout. The late András Kiss, former secretary and vice president of the recently refounded Transylvanian Museum Society, and Dr. Harald Roth, then Director of the SiebenbürgenInstitut in Gundelsheim am Neckar in Germany, helped me navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of ethnic, regional, and communist stereotypes in Transylvanian historiography. A visiting fellowship at the Zentrum für vergleichende Geschichte at the Freie Universität Berlin under the accomplished directorship of Professor Jürgen Kocka provided the occasion of a series of inspiring exchanges with fellow students and more senior colleagues that lasted for several years. Professors Rebekka Habermas and Bernd Weisbrod at the University of Göttingen supported my undertaking by offering valuable feedback. I am thankful to the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the IQN Euroculture Program, Central European University, and its Pasts, Inc., Center for Historical Studies for supporting research and other activities so necessary in the writing process. My stay at the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence, and in particular cooperation with one of the most congenial academics ever, Professor Antonella Romano, occasioned

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acknowledgements

the discovery of new horizons in the historiography of science and helped me locate my province on the map of the European Republic of Letters. Yet, several years and novel research was required before finalizing the manuscript, which was enabled by the generous support of the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz. I would like to thank to my colleagues and friends who assisted my work either by comments on the manuscript or in various other ways: Nándor Bárdi, Peter Becker, María Cruz Berrocal, Rogers Brubaker, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Anda Lohan, Mathias Graf, John Neubauer, Kapil Raj, Kinga Sata, Nina Schneider, and Balázs Trencsényi. I am thankful to the Bavarian State Library for providing me with illustrations for the book. Elemér Könczey kindly advised me in matters of cover design and the maps were drawn by Károly Pavela. As a non-native speaker I am greatly indebted to Thomas Szerecz for assistance in turning my manuscript into a sound English text. It goes without saying that any shortcomings of the text remain my sole responsibility.

List of Illustrations Illustration 1

Transylvanian treasures: fortified churches 162

Maps 1 2

Connecting Transylvania to the world: reconstruction of a postal map of Hungary and Transylvania from 1799 26 Hubs of knowledge: Transylvanian map of higher education from the 1840s 106

Figures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Ratio of source publications in the Archiv and the Korrespondenzblatt 226 Ratio of publications in the political history of Transylvania 226 Ratio of pre-history and history of antiquity 227 Ratio of ancient history: Dacian-Roman period—Inscriptions and numismatics 227 Ratio of contributions on Saxon settlement in Transylvania 227 Ratio of contributions to the history of the Middle Ages and early modern history 228 Ratio of contributions to social and economic history, esp. taxation 228 Ratio of contributions to ecclesiastic history 228 Ratio of writings on individual persons 229 Ratio of contributions to linguistics 229 Ratio of contributions to linguistics/dialects 229

Tables 1

Social-professional distribution of the members of the Landeskundeverein before 1848 73

xii 2 3 4 5 6 7

list of illustrations

Geographical distribution of VSL members before 1848 74 Donations for the National Museum at the Diet of 1841–1843 104 Social-professional distribution of VSL members, 1853–1914 126 Categories of membership in the EME (1859–1914) 146 Social-professional distribution of EME ordinary members 1907–1914 147 Themes and fields of research in the EME, 1860–1918 (publications in the journal Erdélyi Múzeum) 230

List of Geographical Names in Transylvania German

Hungarian

Romanian

Arad Birthälm Bistritz Blasendorf Broos Brünn Burghalle Bun Deesch, Burglos Diemrich, Schlossberg Fogarasch Frauendorf Großschenk Großschlatten Jassy Hermannstadt Karansebesch Kaschau Kastenholz Keisd Kerz Kirchberg Klausenburg Königsboden Kronstadt Lugosch Mediasch Miresch Mühlbach Neumarkt Neuschloss (Odorhellen) Pressburg Rabeburg/Burgberg Reps

Arad Berethalom Beszterce Balázsfalva Szászváros

Arad Biertan Bistriţa Blaj Orăştie Brno (Czech) Óvárhely Subpădure Dej Deva Făgăraș Axente Sever Cincu Abrud Iași Sibiu Caransebeş Košice (Slovak) Caşolţ Saschiz Cârța Chirpăr Cluj Pământul crăiesc Braşov Lugoj Mediaş Mureș Sebeș Târgu Mureș Gherla Odorheiu Secuiesc Bratislava (Slovak) Vurpăr Rupea

Orheiu Bistriței Kistövis Dés Déva Fogaras Asszonyfalva Nagysink Abrudbánya Jászvásár Nagyszeben, Szeben Karánsebes Kassa Hermány Szászkézd Kerc Kürpöd Kolozsvár Királyföld Brassó Lugos Medgyes Maros Szászsebes Marosvásárhely Szamosújvár Székelyudvarhely Pozsony Vurpód Kőhalom

xiv

list of geographical names in transylvania

table (cont.) German

Hungarian

Romanian

Salzburg Sächsisch-Regen Secken Selischte/Großendorf Schäßburg Tarteln Wallenthal Weissenburg Werd Zillenmarkt

Vízakna Szászrégen Szék Szelistye Segesvár Kisprázsmár Hátszeg Gyulafehérvár Vérd Zilah Algyógy Almás Erősd Nagyenyed Nándorválya Tordos

Ocna Sibiului Reghin Sic Săliște Sighişoara Toarcla Hațeg Alba Iulia Vărd Zalău Geoagiu Merișor Ariușd Aiud Valea Nandrului Turdaș

Introduction

Nineteenth-Century Transylvanian Intellectual Milieus

My study draws the topography of knowledge in one of the culturally most heterogeneous eastern provinces of Europe, Transylvania. It inquires into the tangled social settings and cultural as well as political force lines that shaped knowledge about Transylvania during the age of nation-building, a province which found itself successively under Habsburg and, between 1867 and 1920, under Hungarian state rule. The book is thus an exploration into the fascinating topic of communication and strife, imitation and emulation, cooperation and withdrawal, practiced by competing regional elites who, enjoying very different chances for self-assertion, attempted to define what was Transylvania(n) and how this related to the larger cultural areas in which they traveled and where they felt at home. I follow the workings of Transylvanian learned societies engaging in the exploration of their fatherland, an activity reaching back to the beginning of modern scholarly sociability at the end of the eighteenth century. I point at the mechanisms of adapting international trends and practices of scholarship to local conditions and show how they became tied up with the formation of collective identities and embedded in a regime of social and political differences. The upper chronological end of my inquiry is World War I, which not only put an end to the Habsburg Monarchy, but also closed the first great wave of scientific modernization, in a national framework, that began about the middle of the nineteenth century. The scholarly mapping of a certain territory took its origins in a knowledge field that was called Landeskunde in German and honismeret in Hungarian. Having no equivalent in English, it can be only circumscribed as the encyclopedic and systematic description of the land or the ‘fatherland.’ Landeskunde1 thrived in German-speaking continental Europe and made up a part of the state sciences or Staatswissenschaften, the latter employed in the training of

1  There has been still no exhaustive definition of Landeskunde in English. For its interpretation as a form of scientific travel “at home,” while the gathering of empirical data served the goal of improvement, see Henry E. Lowood, “Science for the Fatherland,” in Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), 205–261.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004303058_002

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Introduction

future state administrators.2 Such a description proceeded along the disciplines of geography, topography, meteorology, natural history, ethnography, and above all history.3 Based on the accumulation of facts in the mentioned disciplines, the exploration of the fatherland fit ideally the learned societies, a result of the collective and concerted action of many individuals. In Transylvania two such societies were explicitly dedicated to Landeskunde, one of them founded by Transylvanian Saxon intellectuals and called the Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde (or Landeskundeverein, VSL, Association for Transylvanian Landeskunde, 1842–1947). The other was of Transylvanian Hungarian creation and carried the name Erdélyi Múzeum Egyesület (or EME, the Transylvanian Museum Society, 1859–1950, reestablished in 1990). Both grew out of local intellectual milieus, both were founded around the middle of the nineteenth century, and both were the regional loci of Transylvanian Hungarian and German traditions of scholarship until the end of World War I. The passage of the eastern territories of dismembered Hungary, including Transylvania proper, Maramureș, and parts of the region Banat, to greater Romania in 1920 and the ensuing interwar decades hit the Hungarian institution hard, which witnessed the nationalization of most of its collections, its material and infrastructural assets. The Landeskundeverein fared with no comparable loss under the interwar era Romanian administration, yet it had to adapt to the radical transformation of the cultural and political landscape in the successor state. This institutional crisis was not discontinuous with earlier processes that had begun in the late nineteenth century, though becoming by then an incontrovertible fact, namely, the preeminence of the capitals of knowledge in Bucharest, Budapest, and Vienna, and the loss of prestige of the once significant regional initiatives in the Transylvanian province. The Saxon institution had cast itself as a satellite of scholarly institutions in major German academic centers from the very beginnings, and the perceived reliance on the stronger partners further west transformed into a genuine dependence once the Nazi regime was established within and beyond Germany. The tribulations continued during and after World War II. In communist Romania both societies were 2  David F. Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997). 3  Lindenfeld, Practical Imagination, 39–40; Hans Erich Bödeker, “On the Origins of the ‘Statistical Gaze’: Modes of Perception, Forms of Knowledge and Ways of Writing in the Early Social Sciences,” in Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. Peter Becker and William Clark (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 169–195, 172.

Introduction

3

dissolved as relics of the hated bourgeois past. Yet while the Landeskundeverein could resume its activity in West German emigration—in 1962 it was newly founded as the Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde in Heidelberg and Gundelsheim am Neckar—its Hungarian counterpart could only be reestablished in its hometown Cluj after the regime change in the 1990s. Historians have long demonstrated the important role of scholarship and learning in (re)producing social categories and societal relations in the modern era.4 Still, we know little about knowledge practices in culturally saturated and intertwined milieus like those in Transylvania. My book intends to fill this gap. It is symptomatic in this regard that the shaping Romanian humanities did not embrace the territorial focus of Landeskunde, with no Romanian translation of the term being adopted. From the outset, the third major Transylvanian scholarly institution, also founded in the mid-nineteenth century, Asociația Transilvană Pentru Literatura Română şi Cultura Poporului Român (or ASTRA, the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People, 1861–1950, refounded in 1990) dedicated itself to the more modern concept of the ‘nation,’ and not to the fatherland. This is why I look primarily at the Saxon and Hungarian practices as variations of similar theoretical, disciplinary, and societal paradigms of scholarship, despite many commonalities in practice in all three linguistic milieus. Indeed, one of the most fascinating and hitherto regrettably unexplored questions of modern scholarly thought is the logic of communication in the multilayered cultural settings of East-Central Europe, distinguished as it is by language, social and symbolic capital, and also access to political resources. Yet doing justice to the richness of the cultural terrain has been accomplished most sparingly, despite the transcultural and comparative aspirations of newer historical writing in the past decades. Transylvania too has been addressed as an intellectual and ideological interface, sometimes even battleground, between 4  Just a few representative examples: Lawrence Stone, ed., Europe, Scotland, and the United States from the 16th to the 20th Century, vol. 2, The University in Society (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975); Jürgen Schriewer, Edwin Keiner, and Christophe Charle, eds., Sozialer Raum und akademische Kulturen: Studien zur europäischen Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert / A la recherche de l’espace universitaire européen: études sur l’enseignement supérieur aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1993); Charles E. McClelland, State, Society and University in Germany, 1700–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980); Detlef K. Müller, Fritz Ringer, and Brian Simon, eds., The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987); Viktor Karády, Iskolarendszer és felekezeti egyenlőtlenségek Magyarországon, 1867–1945 [Schooling and denominational inequalities in Hungary, 1867–1945] (Budapest: Replika Kör, 1997).

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Introduction

Hungarian and Romanian spheres of influence, particularly in the volumes generated around the History Department of Central European University in Budapest.5 Research on medical history in Transylvania probed similarly into socially more inclusive domains and asked about the adaptation of knowledge in the heterogeneous Eastern Habsburg territories.6 Furthermore, recent explorations of the history of political thought7 have investigated the complicated relationship between statehood and the entangled national discourses of the polyglot populations in East-Central and South-East Europe. Yet more substantial studies about the circulation, adaptation, or resistance to scholar-

5  Balázs Trencsényi et al., eds., Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies (Budapest/Iaşi: Regio Books/Polirom, 2001); Dietmar Müller, Zsuzsanna Török, and Balázs Trencsényi, eds., “Reframing the European Pasts: National Discourses and Regional Comparisons,” thematic issue of East Central Europe, nos. 1–2 (2009); Anders Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi, and Balázs Trencsényi, eds., Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013). 6  Viktor Karády and Borbála Zsuzsanna Török, eds., Cultural Dimensions of Elite Formation in Modern Transylvania (1770–1950) (Cluj: Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Centre, 2008); Heather Morrison, “Harmony and Discord in the Sciences: Vienna’s Scientific Enlightenment and Its Engagement with Republic of Letters,” in Multiple kulturelle Referenzen in der Habsburgermonarchie des 18. Jahrhunderts / Références culturelles multiples dans la monarchie des Habsbourg au dix-huitième siècle / Multiple Cultural References in 18th- Century Habsburg Monarchy, vol. 24 of Jahrbuch der Ö sterreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Bochum: Dr. Winkler Verlag, 2010), 103–122; Emma C. Spary, “Introduction: Centre and Periphery in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg ‘medical Empire’,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43, no. 3 (2012): 684–690; Daniela Sechel and S. A. King, eds., “Circulation of Medical Knowledge in East Central Europe, 18th–20th Centuries,” thematic issue of East Central Europe, no. 3 (2013). 7  Diana Mishkova, ed., We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009); Maria Falina and Balázs Trencsényi, eds., “Coping with Plurality: Nationalist and Multinational Frames of Mind in East Central European Political Thought, 1878–1940,” thematic issue of East Central Europe, nos. 2–3 (2012). See also the series Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945: Texts and Commentaries, whose first three volumes have been particularly useful in writing this book: vol. 1, Late Enlightenment—Emergence of the Modern “National Idea,” and vol. 2, National Romanticism—The Formation of National Movements, ed. Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006–2007); vol. 3, Modernism—Representations of National Culture, ed. Ahmet Ersoy et al. (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010); Balázs Trencsényi and Márton Zászkaliczky, eds., Whose Love of Which Country? Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

Introduction

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ship in the nested cultural milieus of the region has remained still a largely unexplored terrain.8 A genuinely comparative study, which takes account of the capillary exchanges between contiguous environments, often brings to light entirely new facets and as such cannot rely on the conclusions of studies focusing on one single cultural community but has to be built up anew from the sources. Placing the limelight on the regional Hungarian-Saxon interaction, while regarding the Romanian case as a comparative background, is an initial step into the archeology of a complex field. It is particularly the exchanges with the Romanian intellectual milieu, which remain an outline throughout this study. However, the restriction of contemporary language use and the territorial ambitions of Landeskunde to the German and Hungarian contexts is also an important signpost. It indicates the boundaries of knowledge circulation, an aspect hitherto ignored by the general euphoria in recent historical scholarship, which is all about communication and exchange. Popular and important in the scholarly and educational practices in the Habsburg Monarchy, the study of Landeskunde offers an excellent opportunity to reflect on the osmosis of knowledge in the Habsburg provinces. Probing into the adaptation of this knowledge field in the Hungarian and Saxon milieus of Transylvania is an opportunity to understand how participation in the broader scholarly culture yielded to local intellectual patterns.9 The study of learned sociability and the movement of knowledge across the European social space has been more recently addressed in explorations of the so-called intellectual milieus as modern alternatives to the more traditional Republic of Letters. Whether focusing on antiquities collectors in eighteenth-century Rome,10

8  For studies addressing the entangled nationalisms and science in the context of the Habsburg Monarchy, see Jan Surman and Mitchell Ash, eds., “The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire: An Introduction,” in The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848–1918 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1–29; and also the thematic issue by Sechel and King, eds., “Circulation of Medical Knowledge” (2013). About the mutual construction of nationalism and eugenics see Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling, eds., Blood and Homeland. Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007). 9  William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer, eds., “Introduction,” in The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999), 3–31, 20. 10  Jean Boutier, Brigitte Marin, and Antonella Romano, eds., Naples, Roma, Florence. Une histoire comparée des milieux intellectuels italiens (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles), Collection de l’Ecole Française de Rome, 355 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005).

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Introduction

French p ­ rovincial academies,11 or scientific culture in Geneva,12 such analyses developed a dynamic perspective on the social-geographical scenes of knowledge production in urban areas.13 ‘Intellectual milieu’ seems flexible enough to be applicable not only to the capitals and metropolises, but also to provincial cities. Indeed, the towns that hosted the Transylvanian learned societies and their filiales belonged to the second category. Though both urban in their origins, the two Transylvanian learned societies established widely different patterns of membership. Thus, while the Museum Society remained anchored to the town-dweller ‘middling class,’ the Landeskundeverein fanned out into the countryside. The rural character is a stretch of the original intent behind the term ‘intellectual milieu,’ and it remains to be explored to what extent this was a specificity of East-Central European organizations or, quite to the contrary, an indicator of change in academic character and a shift towards broader educational and social functions. If the category of intellectual milieu has a more neutral social and temporal meaning, it has maintained its reference to a specific urban topography and has not adopted the broad geographical implication characteristic of its predecessor, the Republic of Letters. The latter received its name from Erasmus of Rotterdam in the age of Renaissance. It was given its precise meaning by Pierre Bayle as an imagined polity of equal and independent members, irrespective of their place of origin, confession, or occupation. The European Republic of Letters, displaying a variegated geography of exchange among learned men all over the continent, experienced a rapid growth thanks to the foundation of its institutional backbone, the academies. Established initially in Paris and London, the academies appeared later in every major European city and by the end of the eighteenth century started also to encompass the provincial urban settings. A well-known study by Laurence Brockliss, for instance, is a ‘thick description’ of its settings in Avignon.14 By that time the French republic of knowledge also became closely-knit, benefiting from the modernization and expansion of higher education, which made membership possible also for the 11  Daniel Roche, Le siècle des lumières en province. Académie et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–1789 (Paris: Éditions de l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1989); Lawrence Brockliss, Calvet’s Web: Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002). 12  René Sigrist, L’essor de la science moderne à Genève (Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, 2004). 13  Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994); Boutier, Marin, and Romano, eds., Naples, Roma, Florence, passim. 14  Brockliss, Calvet’s Web, 16.

Introduction

7

less affluent. The reformed universities of Scotland, Germany (but not France), the Hohe Schulen and other specialized schools of the Catholic German and Austrian lands, offered their new venues for the pursuit of learning.15 All the more surprising is the conclusion that polymath curiosity died out after this institutional peak, with the advent of scientific professionalization at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. My study takes off at this point by shifting not only the chronological perspective but also the space of analysis to the eastern Habsburg areas of the long nineteenth century. It asks about the geography of scholarly communication at the alleged moment of decline in the history of the European Republic of Letters. If the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century has been characterized historically as the institutional peak, followed by a crisis and disappearance in the western areas of Europe, can we talk about a new flourishing of the Republic of Letters further east? Did the ethos and practice of the Republic of Letters really come to an end in Europe at the dawn of the nineteenth century or did it experience an extended life, also in the eastern geographical margins of the continent? An inquiry into the institutional ambiance of the Transylvanian societies, and the communication and also the silences and antagonisms between, should provide the answer. In Transylvania, circles of the ‘curious’ first materialized into more formal societies in the last decades of the eighteenth century. These societies embraced the same interests and morals as their cousins further west and north, including the belief that material and moral progress would be advanced through the cultivation and spread of secular knowledge.16 This was first seen in polymath learning, in immersion into the pre-Christian ancient Roman past, the arts, or natural philosophy, which had a material dimension in the collection and ordering of antiquities, natural history, numismatic collections, and bibliophilism. We know about academies in the provincial settings of France and Britain, which promoted the sciences and the arts simultaneously.17 In Transylvania, the first collection of this kind was the opulent Brukenthal Collection founded in 1788, whereas the second public museum was founded by the Transylvanian Museum Society only in 1859 (including at its start a library, a numismatics and antiquities collection, a natural history collection and a botanical garden,

15  Ibid., 11–12, 10. 16  Cf. Ibid., 3. 17  Specialization was a privilege of Parisian academies. See Ibid., 10.

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Introduction

and an arts collection), to be followed later by many similar institutions in the ensuing decades.18 Beyond the typical enthusiasm in the ‘detritus of the past,’ Transylvanian scholars busied themselves with another agenda, known as widely practiced on the entire continent around 1800. They embarked on petite tours, that is, scientific travels within their fatherland.19 This fact-finding obsession persisted in East-Central Europe well until the beginning of the twentieth century, indicating the late thriving of a local Republic of Letters. However, the Hungarian, Saxon, and other linguistic milieus were organized around the notion of mutually discrete cultural identities even within the scope of a region as small as Transylvania. How much interaction and cooperation did such a configuration of scholarly interest allow? Even if the reality of the Republic of Letters was far from the lofty ideal, fraught with conflicts and non-cooperation,20 did these ethnocultural patterns fit or challenge the notion of a coherent European scholarly public sphere? The social complexity of the multilingual and multidenominational Habsburg Monarchy continues to challenge historians and social scientists even today. Cultural heterogeneity marked every aspect of social life, which resulted from the long-term coexistence of ethnicities, languages, and cultures, and the interaction and mutual influences that these exercised on each

18  Christine Lapping, Die Sammlung des Freiherrn Samuel von Brukenthal. Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte und zum Charakter der Sammlung im Herrmannstädter Museum (Brașov: Aldus Verlag, 2004); Gábor Sipos, ed., Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület gyűjteményei [The collections of the Transylvanian Museum Society] (Cluj: Societatea Muzeului Ardelean, 2009), 8. About the “musealization” movement in nineteenth-century East-Central Europe, see Ernő Marosi and Gábor Klaniczay, eds., The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe, Collegium Budapest Workshop Series, no. 17 (Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2006). 19  About the expression petit tours see Brockliss, Calvet’s Web, 9. This travel in the patria was an essential aspect of Landeskunde for gathering empirical data whether for the natural historical descriptions or for the collection of historical documents. 20  “The unremitting emphasis on impartial criticism and evaluation within the Republic of Letters encouraged its citizens to distance themselves first from friends and family, then from compatriots and contemporaries, and finally, in the early nineteenth century, from themselves as well. Although this psychological process of estrangement and ultimately of self-estrangement may seldom have been completely realized, the striving was genuine and constitutes part of the moral history of objectivity.” Lorraine Daston, “The Ideal and Reality of the Republic of Letters in the Enlightenment,” Science in Context 4, no. 2 (1991): 367–386, 385.

Introduction

9

other.21 The relational and reflexive aspect of collective self-identification was at least as constitutive in the formation of modern cultural values as endogenous processes. This was valid also in the nineteenth century, when nationalism turned against plurality. Cultural differentiation that pushed ‘special’ or ‘national’ traits to the foreground resulted from self-comparison with the ‘other.’22 Indeed, Transylvania has been considered a ‘locus classicus’ of entangled and rival nationalisms.23 Since its canonization in the nineteenth century, provincial scholarship in the humanities has divided the past into Romanian, Hungarian, and Saxon compartments, which have not only marginalized each other’s presence but ignored other ethnic and denominational histories, such as that of Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and Roma.24 Neither the historical nor the societal representations of Transylvania have been ‘faithful’ depictions, but 21  Móric Csáky, “Pluralitás. Az osztrák történelem egy lehetséges megközelítése,” trans. Ágnes Deák, Aetas, nos. 2–3 (1998): 250–260, orig. Ger., “Pluralität. Beiträge zu einer Theorie der österreichischen Geschichte,” in Geschichtsforschung in Graz. Festschrift zum 125-Jahr Jubiläum des Instituts für Geschichte der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, ed. Herwig Ebner et al. (Graz: Selbstverlag des Instituts für Geschichte an der Karl-FranzensUniversität Graz, 1990), 19–28. 22  For similar arguments from different theoretical background, see especially Sorin Mitu, Geneza identitǎţii naționale la românii ardeleni (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1997), Eng. trans., National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001); Péter Hanák, “Alkotóerő és pluralitás Közép-Európa kultúrájában” [Creative forces and plurality in Central European culture], in Európa vonzásában. Emlékkönyv Kosáry Domokos 80. szülésnapjára [In the pull of Europe. Festschrift on the occasion of Domokos Kosáry’s 80th birthday], ed. Ferenc Glatz (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 1993), 219–230. See also Ambrus Miskolczy’s notion of transculturality in analyzing national myths and propaganda: A legendák varázsa. Jules Michelet kelet-európai mítoszai és a magyar-román párbeszéd a 19. század derekán [The lure of legends. The Eastern European myths of Jules Michelet and the Hungarian-Romanian dialogue in the mid-19th century] (Budapest: Universitas Kiadó, 2000). 23  Zoltán I. Tóth, Az erdélyi román nacionalizmus első százada 1690–1792 [The first century of Transylvanian Romanian nationalism, 1690–1792], new ed. (Csíkszereda: ProPrint Könyvkiadó, 1998); David Prodan, Supplex Libellus Valachorum (Bucharest: Editura Ştiinţificǎ, 1967); Keith Hitchins, A Nation Discovered: Romanian Intellectuals in Transylvania and the Idea of Nation, 1700–1848 (Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1999); Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860–1914 (Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1999). 24  Similar to Csáky, the Transylvanian historian Sorin Mitu pointed out the emergence of the Romanian self-identification in a web of comparisons to the social others, including foreigners (Transylvanian Hungarians and Saxons also belong to this group), and domestic “strangers” (Jews and Roma). Mitu, “Introduction: The Argument,” in National Identity of Romanians, 1–13, 1–2.

10

Introduction

reveal instead “conflicting perceptions and desires of the [ethnic] communities that generated them.”25 The challenge of writing its comprehensive history, beyond mastering the linguistic diversity, consists of uncovering the common ground of conflicting political stances and of distinct cultural identification. A comprehensive account should “telescope different levels of time, and superimpose upon each other various ethnic perceptions of space.”26 How did encyclopedic Landeskunde, with its focus on the territory, come to terms with the emerging modern nationally oriented humanities? The status of German scholarship was particularly remarkable in the Habsburg lands since it simultaneously figured as the accepted educational norm and also as part of a policy imposed on non-German nationalities by the Habsburg authorities. Moreover, as we shall see in the following chapter, peculiar to Landeskunde was the categorization of Transylvanians according to their perceived level of civilizational and cultural advancement (Stufe der Cultur). These alleged ethnosocial differences were the basis (or pretext) of various interventions on behalf of the state or of the scholars who spoke on its behalf.27 It is intriguing to follow the effect of such a hierarchical perspective on the Transylvanian social world on the emerging modern disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. This brings us back to the initial question about the transformation and even crisis of scholarly sociability in the course of the nineteenth century. Brockliss points at the establishment of state-sponsored professionalism as the most serious threat to polymath learning and sociability. The first modern Transylvanian university was founded in 1872, representing such a direct intervention into local scholarly life, which took place under the auspices of the Hungarian state. To what extent the institutionalization of modern scientific disciplines reshaped local scholarly ideas and practices will be discussed in the following chapters.

25  John Neubauer and Marcel Cornis-Pope, with Sándor Kibédi Varga and Nicolae Harsanyi, “Transylvania’s Literary Cultures: Rivalry and Interaction,” in vol. 2 of History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006), 245‒282, 256. 26  Ibid. 27  András Vári, “The Functions of Ethnic Stereotypes in Austria and Hungary in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe, ed. Nancy M. Wingfield (New York: Berghahn, 2003), 39–55.

Introduction



11

Science in the Composite Monarchy

The impact of politics on scholarship has been a major theme of historical writing in the past decades. It is already a commonplace that from the moment of its birth, science was not the “innocent creation, the product of reading, writing, and conversation, of amateur science and genteel amusements,” but a new means of control over the physical and social realms.28 This Foucauldian interest in the disciplining effect of knowledge fed since the 1990s into the interrogation of the role of the sciences in modern imperialism and colonial domination. Science has been recognized as Janus-faced: on the one hand its aspiration for objectivity and truth qualified it as a terrain free of any coercion and a challenger of imperialism and aggressive nationalism, on the other hand, the institutional framework and disciplinary setup of the modern sciences, built in the nineteenth century, are now seen as evidence for deep allegiances between states and their respective scientific communities. Science has been often instrumentalized to legitimate governmental policies, which led to rivalry and hostility on the international terrain and in the overseas ‘contact zones.’29 This research has benefited from another strand of science studies, which focuses on the more immediate micro-context of knowledge production. Here the circulation of knowledge, its sites and institutions of origin, its trajectories and ways of appropriation, are in the foreground. Other important aspects under scrutiny include the tension between the universalist claims of the sciences and the particularities ascribed to them by gender, social class, and ethnic or racial belonging. Inquiries into the social and manmade environment of science have emphasized that the “material, instrumental, corporeal, practical, social, political circumstances” affect the cognitive results. Context sensitivity has occasionally even led to the radical contestation of universality: knowledge seemed to be always local.30 As a result, the spaces and practices of knowledge production have become an important object of study, inviting increasingly complex methods of 28  Thomas Munck, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721–1794 (London: Arnold, 2000), 14–15; Dorinda Outram, “The Enlightenment Our Contemporary,” in The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, ed. Clark, Golinski, and Schaffer, 32–40. 29  Benedikt Stuchtey, ed., Science across the European Empires, 1800–1950 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005). 30  Kapil Raj, “Introduction,” in Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006), 1–26, 9.

12

Introduction

analysis.31 However, since these studies emerged in Anglo-American and French, later Spanish and Portuguese, contexts, their focus developed primarily in regard to overseas colonial powers. This involved either the metropolitan ‘centers of knowledge’ or their counterparts, the colonial ‘contact zones.’32 Only very recently has attention started to shift towards the contiguous, noncolonial monarchies, including the Romanov, Ottoman, and Habsburg, calling for wide-ranging global comparisons and causing much productive confusion. Whether the Habsburg Monarchy can be modeled as a de facto colonial empire when it comes to social control via knowledge has been a returning question.33 Indeed, parallels with nineteenth-century European overseas rule do exist, especially regarding the conflicting projects of nation-building and the consolidation of the composite and polyglot polity. As Tatjana Buklijas and Emese Lafferton note, the Habsburg state, 31  Jacques Revel, Jeux d’echelles (Paris: Le Seuil-Gallimard, 1996). 32  Roy McLeod and Philip F. Rehbock, eds., Nature in Its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988); Patrick Petitjean, Catherine Jami, and Anne-Marie Moulin, eds., Science and Empires: Historical Studies about Scientific Development and European Expansion (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992); David Philip Miller and Peter Hans Reill, eds., Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany and Representations of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996); Clark, Golinski, and Schaffer, eds., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe; Stuchtey, ed., Science across the European Empires, 1800–1950. For the application to Europe of this non-Eurocentric perspective, see Alexander Kraus and Andreas Renner, eds., Orte eigener Vernunft. Europäische Aufklärung jenseits der Zentren (Frankfurt: Campus-Verlag, 2008). For an overview and evaluation, see Antonella Romano and Stéphane Van Damme, “Sciences et villes-mondes: penser les savoirs au large (XVIe– XVIIIe siècle),” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 55, no. 2 (2008): 7–18, Eng. trans., “Science and World Cities: Thinking Urban Knowledge and Science at Large (16th– 18th century),” Itinerario 33 (2009): 79–95. 33  For a summary of conflicting views, see Tatjana Buklijas and Emese Lafferton, “Science, Medicine and Nationalism in the Habsburg Empire from the 1840s to 1918,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007): 679–686. The authors reject the applicability of the (post)colonial perspective on the Habsburg realms. For an intermediate stance, see Veronika Wendland, “Imperiale, koloniale und postkoloniale Blicke auf die peripherien des Habsburgerreichs,” in Kolonialgeschichten. Regionale Perspektiven auf ein globales Phänomen, ed. Claudia Kraft, Alf Lüdtke, and Jürgen Martschukat (Frankfurt: Campus, 2010). There is, however, a strand of research, which insists on the existence of at least a ‘discursive colonialism,’ especially in view of certain constituents of the composite empire, such as Galicia or Bosnia-Herzegovina. See Jan Surman and Mitchell Ash, “The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge”; Klemens Kaps and Jan Surman, “Postcolonial or Post-Colonial? Post(-)Colonial Perspectives on Habsburg Galicia,” Historyka. Studia metodologiczne 42 (2012): 7–35.

Introduction

13

neither a nation-state nor a colonial empire with extra-European acquisitions, it nevertheless exhibited characteristics of both. At the primetime of European nation-building, the multi-ethnic Habsburg Monarchy was facing increasing internal ethnic tensions, while it also strove to maintain its historical role of political stabilization in Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Like the colonial powers, the Habsburg Empire mobilized strategies of differentiation, inclusion and exclusion to impose order over its vast territories, diverse cultures and political groups. Notions of cul­ tural supremacy, espoused by Germans, Hungarians and Italians, or of the “civilizing mission,” extending beyond the imperial periphery and into the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, will be familiar to scholars of British or French scientific colonial enterprises34 . . . [However,] the models of rule instituted in these contiguous territories and their continuous challenge . . . prove different from those in colonial cultures, transported and then reshaped overseas.35 Notwithstanding the allure of postcolonial perspectives, it is difficult to talk of generic ‘colonial encounters’ and ‘contact zones’ in the nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire. Not even the most ardent colonizing discourse could deny the fact that social relations had been shaped in the Habsburg lands for centuries before titular national elites or the state adopted the language and posture of domination. Also, as Buklijas and Lafferton argue, “Geographical distances were shorter here than in the colonial empires and cultural differences less distinct and in some cases more difficult and sensitive to interpret. Geo-politics was informed by regional cultural traditions that occasionally involved strong connections to rival centers outside the Habsburg borders, as evident from the case of Italians in the Adriatic region, or that of ethnic Romanians in the Eastern Hungarian territories.”36 It is most important, however, to take into consideration the heterogeneity of the monarchy and the various regimes of sovereignty of its component states and dependent territories. This should caution against a uniform perspective on their status and mutual relationship with Vienna. Most of the previously mentioned Romanians lived in the territory of Transylvania, where internal administration was controlled until the mid-­ nineteenth century by estates comprised mostly of the Hungarian county nobility, the Hungarian-speaking Székelys, and the patriciate-based Transylvanian 34  Buklijas and Lafferton, “Science, Medicine and Nationalism,” 680. 35  Ibid. 36  Ibid.

14

Introduction

Saxon social elite. These ‘noble nations’ were defined also by ethnolinguistic or confessional markers, while the peasantry had little social standing and no corporate political rights. The gap between them was further compounded by the existence of linguistically compact settlements. However, despite economic and social inequalities and an unusual social diversity for the core zones of the continent, the cultural backdrop of knowledge production was commensurable with other regions, as demonstrated by the history of education in the region.37 This was true despite the fact that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Transylvania belonged to the agricultural hinterlands of the monarchy, similar to the Banat and Galicia. It qualified as remote and exotic enough for British and French readers of horror novels to function as the right setting for a bestseller on vampires.38 The notion of ‘composite monarchy,’ coined by John Elliott to designate the heterogeneous character of early modern continental monarchies and the polities designed to manage them, is useful in sketching not only political fault lines but also exchanges in the Republic of Letters in the Habsburg lands.39 Only through an account of the heterogeneity of the environment is it possible to reconstruct the cultural and political entanglements of the region. Taking composite states as a political frame of reference implies the reconstruction of alternative patterns of collective identification existing within them. Thus one can differentiate between loyalties connected closely to the Habsburg state frameworks and those tied to regional political identities within this larger scheme. While some of the discourses of identification and sociability were embedded in the imperial structure (as tended to be the case with Transylvanian Saxons and Romanians), others were formulated in a dialogue, or even in dissent and opposition to the center (this latter stance was more likely to be assumed by Hungarians). My narrative embarks from the moment after the death of Joseph II, which exposed the rift between the con37  The great exception consists, of course, of those Roma who continued to lead a nomadic and unassimilated lifestyle in Transylvania—a permanent target of ‘meliorist’ but badly funded governmental policies ever since the reign of Emperor Joseph II. 38  The horror novel by Bram Stoker is the most prominent among several other writings, even if the real international breakthrough of Dracula came only decades later with the new medium of film. As the Dracula literature has pointed out, in the Western imaginary, Transylvania, similar to other places in the Balkans, becomes a space of the “other.” Since the works on Dracula are legion, I would like to merely mention here the work by Matthew Gibson, Dracula and the Eastern Question: British and French Vampire Narratives of the Nineteenth-Century Near East (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); and Matei Cazacu, Histoire du prince Dracula (Paris and Geneva: Droz, 1988). 39  John H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present 137 (1992): 48–71.

Introduction

15

flicting loyalties in Transylvania in terms of political calculation and cultural attitudes. The integration of Hungary and Transylvania into the Habsburg polity in the eighteenth century could not ignore the position of the Hungarian and Transylvanian Saxon estates. The latter clashed with the court whenever policies inspired by cameralism threatened to infringe on the ‘ancient constitution’ (customs and statutes of the realm) and the tax exempt status of the ‘privileged nations’; these were estates ‘wedged’ between the court and their (ethnically and sociopolitically different) peers.40 Transylvania was at this stage characterized as much by the ethnoconfessional inequalities of the urban social structure as the gap between the towns and the ethnically dissimilar countryside. The larger towns had a predominantly Hungarian and German character mirrored among the urban elites and bureaucracy, a structure that did not change significantly until World War I. The largest ethnic population, the Romanians, were mostly rural, and became socially mobile in the second half of the nineteenth century.41 Their intellectual and professional elite established themselves first around the edges of the Hungarian and Saxon towns, having a foothold by the mid-nineteenth century in some of the larger towns, such as Kronstadt and Arad. They also kept their ties to the village throughout the entire period.42 However, it would be wrong to cast Transylvania as an immobile, linguistically and confessionally segregated, caste-like society. The changes of the modern era brought the mobility

40   László Kontler, “Introduction: The Enlightenment in Central Europe?,” in Late Enlightenment—Emergence of the Modern “National Idea,” ed. Trencsényi and Kopeček, 33–44, 39. 41  The census of 1900 counted ca. 233,000 Germans, 815,000 Hungarians, 1,397,000 Romanians, and 32,000 other nationalities on the territory of Transylvania (57,804 km2). The great majority of the Transylvanian population was rural (81.8% in 1869, 76.5% in 1890, and 70.8% in 1910). See Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1995). 42  Ibid., 138; Ambrus Miskolczy, A brassói román levantei kereskedőpolgárság kelet-nyugati közvetítő szerepe (1780–1860) [The intermediary role of the Romanian Levantine merchant bourgeoisie of Brassó/Braşov, 1780–1860] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1987); Maria Crăciun and Ovidiu Ghitta, Ethnicity and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe (Cluj: Cluj Univ. Press, 1995); Ambrus Miskolczy, “Nemzeti ébredés, romantika, liberalizmus” [National awakening, romanticism, liberalism], in Románok a történeti Magyarországon [Romanians in historical Hungary] (Budapest: Lucidus, 2005), 8; Péter Tibor Nagy, Egyenlőtlen alfabetizáció és nemzetiségek a századforduló Magyarországán [Uneven literacization and the nationalities in turn-of-the-century Hungary], Iskolakultúra 12, no. 5 (2002): 53–65.

16

Introduction

of the rural population in general and the formation of a Romanian middleclass in particular.43 The principality of Transylvania was a historic micro-region that had made up part of the Hungarian Kingdom in the Middle Ages, attained quasiautonomous status under Ottoman suzerainty in the seventeenth century, and became an administrative territorial unit of the Habsburg polity by the eighteenth. During the ‘Spring of Nations’ in 1848, the provincial diet, domi­nated by Hungarian estates, voted for union with Hungary. The decision was nullified by the defeat of the Hungarian army a year later and came into effect only in 1867 with the establishment of the Dual Monarchy. Was it the experience of the ethnic conflicts during the civil war, the maintenance of rigid social differences, or simply the primacy of nationalism that prevented the formation of lasting cooperation between Hungarian, Saxon, and Romanian elites in Transylvania? Twenty years before 1848, in the atmosphere of the Age of Reform of the 1830s, the prospect of a more liberal, more cosmopolitan, and more educated Transylvania emerged, and the name was pronounced with references to an independent past, opposed to administrative centralization. However, not only in the lands of the Monarchy, but throughout Europe, claims to the common good had been linked to national perspectives.44 Local scholarly life was organized principally along ethnic and political allegiances at the expense of territorial perspectives. Hungarian plans of civil society envisaged the creation of a nation-state and demanded the union of the principality with Hungary in opposition to the divisive policy of the Habsburg Empire; the improvement of the Hungarian language and culture connected to the merging of the nationalities into a national polity. In contrast, the Transylvanian Saxon elite mistrusted the would-be Hungarian nation-state, advocating cultural values that were simultaneously regional and German Protestant. This combined with loyalty to the imperial dynasty and an emphasis on regional identity, which constituted, together with the Transylvanian Romanian politi43  Ábrahám Barna, “The Idea of Independent Romanian National Economy in Transylvania at the Turn of the 20th Century,” in Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies, ed. Balázs Trencsényi et al. (Budapest and Iași: Regio Books—Ed. Polirom, 2001), 209–226. 44  Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Geselligkeit und Demokratie. Vereine und zivile Gesellschaft im transnationalen Vergleich 1750–1914, vol. 1, Synthesen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 273; László Péter, “Volt-e magyar társadalom a XIX. században? A jogrend és a civil társadalom képződése” [Was there a Hungarian society in the 19th century? The order of law and the formation of civil society], in Az Elbától keletre. Tanulányok a magyar és kelet-európai történelemből [East of the Elba. Studies in Hungarian and East-European history], ed. László Péter (Budapest: Osiris, 1998), 158.

Introduction

17

cal ideas, a counterbalance to the unionist agenda. This dichotomy would also show up in the practice of the Transylvanian scholarly associations: their initial encompassing program and stated social openness had both a local and a broader European scope, at the same time they served the identity politics of their clientele. Yet one must add a word of caution against the reification of ethnic cultures as homogenous and mutually incompatible entities. By the end of the Josephist decade, there existed on the Hungarian and Transylvanian territories already a relatively dense network of associative communication surrounding the emperor and his projects, which cut across cultural and linguistic borders.45 Also, one encounters during a gradually more relaxed period of censorship Masonic lodges, reading societies, public libraries, and printed media, which initiated projects for self-improvement, exploration of the fatherland, and dissemination of knowledge in vernacular languages. This environment generated scholarly endeavors combined with patriotic zeal, often opposed to the centralizing efforts of the absolutist rulers. In the 1790s, the bulk of patriotic scholars could be described—along the lines suggested by Daniel Roche and Lawrence Brockliss—as opponents of the domination of the Habsburg capital, polymaths participating in local scholarly networks, cautious advocators of Enlightenment and progress, and defenders of local prerogatives and corporate rights. It was those men of letters of noble origin who dominated that scene before the 1780s . . . Together they gave voice to the sentiments of a sizeable elite group whose cultural and intellectual horizons, thanks to their ­education . . . were broadly European, but whose vision of the future restoration of the erstwhile greatness of the Hungarian nation was predicated on galvanizing their own class to a new dynamism through modern letters and knowledge practices. This was a vision of improvement which, in their own view, depended on maintaining a discourse of identity built on a prestigious pedigree and social exclusiveness, both under serious attack from the mid-1760s on by the Viennese court and government, towards which their attitudes were therefore highly ambivalent.46

45  Éva H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 1765–1800 (Budapest: CEU Press, 1997). 46  László Kontler, “The Lappon, the Scythian and the Hungarian, or Our (Former) Selves as ‘Others.’ Philosophical History in Eighteenth-Century Hungary,” in Encountering Otherness: Diversities and Transcultural Experiences in Early Modern European Culture, ed. Guido Abbattista (Trieste: Università degli studi di Trieste, 2011), 131–145, 138–139.

18

Introduction

Yet the situation with Transylvania was more complex. The province was attached not to one but to several centers, the local ‘vectors of assemblage’47 were multiple. Some were oriented towards the imperial capital, Vienna, others to the emerging Hungarian political/cultural center, Pest, while academic peregrination strengthened existing ties to northern German cities of learning, such as Göttingen, Jena, Dresden, Weimar, later Heidelberg and Berlin. The German state sciences anchored in law and historical studies had by that time created a profound echo, and enlightened followers of Johann Stephan Pütter, Johann Christoph Gatterer, and August Ludwig Schlözer were eagerly publishing data on Statistik, history, and philology in Hungary and Transylvania. The affiliation of the province to this network of learning brought forth also more cosmopolitan, internationally connected scholars, with broader scientific interests in natural philosophy and the humanities. An emblematic representative of this latter group was Sámuel Gyarmathi (1751–1830). A Calvinist of lower nobility extraction, Gyarmathi continued his studies at the University of Vienna and returned home as a county physician. Yet his professional career was extremely unstable since his financial needs and intellectual curiosity often forced him to switch positions, serving in the houses of the local aristocracy as a medical caretaker and private tutor. As a companion to his noble students on extensive European educational tours, he was well acquainted with German academic circles. The most remarkable ‘encounter,’ however, took place during his two-year stay in Göttingen, establishing contacts with the luminaries of linguistic and historical studies, and enjoying the encouragement of Schlözer to pursue his comparative inquiries into the Finno-Ugric roots of the Hungarian language, the result of which was his Affinitas lingvae hvngaricae cvm lingvis fennicae originis grammatice demonstrata.48 This work, which located Hungarians linguistically in Northern Europe/Siberia, earned him membership in the Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. The honoring of the former peregrinus in the Hannoverian academic city is a sign that the fruits of knowledge transfer were

47  The inspiration for using the term came from the literature on scientific production in the contact zones. See David Wade Chambers and Richard Gillespie, “Locality in the History of Science: Colonial Science, Technoscience, and Indigenous Knowledge,” in Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise, ed. Roy MacLeod (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000), 221–240. 48  Sámuel Gyarmathi, Affinitas lingvae hvngaricae cvm lingvis fennicae originis grammatice demonstrata. Nec non vocabularia dialectorum tataricarum et slavicarum cum hungarica comparata (Göttingen, 1799).

Introduction

19

reaped both at home and abroad: new and relevant knowledge had the potential of putting Transylvanians on the European map.49 Indeed, in the prime time of nation-state building, the question both of patriotism as well as participation in more universal knowledge networks was reformulated with an emphasis on national cultural affiliations. The shaping national canons in the humanities in Pest, Bucharest, Vienna, Heidelberg, and Berlin did not leave the Transylvanian learned societies unaffected, which, though originating in the academic movement of the Enlightenment, were actually founded in the mid-nineteenth century. This moment coincided with the reorganization of scholarship, dominated by the Humboldt-type research university on a European scale.50 The university gradually took over the organization of scientific research from the older types of knowledge production, while the learned societies and academies could survive now only through specialization as discipline-oriented organizations. Major national academies continued to exist throughout the nineteenth century, but they were mostly transformed into honorary organizations destined to legitimize and officially recognize scholarly accomplishments. Universities all over the continent were endowed with and partly legitimized by a national mission in the service of their chief supporter and sponsor, the nation-state.51 The Habsburg Monarchy was no exception, although the eastern provinces were slower in following the trend. In Transylvania for instance, a modern university was founded only in 1872. How the new establishment affected the provincial intellectual milieus can be gleaned from the trajectories of each of the scholarly societies. While the Landeskundeverein could profit from the support of the Austrian post-revolutionary regime after putting down the Hungarian civil war in 1848, its status changed after 1867. During the period of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the Hungarian government strengthened research and education in the ‘national’ humanities and the emerging 49  It also went against the widespread speculations which placed proto-Hungarians into a more ‘prestigious’ and ancient oriental environment. Gyarmathi’s work brought solid philological arguments for another kinship not prestigious at all but saliently characterized as “fish-fatty” and ignoble, contributing to a half-century-long heavily politicized controversy between conflicting interpretative camps, with repercussions felt even today. 50  James McClellan III, “Scientific Institutions and the Organization of Science,” in Eighteenth-Century Science, vol. 4 of The Cambridge History of Science, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003), 87–106, 105. 51  Christophe Charle, Jürgen Schriewer, and Peter Wagner, eds., Transnational Intellectual Networks: Forms of Academic Knowledge and the Search for Cultural Identities (Frankfurt: Campus, 2004), 18; Schriewer, Keiner, and Charle, eds., Sozialer Raum und akademische Kulturen.

20

Introduction

social sciences. Within this policy the Museum Society enjoyed a privileged status that was in marked contrast with the two other Transylvanian scholarly institutions, that kept their grassroots character.52 The late nineteenth-century scientific career of the Museum Society and its collections was closely tied to governmental policies, bearing similarities with partner institutions in the Kingdom of Hungary or that of ASTRA in interwar Romania.53 Among the three Transylvanian associations, the Museum Society was the only one to be officially sanctioned and financially supported at the provincial diet in 1841–43. Only after the deferral of the highest approval from Vienna, and the deterioration of Austrian-Hungarian relations in the neo-absolutist decade after the civil war, did the Museum Society recur to a purely civic organizational form. There were also more contingent formal differences. The Museum Society remained centered in its hometown Kolozsvár and kept the institutional form of a scientific academy, including sections in the humanities, natural sciences, medicine, law, and the social sciences. At the same time, it maintained its museum and a public library, both developing into a high-profile research institutions at the end of the century.54 This 52  “It was an activism that unfolded as often without state sanction as with it. Economic transformation and urban expansion pushed the process along, but civil society had resources of its own to feed off: private wealth, institutional redoubts like churches and universities (even state-run universities might provide a modicum of institutional shelter to would-be civic activists), and a rich repertoire of historical symbols and memories that citizens in-the-making could tap into for inspiration and strength.” Philip Nord, “Introduction,” in Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Nancy G. Bermeo and Philip G. Nord (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), xiii– xxxiii, xxii. 53  See the foundation of the Hungarian National Museum, Gábor Ébli, “What Made a Museum ‘National’ in the Nineteenth Century? The Evolution of Public Collections in Hungary,” in “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe, ed. Marosi and Klaniczay, 77–89. 54  For an overview of the history of the Museum Society, see Attila T. Szabó, Az Erdélyi Múzeum-egyesület története és feladatai [The history and tasks of EME] (Cluj-Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület kiadása, 1942); Lajos Kántor, “Párhuzam az Erdélyi MúzeumEgyesület és az Astra megalakulásában és korai működésében” [Parallels in the foundation and activities of EME and ASTRA], Erdélyi Múzeum, no. 2 (1940): 103–117; Pál Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület félszázados ünnepére, 1859–1909 [Memorial volume in honor of the half-century anniversary of the Transylvanian Museum Society] (Cluj-Kolozsvár: Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület kiadása, 1942); see also the newer editions, Gábor Sipos, ed., Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület gyűjteményei [The collections of EME] (Cluj: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2009); and Gyöngy Kovács Kiss, ed., Hivatás és tudomány. Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület kiemelkedő személyiségei [Calling and science. The prominent personalities of EME] (Cluj: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2009).

Introduction

21

contrasted with the more education-oriented profile of the Saxon ‘academy,’ and even more so with ASTRA, which dedicated its energies mostly to the education of the rural population. As far as academic work is concerned, ASTRA increasingly depended on publications arriving from Bucharest towards the turn of the century.55 A contract with the Hungarian Ministry of Education enabled the Museum Society to establish a liaison with the newly established Franz Joseph Transylvanian University, guaranteeing state support for the museum’s holdings. Yet, when Transylvania was transferred from defeated Hungary to Romania at the end of World War I, the contracts proved fatal for the Museum Society and provided a pretext for the Romanian state to nationalize its collections, a situation that has remained unresolved until the present day. Beyond the material loss, the case also exemplifies the risks carried by state patronage and interference in the local fabric of the intellectual milieus. Founded by professors, high-status state functionaries, and the ecclesiastic elite, both the Museum Society and the Landeskundeverein had encompassing cultural programs, which targeted the exploration of the province in the European context. They intended to ‘discover’ the hitherto ‘ignored’ or ‘barely known’ Transylvanian territory, the history and condition of its peoples, for the common benefit of all inhabitants irrespective of ethnicity or social rank. The translation of their names, “Association for Transylvanian Landeskunde” and “Transylvanian Museum Society,” indicate regional and not national reference. These names were not their primary choices, but the result of lengthy negotiations with the authorities. Similarly, ASTRA also had to drop the national reference from its name in the late 1880s. Such restrictions were issued first by the Viennese administration, only to be continued by the Hungarian authorities during the era associated with the prime ministership of Kálmán Tisza (1875–1890), in both cases characterized by authoritarian policies against the nationalities. Both the Austrian and the Hungarian governments invested considerable energy in the surveillance of potentially disruptive oppositional political movements, but also in the production of authoritative knowledge about ethnic and social minorities in general.56 As a consequence, traditional 55  Teodor Ardelean, Limba română şi cultivarea ei în preocupările Astrei [The Romanian language and its improvement in the scholarly practice of ASTRA] (Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2009); Silviu Borş, Biblioteca Centrală a Asociaţiunii: 1861–1950 [The central library of the ASTRA] (Cluj-Napoca: Mega, 2011). 56  Just two prominent examples from a wealth of ethnic statistical literature produced by prominent statisticians of the Hungarian and Habsburg administration: Karl Czoernig, Ethnographie der österreichischen Monarchie (Vienna, 1857); Pál Teleki, “The Racial or

22

Introduction

historiography saw the associational movement during the Compromise Era only in relation to politics. Cultural and educational associations were considered agents of national mobilization and, in the case of non-Hungarians, of cultural resistance against the increasingly illiberal and nationalizing government.57 But the nation-building character of voluntary associations has been mostly postulated rather than critically examined.58 These scholarly associations were one facet of a principally urban network, enfolding primarily on the basis of ethnolinguistic and denominational affiliation, and only secondarily on occupational, ideological, or other bases. On the eve of the revolution of 1848, Saxons, Hungarians, and Romanians had separate associational networks in the larger towns. These cleavages remained a constant during the proliferation of the civic realm in the second half of the century. The maintenance of various churches’ autonomies and the schooling of national minorities under ecclesiastical tutelage after 1867 played a significant role in a Transylvania where the linguistic and religious boundaries of the three great ethnic populations roughly corresponded. None of the associations could isolate itself from the surrounding public life, which affected their activities. Both the Museum Society and the Landeskundeverein were scholarly associations relying upon the collective effort of their members, and developed a web of affiliates in Transylvanian towns and villages over time. The collections of the Museum Society were initiated by the Transylvanian Hungarian aristocracy. These differences in scholarly output and forms cannot be understood without close attention to the social networks at the disposal of each association. As previously mentioned, the Museum Society bore at its start the imprint of the aristocratic cultural habits of the Hungarian nobility. It was this stratum that, following the German, Austrian, and British examples, established the first public museums and libraries during the first half of the nineteenth century. The preponderance of aristocrats in the ranks of Museum Society was also conducive to the relative visibility of female members, in contrast to the more male-dominant Nationality Problem as Seen by a Geographer,” in The Evolution of Hungary and Its Place in European History (New York: Macmillan, 1923). 57  Günther Schödl, ed., Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas. Land an der Donau (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1995), 269. 58  Especially Schödl, Deutsche Geschichte; and Gustav Gündisch, “Der Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde. Eine Wissenschaftsgeschichte,” in Wege Landeskundlicher Forschung. 25 Jahre Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde. 1962–1987 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1987), 13–49; Harald Zimmermann, “Bemerkungen zur Geschichte des Vereins für Sebenbürgische Landeskunde,” in Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Paul Philippi (Cologne: Böhlau, 1967), 24–53.

Introduction

23

Bildungsbürger-type Landeskundeverein. The few women savants who also made a name in and beyond Transylvania were of aristocratic background. Should one have to deal in this case, contrary to generalizations about the ‘backwardness’ of the Eastern civic circles, with a specific configuration of the aristocratic scholarly culture that accepted women of certain status more easily?59

Interlocking Scientific Cultures in the Province

Transylvania was wedged between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Romanian principalities, and the national movements emerging in each neighboring state locked the province into linguistically, confessionally, and geographically distinct networks of communication. Defining Transylvanian topics was the effect of communication with cultural centers that lay outside the province and were scattered in various countries. Therefore, as the book intends to show, even the strictly local content of provincial scholarship was affected by the cross-border exchanges of the men of letters who filled the pages of the publications, curated the exhibitions, and gave the talks at the itinerary meetings of the societies. Conversely, the learned societies had not only a local effect, but put Transylvania on the map of international knowledge. This was an important achievement, even if they were painfully aware of living in the shadow of the large European cultural metropolises. The book shall trace the emergence and career of the Hungarian and Saxon practices of regional scholarship by adopting a chronological perspective over the long nineteenth century. Rooted in the early modern descriptions of states, eighteenth-century Landeskunde undertook the exploration of the Transylvanian fatherland. Chapter One asks how the local configuration of savant life shaped its main themes at the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It highlights those elements of contemporary politics that had an impact on education and learning in the socially heterogeneous environment. It asks about the real and perceived limitations that emerged from the dependent status in the Habsburg administration and the divided loyalties of the local Saxon and Hungarian practitioners. Furthermore, the chapter will evaluate how the cultural exchange between Transylvania and the broader German and Austrian context contributed to academic sociability and to the Transylvanian manifestations of Landeskunde and honismeret. 59  For a contrastive view see Munck, “The ‘Public Sphere’ and Its Limits,” in The Enlightenment, 14–17, at 17.

24

Introduction

The Hungarian Age of Reform, roughly two decades before 1848, brought the maturation of the national and liberal perspective in politics and scholarship. Chapter Two shows how Landeskunde received a new momentum in these decades, when identification with the nation as a cultural community overwrote territorial allegiance as part of a Hungarian politics that took place both in Transylvania and Hungary. The 1830s and 1840s enhanced the public visibility of patriotic scholarship in an emerging public sphere, consisting of voluntary associations and periodicals, which endorsed the exploration of the Transylvanian fatherland. As the chapter argues, the dilemma of the 1830s concerned the channeling of the growing popular interest in Landeskunde into institutionalized forms. The ensuing solutions and strategies reveal the increasingly conservative attitude of the elites behind these plans as to the social function of scholarship, but also the role of the state and the society in shaping scientific content. Chapter Three seeks to position the emerging Transylvanian Saxon, Hungarian, and Romanian scholarly associations in the circumstances of the post-1848 neo-absolutist administration. All three institutes were founded as voluntary associations, and the chapter analyses the impact of the civic movement on the configuration of regional science. Political support and state patronage played an immense role too. The Landeskundeverein had a situational advantage vis-à-vis its peers when it came to the latter resources. This advantage grew further during the 1850s, when the Austrian authorities applied restrictive measures towards scholarly institutions of the defeated Hungarian ‘rebels,’ and benefited those of non-Hungarians. These policies welcomed the scholarly vision of a distinct Transylvanian political space, without the dominant role of any single nation(ality). How did the new policy affect the territorial and cultural scope of Landeskunde and honismeret? Chapter Four describes the challenges posed by scientific professionalization to provincial scholarship in the second half of the long nineteenth century. These decades coincided with the novel shift of political power and the consolidation of the Hungarian state during the Austro-Hungarian Compromise after 1867. The chapter addresses the changes in the disciplinary structure of Landeskunde during the establishment of modern scientific disciplines in higher education and research. The latter took place throughout the continent in a national framework, to which the province, now reincorporated into the Hungarian state, was no exception. In 1872 the second Hungarian university of the country opened in Kolozsvár, following the oldest one in Budapest. How did the new cultural politics, now privileging the scholarly institute of the titular nation, shape local agendas for the exploration of the fatherland? Was there any convergence in the disciplinary practices and themes of the ­societies?

Introduction

25

Furthermore, the chapter investigates the diverse strategies adopted by the two associations to communicate with specialists and also with their larger publics. Finally, the Conclusion returns to the initial questions in the light of my research results. What this study hopefully offers is not merely another isolated story about Europe’s peripheral zones of learning,60 but an attempt to chart these ‘nonmetropolitan’ geographies of European knowledge on their own terms, and not as appendages to the well-studied centers.61 In comparison to French and British provincial scientific life, this area possesses, so my hypothesis, a peculiar ‘cultural geography’62 of its own. Thus, my analysis should be seen as an exploration into the meaning of the word ‘provincial’ without pejorative overtones. I understand it as a dynamic and functional contradistinction, a selfpositioning vis-à-vis the cultural center(s), a dialogue.63 Last, but not least, Transylvania is not regarded as a unique case, but rather as representative of the multiethnic provinces of the Habsburg, German, and Romanov empires. It is an example of the cultural division of labor and the dialogue and conflicts between the practitioners of provincial scholarship. Saxon, Hungarian, and Romanian scholars occupied different positions within the region’s social and symbolic hierarchy and had different resources at their disposal. In this sense, this book is less a classical account of scientific institutions and more an inquiry into the local configuration of scientific communication and knowledge production in a region that remained multiethnic in the age of nationalism.

60  Richard Butterwick, Simon Davies, and Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa, eds., Peripheries of the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008). 61  Charles W. J. Withers, Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007). 62  David N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003). 63  See the cited literature on provincial academies in the French and British context.

MAP 1

Connecting Transylvania to the world: reconstruction of a postal map of Hungary and Transylvania from 1799. Based on Allgemeine Postkarte von Ungarn, Kroatien, Sklavonien und Sibenburgen zur Uebersicht by Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly (Vienna, 1799).

CHAPTER 1

Landeskunde, honismeret—Patriotic Scholarship and Vernacular Languages Rooted in the early modern descriptions of states,1 eighteenth-century Landeskunde was understood as an intellectual engagement with the ‘fatherland.’ Its purpose was the application of acquired knowledge to the betterment of the overall conditions and therefore a contribution to the common weal. In practice, Landeskunde meant the comprehensive and encyclopedic mapping of the patria, and its emergence and disciplinary configuration in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Transylvania was the adaptation of a German scholarly tradition. This chapter asks how the local configuration of savant life shaped its content and its practices. Before explaining the specific features of Transylvanian Landeskunde, I highlight those elements of contemporary politics that had an impact on education and learning in the socially heterogeneous environment. I shall also ask about the real and perceived limitations that emerged from the provincial status, namely, from the fact of dependence on administrative and cultural centers that lay beyond the borders of Transylvania. The inquiry shall draw together these seemingly disparate phenomena of the political and cultural life with the purpose of mapping the types of emerging academic sociability as well as the specific Transylvanian manifestations and scholarly foci of Landeskunde.2 * An earlier version of this chapter was published as “Patriotic Scholarship: The Adaptation of State Sciences in late Eighteenth-Century Transylvania,” in Whose Love of Which Country? Composite States, National Histories, and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe, ed. Balázs Trencsényi and Márton Zászkaliczky (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 663–688. 1  Mohammed Rassem and Justin Stagl, eds., Statistik und Staatsbeschreibung in der Neuzeit, vornehmlich im 16.–18. Jahrhundert. Bericht über ein interdisziplinäres Symposion in Wolfenbüttel, 25.–27. September 1978 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1980). 2  Gyula Szekfű, Magyar történet [Hungarian history], vol. 5, ed. Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfű (Budapest: Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1936); R. J. W. Evans, Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: Essays on Central Europe, 1683–1867 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006); Éva H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 1765–1800: An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism, trans. Tim Wilkinson (Budapest: CEU Press, 1997); László Kontler, “The Enlightenment in Central Europe?,” in Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1770–1945), vol. 1, Late Enlightenment—Emergence of the Modern “National Idea,” ed. Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček (Budapest: CEU Press, 2006), 33–44; Teodora Shek Brnardič,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004303058_003

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Robert Evans identified two competing political visions that shaped contemporary legal thinking in Hungary in that time. Accordingly, one of them construed Hungary as a state, persisting on the assumed continuity of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom. The other one developed from the enlightened Habsburg theories of governance and cast Hungary as a province of the Habsburg Monarchy. To bring the two opposing views together involved engaging with the relation of the lands, that is, the constitutive elements of the composite polity with the Gesamtstaat. The difference between these two views was of paramount political importance since it affected how the sovereignty of the land was evaluated and, closely linked to it, the internal political and social hierarchy, and therefore the loyalties of various social clusters within the kingdom.3 The same observation is also valid for Transylvania with its separate governing body and legislation. To begin with, the loyalties of the Hungarian estates on both sides of the Hungarian-Transylvanian border fluctuated during the reforms carried out under the auspices of Maria Theresa’s reign, reaching their nadir at the end of the Josephist decade in 1790. Alienated by the centralizing and anti-feudal measures of the new emperor, these attitudes appear to us today—especially as they were presented at provincial diets of the post-­Josephist decade—as Habsburg loyalty and not necessarily antagonism although colored by vested local interests. This seems to be the case even if in terms of taxation and economic reform the relationship with Vienna was tense. While the court sought legal means to justify its centralizing efforts, “Intellectual Movements and Geopolitical Regionalization: The Case of the East European Enlightenment,” East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre-Est: Eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 32, nos. 1–2 (2005): 147–178. Case studies that discuss how specific empirical scientific disciplines (such as medicine, studies of domestic economy, and history) emerged in the framework of enlightened sociability and commitment to welfare include: Josef Spielman, “Die Aufklärungsperiode in der Medizingeschichte Siebenbürgens,” in Die Wissenschaftskultur der Aufklärung, ed. Reinhard Mocek (Halle: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1990), 176–187; Jenő Pataki, Az erdélyi orvoslás kultúrtörténetéből [On the cultural history of medicine in Transylvania] (Piliscsaba: Magyar Tudománytörténeti Intézet, 2004); Lajos Hanzó, “Tessedik gazdaságtudományi nézeteinek forrásaihoz” [On the sources of the economic concepts of Tessedik], Századok 96, nos. 3–4 (1962): 553–564; Éva H. Balázs, Európai gazdaságpolitika—magyar válasz [European economic politics—Hungarian answers] (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1996); Éva V. Windisch, “Kovachich Márton György és a magyar tudományszervezés első kísérletei” [Márton György Kovachich and the first attempts of organizing Hungarian science], Századok 102, nos. 1–2 (1968): 90–141. 3  R. J. W. Evans, “Hungary in the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th Century: The British Dimension,” The Hungarian Quarterly 43, no. 171 (Autumn 2003), 111–121.

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it met the countermovement of the estates, which could be legitimized by ­making reference to the Hungarian “ancient constitution” and local feudal prerogatives, both in Hungary and Transylvania, which were acknowledged even by the Habsburg emperor. The death of Joseph II exposed the discrepancies between the local and Viennese interests as well as another rift that emerged between the Saxon and Hungarian estates in Transylvania. To make the scene complete, Transylvanian estate politics, busy with reclaiming its prerogatives lost under the reign of Joseph II, faced a new political challenge from below, namely the demands for political representation of the Romanian-speaking Orthodox and Greek Catholic ecclesiastical and social elites, formulated as the demands of the “Romanian nation.”4 The last three decades of the eighteenth century witnessed the slow establishment of a scholarly public in Transylvania, with its characteristic institutions, learned circles, semi-public libraries of aristocrats and elite ecclesiastics, as well as the first journals published in the vernacular. These circles often regarded themselves as eastern outposts of a German-styled scholarship. The intellectual standards were set at the universities of Göttingen, Tübingen, Halle, Jena and Vienna. Law, history, the sciences of state, but also medicine and natural history, could be learned there, as well as newer methods for “measuring” the improvement of states and peoples within a comparative framework. The standards were set by the Göttingen journal Staatsanzeiger, published by the renowned professor August Ludwig Schlözer. The periodical was of “statistical” content and informed a wider Central European public about the state affairs of Hungary and Transylvania, among others. Schlözer’s enterprise soon came to be emulated in Vienna, Pressburg, and Kaschau, but also in the Transylvanian towns of Marosvásárhely and Hermannstadt. The decades around 1800 witnessed the beginnings of a scholarly exchange reaching across the political borders with the purpose of describing the particularities of Hungary and Transylvania and making these available for a larger audience. The first scholarly periodicals written in the vernacular were addressing more or less specific questions of governance. They gauged the cultural conditions and political traditions of these lands, comparing them to developments abroad.5 In the second 4  John H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present 137 (1992): 48–71, 68–70. 5  Éva H. Balázs, “A Magyar jozefinisták külföldi kapcsolataihoz” [About the international connections of Hungarian Josephinists], Századok 97, no. 6 (1963): 1187–1203; János Poór, “August Ludwig Schlözer und seine ungarländischen Korrespondenz,” in Brief und Briefwechsel in Mittel-und Osteuropa im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Alexandru Duţu, Edgar Hösch, and Norbert Oellers (Essen: Reimar Hobbing Verlag, 1989); János Poór, “Gróf Hofmannsegg uta-

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part of this chapter, I shall consider more closely two major scholarly enterprises in contemporary Transylvania, the Saxon Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift and the Erdélyi Magyar Nyelvmívelő Társaság (Transylvanian Society for the Cultivation of the Hungarian Language), explaining their adherence to Central European scholarship and their perspectives on local society.

The Heritage of Josephist Politics: Impulses to Historiography

The Transylvanian Diet of 1790 was an event of extraordinary significance in the political life of the principality. For a span of almost thirty years, Empress Maria Theresa and Joseph II suspended the provincial diet. But the absolutist measures were loosened after the Restitutionsedict of Joseph, who revoked most of the decrees that were intended to ameliorate the social inequalities of the monarchy. His successor, Leopold II, approved of the restoration of feudal rights and allowed the protagonists of the old order back on to the political scene. The Saxon, Hungarian, and Székely estates began a tug of war for the reestablishment of lost privileges in their negotiations with the court. Saxon concerns grew as the reestablishment of the old corporate veto right, the curiatum votum, was denied, exposing the vulnerability of the small Germanspeaking minority (35 out of the 419 diet members) in the face of an emerging Hungarian politics bent on exceeding the narrow limits of the estates. On both sides of the border, the Hungarian language came to be advanced by Hungarian patriots as the desired official language, aiming to replace Latin, hitherto the language of administration. The commissioning of a Hungarian grammar for use by students, scholars, and “our foreign[-tongued] neighbors to learn our language”6 was a part of this policy. Furthermore, an educational committee of the diet discussed a plan for a provincial Hungarian academy, later modified into the Transylvanian Society for the Cultivation of the Hungarian Language, and presented it for approval to the Transylvanian Chancellery.

zása a XVIII. század végi Magyarországon” [The travels of Count Hofmannsegg in Hungary at the end of the 18th century], Budapesti Negyed 2, no. 4 (1994): 56–70, http://bparchiv .hu/id-77-poor_janos_grof_hofmannsegg_utazasa_xvii.html, accessed 1 June 2015; in the Transylvanian Romanian context see the excellent analysis of Sorin Mitu, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania, trans. Sorana Corneanu (New York: CEU Press, 2001). 6  Sámuel Gyarmathi, Okoskodva tanító magyar nyelvmester [Reasoning guide to Hungarian] (Kolozsvár, 1794). It was the first grammar in Hungarian, written by the noted linguist.

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A decade before, the reform politics of Joseph II (1780–1790) had worked in favor of the lower social strata, most of whom belonged to different confessions and spoke languages other than Hungarian and German. They were inimical to the privileges of the Hungarian nobility and the Székely and Saxon estates, to their regional rights and institutions. The administrative and legal measures had not exempted the Saxon Universitas (the body of Saxon selfgovernment) either. These lifted the exclusive Saxon right to citizenship on the territory of the multiethnic Königsboden (1781), Saxon political autonomy was temporarily abolished, and the property of the Universitas confiscated. The “anti-­constitutional” measures not only generated protest but also gave an impetus to studies on the history of the old “nation,” viewed as a reservoir of corporate rights. In this case, “nation” was concerned with the political rights of the three estates, and not with the ethnic population and its languages. The “Restitution Diet” generated many writings in legal history for direct use in the process of restoration. The titles are suggestive: Verfassungszustand der sächsischen Nation in Siebenbürgen (The constitutional status of the Saxon nation in Transylvania), Das Recht des Eigenthums der Sächsischen Nation in Siebenbürgen (The right to property of the Saxon nation in Transylvania), Über das ausschliessende Bürgerrecht der Sachsen in Siebenbürgen auf ihrem Grund und Boden (On the exclusive citizenship rights of Saxons on their territory), Die Siebenbürger Sachsen, eine Volksschrift; herausgegeben bei Auflebung der für erloschen erklärten Nation (The Transylvanian Saxons, a writing for the people, published on the revival of the nation held extinct), and De initiis juribusque primaevis Saxonum Transsilvanorum (The legal origins of the Transylvanian Saxons).7 Hungarian interest in the records of the past, especially in the institutions of state power since the Middle Ages, equaled with those of their Saxon counterparts. The political events gave further impetus to the already existing interest in legal history.8 Quite contrary was the reaction of the Romanian 7  Verfassungszustand der sächsischen Nation in Siebenbürgen, 1791; Johannes Tartler, Das Recht des Eigenthums der Sächsischen Nation in Siebenbürgen, 1792; Michael Fronius, Über das ausschliessende Bürgerrecht der Sachsen in Siebenbürgen auf ihrem Grund und Boden, 1792; Jakob Aurelius Müller, Die Siebenbürger Sachsen. Eine Volksschrift herausgegeben bey Auflebung der für erloschen erklärten Nation, 1790; Josef Karl Eder, De initiis juribusque primaevis Saxonum Transsilvanorum (Vienna, 1792). 8  Evans, Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs, 24. For the ‘dichotomist’ view, see Pál Horváth, A magyar jogi gondolkodás az állam és jog fejlődéstörténetéről [Hungarian legal thinking about the developmental history of the state and law], in Magyar állam- és jogtörténet [The history of the Hungarian state and law], ed. Andor Csizmadia, Kálmán Kovács, and László Asztalos (Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, 1998), 7–13.

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Greek Catholic elite, also brought to the fore in the process of restitution. The Church Union with Rome (1699–1700) created an opportunity for the Romanian ecclesiastical elite from Transylvania for social and political ascendancy under the tutelage of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. They feared a deterioration of status and a halting of the emancipation and social mobility of the Romanian-speaking Greek Catholic and Orthodox peasants and serfs that had begun during the Josephist decade. So the Restitution caused among them an opposite reaction compared to the Saxon and Hungarian elite. While the latter strove to restore the constitutional order prior to Joseph, the Romanian elites aimed at maintaining the progress attained under his reign. They drew up a petition to the emperor in the winter of 1790–1791, the Supplex Libellus Valachorum, vindicating the rights of a fourth Nation, including privileges similar to the other Transylvanian estates. The Supplex made up part of a campaign to obtain corporate rights for Transylvanian Romanians, which can be traced back to the 1740s. The historical and language studies of the time supported the claim that the Romanians were the oldest and most numerous people in Transylvania, who belonged to the Transylvanian political leadership before the Saxon, Székely, and Hungarian estates had formed a political union to protect their privileges against peasant revolts in 1437. The hypothetical core of the Supplex was the assertion of Roman continuity in Transylvania, a theory which supported the confessional and political struggle, proclaiming the right to collective existence and emancipation of Transylvanian Romanians.9 The Supplex presented several demands: the elimination of “hostile and offensive terms” such as “tolerated” or “not considered as admitted among the estates,” commonly used by the three estates toward the Romanian nation; equal rights and privileges for the Romanian nobles, peasants, and clergy, as with the other nations; proportional representation for Romanians in county, 9  H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 98; Keith Hitchins, A Nation Discovered: Romanian Intellectuals in Transylvania and the Idea of Nation, 1700–1848 (Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1999), 133–143; Katherine Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 120; Béla Köpeczi, ed., Erdély története 1830-tól napjainkig [The history of Transylvania from 1830 until today], vol. 3 of Erdély története [The history of Transylvania] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986), 1112 (in the following: ET 3); László Kontler, “Monarchs and Estates and the Limits of the Enlightenment,” in Millenium in Central Europe (Budapest: Atlantisz Publishing House, 1999), 207–222; Rolf Kutschera, Landtag und Gubernium in Siebenbürgen 1688–1869, Studia Transylvanica, vol. 11 (Cologne-Vienna: Böhlau, 1985), 110; Marius Turda, “Supplex Libellus Valachorum. Context,” in Discourses of Collective Identity, ed. Trencsényi and Kopeček, 1:276–278.

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district, and communal government and in the diet; the use of Romanian names for settlements and geographical places with Romanian majority p ­ opulation; and a parity of taxation and other public burdens with the other nations. Finally, the Supplex requested permission from the emperor to hold a national congress under the leadership of the Orthodox and Uniate bishops to discuss how the Romanian nation could be legally enshrined.10 Emperor Leopold II referred the memorandum to the Transylvanian Diet, which squarely refused the Romanian claims, although it did acknowledge the necessity to act towards the improvement of the situation of subjects of Greek Orthodox faith. The birth of modern historical writing and critical studies in the “national” histories and origins of languages were thus directly linked in Transylvania to claims to domination in the decade after the French Revolution. It was not only the restoration of lost privileges and the acquisition of new ones that engaged the attention of scholars, statesmen, and educated private persons, but also the reform of state administration. The rationalization of state bureaucracy demanded usable data on the inhabitants and their environment, which should be available in compendia and handbooks. The chief initiator of this activity had been the government, but there was growing interest in economic and social reform among the educated strata of the society as well. Learned societies were created throughout the monarchy, which fostered accurate knowledge and thus a “humble love of the fatherland.”11 An administrative system organized according to the precepts of political science would help statesmen and bureaucrats to develop and execute policies of uniformization. Religious toleration would increase the pool from which those bureaucrats could be recruited. The Patent of Toleration ended the official and formal discrimination of Protestants and Orthodox in the monarchy. Previously excluded from office holding and politics, they could now officially become candidates for these posts. The patent also set the foundation for Romanian and Jewish emancipation. Nevertheless, it caused mixed reactions eventually. The old elites, assuming a conservative stance after the French Revolution,

10  See Hitchins, A Nation Discovered, 137–138. 11  Joseph von Sonnenfels, Der Mann ohne Vorurtheil, cited in B. Becker-Cantarino, “Joseph von Sonnenfels and the Development of Secular Education in Eighteenth-Century Austria,” in Facets of Education in the Eighteenth Century, ed. James A. Leith (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1977), 29–47, 29; Moritz Csáky, Von der Aufklärung zum Liberalismus. Studien zum Frühliberalismus in Ungarn (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981), 172.

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feared now competition from below, centralization from above, and a loss of established privileges.12

Language Politics and Education: Synchronizing Transylvania with the Polite World

The promotion of the vernacular languages in Hungary and Transylvania was partly a reaction to the language reforms of Joseph II. The emperor had ordered by decree (1784) the introduction of German instead of Latin as the language of official communication and education in Hungary and Transylvania. It was intended as a measure of improvement: The use of a dead language such as Latin in all affairs of the state is proof enough that the nation has not yet reached a true level of enlightenment. It serves as tacit proof that either the national language is defective, or that no other people can read or write it, and that only those who have devoted themselves to the study of Latin are able to express themselves in writing, while the nation in general is ruled and receives judicial decisions in a language which it does not understand . . . If Hungarian were the general language in the Kingdom of Hungary and its dependencies and in the Grand Duchy of Siebenbürgen, it could certainly serve as the medium for the conduct of official business. But it is well known that the German and Illyrian [Serbo-Croat] languages, with their numerous dialects, and also the Wallachian [Romanian] language, are so commonly used, that Hungarian can in no way be considered the general language.13 Since the late Middle Ages, Hungarian counted as the second official language of Transylvania, spoken not only by a large part of the population but also by the aristocracy. The Language Edict secured now the knowledge of German for state bureaucrats. According to Elek Csetri, by 1799 almost all of the higher officers of the Transylvanian Chancellery spoke in fact not only German but also 12  H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 180–183; Zoltán I. Tóth, Az erdélyi román nacionalizmus első százada [The first century of Romanian nationalism] (Csíkszereda: Pro-Print, 1998), 270–271. 13  “Order,” in bk. 5 of Josephinische Curiosa (Vienna, 1848), 42–44, 46–47. See also H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 206. Indeed, Hungarian was far from being in general use in Transylvania, where the urban population spoke predominantly German, and Romanian was widely used too; ibid., 206–207.

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Hungarian and Romanian in addition to Latin, which was further kept as the language of higher learning. According to his statistics, out of 109 staff members of the Gubernium and the related central institutions, all spoke Latin, 99 spoke German, 101 spoke Hungarian, and 96 spoke Romanian. Given the extremely low proportion of ethnic Romanians in the county administration, because the criteria of admission required membership in the estates and of the received religions, it seems likely that the bureaucrats used Romanian in the everyday contact with the population.14 However, the Language Edict scarred the sensitivity of the Hungarian political elite and created a contrary effect as well: it became an impetus for modernization and improvement of the vernacular. The draft of the Hungarian language law in the Transylvanian Diet of 1790–1791 was the first in a series of measures targeting Hungarian as the language of official communication. When Transylvanian scholar György Aranka (1737–1817) pleaded at the “Restitution Diet” of 1790–1791 for an institution to standardize the Hungarian language, he reformulated the program of improvement in terms of a national culture considered in need of emancipation. Through knowledge and authority, the vernacular could be emancipated from a presumed position of oppression and contamination by German. Similar concerns preoccupied the elite of the Transylvanian School as well, as witnessed by the abundance of treatises on the nature and history of the Romanian language, on the preponderance of the Romanian vocabulary in spoken Latin, but also on questions of language standardization and grammar.15 About forty years later, Hungarian nationalists would demand the general use of Hungarian in the whole of Transylvania. The shared language would 14  See Elek Csetri, “Az erdélyi központi hatóságok tisztviselőinek nyelvtudásáról a XVIII. század végén” [About the language ability of the officers in the central institutions of Transylvania at the end of the 18th century], in Nemzeti és társadalmi átalakulás a XIX. Században Magyarországon [National and social transformation in 19th-century Hungary], ed. István Orosz, Ferenc Pölöskei, and Tamás Dobszay (Budapest: Korona, 1994), 19–29, 20–22. 15  Keith Hitchins, “Samuel Clain and the Rumanian Enlightenment in Transylvania,” Slavic Review 23, no. 4 (Dec., 1964): 660–675; Pompiliu Teodor, Interferențe iluministe europene [Interferences of European Enlightenment] (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1984); Pompiliu Teodor, Sub semnul luminilor. Samuil Micu [Under the sign of Enlightenment] (Cluj: Editura Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2000); Iacob Mârza, É cole et Nation: les écoles de Blaj à l’époque de la renaissance nationale (Cluj-Napoca: Institut Culturel Roumain, Centre d’É tudes Transylvaines, 2005), 141–150. About the language questions in particular see Petru Maior, “Disertație. Pentru începuturile limbei românești” [Dissertation. About the origins of the Romanian language], in vol. 1 of Scrieri [Writings] (Bucharest: Minerva, 1967).

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be held as the core of the political community, the bridge between the individual and society: “common language gives birth to public spirit, the latter leads to common goals, [and] the efforts for public good unify the strength of the patria; this in its turn enhances improvement, improvement leads to association, [and] this is how nationality comes into being, and glory descends on our homeland.”16 Romanian and Saxon opponents of a feared Hungarian hegemony would reject the claims of a single dominant language on the grounds of cultural-linguistic pluralism: “culture and happiness are the chief aims of each Transylvanian people; Hungarians want to attain it in Hungarian, Romanians in Romanian, everybody in their own natural ways.”17 But let us turn back to the reforms and their consequences. Besides the intervention in the established social and political order and the language reform, education became another prominent field for growing governmental control. Schooling ceased to be, as it was exercised for centuries, the exclusive concern of the churches, and the state took upon itself the task of making it comprehensive and uniform. The first step of the educational policy was the systematization of a schooling divided by confessional differences and social rank. It was not before the absolutist reforms that the ground for an integrated school administration began not only in Transylvania but also in the whole of the monarchy. State control grew after the dissolution of the Jesuit Order in 1773 and the appropriation of their funds. Considering the heterogeneous denominational constituency and varying educational level of the population, this was an enormous task.18 The primary 16  “Gemeinnütziges Wirken in einem Marktflecken Burzenlands,” Blätter, no. 4 (25 January 1841): 25–29. 17  ET 3: 1301–1323. 18   A Transylvanian school survey from 1763 registered five Lutheran gymnasia (in Hermannstadt, Kronstadt, Mediasch, Schäßburg, and Bistritz), sixteen preparatory schools, and 236 elementary schools, with a reported total attendance at ca. 125,000 Lutherans (Saxons). On the other end of the scale was the Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches, whose own elementary schooling system was institutionalized in the Josephist decade. This was the period when schools were built and textbooks on reading, mathematics, and Romanian grammars were written. In Blaj, there had been an elementary school since 1738 and a gymnasium since 1754 for Greek Catholics. But for the material and intellectual exigencies of both churches, the majority of the Romanian youth were sent to Hungarian and Saxon schools. It was almost at the end of the century when the industrious Gheorghe Şincai, the director of the gymnasium from Blaj, could count almost 300 newly founded Greek Catholic schools. Walter König, “Thesen zur ‘Bildungsrevolution’ bei den Siebenbürger Sachsen” [Theses about the education revolution among the Transylvanian Saxons], in Beiträge zur siebenbürgischen Schulgeschichte (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996),

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goal of the Theresian and Josephist reforms was to combat the illiteracy of a largely rural population through making elementary schooling available in the vernacular.19 They placed emphasis on practical knowledge and the Realia as well as knowledge of geography and history of the state. The law on education, tailored for Transylvania (Norma Regia pro scolis magni principatus Transilvaniae, 1781), introduced compulsory attendance of elementary school from the age of six and these new curricula along with the traditional Latin classes (secondary school was linked to fees and thus more selective). It also gave room for the vernacular and did not force German as elsewhere in the monarchy. The goal of bringing uniformity into the school system yielded mixed results: while Catholic schools were required to apply the Norma, the autonomy of Protestant schools (secured by the Patent of Toleration) enabled them to decide freely whether to comply or not. Differences in the adaptation of the guidelines by confession cannot be treated here, but it should suffice to know that Catholics ran the most up-to-date higher-tier schools in competition with the five Transylvanian Lutheran gymnasia (in Schäßburg, Hermannstadt, Kronstadt, Bistritz, Mediasch). Teaching was accomplished partly in the mother tongue in the Protestant schools, while Catholics, authorized to receive students from all the other religions, taught in Latin only. The diet of 1790 resumed the systematization of education with the intention of further modernizing the curricula. The activity directed attention to gaps in Transylvanian scholarship, that is, the shortage of usable sources and data on the region that could have formed the basis of the new curricula. The changes to educational infrastructure accomplished during the last decades of the eighteenth century were just sufficient for preparing a pool of lower-status ecclesiastics and public functionaries for the newly reorganized state administration. The latter required legal education in newer disciplines, which could be acquired only in the vocational academies and höhere Schulen (vocational academies). In Transylvania, too, training for future civil servants, lawyers, clerics, and lower medical staff became available in the aftermath of the Habsburg educational reforms from the second half of the eighteenth 273–313, 285; I. Tóth, Az erdélyi román nacionalizmus, 274–278; Ladislau Gyémánt, Mişcarea naţionalǎ a românilor din Transilvania între anii 1790 şi 1848 [The national movement of Transylvanian Romanians, 1790–1848] (Bucharest: Edit. Ştiinţificǎ, 1986), 336–355. 19  László Makkai, ed., Erdély története 1606-tól 1830-ig [The history of Transylvania from 1606 to 1830], vol. 2 of Erdély története [The history of Transylvania] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986) (in the following ET 2), 1089. The highest literacy rate was registered among the Lutherans; the highest illiteracy was among the Orthodox (ET 2:1106; and König, “Thesen,” 285).

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c­ entury onward under the patronage of the churches.20 Yet higher qualification in these professions required additional university training. As Transylvania had no university of its own, future students recurred to the centuries-old tradition of academic peregrination.21 University studies were mostly undertaken by the middle strata, the majority of Lutheran (i.e., Saxon) origin.22 The training of Lutheran pastors and gymnasium professors at German universities had been an established custom since the Middle Ages. The destinations of university studies differed as well by religion and language. Lutherans (Saxons) traditionally attended Halle (the Pietistic citadel), Jena, Tübingen, or Heidelberg. Towards the end of the century, Göttingen also became attractive for many Protestant Transylvanians. Hungarian Calvinists and Antitrinitarians joined their compatriots relatively late at the German universities as studies in this language were supposedly an extra burden for the students educated in Latin. By the end of the eighteenth century, the University of Vienna was the most progressive university in the monarchy. Joseph von Sonnenfels (1732–1817) taught here his courses on Policey- und Kameralwissenschaft, and his lectures were compulsory for students of law. In spite of reservations concerning Protestants, the University of Vienna remained one of the most frequented institutions by Transylvanians. With its 1,980 matriculations for the period of 1701–1849, it led the list high

20  Lucian Nastasă, “University Education and Culture in Kolozsvár/Cluj,” in The University of Kolozsvár/Cluj and the Students of the Medical Faculty (1872–1918), A Historical and Prosopographic Study, ed. Viktor Karady and Lucian Nastasă (Budapest and Cluj: CEU and CRDE, 2003), 15–45, 15. 21  About the conjunctures of Transylvanian peregrination to the various universities within the Habsburg lands and beyond, see Miklós Szabó and László Szögi, Erdélyi peregrinusok. Erdélyi diákok európai egyetemeken, 1701–1849 [Transylvanian traveling students. Transylvanian students at European universities] (Tîrgu Mureş: Mentor, 1998). On mobile medical knowledge and peregrinating students of medicine from Hungary see Lilla Krász, “The Circulation of Medical Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Hungary,” East Central Europe 40, no. 3 (2013): 268–295. About famous professors and guest students in late eighteenth-century Göttingen, see “Sámuel Gyarmathis Bericht nach Siebenbürgen 1798,” in Selige Tage im Musensitz Göttingen, ed. István Futaky (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 73–74, 73. 22  Of the Transylvanian university students at the end of the 18th century, 6.7% were of aristocratic or higher noble background, but the overwhelming majority were honoratior (non-noble), that is, 81.0%. The overwhelming majority of students originated from towns, more than half from the Saxon districts (64.4%). Szabó and Szögi, Erdélyi peregrinusok, 35.

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above Jena (669 enrolments), Halle (326), Göttingen (214), Berlin (151), Leiden (151), Utrecht (108), and other universities.23 What motivated Transylvanians to undertake the costly peregrination? The reasons were mostly institutional—Protestants, especially future pastors, had to leave their fatherland and even Hungary if they wanted to acquire a university degree—but also intellectual and political. The way a Hungarian visitor praised the freedom of thought experienced at the Georgia Augusta was telltale both of the better conditions in Göttingen and even more so of the much narrower possibilities at home. A high-spirited letter of this young Hungarian visitor, József Mátyási, depicts education in the Hanoverian institution as a liberating experience: There is no particular witchcraft that made this small fleck of free land to overcome all those great prisons of mind and soul through educating them, [the prisons where] violence commands one to stay still, where the threatening finger of intimidation makes the voice whisper, where the truth for far-fetched reasons is locked up as a secret and cannot be uttered without risking one’s head, and where because of superstition, prejudice, and selfishness one has yet to speak in fables, as once Phaedrus complained. As I already mentioned, the writing and the printing of books is not forced among narrow boundaries, the truth can be told and written openly, should it be favorable or damaging. But listening to the sober reason and the natural law, what in the world can hinder what once became publicly visible and entered the mind from making it heard?24 Besides their much-valued intellectual and social environment, German universities were sought after for their established curricula in law, medicine, and the sciences of state. The larger interpretative framework for effective state management in both the Habsburg Monarchy and the German states had been the sciences of state (Staatswissenschaften). It was a loosely defined field that varied from university to university, involving lectures on the study of state economy, finance, politics, police science (Polizeiwissenschaft, meaning approximately “public administration”), agriculture, forestry, mining, “technology,” and descriptive statistics, called Staatenkunde (state description). The emphasis of these fields was not an in-depth investigation of a particular subject, but on the comprehensiveness and ­systematic ordering 23  Szabó and Szögi, Erdélyi peregrinusok, 21, 23–25. 24  “József Mátyási über drei erlebnisreiche Tage im Juli 1792 in Begleitung eines ungarischen Magnaten,” in Selige Tage im Musensitz Göttingen, ed. Futaky, 48–52, 51.

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of knowledge about the components of the state. Throughout the eighteenth century, specialization was no priority, but rather the establishment of categories to describe the particularities of the social-physical environment and the historical-legal development of the polity.25 A part of descriptive statistics or state description was Landeskunde, the ordering of knowledge about a political territory and its inhabitants. This included the exhaustive account of the geographical parameters, that is, the position of the country on earth, extension, physical geographical characteristics, and climate, then the number of the population and its ratio in relation to territorial extent, and finally the quality of the human and physical resources and products. Originally purely descriptive, Landeskunde gradually involved both mathematical methods and historical narratives in order to describe the particularities (Merkwürdigkeiten meaning “the special features of the actual state”) of the fatherland.26 The definition of what could be classified as Staatsmerkwürdigkeit changed over time; principally it meant the most relevant data for state administration. This data was arranged along the administrative map of the country, hence a close connection between geography and descriptive statistics. The presentation of facts could take place in narrative form and included also a historical component. The evidence was also rendered in the form of descriptions (the present state of affairs or “history standing still”).27 The methods were “en plein air,” to be practiced outdoors—hence the preference for scientific hikes and travels—and fostered exchange among the practitioners.28 There was a distribution of tasks, and while engaged amateurs were responsible for the collection of data, trained armchair academics, the Stubenforscher, were in charge of the processing and classification. The societies participated in 25  See for instance Christian Wolff, Vernünftige Gedanken von dem gesellschaftlichen Leben der Menschen, und insonderheit dem gemeinen Wesen (Halle, 1721); David F. Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997), 14. 26  Henry E. Lowood, “Science for the Fatherland,” in Patriotism, Profit and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), 205–261, 205–206; see also Schwartner, Statistik, 2–4. 27  August Ludwig von Schlözer, Theorie der Statistik. Nebst Ideen über das Studium der Politik überhaupt (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1804), 86. 28  Hans Erich Bödeker, “On the Origins of the ‘Statistical Gaze’: Modes of Perception, Forms of Knowledge and Ways of Writing in the Early Social Sciences,” in Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. Peter Becker and William Clark (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 169–195, 178, 184; Lowood, “Science for the Fatherland,” 210–211, 239–240.

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networks of correspondence even beyond the political borders and exchanged scientific data. Based on the information they possessed, they could function as experts, political counselors, and political journalists; following the example set by scholars like Schlözer, they frequently launched journals to publish their findings and to convey to their readers “useful truths.”29 After 1750, Staatenkunde boomed in the German states; by the 1790s, nine new university chairs were created despite the general decline in higher education. The only university of Transylvania’s mighty neighbor, the Hungarian Kingdom’s University of Pest (previously the Jesuit university in Nagyszombat, Slovak: Trnava, founded in 1635), could not compete in fame and competence with the established German and Austrian counterparts. In the post-Josephist decades, the university seemed to value confessional conformity over innovation; the most accomplished expert of descriptive statistics, the Lutheran Martin Schwartner, applied in vain for a professorship in Statistik.30 However, it did create a venue for scholars of Hungarian state science. There are no studies on the scholarly exchange between the professors of Pest and Transylvanians, but there is evidence of mutual familiarity in many prefaces, introductions, and bibliographies. Schwartner’s Statistik des Königreichs Ungern (State description of the Hungarian Kingdom), for instance, was widely known, and vice versa, the book betrayed a fair knowledge of the recent statistical publications on Transylvania. The Transylvanian Saxons, in particular, had a considerable local tradition of descriptive statistics and Landeskunde, building on the even older genre of chorographies, such as the Siebenbürgische Kronik (Transylvanian chronicle) by Georg Krauss and the later teachings of Martin Schmeizel (1679– 1747), professor of Transylvanian origins at the university of Halle.31 As this brief presentation of the academic landscape may suggest, Transylvanian Saxon students at the end of the eighteenth century had a situational advantage to their non-German peers in their access to knowledge at the German universities, which was due to infrastructural, linguistic, and 29  Lowood, “Science for the Fatherland,” 223, 229–231. 30  Balázs Pálvölgyi, “A magyar állam- és jogtörténeti tanszék története a kezdetektől Eckhart Ferencig” [The history of the faculty of Hungarian state sciences and legal history from the beginnings to Ferenc Eckhart], in Eckhart Ferenc emlékkönyv [Festschrift for Ferenc Eckhart], ed. Barna Mezey (Budapest: Gondolat, 2004), 389–409; Ferenc Eckhart, A Jog- és Államtudományi Kar története, 1667–1935 [The history of the faculty of law and state sciences, 1667–1935] (Budapest, 1936). 31  Georg Krauss, Siebenbürgische Kronik des Schäßburger Stadtschreibers Georg Kraus 1608–1665, reprint edited by the Presidential Committee of the Society for Transylvanian Landeskunde, pts. 1–2 (Vienna, 1862–1864).

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d­ enominational factors, but also to existing traditions at home.32 These differences left their stamp on the adaptation of state sciences manifest in the formation of linguistically different intellectual milieus. Landeskunde was more prolific and strove for an inclusive map of all the peoples of Transylvania, ­fostering exchange of Hungarian and Saxon scholars. In contrast to the latter, the encompassing supranational interest disappeared from the Hungarian honismeret. Its narrower focus made it closer to the practice of the Romanian Şcoala Ardeleanǎ (Transylvanian School), the latter initiating studies on national history and language and constituting the intellectual framework of the Supplex Libellus Valachorum. Honismeret urged self-assertion against the domination of a more advanced German culture, adopting thereby an oppositional stance typical for the shaping Hungarian learned sociability both in Transylvania and Hungary.

Stages of National Improvement: Diagnosing Backwardness

Writings in Transylvanian learned journals reflect a heightened awareness of the value of a learned career and simultaneously complain about its unfavorable domestic circumstances. This was the subject of the opening article of the first Transylvanian scholarly periodical, Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift, written in German. Its author, Daniel Georg Neugeboren (1759–1822), a Lutheran bishop from 1806 until 1822, depicts the hindrances of a learned career and sketches the possibilities of overcoming them in an Enlightenment fashion: improvement through public spirit, attained through learning.33 His ideal intellectual is the Aufklärer in the service of his country, an embodiment of contemporary ideals of the enlightened patriot.34 Knowledge of the land was believed to enhance patriotism, a belief that resonated with the educational and political agenda of Joseph von Sonnenfels, the Viennese authority on the sciences of the state, according to whom knowledge of the fatherland “instill[ed] into the hearts of the children the certainty that their welfare is inseparably joined to the welfare of the state and that the laws are wise, the trespassers unfortunate

32  Edit Szegedi, Geschichtsbewustsein und Gruppenidentität. Die Historiographie der Siebenbürger Sachsen zwischen Barock und Aufklärung (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002), 309; see also fn. 69. 33  Daniel Neugeboren, “Ueber die Lage und Hindernisse der Schriftstellerei in Siebenbürgen,” Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift, no.1 (1790): 1–27. 34  Csáky, Von der Aufklärung zum Liberalismus, 172.

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and foolish people.”35 According to Neugeboren, this patriotism did not lead to bureaucratic enslavement, but to “inviting and motivating” the state to support scholarship.36 His image of a scholar is a public man with an impact on his “nation and time.” Alas, Transylvania could not yet boast of such intellectuals and of such grandiose deeds. Indeed, a formidable task for the returning intellectuals from universities abroad was to carve out a space of educated sociability at home beyond the narrow confines of institutionalized learning. The examples were set by a number of well-established Masonic lodges, with their emphasis on self-­ formation that gradually extended into plans for the cultural improvement of the entire society. Monarchy-wide, the lodges were immersed in questions about the interrelated nature of individual virtues and the public good, the love of homeland in relation to the love of mankind, and the aims of education. They sought cultural and moral improvement in the framework of a new type of sociability, establishing “sites of social compromise” between different social classes of educated men.37 These exclusive circles involved members of the aristocracy, the higher nobility, high office bearers from the provincial government, and the crème of the intellectual elite. Between the cycles of control and persecution, Transylvania too witnessed a bourgeoning of Masonic life in the 1780s, involving remarkable cultural patronage in the person of governors, such as Baron Samuel von Brukenthal (1721–1803), founder of the first private museum in Transylvania, and Count György Bánffy (1746–1822), patron of the first Transylvanian learned society, as well as scholars of various linguistic and denominational background. Although little information is available about the everyday activities of these circles, their impact on regional scholarship is indirectly discernable. Several agendas for the improvement of language, culture, and education had common Masonic roots. The parallel emergence of plans for establishing Saxon, Hungarian, and Romanian scholarly societies, and even a university in the last decade of the century, suggest that such plans were discussed in the lodges. Respectively, many of the key individuals promoting these scholarly projects can be identified as Freemasons. Not accidentally, the lodges had been closely connected to the reform-minded circles of the Viennese court and in particular to Joseph II. It was especially the non-Catholic (Protestant and Orthodox) brothers, elevated by the emperor to public offices, who were supporters of his 35  Sonnenfels, Der Mann ohne Vorurtheil, 29–47, 29. 36  Neugeboren, “Ueber die Lage und Hindernisse”, 2. 37  Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in EighteenthCentury Europe (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), 72.

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administrative modernization—some Hungarian adherents in Hungary went even as far as endorsing the Language Edict. This contributed to a new ethic and an unprecedented commitment to society and scholarship.38 The idea of self-formation and of educated sociability brought into fashion the reading societies (Lesezirkel) and their reading rooms (Lesekabinet). An English creation, these appeared at the beginning of the eighteenth century and spread across the Continent, especially in Germany and France. In the 1790s, such establishments were known to exist in Transylvania in the vicinity of gymnasia, often initiated by lodge members, amidst more modest economic and social circumstances than familiar further west.39 If there the loosely knit associations constituted the nuclei of the critical public assessing the canonical texts of the Enlightenment, their eastern counterparts reflected on the discrepancy between the advanced Western institutions and the harsher circumstances at home. The journal Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift was also edited by such a reading society from Hermannstadt, initiated by the distinguished Freemasons Johann Filtsch (1753–1836), Johann Binder (1767–1805), and Josef Karl Eder (1760–1810). The latter scholar, director of a Normalhauptschule (normal school) in Hermannstadt, distinguished himself not only through his “statistical” knowledge of Transylvania, but also as an avid defender of Saxon feudal rights at the “Restitution Diet” and author of the first refutation of the Supplex Libellus Valachorum. He is therefore an emblematic figure in both Transylvanian Saxon and Romanian historiography.40 His writings illustrate

38  H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 36. Some of them, like Freiherr Samuel von Brukenthal, president of the Transylvanian Gubernium, belonged even to two lodges— to the “Andreas zu den drei Seeblätter” in Hermannstadt and to the Viennese “Au trois canons.” 39  Éva H. Balázs, Beförderer der Aufklärung in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Freimaurer, Gesellschaften, Clubs (Berlin: Camen, 1979). Contemporary journals, like the Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift, announced the new inaugurations. Hitchins, A Nation Discovered, 134, mentions a Romanian reading society involved in preparing the draft of the Supplex Libellus Valachorum. 40  Cf. fn. 10. The title of the refutation read Supplex libellus Valachorum Transsilvaniae, jura tribus receiptis nationibus communia postliminio sibi adseri postulantium. Cum notis ­historico-criticis (Claudiopoli, 1791). Schlözer’s attitude to the Supplex and to its refutation by Eder favored clearly the latter: “The text is written with an exemplary historical ignorance, which is pleasantly contrasted by the learned notes of the disprover.” August Ludwig Schlözer, Kritische Sammlungen zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen (Göttingen, 1795–1797), 664.

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well the mutually exclusive logic of the emerging national political claims and its supporting scholarship, namely, the legitimacy of one’s agenda built upon the negation of the other’s. A critical attitude towards the “disadvantageous” domestic (i.e., Transylvanian) situation was carried out in a didactic tone, akin to whole generations of EastCentral European enlightened reformers.41 The first Transylvanian papers reflected on the more modest potential of a domestic reading public in comparison to the boom in learning and education in Germany, England, and France, establishing enduring patterns of comparison between the cultivated models and the circumstances at home. For both the Hungarians and Saxons, Protestant Germany emerged as the norm, with its universities and intellectual effervescence against which Transylvanian developments were measured. The diagnosis identified the reasons for insufficiencies in contrast to their superior neighbors. Some of these reasons, like the miserable prospects for regional scholarship, emerged from the economic and cultural political status quo. According to the Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift, it was uniformity (Gleichförmigkeit) and a sense of community (Gemeinschaft) that formed the basis of a sound public—both were missing values in Transylvania according to the author. There was still no central regional academic institution to coordinate scholarship and education. Students intent on studying had no choice but to attend universities abroad, a costly and time-consuming enterprise from which the “luckier neighbors” had been exempted. And what was the fate of those who bore the cross of an intellectual career? On their return to their homeland as professors, state officials, or doctors, they were confronted with the perspective of poorly paid jobs, a “non-existent” reading public, a “missing” literary market, the “lack” of cultural patronage, and religious fragmentation. The author also drew attention to an infrastructural handicap: the distance of the province from the significant cultural centers meant that cultural goods were expensive and difficult to purchase. This was detrimental to regional scholarly and literary production as the latter entered into an unequal competition with the “refined foreign masterpieces.” This intimidated the Transylvanians, who either “do not dare to be original” or escape into self-centered provincialism.

41  Compare Jerzy Jedlicki, A Suburb of Europe: Nineteenth-Century Polish Approaches to Western Civilization (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999).

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The Regional Particularities of Landeskunde: Hierarchy of Civilizations

The concern of Neugeboren and his fellow patriots was similar to those of his German counterparts: the calling to life of a patriotic public beyond the narrow circle of learned men via shared language and (regional) culture.42 But the domestic inequalities along linguistic, confessional, social, material, as well as educational lines induced skepticism about the prospects of an integrated Transylvanian public. Thus the “cultural differences” among the Transylvanian “nations” were diagnosed as another obstacle to the unfolding of public spirit. Geographic isolation, the troubled history of the province, and its ethnolinguistic and religious cleavages and sensitivities were all considered hindrances to the formation of an educated public. The author classified the Transylvanian “nations” according to stages of education and improvement. The word “nation” was used here in the modern sense of a homogenous group demarcated by not only confession and rank in the political system but also by a common language and history. Cultural refinement was related to the ability of the national tongues to serve as a vehicle of scholarly communication—an idea familiar both from politics (Joseph II) and the late Enlightenment German theorists of culture.43 In the following, the author asserted a hierarchy of civilizations among the largest ethnolinguistic groups of the region, a hierarchy that had a great resonance in the rhetoric of future nationalists in the centuries to follow. The Romanians were situated at the bottom of the cultural ladder, presented as a population of noble (Roman) descent, although uncultivated because of their social and political status in Transylvania. Half of the country’s population is Wallach, a nation still at the lowest stage of civilization: scholarship and the sciences are not even missed among them. And their language will so long resist foreign cultivation until there will be enough intelligent people among them to select and translate insightfully other cultivated nations’ writings for the public good and spread these through schooling.44 42  See the project of the Popularphilosophen in Prussia to constitute the national public without the limitations of social rank and status by promoting “the culture of our fatherland”; Georg Bollenbeck, Bildung und Kultur. Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters (Frankfurt: Insel, 1994), 32. 43  See the cultural stages by Herder, ibid., 74. 44  Neugeboren, “Ueber die Lage und Hindernisse,” 6.

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The case of the “two Hungarian tribes,” the Hungarians and Székelys, was more complex. The Hungarians were in possession of a glorious intellectual past in the late Middle Ages, but the centuries-long barbarism of the Turkish Wars, internal conflicts, and religious skirmishes eroded “taste and scholarship.” Meanwhile Western Europe had changed, especially in the advancement of scholarship in the national languages, relative to which the Hungarians, clinging to the old-fashioned Latin, remained at an impasse. Their Latin education isolated them from new and modern education—above all at the German universities. Rejecting Hungarian incentives to improve their own language, the author took a Josephist stance by recommending the use of German instead of Latin. Hungarian seemed to him too hopelessly neglected to serve as an up-todate, universal language of scholarly communication: Through the excessively used Latin language, the Hungarian itself was neglected, and through disregarding German [language], the contribution of Germany and the German colony in Transylvania was entirely hindered . . . But beyond the commitment to the public good, which all the parts of the Austrian body politic should suggest, it is the use of the [German] language of the court and jurisdiction, [and] the example and influence of some of their great personalities and scholars, engaged as public tutors in Kolozsvár and Enyed, [which] will persuade more the noble nation to instate into its rights this language that became recently so important in the sciences, to which the Latin cannot be compared.45 Neugeboren closed his survey with the Saxons who, as he suggested, had the best perspectives for “Enlightenment and refining of taste.” Accordingly, Saxon Nationalgeist was enhanced by political and ecclesiastical unity—considering, respectively, the Saxon constitution and the fact that among the Transylvanian “nations” only the Saxons were not divided by confessional differences for they all belonged to the Lutheran Church. Free from revolutionary messages and within the range of the contemporary idiom, Neugeboren stuck with the established task of improvement. The Transylvanian cultural and social discrepancies could be ended, he argued, if all the inhabitants acquired proper knowledge about their patria. The task was “making the Fatherland acquainted with itself, turning its attention to important truths [facts]” concerning its “moral,” “political,” “scholarly,” and “economic” aspects via writings on geography, natural history, “morality of its [Transylvanian] inhabitants once and now,” “pragmatic perusals of 45  Ibid., 9–10.

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­ istory,” and also literary reviews and news of “important events of our times.” h Resonating with a Sonnenfels-type language of patriotism, knowledge would be the ground for “private and public happiness.”46 The Quartalschrift promoted an encyclopedic perusal of the land in a manner in which the past and the facts of the present built a continuous flow. Which disciplines were present in Saxon Landeskunde? Transylvanian history was the favorite topic, as the broader scholarly context of the ongoing political debates. The journal, which appeared between the years of 1790 and 1801, included writings on Saxon history (6 articles), Transylvanian history in general (2), the history and contemporary situation of the Saxon Lutheran Church (6), the past and present of the Roman Catholic and Unitarian Church in the province (2), as well as annals of Transylvanian history (5). Other writings indicated an interest in knowledge relevant for the state administration, such as chorography of towns (12 articles), political arithmetic and descriptive statistics (11), politics (1), agriculture (3), and even short reports on the weather. For similar reasons, the natural history of Transylvania was also represented with five articles on geography, one article on physics, one on botany, and fifteen articles on medicine and medical Polizey. The ethnographic interest in the peoples of the province brought five articles on the Saxon dialect and one article each on Romanians and Serbs. The panorama was rounded off by writings on the general status of contemporary Transylvanian scholarship (3 articles), biographical details of Saxon scholars (2), as well as of Transylvanian Hungarian scholars (7), facts about Saxon schools (3), and on prominent Transylvanian politicians and statesmen (18), that is, historia litteraria proper. The Quartalschrift also published obituaries, literary reviews, political news, and articles pertaining to the field of political economy. The holistic disciplinary structure and the regional focus are typical to the methods of Landeskunde, revealing an interest in practical knowledge based on the natural sciences, and in the local and the useful which could be registered and communicated to the larger home public. These learned practices made the circle around the Quartalschrift largely similar to many other scholarly gatherings in the European urban zones, characterized by the collaborative effort of collecting Staatsmerkwürdigkeiten (state particularities): “The sheer volume of disparate venues demands a multitude of observers, each of whom briefly strokes his brush across the canvas of knowledge: nature wants ‘to be observed unceasingly in a thousand places by a thousand eyes.’ ”47 Landeskunde aimed thus at an encyclopedic exploration of the province, organized through the collective work of individuals. The higher 46  Ibid., 25. 47  Lowood, “Science for the Fatherland,” 222.

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the number of the contributors, the higher was the chance of assembling the bits of contribution into the scholarly portrait of the fatherland. The synthetic character of Landeskunde was similar to the museums, whether real or published in the forms of journals, as it aimed at the collection and systematization of relevant facts. The editors of the Quartalschrift did not advance either cosmopolitan or democratic projects. Aware of their elite status in the province, the Saxon authors argued for region-wide communication in their quality as members of overlapping German, Austrian, and Transylvanian cultural networks. Not lacking gestures of fatherly condescendence towards the two other “nations,” this stance committed itself to dynasty-loyal Austrian patriotism. The demand for German in public communication indicates that the advocators of Landeskunde understood their role as legitimate initiators of provincial improvement, also on behalf of the Viennese government. This must be the reason why the scholarly focus as well as the addressees of the Quartalschrift transcended the narrow ethnocultural boundaries. The journal also translated the writings of established authors of honismeret and reported on meetings of the Transylvanian Hungarian Language Society as well as several learned societies abroad. The focus remained on Saxon history, religion, and education, but there was interest in the Transylvanian Hungarian culture too.48 The articles on history centered on the feudal privileges of the Saxon estate, respectively the satisfaction of and hindrances to corporate freedom under various kings and governors of the past. The history of the corporate nation was a subject of chief political importance among the contemporary Saxon public as well. On the other hand, the practitioners of Landeskunde had little appreciation for the intellectual achievements of the emerging Romanian scholarship. The controversy caused by the Supplex triggered only a contemptuous half-sentence by Lucas Joseph Marienburg (1770–1821), in regard to the “uncivilized Romanians” and their “foolish political attempts.”49 This was but a covert sign of the aversion of the privileged elite vis-à-vis the underprivileged majority.50 48  The journal published in six issues the biography of Transylvanian Hungarian and Székely scholars by József Benkő. 49  Lucas Joseph Marienburg, Geographie des Grossfürtstenthums Siebenbürgen, ed. Ernst Wagner, Schriften zur Landeskunde Siebenbürgens, vol. 12 (1813; facsimile ed., Vienna: Böhlau, 1987), 95. 50   See Klaus Heitmann, “Die Rumänen Siebenbürgens aus deutscher Sicht im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Das Bild des Anderen in Siebenbürgen, ed. Konrad Gündisch, Wolfgang Höpken, and Michael Markel (Cologne: Böhlau, 1998), 33–56.

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The Hungarian Language Society: Fencing off Vernacular Culture

By the end of the Josephist decade, the patriotism of the Hungarian intellectual milieu was slightly different from the Saxon counterpart in its sharper opposition and contrast with the centralizing efforts of the Viennese government. In the 1790s, a type of patriotic scholar emerged whose profile may be described along the lines suggested by historians of the French Enlightenment, Daniel Roche and Lawrence Brockliss: an opponent of the domination of the capital, a locally anchored polymath, a cautious advocate of the Enlightenment and progress, and a defender of local prerogatives and corporate rights. The prototype of this scholar was György Aranka.51 Son of a Calvinist bishop of petty noble background, Aranka grew up, studied, and lived in Transylvania. He received his training at the Calvinist legal academy of Nagyenyed and became a magistrate and later assessor at the provincial High Royal Table. Although a speaker of French and German, Aranka seldom traveled abroad. His upbringing and encyclopedic scholarly curiosity, his membership in various provincial circles of learned sociability including Freemasonry, as well as connections to the provincial legal executive bodies, made him the true spokesman for the middle tiers of Transylvanian Hungarian nobility. It was the same nobility that dominated Transylvanian political life, fostering improvement but jealously guarding their feudal privileges. These “noble rights” became by that time a controversial subject in contemporary politics and in Austrian and German historical writing. August Ludwig Schlözer also entered the debate, taking sides on behalf of an emerging Saxon interpretation of the political history of Transylvania and the origins of the diverse feudal rights.52 There is too little space here to describe in greater detail the various “theories” of Saxon, Hungarian, and Romanian ethnogenesis that were integral parts of Schlözer’s interpretation and the ensuing polemics, which also involved Aranka.53 More important for the present purpose is the scholarly effervescence generated by the polemics, which contributed to a growing local hunger for verified data 51  About the biography of Aranka, see Emőke Király, Aranka György, az író és tudományszervező [György Aranka, the writer and organizer of science], PhD diss., University of Cluj, 2006; Emese Egyed, ed., Aranka György gyűjteménye I. Az emberarcú intézmény. Tanulmányok Aranka György köréből [The collection of Aranka György, vol. 1, The institution with a human face. Studies concerning the circle of Aranka György] (Cluj: EME, 2004). 52  Schlözer, Kritische Sammlungen. 53  Annamária Biró, ed., Aranka György gyűjteménye II. Aranka György Erdély-története [The collection of Aranka György, vol. 2, The Transylvanian history by Aranka György] (Cluj: EME, 2010).

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and also for the establishment of professional standards in an attempt to refute the “lambasting and not entirely reasonable book of Professor Schlözer.”54 Besides the attacks on the “noble rights,” the insufficiency of Hungarian in scholarly exchange, mentioned also by Neugeboren in the Quartalschrift, became another chronic concern of Hungarian scholars. The scholar Péter Bod (1712–1769) diagnosed as early as 1756 that “the Hungarian language has started to deteriorate quite much lately; it would be good to do something to embellish and strengthen it, as other nations do. It would be good to establish some Literata Societas, with members from Hungary and Transylvania.”55 Aranka further elaborated the plan at the Diet of 1790 as well as outside the political arena. If Neugeboren mentioned the use of German as a self-understanding scholarly practice, his Hungarian compatriot emphasized the educational benefits of a scholarly society for the broad dissemination of scholarship in his own vernacular language: to introduce the Hungarian language, it is necessary already at the beginning to found a society of learned patriots in the Hungarian country, which should 1) translate into Hungarian all kinds of books written about our patria, so that all the sons and daughters of the patria have the opportunity to read them in their own language without learning with pain foreign languages; and that would be the path to the Hungarian national Enlightenment . . . 2) This society should translate all Greek and Latin authors into Hungarian, so that one could become acquainted more easily with these authors.56 In this regard, Hungarians’ effort to institutionalize general and specialized instruction in the mother tongue had their corresponding efforts in the Romanian milieus of Transylvania to create a scientific language, while Saxon scholars pondered the capacity of dialects to absorb modern knowledge.57 As the draft of the Transylvanian Society for the Cultivation of the Hungarian Language prepared by the diet in 1790, did not receive permission from the 54  Cited by Biró, “Introduction,” in Aranka György gyűjteménye, 2:7–20, 9. 55  Ibid. 56   Cited by Sándor Enyedi, “Introduction,” in Aranka György Erdélyi társaságai [The Transylvanian societies of György Aranka] (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1988), 9–39, 12–13. 57  Daniela Sechel, “Medical Knowledge and the Improvement of Vernacular Languages in the Habsburg Monarchy: A Case Study from Transylvania (1770–1830),” Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2012): 720–729.

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Viennese Chancellery, Aranka launched it together with the Manuscript Editing Society (Kézírások Társasága) as informal circles instead. In contrast to the Saxon project, Aranka thought in linguistic and cultural terms, his addressee was not all Transylvania but the Hungarian community. The drafts of the two societies advanced national scholarship and the creation of an enlightened public on both sides of the Transylvanian border, in order “to demolish the wall among us . . . to make Enlightenment and scholarship a domestic plant, to make it [our] citizen.”58 Here too, honismeret, the knowledge of the fatherland, was to involve studies above all along the classical canon of education and in particular history. The data to be collected concerned both the present state and the recent and ancient (Roman) history of Transylvania, connecting local interests with the larger European stream—an evidence of Aranka’s conscious identification as member of the Republic of Letters. The auxiliary sciences were important too. Aranka assigned a vital role to numismatics and philately, to the archeological collection of “Roman inscriptions that abound in Transylvania,” but also to an art collection of patriotic character (“the collection of the portraits of the great forbears”). More modern disciplines involved population statistics, including “reports on the morality statistics of the population” and “statistics about those who studied abroad, categorizing them by their vocation,” and natural science, that is, a collection of botanical specimens and of mineralogy (“translating the categories of Linné and Valerius”). Here too the list was made complete with plans about reports on local meteorology.59 Aranka enjoyed the mighty patronage both of the Protestant Chancellor Count Sámuel Teleki de Szék (1739–1822) and the Catholic Freemason governor György Bánffy. His language society became an informal academy of Transylvanian Hungarian intellectuals, where professors met pastors of both Catholic and Protestant denominations, as well as lawyers and gentlemen amateurs. During its thirteen years of existence, the encyclopedic interest in Transylvania’s past and present led to the establishment of natural science collections with a repository of historical sources and numerous manuscripts, thanks to a network of supporters in Hungary, Vienna, and even at German universities. Aranka’s societies became the intellectual center and meeting place of the “noble estates” well beyond the Transylvanian border, and the Quartalschrift 58  György Aranka, “Egy Erdélyi Magyar Nyelvmívelő Társaság felállításáról való rajzolat az Haza Felséges Rendjeihez” [Proposal to the Noble Estates of the patria about erecting a Transylvanian Hungarian Language Society], in Enyedi, Aranka, 42–68, 48. 59  György Aranka, “A Magyar Nyelvmívelő Társaságról újabb elmélkedés” [Another reflection on the Hungarian Language Society], in Enyedi, Aranka, 71–101.

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also showed familiarity with their activities. Indeed, looking at the “useful” (i.e., active) members’ list in the historical section of the Hungarian Language Society, one finds, besides Aranka, the names of Martin Bolla, Catholic professor of history at the legal academy in Kolozsvár, Johann Michael Ballmann, Lutheran gymnasium professor in Mediasch, György Kovachich, the wellknown historical scholar from Buda, and Josef Karl Eder.60 The society engaged itself, as the first official institution, with the publication and critical edition of historical sources from the history of Transylvania. A systematic collection was planned of original documents scattered in the official and ecclesiastical archives as well as private libraries of the province. Enjoying the support of the highest Transylvanian political circles, the task did not seem impossible. It was a major scholarly enterprise, which could not have been achieved without the Transylvanian German counterparts, not to mention assistance from Pest. Eder too was commissioned with a critical edition of early modern historical encyclopedias and language dictionaries.61 If the Hungarians relied in the process of data gathering on their Germanspeaking peers, the reader of the Saxon journal may have had the impression of an intimate exchange between the authors of the Quartalschrift and those around Aranka, despite some articles of permanent dispute, such as the legitimacy of Hungarian-language politics or the presumed inferiority of Hungarian culture. In his Kritische Sammlungen zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen (Critical edition of data to the history of Germans in Transylvania), which accompanied the legal debates at the Restitution Diets of Transylvania on behalf of the Saxon claims, Schlözer even expressed his worries about the loss of German as official language in the province.62 He feared the dissolution of a small linguistic minority within a sea of foreign-tongued ignorant peasants. The consequences could be fatal: It would bring to an end also their connection to Germany and German scholarship, which, until now, especially since the Reformation, each and every year had been stable and continuous. It would turn all of the [Transylvanian] German nation into half-barbarians; German industry, German commerce, and German refinement would perish . . . here 60  Jakab Elek, Aranka György és az Erdélyi Nyelvművelő és Kéziratkiadó Társaság [György Aranka and the Hungarian language and manuscript editing society] (Budapest: Rudnyánszky, 1884), 36. 61  See József Szinnyei, Magyar írók élete és munkái [Lives and works of Hungarian scholars], accessed 3 February 2014, http://mek.niif.hu/03600/03630/html//index.htm. 62  Schlözer, Kritische Sammlungen.

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too . . . if they amalgamate with a raw but through its majority a constraining mass. I do not speak here about the noble part of the nations there—they are obviously on a par with the cultivated noble peoples of Europe. But who can deny the immeasurable lag between a Hungarian, Slav, Wallach commoner, and a German one from there?63 The passage clearly reflects, besides the entanglement of politics and scholarship, how the feudal “nations” were slowly acquiring a new meaning, based on language and cultural markers. For Aranka, too, the concept of the nation displayed this double meaning. As we have previously seen, his arguments on the establishment of his learned circles advanced a cultural understanding of nation, regardless of the political border. On the other hand, both in the case of Schlözer and Aranka, this concept was firmly rooted in the social differentiation between the nobleman and his serf, which in the opinion of Aranka had to be legally enforced: A noble Hungarian man . . . is different from his peasant, as much as an owner differs from his property. He is obliged to attend with all his efforts to the happiness of the latter, and he is indeed tending to do so, but to place his peasant near him, member of the crown, to make the other have the same rank and measure as him, and especially to deprive him of his original national honor, and sentence him to the same low fate that nature and providence allotted to his peasant, to carry all the peasant burden with the latter, this would be the opposite of the great and . . . awful truth. To take from him with a stroke of the pen what he cannot discard without offending the law [!] . . . This seems to be the will of some evil councilors. Because they have said: one man in the society is like the other one . . . [Yet] law and justice have the same commercial nature as money: its value depends on where and how it is used.64 Were Hungarians uniquely obstinate in their clinging to an anachronistic social order? Or was it a more general elitist social vision, reasserting itself 63  Ibid., 662–663. 64  György Aranka, Anglus s Magyar Igazgatásnak egyben vetése [Comparison of English and Hungarian administration] (Kolozsvár, 1790), cited in Győző Concha, “Az angolos irány politikai irodalmunkban a múlt század végén” [The English direction in our political literature at the end of the previous century], in Hatvan év tudományos mozgalmai között [Within the scientific movement of the past sixty years] (Budapest: Tudományos Akadémia, 1928), 213–227, esp. 221–222.

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against the leveling policies of monarchical governance, against challenges from below, and reacting perhaps also to the continental echo of the North American and French revolutions? It is the latter which seems to have been the case. The German, Austrian, and Transylvanian Saxon counterparts of Aranka embraced no democratic social ideals: “the law-abiding burgher and the true patriot distinguishes the fatherland from the populace”—this was the truism of the day announced by Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, an Austrian-born intellectual and gentleman historian.65 After its cessation in 1800–1801, the idea of the learned society was not forgotten. Repeated attempts were made at the following diets to receive official authorization. In the slowly growing Hungarian-speaking public after the turn of the nineteenth century, the demand for such a learned society established itself as an indispensable requisite of “taste refinement” through education, an ideal that gradually transformed into allegations of a “national public spirit” and “national spiritual force.” Later museum projects by Gábor Döbrentei (1785–1851) and Farkas Sándor Bölöni (1795–1842) were formulated in the same idiom of patriotic scholarly sociability, but put forward in a more sweeping national romantic vein.66 In contrast to the more optimistic Saxon self-­ reference, however, Hungarians tended to use much more somber tones, partly for the (unsuccessful) promotion of national education in politics. Bölöni lamented that Transylvanian Hungarians were “last place” among the “surrounding nations” as far as their public sphere was concerned, and there were no public forums, newspapers, books, or institutions to preserve the “national heritage.” The jeremiad was duly echoed in the prefaces to Romanian treatises of historical and linguistic scholarship as well.67 The Habsburg administration and its educational system created a Germanspeaking functional elite who established Landeskunde in Transylvania. The knowledge pioneered by the learned journals such as the Quartalschrift 65  Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, Dr. Fesslers Resultate seines Denkens und Erfahrens als Anhang zu seinen Rückblicken auf seine 70 jähriger Pilgerschaft (Breslau: Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, 1826), 168–169. 66  József Kemény and Sámuel Kemény, “Tekintetes Karok és Rendek!” [Noble Estates!] (Kolozsvár, 1842), in Az Erdélyi Nagyfejedelemség s hozzá vissza kapcsolt Részek három nemes Nemzeteiből álló Rendeinek Kolozsvár szabad királyi várossában 1841-ik Év November 15-ik napján kezdődött ország Gyülésökről készített Jegyző-Könyv [Minutes of the Transylvanian Diet of 15 November 1841] (Kolozsvár, 1841), 330–331 (in the following, Országgyűlési Jegyzőkönyv [1841]). 67  Mitu, National Identity.

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found further followers at the beginning of the nineteenth century.68 In the ­introduction to his Transylvanian Vaterlandeskunde, Joseph Marienburg recommended his handbook for specialists and amateurs, teachers and students, and foreigners and travelers “who rightly ask for a guide through the land and its peoples.”69 As I argued at the beginning of this chapter, the scope and end of the parallel Saxon and Hungarian scholarly projects were decisively shaped by politics and the public life after the death of Joseph II, shifting back and forth between modern state-building with new educational and language policies and the restoration of the status quo ante. Challenge from below in the shape of a newly forming Romanian scholarly canon was also powerfully felt. Landeskunde legitimized the conservative outlook of the elites, namely the restoration of feudal legislation, including control over the largely peasant non-Hungarian- and non-German-speaking population. Eventually, Landeskunde recast the social inequalities of the old order into the language of scholarship. It also put forward a scholarly model of the nation as a social entity defined by language, religion, customs, education, history, and numerical extent. Conforming to the anthropological vision of the Enlightenment, Landeskunde cast distinctions between the “civilized German,” the “less cultivated Hungarian,” and the “uncivilized” Romanian, Slav, Roma, etc. The distinctions were defined both along intraregional as well as trans-border dividing lines. In Transylvania, as well as in Hungary, advocates of improvement measured their own standing against that of their neighbors, thus creating a (permanently challenged and rebuilt) civilizational hierarchy of the domestic “other.” The contrast between them illustrates how groups that were already positioned differently in the sociocultural and political system were brought into the discourse of nationality and scholarship as distinctive loci in their internal developments.70 It was through the idea of social betterment via knowledge that education became a more general social concern. The early adaptations of Landeskunde as part of an encyclopedic mapping of the province illustrate how the patriotic citizen yearned by the end of the eighteenth century to teach himself 68  Michael Lebrecht, Versuch einer Erdbeschreibung des Grossfürstenthums Siebenbürgen (Hermannstadt, 1789); Johannes Ballmann, Statistische Landeskunde Siebenbürgens im Grundrisse. Ein Versuch, vol. 1 (Hermannstadt: Hochmeister, 1801); Marienburg, Geographie; Daniel Joseph Leonhard, Lehrbuch zur Beförderung der Kenntniß von Siebenbürgen (Hermannstadt: Barth, 1818); Eduard Albert Bielz, Handbuch der Landeskunde Siebenbürgens (Hermannstadt: Filtsch, 1857; repr., Cologne: Böhlau, 1996). 69  Marienburg, “Vorerrinerung” [Introductory remarks], in Geographie, v–viii, vii. 70  See Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers, 118–127.

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and his fellow citizens in the Republic of Letters about the conditions of the Transylvanian fatherland. Participating in the collecting of data and in the circulation of knowledge meant contributing to the public good. The elite Transylvanian Saxon and Hungarian scholars, similar to their brethren in Hungary, Austria, the German states, and beyond, launched domestic surveys and classified, described, and qualified their social environment and made them known either through collaborative source collection like the one published by Schlözer, by linguistic treatises written in Latin, like in the case of Gyarmathi, or via learned journals in the fashion of the Quartalschrift. Transylvanians fashioned themselves as second-class citizens of the vast European republic of learning, which manifested itself in comparisons with the “advanced abroad.” Landeskunde and honismeret placed the fatherland on the periphery of the more improved (Western and Central European) regions. On the other hand, this novel tradition also introduced a symbolic intraregional hierarchy based on the dominance of the old-new German and Hungarian political elites. This hierarchy of the Transylvanian “nations,” which was also rooted in the traditional estate politics as well as ideas of more modern governance, was tacitly acknowledged and became, as we shall see in the following chapters, a powerful catalyst of plans for cultural emancipation for the intellectuals situated on the lower end of the scale. Landeskunde was adaptable to a conservative social agenda of improvement; not even August Ludwig Schlözer was an advocate of a democratic political order.71 The meliorist vision of Landeskunde helped reconfigure traditional hierarchies into new, cultural ones, and the Transylvanian case is a proof that social reforms did not translate into an advocacy of social mobility. Hungarian scholars represented an even more particularistic voice within this choir, resenting the intervention of Vienna into local affairs. As György Aranka complained, “In Europe, [everybody,] from learned professors of Göttingen to the Viennese literati, calls the provinces of the Hungarian crown ‘Austrian lands,’ although Austria owns as much land in Hungary as the number of hairs on one’s palm.”72

71  On Schlözer and his contemporaries in Göttingen, see Lindenfeld, Practical Imagination, 4–6, 22–28. In general see Anthony J. LaVopa, Grace, Talent and Merit: Poor Students, Clerical Careers, and Professional Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988), 49–52; James Van Horn Melton, “From Enlightenment to Revolution: Hertzberg, Schlözer, and the Problem of Despotism in the Aufklärung,” Central European History 12 (1979): 103–123. 72  Concha, Hatvan év, 219.

CHAPTER 2

The Friends of Progress in the Transylvanian Age of Reform The Hungarian Age of Reform, as the roughly two decades of political and social reforms before 1848 were called, brought the maturation of the national and liberal perspective in politics and scholarship. This chapter shows how Landeskunde received a new momentum in these decades, when identification with the nation as a cultural community, transcending social boundaries, overwrote territorial allegiance as part of a Hungarian politics that took place both in Transylvania and Hungary. As seen in the previous chapter, Landeskunde within the Hungarian intellectual milieus had endorsed cultural unification already in the decades prior, as reflected by the declarations of György Aranka. The 1830s and 1840s enhanced the public visibility of patriotic scholarship in an emerging public sphere, consisting of voluntary associations and periodicals, which endorsed the exploration of the Transylvanian fatherland. The new movement of voluntary associations kept certain references to the earlier exclusive intellectual milieus, but it also presented new features. Knowledge about the patria became the building block of a more generally understood self-formation (Bildung) and of national improvement. As the present chapter will argue, the dilemma of the 1830s concerned the channeling of the growing popular interest in Landeskunde into more institutionalized forms. The ensuing solutions and strategies for designing specific social spaces to the practice of Landeskunde and honismeret reveal the cultural and political differences in the attitude of the elites behind these plans. The first two sections present the attempts at the institutionalization of scholarship in the Transylvanian Saxon and Hungarian milieus. The Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde was established in 1840, initiated as a voluntary association, whose program and social profile shall be looked at in greater detail further below. The simultaneously emerging twin project, the Transylvanian Museum, modeled after the Hungarian National Museum (1808), was similarly a grassroots initiative of the Transylvanian Hungarian cultural elite, and yet its final agenda was drafted at the diet. Intended as the academic successor of the Manuscript Editing Society of Aranka, it was planned as a state-funded institution. Even if eventually the campaign did not receive the approval form the Viennese chancellery, the preparations reveal a consistent cultural policy of the Hungarian elites in Transylvania. The second part of the chapter a­ nalyses

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the dynamics of the Transylvanian scholarly public in the 1840s and asks about the possibilities of scholarly cooperation between Saxon and Hungarian intellectual milieus in the context of an ethnically divided civic sphere. The Age of Reform combined the demand for social and political modernization with the linguistic Magyarization of the administration and parts of the educational system. Enjoying support from Hungary, its proponents aimed to create the prerequisites for civil liberties by abolishing serfdom and removing territorial privileges in the process of establishing a Hungarian parliamentary state. This was the core of the Transylvanian Hungarian reform movement, which inevitably stirred the Saxon opposition in the provincial diet. By the eve of the Hungarian war of independence in 1848, the Transylvanian Diet had accepted the union of Hungary and Transylvania in an effort to save their autonomy in the emerging nation-state. The Romanian political elite too, who, apart from the Greek Catholic bishops, had no representation at the Transylvanian Diet, either tied their acceptance of the union to their recognition as the ‘fourth nation,’ or rejected it in favor of an autonomous Transylvania; a sine qua non for their leaders was the recognition of Romanians as a nation equal to the others. The Hungarian politicians’ refusal of Romanian requests for national-political emancipation was couched in terms of prospective liberal rights for the whole population of Transylvania. In order to understand the cultural developments, it will be necessary to first cast a glance at the social background and patronage of scholarship of a patriotic bent in the broader European French- and German-speaking context, most prominently Prussia, since the latter shaped the outlook and strategies of the Hungarian and Transylvanian elites. The most important novelty in this respect is the reorganization of education along neohumanist values, and the further engagement of the state in the institutionalization of a historicized and national interpretation of culture. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Prussian state embraced the quickly growing social movement for the ‘musealization’1 and preservation of ‘monuments,’2 the latter recognized as having a national and historical significance. As early as 1819, the Prussian Ministry of Spiritual, Educational, and Medical Affairs began supporting the systematic collection of the movable and immovable artifacts declared to be of historical value. 1  Gábor Klaniczay, “Multiple Antiquities—Multiple Modernities: A Multi-Annual Research Theme in Collegium Budapest,” in The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe, ed. Ernő Marosi and Gábor Klaniczay, Collegium Budapest Workshop Series 17 (2006): 7–10, 8. 2  Susan A. Crane, Collecting and Historical Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2000), 42–83.

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This called into life an entire movement of historical and Landeskunde associations, which gained momentum particularly in the 1830s and 1840s. While the original target of the ‘collecting collective’ was the preservation of architectural monuments, works of art, and written documents, the scope quickly broadened to encompass ethnographic items as well, while the chronological interest of the collectors ranged from antiquity to the Middle Ages and, in the case of folk art, enclosed also the present. Museums, real as well as virtual (the latter in the shape of journals), grew also outside Prussia, and were dedicated to the publication and display of items declared of ‘national value.’ The emphasis was placed on the authenticity of the findings and contributed to the inculcation of historicized cultural sensitivity towards one’s ‘national’ culture. Further ­impetus was provided by the fact that many private and ecclesiastical collections of antiquities, owned mostly by the traditional social elite, were turned now into public ones, enjoying thus the support of the government. The Altes Museum in Berlin, the Glyptothek in Munich, and the Akademisches Kunstmuseum in Bonn were all foundations from the 1820s and took their origins in this way.3 Financial and infrastructural support from the diet was also crucial in Hungary, where the musealization movement started as early as 1808, with the foundation of the Hungarian National Museum.4 Similar to the Prussian case, in Hungary too the holdings of the museum originated from the donations of the nobility, while the state took over the costs of preservation, storage, maintenance, and display. These examples were observed in Transylvania. On this terrain too, Hermannstadt had an advantage from the start, as it could boast already of an internationally outstanding classical art collection, numismatic and mineral collections, as well as a library, all making part of the Brukenthal Museum, which opened to the public as early as 1817.5 The incipient Hungarian National Museum in Pest had embraced from the earliest moment collections of both ‘national,’ i.e., Hungarian, as well as more ‘universal’ character, which corresponded to their public pedagogical purpose. Furthermore, a certain “appreciation for the non-Hungarian”

3  Ibid., 132–137. 4  Gábor Ébli, “What Made a Museum ‘National’ in the Nineteenth Century? The Evolution of Public Collections in Hungary,” in “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe, ed. Marosi and Klaniczay, 77–89, 78. 5  Christine Lapping, Die Sammlung des Freiherrn Samuel von Brukenthal. Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte und zum Charakter der Sammlung im Herrmannstädter Museum (Kronstadt: Aldus Verlag, 2004), 126.

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c­ ultures on the territory of the state had also been evident and maintained.6 This applied even more to the Brukenthal collections, whose Flemish, Dutch, and Italian collections of paintings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries attracted particular attention already in the 1770s, and contributed to the fame of Brukenthal as a cultural Maecenas of renown in the whole Habsburg Monarchy.7 By the 1810s the Brukenthal library and its adjacent numismatic collections were also well known. All in all, both the Hungarian National Museum and its Transylvanian counterpart in Hermannstadt displayed an encyclopedic interest in their patriae in a broad European context, whereby specimens from Hungary and, respectively, Transylvania, were prominently represented.8 While several parallels can be drawn between the two museums, a few characteristics stand apart. Both of them had a pedagogic purpose, as all museums did, yet the national focus was more explicit in the Hungarian case; the primary beneficiary of the exhibitions and the libraries was the Hungarian nation.9 Notable is also the fact that the ownership and management of the Brukenthal Museum had never been discussed at the Transylvanian Diet, as happened in the case of its counterpart in Pest. Instead, it was delegated to the competence of the Saxon cultural self-government. Indeed, conforming to the will of Brukenthal, the museum entered into the property of the gymnasium of Hermannstadt, and as such, it was co-supervised by the Transylvanian Lutheran Church Consistory. Of course, the museum quickly acquired the air of an informal national institution, also due to its location in the Saxon administrative seat, nonetheless it had been strongly linked to the person of Brukenthal and as such it maintained a more private character.10 In contrast, 6  Gábor Ébli, “What Made a Museum ‘National,’ ” 85. 7  Kürzböck, Almanach de Vienne, en faveur des étrangers, ou abrégé historique indiquant ce que la ville de Vienne renferme de plus remarquable et de plus curioux (Vienna, 1773), 180. 8  The mineralogist Lucas Joseph Marienburg, a Lutheran pastor nearby Kronstadt, noted already the 15,000 volumes of the Brukenthal library, the numismatic collections containing, along with European examples, Hungarian and Transylvanian coins, as well as the mineral collections containing Transylvanian gold and Hungarian silver. Lucas Joseph Marienburg, Geographie des Großfürstenthums Siebenbürgen, ed. Ernst Wagner, Schriften zur Landeskunde Siebenbürgens, vol. 12 (1813; facsimile ed., Vienna: Böhlau, 1987), 245–246. 9  Ébli, “What Made a Museum ‘National,’ ” 78. 10  This would have been the case even if the collection had not been developed in the same richness and intensity, i.e., had Brukenthal not been the Transylvanian governor, with excellent ties to the court. Some of the valuable paintings of his art collection were, for instance, personal donations of Maria Theresa. See Lapping, Die Sammlung des Freiherrn Samuel von Brukenthal, 71–72.

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the addressee of the Hungarian National Museum was officially claimed to be the ‘nation,’ and the supporters regarded it in the framework of national—and state-sponsored—cultural politics from the beginning, providing the model, as well as strategies to attain it, to their Transylvanian Hungarian emulators.

Grassroots Scholarship: Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde

The earliest Transylvanian scholarly journals articulating an interest in Landeskunde were published in Hermannstadt as early as 1790. Besides a general encyclopedic immersion in the past and present of the fatherland, which linked Hungarian and Saxon practitioners to a common enterprise, the Siebenbürgishe Quartalschrift displayed a hierarchic vision of the domestic social sphere. On the other hand, a distinct Hungarian consciousness, which transcended the borders between the Hungarian Kingdom and Transylvania, was the characteristic note of the intellectual milieu around György Aranka in the rival administrative center of the province, Kolozsvár. While the scholarly milieus visibly suffered during the restrictive policies of the post-­Napoleonic period, Landeskunde burst with new popularity from 1830 on, when the Hungarian Diet resumed working on the reform projects from 1790–1791, and especially in the 1840s, when censorship loosened.11 A closer scrutiny may identify thematic and even personal continuity between the groups around Siebenbürgishe Quartalschrift and the Manuscript Society, as well as the later journals of Landeskunde. At the center of these scholarly patriotic undertakings, whose purpose was the publication of relevant information about the present and past of the province, one finds above all members of the local and regional administrative German-speaking elite. This was a mixed group, including officials from various other Habsburg provinces. Such a gentleman was the Vienna-born expert in military and educational matters and later director of the Transylvanian chancellery, Joseph Benigni von Mildenberg (1782–1849). Already in the earlier stage of his career, this prolific author had distinguished himself by sending to various Austrian periodicals writings about Transylvanian topics of geographical and ‘statistical’ content. The latter grew into a book about the

11  Dorottya Lipták, “Die Rolle der Zensur im Verlags- und Pressewesen Ungarns im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Libri prohibiti. La censure dans l’espace habsbourgeois 1650–1850, ed. Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux and Martin Svatoš (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2005), 55–72.

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‘statistics’ of the Transylvanian military border,12 while numerous unpublished manuscripts remained in the drawer. In the 1830s, Mildenberg edited in Hermannstadt an encyclopedic journal Transylvania, periodische Zeitschrift für Landeskunde (three volumes total).13 His fellow editor was Karl Neugeboren (1781–1861),14 member of the city council and son of Daniel Neugeboren, one of the time-long contributors to the Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift. Thus there was a family tradition of sorts by the 1830s, connecting the generation of Landeskunde authors, publishing around 1800, and the generation of the sons two decades later. Further contributors to the three-volume publication included two senior members of the Transylvanian administrative elite, namely, Count Joseph Bedeus von Scharberg (1783–1858)15 and Count József Kemény de Gerend (1795– 1855). Both Bedeus and Kemény were public personae who incorporated the link between patriotic scholarship, sociability, and activity in the highest echelons of provincial politics. Both of them came from old aristocratic families and both had first-hand experience with the various sites of the Transylvanian administration, including the diet. Moreover, they had a thorough legal and historical training and experience in the politics of the polyglot province, as well as a scholarly curiosity transcending the administrative borders of their homeland. They were emblematic figures of a generation of liberal mindset, whose scholarly interest and political loyalty orientated towards the territory of Transylvania, though with strong ties to Vienna. This loyalty was modulated but never exclusively determined by the loyalty to a particular linguistic community, even after the polarization of national politics prior to and after 1848. Landespatriotismus was reflected also in their topics of scholarly ­interest, 12  Statistische Skizze der siebenbürgischen Militärgrenze (Hermannstadt, 1816; 2nd ed., 1834); Kurzer Unterricht in der Geographie Siebenbürgens zum Schulunterrichte (Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, 1823; 2nd ed., 1833). 13  Transylvania, periodische Zeitschrift für Landeskunde, 3 vols. (1833–1838), ed. Joseph Benigni von Mildenberg and Karl Neugeboren; Joseph Benigni von Mildenberg, Handbuch der Geographie und Statistik des Grossfürstenthums Siebenbürgen (Hermannstadt, 1837). 14  Archiv des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde 9, no. 11 (hereafter Archiv). On the launch of the periodical Transsilvania, see J. Trausch, Schriftstellerlexikon der Siebenbürger Deutschen, vol. 3 (Kronstadt, 1871). 15  Publications by Bedeus included Das Lucrum camerae in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen (Kronstadt, 1838); Die Wappen und Siegel der siebenbürgischen Landesfürsten und der ständischen Nationen (Hermannstadt, 1838); Die Verfassung des Großfürstenthums Siebenbürgen (Vienna, 1844), which was translated into Hungarian; Historisch-genealogischer Atlas zur Uebersicht der Geschichte des ungarischen Reiches, seiner Nebenländer und der angrenzenden Staaten und Provinzen (Hermannstadt, 1851).

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which were often directed towards the legal and political history of their patria and its legal and administrative order.16 Count Kemény, jokingly calling himself “the spare tire sought after whenever some old historical or diplomatic conundrum emerges”17 in the provincial diet, edited, among other learned collections, also a series of German sources about the history of Transylvania in 1839–1840. Perfectly bicultural, he welcomed both Saxon and Hungarian scholars in his library and manuscript collection and, as it turned out many decades after his death, he even ‘manufactured’ documents to please his guests in search of historical sources.18 The list was complete with members of the Lutheran gymnasium professoriate who acquired their training at German universities, including Johann Karl Schuller (1794–1865), the honorary member of the Berliner Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache, and Michael Ackner (1782–1862). Born in Schäßburg, Ackner completed his university studies in Wittenberg and Göttingen, where he attended the classes of Christian Gottlob Heyne, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Johann Beckmann, and Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren. Upon finishing his university studies, he traveled through Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland on his way back to Transylvania, complementing thus his theoretical learning with more practical observations. Once home, he became a professor of philology and archeology in Hermannstadt and, after 13 years of work, was elected pastor of the city. Not a man to remain sedentary, Ackner made frequent archeological explorations of ancient Roman and Dacian settlements in Transylvania. Along with his archeological and numismatic collection, 16  For Bedeus see fn. 5. The longer publications by Kemény included mostly historical source publications, such as Notitia historico-diplomatica archivi et litterarum capituli Albensis Transilvaniae, 2 vols. ([Cibinii], 1836); Deutsche Fundgruben der Geschichte Siebenbürgens, 2 vols. (Klausenburg 1839); and together with István Kovács, Erdélyország történetei tára [Historical repository of the state of Transylvania], 2 vols. (Kolozsvár, 1837–1845); Történelmi és irodalmi kalászatok (Pest: Toldy Ferenc, 1861). Shorter works were published in the penny magazines Árpádia. Honi történetek zsebkönyve [Árpádia. Pocketbook of the histories about the fatherland] (Kaschau) 1833–1838, and Iris (Pest), in the Hungarian journals Tudományos Gyüjtemény, Erdélyi Nemzeti Társalkodó, Tudománytár, Uj Magyar Muzeum, and in Blätter für Geist, Gemüth und Vaterlandskunde (a supplement of the Siebenbürger Wochenblatt published in Kronstadt), Archiv, and Magazin für Geschichte, Litteratur und alle Denk- und Merkwürdigkeiten Siebenbürgens. 17  Trauschenfels, Eugen von, “Kemény, Graf Joseph,” in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 15 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1882), 597–599, www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz40514 .html, accessed 2 May 2014. 18  Martin Rady, “The Forgeries of Baron József Kemény,” The Slavonic and East European Review 71, no. 1 (1993), 102–125.

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he devoted himself to minerals and fossils.19 The career of Schuller was in many respects a similar one. He too attended a German Protestant university—in his case Leipzig—and completed his studies in 1814 in Vienna. Beginning his career, likewise, as a gymnasium professor in Hermannstadt, he eventually became co-principal in 1821, then principal, and finally professor of history and classical languages. In the 1850s he became the chief counselor to the Austrian government in educational matters and was royal school inspector in the Saxon educational system until his retirement in 1859.20 Schuller had the same encyclopedic interest in the history and present state of Transylvania as his aristocratic contemporaries. The only difference was his distinct emphasis on the Saxon-German facets of provincial history.21 After the rhapsodically appearing periodical Transylvania ceased to appear, he edited Archiv zur Kenntnis von Siebenbürgens Vorzeit und Gegenwart (Archive for the knowledge of Transylvania’s past and present) in 1840–1841.22 It was the same encyclopedic collection of ‘particularities’ from the past and present of Transylvania, displaying facts about themes familiar already since the Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift.23 The national rhetoric of the publication was a novelty to a certain extent since the preface addressed the undertaking as the continuation of ‘German patriotic literature,’ in general, and of the 19  Trauschenfels, “Kemény, Graf Joseph.” 20  Ibid. 21  Works by Schuller encompassed Kritische Geschichte der Reformation des Hermannstädter Capitels ([Cibinii], 1819); and Umrisse und kritische Studien zur Geschichte von Siebenbürgen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Geschichte der deutschen Colonisten im Lande, published as a separate volume of the Archiv (Hermannstadt, 1840). The second volume appeared in the same journal of the Landeskundeverein in 1851, while the third one was published in 1872. Shorter writings appeared in the periodical Transsilvania and in the Archiv für die Kenntniß von Siebenbürgens Vorzeit und Gegenwart. 22  Archiv zur Kenntnis von Siebenbürgens Vorzeit und Gegenwart (Hermannstadt), vol. 1 (1840/1841), ed. Johann Karl Schuller. Only one volume was published. 23   The titles of the writings in the magazine include: “Die siebenbürgische Steuergesetzgebung,” “Die Mongolen in Siebenbürgen” (Schuller); “Die antiken Münzen, eine Quelle der altern Geschichte Siebenbürgens” (Ackner); “Ueber die Eigenheiten der siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Mundart und ihr Verhältniß zur hochdeutschen Sprache” (Schuller); “Apologie I. K. Eder’s” (I. Benigni); “Original zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens im sechszehnten Jahrhundert”; “Die deutschen Ritter im Burzenlande” (Schuller); “Kritische Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte des Hermannstädter Capitels in Siebenbürgen, vor der Reformation” (M. Reschner), “Die antiken Münzen u. s. w.” (continuation, Ackner); “Reisebericht über einen Theil der südlichen Karpathen, welche Siebenbürgen von der kleinen Walachei trennen, aus dem Jahre 1838” (Ackner).

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Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift, in particular. The political-territorial horizon of Schuller’s scholarly project was still Transylvania. The scholar praised Count Kemény as the most thorough scholar of Transylvanian history, whose edition of German historical sources was an eminent example to follow,24 while his other genuflection was directed to Count Bedeus von Scharberg as the chief mentor of learned undertakings. The publication of historical monuments and other themes of the province were stronger than a mere repetition of the bygone Freemason scholarly activities of the 1780s–90s; now, it rather constituted a segment of a larger initiative. Until the early 1840s, there were no institutions of higher learning in Transylvania. Regional intellectuals bemoaned their absence when looking at the learned societies, national theaters, and libraries that sprang up in the German lands and Hungary in the post-Napoleonic cultural revival. The dearth of such institutions was felt as all the more frustrating in Transylvania since the central cultural authorities in Vienna systematically rejected permission for their establishment. Such rejected projects at the beginning of the nineteenth century included the Saxon Verein für Vaterländische Geschichte und Literatur (Association for the History and Literature of the Fatherland, 1817), the already mentioned Transylvanian Hungarian Society for the Cultivation of Language, a Romanian Societatea Pentru Cultivarea Limbii Române (Society for the Cultivation of the Romanian Language, 1817), and an ensuing Ateneul Cunoștinţelor, Cabinetul Muzelor Române (Athenaeum of Knowledge, Cabinet of Romanian Muses, 1830). The impetus to inaugurate an academy by adopting the form of voluntary association was a way out from the impasse. Lutheran pastors and professors educated abroad, such as Ackner and Schuller, as well as the administrative elite, including senators and members of the city magistrates, launched the plan in the Saxon papers in 1830.25 Similar associations in the German states, above all in Baden, Württemberg, and Prussia, provided the model. Addressing the public in a pamphlet, Neugeboren and Benigni’s plea for better knowledge of Transylvanian society took up the imagery and arguments of the earlier articles from the 1790s: Transylvania deserves to be better known. It is populated by gentle, free, and educated nations whose history, if written in the spirit of a Tacitus, 24  Karl Schuller, “Vorrede,” Archiv zur Kenntnis von Siebenbürgens Vorzeit und Gegenwart 1 (1840/1841) (unpaginated). 25  “Ueber Schriftstellerei und Publizität in Siebenbürgen,” Unterhaltungsblatt 1 (24 May 1837).

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would stir the attention of any philosopher, any statesman of Europe. In the north there are the Hungarians, a gentle nation, whose pride rests on their initial free constitution. In the east and south, there are their national and language kin, the Székelys, a nation born in arms, belligerent and brave, who are free of taxes, free of the yearly contribution to the country, who have guarded the border against the Turkish provinces since the earliest centuries of the Hungarian kingdom. In the south, there are the judicious, hardworking loyal Saxons, who were called (to Transylvania) from Germany by Géza II in the twelfth century, who secured by contract their exquisite freedom . . . They proved their German courage, they put their shoulders to the wheel, logged forests, dried marshes, built streets, constructed villages and towns, beautiful temples, fought against the invading enemies, and secured their territory through the prerogative of self-administration. They swore by blood and sweat to maintain for themselves and their children their war experiences, their art, their useful trade, the resulting improvement and comfort, and to spread it throughout the country. Probably it was them who gave the name Siebenbürgen [Seven fortresses] to this part of old Dacia . . . Spread throughout Transylvania, there live the Wallachs in the counties of the Hungarian nobles, in the districts of the Székely, without a territory of their own, and as subjects of the two, they are compelled to villeinage. In the land of the Saxons, they are settled in the suburbs or at the end of the villages, there they are free to do as they wish and are entitled to own their land and to equal treatment before the law. They are a numerous people, who once came under the Roman yoke, and became acquainted with the language and customs of these world conquerors. Afterwards they became more depraved and uncivilized, but, as experience shows, they are capable of the finest improvement. They are a people devoted to agriculture and especially to cattle breeding, and they alone make up more than two-thirds of the Transylvanian population. The history of these nations, whose origins and gradual development is revealed by documents, is worthy to be studied, collected, and critically evaluated for posterity . . . Each inhabitant of Transylvania who loves their nation, their constitution, and their fatherland must also contribute to its fame.26 This passage, published in the Unterhaltungsblatt, a supplement of the weekly Siebenbürger Wochenblatt from Kronstadt, displays the same symbolic map as earlier writings. What is novel, however, is the diachronic dimension and a new 26  Ibid.

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rhetoric: The panopticum of peoples of Transylvania, compared to each other according to their presumed stages of improvement, are placed in a historical perspective. They acquire an elevated, almost classical aura of heroes. The designated focus of patriotic devotion, the Saxon nation, receives her adequate place in the cultural pantheon through the purifying process of prospective historical work. The pathos of the writing allows speculations about the spread of the cult of Bildung as a ‘semi-religious devotion’ among the generation of Transylvanian Saxon scholars maturing in the 1820s–30s.27 One should not disregard the fact either that the above passage was published in a literary supplement of a weekly newspaper, which targeted a much broader audience than the exquisite circle of learned scholars, including possibly ladies and youth. In 1839, Georg Binder (1787–1867),28 pastor in Keisd, published a plan for a society for Landeskunde in a newspaper. He wanted an institution for the Transylvanian Saxons: The readers of this paper might know how recently seemingly unattainable wishes were accomplished through the common effort of kindred spirits, and in all the civilized countries there emerges a great number of such bonds to reach this or that aim. There have been such attempts also in our fatherland, although without the expected success. It is thus high time for founding such an association and to ask for the cooperation of all Transylvanian Germans.29 27  Aleida Assmann relates art and history as two central elements of the German discourse on Bildung, as both disciplines became objects of scientific inquiry and were also enshrined as objects of admiration. The professionalization encompassed literary and artistic criticism through the adaptation of the classical canon. Aleida Assmann, Arbeit am nationalen Gedächtnis. Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Bildungsidee (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1993), 46. 28  Binder, born in Schäßburg, was elected to the position of Superintendent of the Lutheran Church of Transylvania. His education started in a non-conventional way, since after a start at the Lutheran gymnasium in his hometown he attended the Antitrinitarian College, mostly frequented by Hungarian-speaking youth in Kolozsvár. After three years of theological studies in Tübingen (1804–1807), he began his career as a teacher at his alma mater in Schäßburg, and then continued with his election as pastor in the village of Schaas and then in Keisd in 1840. His career in the church ascended further, and in the early 1850s Binder was active in the drafting of the constitution of the Lutheran Church in Transylvania. Teutsch, “Binder, Georg Paul,” in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1875), 644–646, http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/ sfz4503.html, accessed 2 May 2014. 29  Ein Freund des Fortschreitens [Georg Binder], “Aufforderung,” Blätter 41 (10 October 1839): 335.

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Binder proposed the Landeskunde society as an alternative to a state-funded academy or university run by Saxons. The association was to be a private institution, its funds raised through members’ fees, collections, and donations, and the author welcomed the financial support of the Saxon self-government, the Nationsuniversität. The arguments in favor of the institute may sound familiar: scholarly curiosity should be directed not only to the distant abroad but also to the homeland. Moreover, Transylvania had not been widely studied, and there was insufficient reliable data even for the basic needs of foreign and domestic scholars. For its systematic and precise study, the educated citizens of the country had to join forces and collect data in all fields of human activity. The language of communication should be educated German, Binder contended, and not a dialect: “our nationality must be especially precious for us, since we belong to a great, world historical people.” Binder’s argument is notable not only as a gesture of national identification but also because it betrays the gap, manifest in language use, that separated the educated speakers of Hochdeutsch from the less-educated Saxons, speaking in dialect. Like in the case of learned societies initiated from ‘below’ in Germany, the proposal advocated the combination of amateur and professional work. Members of all ‘educated professions’ from all the corners of the province were invited; here the author stressing voluntary and unrestrained participation.30 Within the society, compiling data and publishing studies were viewed as the most important tasks, and all this activity relied on the cooperation of the elite with the society’s rank-and-file members.31 The proposed disciplines included natural science—mineralogy, botany, and zoology—all erratically researched at home, particularly in comparison to Germany, where “many scholars devoted their effort to this discipline of knowledge, since the impulse of our great Humboldt, and make thinner the veil that still envelopes so many phenomena of the world.”32 Another discipline of crucial relevance was history, including the history of the state, churches, Bildung, customs and trade, legal history, and the “history of the inhabitants of Transylvania and thus their ethnic origins.”33 The orientation was eclectic, encompassing both older Transylvanian legal historical tradition and a new historicist perspective on the nation. And last but not least, there followed descriptive statistics or Landeskunde ‘proper,’ that is, the measurement of the land, the description of its peoples, their numerical extension, distribution, their rights, ­professions, and data about their ­education and 30  Ibid., 337. 31  Ibid., 337–338. 32  Ibid. 33  Ibid.

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customs. The goal of this section of Binder’s proposal was “the exhaustive portrayal of our homeland’s present condition,” which even included “picturesque descriptions of the particularly attractive places.”34 The proposal reflected an encyclopedic scholarly horizon, which was identical with the one employed by Neugeboren and his colleagues three decades before. Even the themes and disciplines mentioned are identical to Quartalschrift with the only difference involving a specific emphasis on the history of the ethnic community. Binder’s call did not remain unanswered. Supporters welcomed it as a longawaited project, familiar from abroad. But not everybody wanted to restrict membership only to the Saxons. Such a scholarly institution, Schuller emphasized in response, had to stand beyond national particularisms: Since the inhabitants of our fatherland belong not only to one nation but many, the association in question should be a patriotic society, open to all scholars, who would dispense their knowledge to everybody, for common usefulness. This is why one should not start from the beginning with particularisms . . . Should the Germans consider only the Saxon territories as their fatherland? Are not Hungarians living on the greatest part of Transylvania’s ground? I do not want to maintain that they are our superiors concerning improvement; nevertheless, many of the wealthy Hungarians are known for their quest for education and Bildung.35 There were practical reasons for sharing the institution with the Hungarians since the archives were partly Hungarian, partly Saxon properties, and a narrow national particularism would only hinder the efficiency of research: I do not imply that a Hungarian, excluded from this association, will close off his historical sources from the Saxon who is researching, but it is clear that the Hungarian will open his archives and will show his collection of manuscripts with the greatest will of cooperation . . . if he knows that his fellow national as well as the Saxon scholar are working towards the same purpose, which they will attain in patriotic brotherhood. When it goes to purely national goals, it is the business of each nation to resolve them in their way, without foreign involvement . . . [but] in the case of aspects of patriotic scope, there should be no separation, no overemphasizing of one single nation, even if some would say that results would be 34  Ibid. 35  L. H., “Auch einige Worte über den besprochenen Verein für Vaterlandeskunde,” Blätter 28 (9 July 1840): 203–225.

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increased through competition . . . All the reasons for a separate society for Germans, which would offend [the norms of] humanity and tolerance, would display one-sidedness and an all-offensive national pride. If the foundation of the mentioned association causes any sort of separation, either because of the language differences or any other ones, there is enough reason not to be glad about it, because a German association would be isolated. One would be sorry about the lack of common will of the nations, about [losing] a cause that not only enables common work, but makes it incomparably easier.36 It was proper to choose German as the language of the association, also for the ease to communicate with scholars abroad, but the exclusion of non-Saxons was unreasonable.37 Then again, nationality weighed heavily, and Schuller’s discussion ended in praise of education as a means of national, that is, Saxon, prosperity. The purpose of the association laid out by Schuller also generated some disagreement. Binder had already intimated that the association could evolve into something larger and weightier in the future: “To handle all the complexities, one needs a society that would make significant efforts not only in all the disciplines of knowledge, but also for the public good of the fatherland.”38 Divergent answers to the question of how the planned institute would serve the ‘public good’ indicated that a purely scholarly mission was insufficient. Some wanted it to become an informal Saxon ministry: “This large and general assembly for representing all the interests of the nation should consist of several departments, which similar to the various departments of a reasonable government, would function independently from each other. They would join [their activities] on the higher level of the assembly and would have a common purpose: the [spiritual] happiness of the people.”39 The political aspirations of the project sound odd today, as the object in question was only a voluntary association. Yet in the absence of institutionalized higher education and Vienna’s mistrust of any national, rather than territorial, agenda, the 36  Ibid., 223. 37  “Since we talk about Vaterlandskunde, I do not really grasp the principle to exclude all non-Germans. There is nothing more peaceful and endurable on earth than science, and if its devotees might have a reason for choosing a certain language [of communication], they do not have enough reason, so it seems to me, to close themselves off from members of other nations.” Ibid., 408. 38  [Georg Binder], “Aufforderung,” 335. 39  “Als Antwort auf dem Briefe über interessante und dunkle Gegenstände der siebenbürgischen Geschichte,” Blätter 50 (12 December 1839): 406–407, esp. 407.

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initiative took on political airs, manifest mostly in rhetoric—a phenomenon recognizable in later Hungarian and Romanian cultural societies in the 1850s. Amidst real and assumed governmental surveillance, organizations with a national purpose did carry an air of secrecy and conspiracy.40 After an introductory discussion, the invitation published in the Saxon newspapers to the launching summit emphasized that the foundation of a Landeskunde association was a major public event.41 The founders underlined the social purpose as well, that is, improvement of the whole Saxon population of Transylvania via solidarity through scholarship and education: “the town dweller reaches out to the villager, the educated to the simple farmer.”42 They proclaimed social openness, yet only under the guidance of learned men. In contrast to the initial deliberation of Schuller, the new institution remained firmly anchored in the German-speaking local society. The invitation was addressed to “all the friends of Transylvanian Landeskunde, of all nations and ranks,” but the list of founding members gathered in Mediasch on 8–9 October 1840 reveals that the call did not have resonance outside the Saxon public. All 97 men who signed up were Transylvania-born or Transylvaniabased Germans (see Table 2). A decade passed before the association established itself over all the Saxon areas and attracted members from diet-hosting Kolozsvár and Vienna. It was a relatively exclusive gathering, involving the same social strata generally found in contemporary associations, that is, mostly middle- to high-status state functionaries and the intellectual elite of gymnasium professors and pastors.43 Actually, it became an association of the educated Saxon ‘middling sorts’ (see Table 1). Planned as a financially self-­sufficient body, its social distinctiveness was reflected in the composition of the presidential board, consisting of the Saxon cultural elite. True to the contemporary habit, the assembly elected the distinguished politician Joseph Bedeus von Scharberg as its lifetime president, undoubtedly raising the prestige of the society. 40  But nothing was farther from Schuller’s planning than such a political action. See “Einiges in Betreff der am 19 und 20 dieses Monats in Schäßburg stattgefundenen Generalversammlung des im Oktober 1840 zu Mediasch gestifteten Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” Blätter 21 (23 May 1842): 156–157, esp. 157. 41  Daniel Gräser, S. Gräser, and Joseph Fabini, “Einladung,” cited in Heinrich Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” Archiv 28 (1898): 139–236, esp. 142–143. 42  Ibid. 43  Protokoll über die Verhandlungen der am 8. October 1840 in Mediasch zusammengetretenen Versammlung, zur Gründung eines Verein’s für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde (1845).

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The Friends Of Progress In The Transylvanian Age Of Reform TABLE 1 Social-professional distribution of the members of the Landeskundeverein before 1848. Profession

1840

1842

Middle-status state employees Upper level teaching staff: gymnasium professors, etc. High-status state/city officials Pastors Businessmen Free professions: lawyers, physicists Students (law, theology) Others: army, lower level teaching staff,landowners, artisans, unidentified Total

26 24

26.8% 24.74%

54 36

23.58% 15.72%

130 54

20.86% 8.66%

19 13 7 5

19.58% 13.4% 7.21% 5.15%

27 42 11 10

11.79% 18.34% 4.80% 4.36%

156 145 30 50

25.04% 23.27 4.81% 8.02%

3 —

3.09% —

19 11

8.29% —

13 45

2.08% —

97=100%

1847

229=100%

623=100%

Source: “Protokoll über die Verhandlungen der ersten in Schäßburg abgehaltenen GeneralVersammlung des Allerhöchsten genehmigten Vereines für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde. 19 Mai 1842.” In: Protokolle des VSL. (Hermannstadt, 1846), Verzeichniß sämmtlicher wirklicher Mitglieder des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde welche für das Jahr 1847 ihre Beiträge entrichtet haben (Hermannstadt, 1847).

The newspaper report on the constituting assembly praised the capacity of Landeskunde to mobilize and build a coherent ethnonational community: “that our people would feel its unity, and the prejudices of the districts toward each other would cease, and we would stop being Hermannstädter, Mediascher, Schäßburger, Kronstädter, but Saxons, and feel like Saxons.”44 The list of subscribers grew yearly, with 242 new members in 1843, 149 in 1844, and 641 in 1846; and by 1846, the group itself averaged 550 members yearly. By 1847, the Saxon urban areas and significant educational centers were covered. As expected, the largest Saxon towns, Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, were strongly represented. Twenty-one German names in the protocols were associated with Kolozsvár. They were predominantly the rank-and-file staff of the provincial public administration, while the natural scientific branch attracted members of the medical staff. Vienna was represented with 15 members of the 44  Ibid.

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TABLE 2 Geographical distribution of the members of the Landeskundeverein before 1848.

Mediasch Schäßburg Hermannstadt Kronstadt Mühlbach Klausenburg Bistritz Sächsisch-Regen Reps Vienna Other Total

1840

1842

1847

49 7 18 2 — — — — 2 — 19 97

52 48 38 17 1 2 3 2 5 1 60 229

25 40 132 83 16 21 28 13 23 15 227 623

Source: “Protokoll über die Verhandlungen der ersten in Schäßburg abgehaltenen generalVersammlung des Allerhöchsten benehmigten Vereines für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde. Den 19 Mai 1842.” In: Protokolle des VSL. (Hermannstadt, 1846), Verzeichniß sämmtlicher wirklicher Mitglieder des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde welche für das Jahr 1847 ihre Beiträge entrichtet haben.

Transylvanian Chancellery. The members’ list of 1847 saw 13 Hungarian subscribers, including gymnasium professors and members of the Transylvanian Hungarian aristocracy. The latter, as owners of remarkable libraries and private archives, made up part of both the Hungarian and Saxon intellectual milieus, indicating that the early wish of Schuller did not remain unfulfilled: there was willingness to cooperate in the patriotic exploration of Transylvania.45 The society initiated and organized the study of “all the branches of Vaterlandeskunde,” and respectively the publication of scholarly works.46 Curiously, Landeskunde itself was not precisely defined, and thus the body of its constitutive information and knowledge was continually modified, depending on the capacity of the active members. The assembly meeting from 45  Such as Sámuel Brassai, George Bariţ, Gheorghe Bardosi, Count József Kemény (1795– 1855), and his cousin Sámuel, also a member of the Teleki family residing in Hermannstadt. 46  “Statuten des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” in Vereins-Album. Denkblätter der dritten Versammlung des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, ed. Benigni von Mildenberg (Hermannstadt, 1845).

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1842 described Landeskunde only in broad terms, regarding the disciplines of “statistics, geography, ethnography, topography, public law, and legal studies, and the fields pertaining to natural history,” which provided the framework of scholarly activity. The scientific committee of the institute created three departments, including a historical section with 25 members, the statisticsgeographical branch with 10 subscribers, and finally the natural historical section with 16 members. Conforming to the legal constraints on exchange, the statutes underlined the association’s ‘scholarly character’ and forbade political discussions. The Landeskundeverein also fashioned itself as a gathering of dilettanti instead of academics, and placed much emphasis on its inclusive character—“it is not a society of learned men”—the goal being collection and not just the writing of learned treatises.47 This was not to be the case: the presidential board launched a periodical, Archiv des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde (hereafter referred to as Archiv), planned as a continuation of Karl Schuller’s Archiv zur Kenntnis von Siebenbürgens Vorzeit und Gegenwart. The journal published learned articles, and to increase its circulation in the German-speaking world, all of the association’s works were written in German. Yet the activity of the association rested indeed on the individual’s curiosity and collective work of the members regarding the objects and documents of historical value, biographies of important personalities, chronicles, excerpts from parish registers and business papers, epigraphs, descriptions of settlements or surroundings, natural phenomena, and statistical data about the population, livestock, agriculture, and trade, all contributing to the ‘enlightenment’ of the large public. In addition, the association’s rules allowed the gathering of data about the province but prevented its use for ‘political purposes.’48 Every man could join, irrespective of his background, provided that he registered with the assembly and paid the yearly membership fee of two florins. Also, the association did not understand itself in exclusively national terms, but rather as a project encompassing the entire province. It paid equal tribute 47  Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines,” 150. 48  For mechanisms of censorship in Austria and the procedure for obtaining the crown’s approval for associational activities, see Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918 (London: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1989), 44–52; Robert Nemes, “Associations and Civil Society in Reform-Era Hungary,” Austrian History Yearbook 32 (2001): 25–45, esp. 31–33. For a comparison with contemporary German scholarly associations, see Hermann Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine einst und jetzt,” in Geschichtswissenschaft und Vereinswesen im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Hartmut Boockmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 45–73, esp. 51–55.

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to the former Transylvanian Hungarian Language Society and the early Saxon learned papers, and to Transylvanian learned men, such as József Kemény. The count remained a faithful and energetic member of the Landeskundeverein until his death, and neither the failure of his plan to establish a Hungarian museum in Kolozsvár, nor the convulsions of 1848/49, could overshadow this cooperation. After his death, the Landeskundeverein mourned the loss of a valuable partner, whose activity “equaled entire institutions,” and decided to translate and publish a volume of all his works.49 All in all, the association sought contact with other societies and learned men in Transylvania and Hungary in the period before 1848.50

Regional or National Science? A Saxon-Hungarian Dispute at the Transylvanian Diet The duty of the present is to work usefully and to make progress not only in politics, but also in the sphere of science . . . The faithful patriots, engaged to the public good and the happiness of the two brother patriae, . . . realize that science has to be moved from private circles and behind the walls of schools out into public life.51

The above passage comes from a letter addressed to Count József Kemény, the driving force of Hungarian initiatives to establish a scholarly institution of national reputation in Transylvania. The count and his cousin Sámuel had long been planning a museum whose purpose was not just the collection of objects but a range of scholarly activities as well. The latter were similar to that of the Landeskundeverein, even though the institutional strategy was different. The count relied on the diet resolution from 1790 concerning the foundation of a Transylvanian academy. It is also likely that the success of the Hungarian Diet in Pressburg the years before gave the Transylvanians confidence; the success in question was the law for the founding of a national theater and then the Hungarian Learned Society (Magyar Tudós Társaság, 1825, which later became the Hungarian National Academy), despite vehement Croatian

49  Jahresbericht des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde 1856/7 (Hermannstadt, 1857), 17. 50  Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines,” 149. 51  Letter to József Kemény, Pressburg, 30 January 1844, Direcţia Generalǎ a Arhivelor Naţionale Cluj (ANC) (General directorate of the national archives), Fond 594, Colecţia personalǎ József Kemény.

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and Serbian opposition. And why would the same project fail, if pursued in Kolozsvár? The Hungarian intellectual milieus were connected through many personal ties not only to each other but also to formal politics. Several members of the diet’s reform opposition in Transylvania were avid attendees of the fashionable social gatherings in the so-called Casinos (not to be identified with the gambling places of today), and were directly involved in the running of periodicals. The channels of communication between the civic and political spheres were relatively broad. The orchestration of the diet assembly itself, with its preliminary ‘national conferences’ (separate clubs for Hungarians, Székelys, and Saxons), the ‘delegates’ meetings’ (that is, deputies without royal representatives), and the ‘national assembly’ (of all the diet members), facilitated face-to-face communication among the various groups and factions.52 It was, therefore, rational to lobby in the diet for projects of ‘national importance’ that had been initially conceived in the Casinos. The planned museum was one such project. At the Assembly of Küküllő County (25 February 1841), counts József and Sámuel Kemény presented the following report: The recent borders of Transylvania are significantly tighter than they once used to be, but the circumstances of the old times, their old, virtuous nation, and its deliberations have been preserved. No wonder that the hardships and history of our country, especially from Mohács onwards, have been so important for us, that we can hardly understand the grounds of our present existence without knowing these. It is thus necessary to save from perishing all the ruins of the past, especially its written documents, and to see them as obelisks of civic virtue. [It is important] to keep up the memory of our nationality, so that we can adapt the teachings of the past to current moral, political, and scholarly self-formation . . . This was the reason why we collected thousands of items from the history of our country, its laws, statistics, geography, and literature, several thousand original correspondences of the commonwealth and its offices, documents of armistices, legal paragraphs, original copies of old legal codes, a great number of manuscripts written by contemporary historians, and so on. Since the success of individual efforts, no matter how beneficial they are, rests in their public use, and since the foundation of a national public institution, which unites the collections spread across the country, exceeds the capacity of individuals, it is highly recommended . . . to 52  Rolf Kutschera, Landtag und Gubernium in Siebenbürgen, 1688–1869 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1985), 67.

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establish a public library and a related national museum in the capital of the country, Kolozsvár.53 In the late 1830s, counts József and Sámuel Kemény relied on the support of a growing urban public and the encouraging example of the Hungarian ‘brother homeland.’ József Kemény was, as mentioned before, one of the emblematic personages of regional scholarship, who published in Hungarian and German, and was a member of the Hungarian Learned Society and a correspondent of Bedeus von Scharberg; in short, a bicultural man of letters. Kemény and his friends referred to the ‘nation’ in a way that had strong territorial and legal connotations, linked to the feudal administration, instead of a strictly cultural reference. They spoke of the prospective national museum being generated by “civic sentiments” and “patriotic duty,” and not exclusively by national fervor. Similar to the Saxon Landeskunde champions, their scholarly interests included all the “cultural treasures of the patria” and those of the other “cultivated nations” of Europe. Their plans included an extensive library with “general works,” such as encyclopedias and bibliographies; works of “basic knowledge,” including texts on religion, languages, philosophy, and history with geography, archaeology, and other auxiliary disciplines; and works of “applied knowledge” in fields such as politics and medical police. A modern central library was to gather documents and private collections and therefore provide the impetus for the study of Transylvania’s past and present. Kemény and his associates also evidenced a new scholarly conscientiousness about the value of historical documents and decried the carelessness that had allowed many valuable private libraries to be scattered or purchased and carried away from the province. They launched the first public incentive for preserving and exploring the educational value of such collections.54 However, the fact that the culturally most open man from Transylvania did plan a scholarly establishment exclusively in Hungarian and for Hungarians indicates a fragmentation of the intellectual milieus that was more than linguistic. It shows furthermore that the Hungarian scholarly project with a national scope, shaping up in the public, had found an ally in official politics. Support in the diet and good timing were equally crucial for successful realization of the museum plan, and the diet of 1841–1843 (15 November 1841–4 February 1843) seemed to offer both. The governor at the time was Count József Teleki (1790–1855), a famous book collector, recognized historian, and 53  Erdélyi Hiradó, no. 20 (1841), cited in Imre Mikó, “Erdélyi Múzeum Egyesület” [Transylvanian Museum Association], Erdélyi Múzeum, no. 1 (1856). 54  Pál Erdélyi, Erdélyi Múzeum [Transylvanian museum] (Kolozsvár, 1909), 33–36.

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co-founding president of the Hungarian Learned Society in Pest.55 Besides his formal support for nascent institution in Transylvania, Teleki was also among the first donators for its library (see Table 3). A separate committee prepared a plan for a publicly financed museum, academy, theater, economic association, as well as a polytechnic university.56 The debates over only these plans stretched from June 1842 to January 1843 and brought to the fore conflicting Hungarian and Saxon views about the competence of the state in interfering with civic initiatives. The Hungarian drafters appealed for state support in its capacity as a vehicle to consolidate a ‘weak’ national civil sphere. The Saxon opposition considered this act a harmful intrusion that not only ignored the self-administering German institutions, but deprived them of financial resources. The clashing views on cultural politics escalated into a tug of war between uncompromising national stances, aggravated by matters of financial interest and political prestige. The debate was overshadowed by other Hungarian-Saxon clashes on language politics and on account of the presumably unionist aspirations of the Hungarian nobility (that is, a union between Hungary and Transylvania). By the end of the debate in January 1843, the Hungarian initiators and the Saxon opponents faced each other as antagonistic political factions. The issue most heatedly debated was the would-be state-funded museum, which the Saxon deputies interpreted as a symbol of Hungarian aspirations for political dominance in Transylvania. The plans foresaw an institute whose main function was to be more a research library with adjacent archeological collections, mineralogy, and maps than a full-fledged museum. The language of the draft, prepared by a diet committee in Hungarian and in Latin, avoided in general references to any ‘national’ character, instead operating with the more general term ‘patria.’57 Its collections aimed to “reflect faithfully the state of the art of science,” to offer 55  There were 24,000 volumes dedicated to the National Library, to which were added several other collections. The count donated 5000 forints for library personnel, 2000 forints for the extension of the numismatic collection, and further royalties for the enlargement of the library; http://mek.oszk.hu/03600/03630/html/t/t27529.htm, accessed 7 Feb. 2014. 56  Az Erdélyi Nagyfejedelemség s hozzá vissza kapcsolt Részek három nemes Nemzeteiből álló Rendeinek Kolozsvár szabad királyi várossában 1841-ik Év November 15-ik napján kezdődött ország Gyülésökről készített Jegyző-Könyv [Records of the Transylvanian Diet of the three noble estates of Transylvania and its reattached Partes that began on 15 November 1841 in the free royal town of Kolozsvár] (Kolozsvár, 1841) (hereafter: Jegyző-Könyv). 57  “Az Országgyűlési Rendszeres Bizottmány Vegyes Albizottságának munkálatai. Kolozsvár, 1842. Július-Augusztus” [The workings of the Mixed Subcommittee of the Systematic Committee of the diet], in Okmány- és irodalomtár. Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület történetéhez [Repository of documents and literature. To the history of the Transylvanian

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“specimens for the improvement of taste,” model the “movements in the different branches of industry” at home and abroad, and collect Transylvanian “resources and artifacts.”58 Yet, they were to include “the best examples of the universal and national literature.”59 The designated founding fathers were almost exclusively Hungarian Diet members of the progressive liberal faction. In the original plan, the museum had relied primarily on private donations. The core of its collections was the Kemény library with its 15,439 books and 1083 manuscripts, completed with other donations (see Table 3). A mineral and a numismatic collection constituted the other two pillars of future scholarly work, most of them donations of the Hungarian nobility. The catalogue of the library collection donated by Count József Kemény has been preserved and is instructive about the contemporary scholarly taste and patriotism of an educated gentleman from Transylvania.60 The library counted as considerable in extension, though it was neither as old, nor as differentiated, as the more famous ‘Teleki Téka’ in Marosvásárhely, founded by Count Sámuel Teleki of Szék (1739–1822), the latter counting ca. 40,000 volumes at that time.61 As was often the case with similar private libraries, the collection was complete with a considerable manuscript section and also included an archeological and numismatic section, the latter two also making part of the donation. The overwhelming majority of the books were German and French publications, which indicate the cultural taste among the upper circles of the Transylvanian nobility. Works in Latin and Greek made up a lesser, though still significant part, followed by considerably smaller sets of mostly literary works in Italian and Spanish. The list was complete with about 30 titles from the Paris-based Baudry’s European Library, a popular series of British fiction and historical scholarship.62 The structure of the library followed the ­contemporary canon of education, as reflected also by the catalogue, based on Museum Society], vol. 1, (1841–1859), ed. Ákos Egyed and Eszter Kovács (Cluj: EME, 2009), 77–84, 77. 58  Ibid. See also Lajos Kelemen, “Törekvések egy erdélyi múzeum alapítására” [Efforts towards establishing a Transylvanian museum], Erdélyi Múzeum 26 (1909): 352–375, esp. 366–367. 59  Ibid. 60  “Az Erdélyi Múzeumnak gróf Kemény Sámuel által adományozott s bészállított gerendi könyvek lajstroma, 1860” [List of books donated by Count Sámuel Kemény to the EME, 1860], ANC, Fond 242, 1–127. 61  Anikó Nagy Dée, ed., Teleki Sámuel és a Teleki-Téka [Sámuel Teleki and the Teleki library] (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1976), 41–58. See also http://www.telekiteka.ro/index .php?m=teleki_bolyai_konyvtar, accessed 2 May 2014. 62  “Az Erdélyi Múzeumnak,” 88–89.

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Greek and Latin classical literature, then branching out into the disciplines of the state sciences, medicine, natural philosophy, and mathematics, and completed by sections on philosophy proper and the philosophy of religion, pedagogy, grammar, and further miscellanea. The polyglot encyclopedic library, organized into sections according to the physical parameters of the books, as well as language, comprised also a section of periodicals, mostly in German, French, and Hungarian. Most comprehensive are by far the segments pertaining to the sciences of the state, comprising titles in history, but also a significant number in law, then politics, geography, political economics (the latter bearing the title ‘national economy’), Staatenkunde, travel literature, and ethnography. An additional criterion of selection was whether the object of the (historical, legal, geographical, statistical, and economic) treatises was the ‘patria,’ yielding separate sections in Hungarian and other languages, mostly Latin and German. The library reflects well the educational premises and broad curiosity of a generation of Transylvanian gentlemen whose intellectual coming of age corresponded with the Napoleonic wars. The scholarly foundation in law is clearly of Göttingen and Vienna bent, while the works in history (most of them also published in Göttingen) encompass the entire world. This is reflected by a significant number of travel and state descriptions, including regions far beyond Europe, from Guyana to Persia, and China to North America. The historical and legal works written in Hungarian focus on the ruling dynasties and estates of the Hungarian Kingdom and Transylvania. Items of Transylvanian Saxon scholarship were represented above all by the publications coordinated together with Johann Karl Schuller, including the periodicals Archiv zur Kenntnis von Siebenbürgens Vorzeit und Gegenwart63 and Transylvania. The first volume of the major publication by Schuller, Umrisse und kritische Studien zur Geschichte von Siebenbürgen: mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Geschichte der deutschen Colonisten im Lande,64 though not the second one published by the Landeskundeverein in 1851, figured in the catalogue too. In view of the richness of literature concerning the German states and the Habsburg capital Vienna, the record on Saxon scholarship is surprisingly meager. The library illustrates well the polymath concept of scholarship; such a concept of honismeret had been in fact forwarded by Aranka at the end of the eighteenth century. The same approach to domestic scholarship integrated into a European context and completed by the farther, more exotic fringes of the world was reflected in the collections of the Hungarian National Museum 63  Ibid., 99. 64  See fn. 21.

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in Pest and advanced by the Kemény cousins too. The separate collection of works in Hungarian indicate the importance of education and scholarship in the vernacular. Furthermore, the catalog embraced both Transylvanian and Hungarian topics, written in the vernacular, indicating the geographical and cultural focus of the collection. The legal, historical, and statistical literature of Transylvania and Hungary found its complementary stock of knowledge in the treatises on other countries, the latter constituting the generic category of ‘abroad.’ The library’s profile aids in understanding further the scholarly logic of honismeret. The mapping of the provincial microcosm proceeded methodologically in the same way as exploring the wide world abroad. This activity could not be but synthetic, based on the concerted deployment of a large variety of disciplines. The setup of Kemény’s private library also exemplifies the anchoring of honismeret and Landeskunde into the encyclopedic scholarly model of the Enlightenment, which by that time witnessed its eclipse in Germany and its replacement by historicist approaches to the nation as a culturally coherent community with a common descent. However, pursuing a national focus amidst contemporary Habsburg cultural policies carried serious risks, especially in regard to the envisaged support of the state. The proposal of the museum found immediate support in the diet in the person of Count János Bethlen and János Fogarasi (the latter a deputy of Vízakna), János Gál (deputy of Küküllő), Károly Szász, professor of law at Nagyenyed, Count János Bethlen Jr., János Mikes, József Zeyk, Ferencz Bürger, and Gusztáv Grois. The donations were announced publicly. It is telling that while the central committee referred to the museum as országos (territorial) in the sense of ‘Transylvanian,’ the donors mentioned a nemzeti (national), that is, ‘Hungarian,’ institution.65 Later projects became more extravagant and demanded more state backing: the budget prepared by the committee already presented the considerable sum of 200,000 florins only for its maintenance (while the yearly income of the provincial governor in 1786 was 18,000 florins), in accordance with the ­prestige and grandeur expected from such an institution. As a result of Saxon opposition to the proposal, the ‘national’ adjective was dropped, and the committee chose the more neutral ‘Museum Ferdinandeum,’ which was, perhaps, a clumsy attempt to distract from the emphasis on Hungarian culture and pacify their compatriots. But the plan for the museum and theater met with considerable opposition from the Hungarian conservatives as well. Untouched by the progressive rhetoric on national Bildung and the public sphere, the conservative Miklós Cserey viewed the project as an 65  Jegyző-Könyv, 330–702.

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unnecessary luxury, while Károly Fosztó and József Pap, Sándor Bagosi, and Antal Báternay, deputies of Kővár, Kraszna, and Zaránd counties, respectively, pointed out the limited resources of the government and the potential emerging administrative problems. The strongest resistance however came from the Saxon deputies: despite considerable Hungarian pressure and lowered costs, they declined to participate in a project considered to be an exclusively Hungarian business. Deputy Simon Schreiber opposed the very idea of a statesupported Hungarian institution by pointing to the voluntary nature of similar Saxon establishments, thriving without state intervention. Schreiber invoked the power of public opinion to justify Saxon opposition to the proposed museum’s designation as a representative Transylvanian institution. The alleged country-wide reach of the museum was false, he contended, and therefore the ‘Saxon nation’ opposed it, not out of blind particularism or retrograde isolation but as a defense of their own interests: “those who consider our agriculture, primary schools, our art and commerce, will not deny that our forbearers had made progress, and the present generation has done more than [any one] in other parts of the country.”66 What made the Hungarian initiatives unjust, so the criticism went, was forcing other ‘nations’ to help create national public institutions that the Saxons had achieved already through their own civic effort. Schreiber’s protest, seconded by all Saxon deputies, did not stop the work of the committee, and the planning continued. On 9 January 1843, the finalized draft law, considerably sleeker than its original version, was presented to the plenum for a vote. After another round of negotiations, the Saxon deputies attached their dissenting opinion to the resolution voted for by the Hungarian majority, and the plan was ready for authorization by the Chancellery. The museum never received an official answer from the Gubernium, however. The diet discussed the resolution again during the 1846–1847 session, with no more success. The press, and especially the progressive-nationalist Erdélyi Hiradó (Transylvanian Gazette) from Kolozsvár, followed the dispute with an interest bordering on hysteria. Almost all January 1843 issues contained articles such as “Fight and War in the Diet Hall,” “Armistice among the Two Nations,” “Separate Opinion Issued by the Deputies of Saxon Authorities against the Museum, Theater, and the National Hall,” and “Saxon Movements: Our Attitude.”67 One can sense how national cultural politics broke through the barriers of censorship and became a matter of public debate. That debate led to an open 66  Ibid., 560–564. 67  Erdélyi Hiradó, no. 5 (17 January 1843), 27; no. 6 (20 January 1843), 33–34, 37–38; and no. 7 (31 January 1843).

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confrontation between Hiradó and Siebenbürger Wochenblatt, aggravated by dissent over Hungarian language politics and the emergence of another national political issue: the petition of the Romanians of Königsboden for equal rights.68 The conflicting parties instrumentalized the Romanian case to cast one another as nationalist tyrants and themselves as martyrs of political fairness. Széchenyi’s famous work, A’ magyar Academia körül (Speech on the Academy), which warned Hungarians about the exaggerations of nationalist fervor, was published in full or reviewed in nearly every Transylvanian paper, but came too late to pacify the opponents.69

Learned Sociability and Projects of National Improvement

Voluntary associations and the press, the classic constituents of the ‘public sphere,’70 had an important role in the formation of the middle class in nineteenth century Hungary and Transylvania.71 Associations and social clubs 68  The petitioners demanded proportional representation in public offices, electoral rights, the right to select jurors, mining rights, a share of public support for Romanian students and the clergy, guild participation, a share of the common arable land for newly married Romanians, and equal shares of common lands, pastures, and forests (Jegyző-Könyv, 179). 69  István Széchenyi, A’ magyar Academia körül [Speech on the Academy] (Pest: Trattner, 1842). 70  The Habermasian ideal of the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ was subject to substantial criticism in the 1990s while establishing itself as a solid social category. In my study too, the expression indicates the fuzzy zone between the state and the private realm, a space of sociability and exchange for the ‘middling sort,’ with a relatively high level of education and sufficient property to afford participation. Jürgen Habermas, “Author’s Preface,” in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), xvii–xix, xvii; James Van Horn Melton, “Introduction: What is the Public Sphere?,” in The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001), 1–15; Geoff Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 288–399; Thomas Munck, “The Public Sphere,” in The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721–1794 (London: Arnold, 2001), 14–17. 71  András Arató, Civil társadalom, forradalom és alkotmány [Civil society, revolution, and constitution] (Budapest: Új Mandátum Kiadó, 1999); István Fenyő, “A hazai liberalizmus forrásvidékeiről” [From the origins of Hungarian liberalism], Kortárs: irodalmi és kritikai folyóirat 37, no. 3 (1993): 99–102; Károly Halmos, “Magyarországi polgárosodás. Tallózás az 1988–1992 közötti történeti irodalomban” [Hungarian civil society: Browsing the historical literature of 1988–1992], Aetas: Történettudományi folyóirat 3 (1994): 95–154; Gábor Gyáni and György Kövér, Magyarország tárdadalomtörténete a reformkortól a második

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were public spaces with expected norms of social exchange and formal rules that included discussing and voting about matters of common concern and preparing a budget. They were “any free, formal combination of individuals established independently of the state for joint purposes other than earning a livelihood.”72 These sites of sociability brought on the intermingling of the affluent and the educated of noble and non-noble background, forming a new elite, including mostly university professors, high-status officials, and pastors (professions tied more closely to the state), which was a pattern particularly fitting the Transylvanian Saxon milieus.73 Transylvania witnessed a burgeoning association landscape in the 1830s.74 Other provinces in the eastern Habsburg Empire also displayed signs of ‘clubbism,’ especially after state control weakened following the death of Emperor Francis I. The general model was to be implemented amidst the specific regional sociopolitical circumstances, characterized by Thomas Munck in világháborúig [The social history of Hungary from the Age of Reform to World War II] (Budapest: Osiris, 1998); Árpád Tóth, “A társadalmi szerveződés rendi és polgári normái. A Pesti Jótékony Nőegylet fennállásának első korszaka” [The feudal and bourgeois norms of social organization: The first era of the Women’s Charity Association in Pest], FONS: Forráskutatás és történeti segédtudományok 5, no. 4 (1998): 411–479; Sándor Bősze, “Az egyesületi élet a polgári szabadság . . .” Somogy megye egyesületei a dualizmus korában [“Associational life and civic freedom . . .” Associations in Somogy County in the dualist era] (Kaposvár: Somogy Megyei Levéltár, 1997); Gábor Gyáni, “ ‘Civil társadalom’ kontra liberális állam a XIX. század végén” [“Civil society” versus the liberal state at the end of the 19th century], Századvég 1 (1991): 145–155. 72  I use the ‘classic’ definition of Georg Iggers as applied also by Gary B. Cohen. Georg Iggers, “The Political Theory of Voluntary Associations in Early Nineteenth-Century Liberal Thought,” in Voluntary Associations: A Study of Groups in Free Societies, ed. D. B. Robertson (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1966); Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1981); Thomas Nipperday, “Verein als soziale Struktur im späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert,” in Gesellschaft, Kultur, Theorie. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur neueren Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), 174–205; Lothar Gall, ed., Von der ständischen zur bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993), 67–71, esp. 67. 73  Eley, “Nations,” 298; Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michagan Press, 1996); Van Horn Melton, “Introduction,” 11. 74  Farkas Sándor Bölöni, Bölöni Farkas Sándor naplója [The diary of Farkas Sándor Bölöni], ed. Elemér Jancsó (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1971), 40–41; Eduard Albert Bielz, Handbuch der Landeskunde Siebenbürgens (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996), 232–235; Gábor Pajkossy, Polgári átalakulás és nyilvánosság a magyar reformkorban [The formation of civil society and the public sphere in the Hungarian Age of Reform] (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1991).

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regard to northwestern Europe as “restraints of tradition, state-backed religious conservatism, far lower literacy rates, persistence of censorship controls abandoned or unenforceable in the northwest, [and the] absence of explosive economic growth, which loosened social barriers, facilitated consumer spending, raised expectations, and spawned genuine liberalization in northwestern Europe in the century before the French Revolution,”—all aspects applying to Transylvania, only later.75 For all the hindrances, the educated and wealthy urban population, aristocratic or not, indulged itself with the pleasures of sociability and cultural uplift.76 At the end of the eighteenth century, the informal gatherings around the noted Freemasons, like Samuel von Brukenthal, or György Aranka, were yet exclusive networks for the select few. Similarly, their works had a narrow range of circulation. This would change by the 1830s as intellectual exchange expanded and became more formalized. The newly emerging public and the forming societies and associations were the medium of műveltség/Bildung (self-formation). Count István Széchenyi (1791–1860), the first and most influential advocate of associations, considered them the pillars of cultural and moral elevation not only for the individual but for the ‘whole nation.’ Associations were to galvanize exchange between persons and nations (especially those serving ‘pure’ intellectual purposes such as the Casinos).77 As many of his contemporaries in Europe, he considered larger towns to be the most favorable scene for this exchange, fostering “contact with other nations” and transgressing social and political boundaries between people. Associations were to bring the famous eszmesúrlodás (emulation), the fight against “provincial boredom,” “spying, fault-finding,” and “calumny.” They sharpened the intellect, and thus contributed to civilizational progress. This explains the diary notes from 25 January 1835 of Farkas Sándor Bölöni (1795–1842), Unitarian Székely nobleman and government functionary in Kolozsvár, complaining of the opposite:

75  Munck, “Preface,” in The Enlightenment, vii–xii, esp. ix–x. 76  See Philip Nord, “Introduction,” in Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from NineteenthCentury Europe, ed. Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), xiii–xxxiii, xvi. According to the Saxon periodical Siebenbürger Volksfreund, the trade associations attracted only well-to-do, “wohlhabenderen Bürger.” Ernst Weisenfeld, Die Geschichte der politischen Publizistik bei den Siebenbürger Sachsen (Limburg an der Lahn, 1938), 58. 77  István Széchenyi, Világ. Vagy is felvilágosító töredékek némi hiba s előítélet eligazítására [World. That is, fragments of enlightenment to remedy some mistakes and prejudices] (Pest: Landerer, 1831), in Széchenyi István, ed. Gergely András (Budapest: Új Mandátum Kiadó, 1998), 47–52. Széchenyi himself initiated several prestigious societies.

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Yesterday we had the Casino assembly. In the function of commissioner, Gyergyai and I had proposed some bills, and these were now accepted. But many of them came to be eliminated, exactly those addressing the maintenance of the Casino, the consolidation of its funds, and its uplifting from deprivation. Most Hungarian noblemen have a terribly false notion of freedom. They cannot get into their heads that philosophy of law that our freedom is secured only if we oblige ourselves not to harm the freedom of others. The Hungarian considers every legal bond in his social relations an insult to his freedom, and because his laws do not oblige him to spend money for the public, in virtue of this legal injustice, he does not easily pay for public institutions either. He finds the very principle of thriftiness disgraceful, he wants to be magnanimous, but he does not like to pay. He wants to be free everywhere, because he is a free nobleman, and he injures the freedom of his fellows at every step. He demands a civil, splendid, protective society, but he behaves like a rogue and only obscenities are the object of his speech. It made me sad, the quarrel of these liberal despots, these pretentious poor and free rascals.78 One can hardly find another man with a greater civic zeal in contemporary Transylvanian Hungarian urban society.79 He was the initiator of the first (Hungarian) credit association (1825), the National Casino in Kolozsvár (1833), and an attached fencing school. He wrote a highly successful travel journal, praising Western European liberalism and American democracy, which earned him membership in the Hungarian Learned Society in Pest. Bölöni edited Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday Magazine), a penny magazine to inform and educate the poor, and redrafted the old plans of a Transylvanian learned society into a national museum. He was a typical reformer, imbued with national feelings. We do not know exactly to what extent contemporary Transylvanian mores were lagging behind his liberal mindset and expected code of civility. For a less

78  Bölöni, Bölöni Farkas Sándor naplója, 40–41. 79  Alexander Farkas Bölöni, Journey in North America, trans. and ed. Theodore and Helen Benedek Schoeneman (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1977). The Journey described in detail the democratic administration and legislation in England, France, and North America, which served as an implicit criticism of the conservative centralizing government. Published in several editions, it was widely read by enthusiasts of democracy independent of nationality. See G. E. Marica, I. Hajos, and C. Mare, Ideologia generaţiei române de la 1848 în Transilvania [The ideology of the Transylvanian Romanian generation of 1848] (Bucharest: Editura Politica, 1968), 42.

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demanding historian, the passage reveals the existence of urban social spaces (such as the National Casino) in the 1830s, where the local nobility socialized. If “from Boston to Saint Petersburg” there was a shared belief that sociability led to “mutual improvement, for increasing our knowledge and mending our heart,”80 such plans for improvement were present in the Hungarian and Transylvanian Age of Reform as well; indeed, they were an integral part of the modernization program. In contemporary Hungarian liberal usage, polgári/ civil society meant opposition to the traditional order, which was perceived to be governed by ‘barbaric’ feudal distinctions, that is, sharp differentiation among the estates and between the privileged and the serfs living in bondage, and discrimination between religions and languages. The word ‘polgári’ also connoted an aim to replace heterogeneous and fragmented legislation with a unitary law applicable to everyone, as well as the eventual creation of an educated and politically empowered citizenry in the framework of a Hungarian nation-state that incorporated Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia.81 The members of the mostly German- and Hungarian-speaking associations in the Transylvanian Age of Reform were of mixed social background. Like in Hungary, these were created by the diet-attending nobility, supported by aristocrats, and joined by intellectuals of less prestigious or even common origins, especially lawyers, professors, and clergy. What the historian Robert Nemes maintains for Hungary applies to Transylvania as well: “The associations brought together movers and shakers, men joined not so much by a common lifestyle and economic interests as by common patriotism and, to a lesser degree, similar political views. Patriotism and politics, more than socioeconomic interests, lay behind the Hungarian reform movement and the emer-

80  Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, “Democracy and Associations in the Long Nineteenth Century: Toward a Transnational Perspective,” Journal of Modern History 75, no. 2 (2003): 269–299, esp. 275–276; Hoffmann, Die Politik der Geselligkeit. Freimauerlogen in der deutschen Bürgergesellschaft, 1840–1918 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000); Hoffmann, Geselligkeit und Demokratie. Vereine und zivile Gesellschaft im transnationalen Vergleich 1750–1914, vol. 1, Synthesen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003). 81  László Péter, “Volt-e magyar társadalom a XIX. században? A jogrend és a civil társadalom képződése” [Was there a Hungarian society in the 19th century? The order of law and the formation of the civil society], in Az Elbától keletre. Tanulmányok a magyar és keleteurópai történelemből [East of the Elba: Studies in Hungarian and East European history] (Budapest: Oriris, 1998), 148–186, esp. 156–158; András Gergely and János Veliky, “A politikai közvélemény fogalma Magyarországon a XIX. század közepén” [The concept of political public opinion in Hungary in the mid-19th century], Magyar történelmi tanulmányok, no. 7 (1974), 5–42.

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gence of civil society.”82 These findings are not surprising if one considers that, in both Hungary and Transylvania, the sizeable nobility—about 5 percent of the population—and not the meager bourgeoisie was the chief motor of liberal reforms.83 The social background of the Saxon network was closer to the German pattern, with its university-educated professionals, state employees, and middle-class urbanites. Although on a smaller scale and with more delay, in Transylvania too, urban life provided the “basic lubricant of civic activity”— an activity that was motivated by the regional or national identification and the affiliation with the local elite that had come to encompass all of Europe by the middle of the nineteenth century.84 The laments of Bölöni about the Casino of Kolozsvár also illustrate the intricate interconnection of language, education, and public spirit by the 1830s. Without them sociability was considered no more than a ridiculous formality. On the other hand, universalist aspirations were translated into national terms, and ‘national progress’ became the primary concern for improvement and sociability. The language of nationality permeated not only politics but became both the motor and dividing wedge of civil society itself. Transylvanian Hungarian ‘associationists’ hoped for a similarly beneficial impact of the Casino in Kolozsvár as a “public association of the Nation.” They expressed their liberal belief that “the Casino will be the assembly of people from all the classes of the Nation . . . of different ranks, vocations, occupations,” contribute to “the better development of thoughts and sentiments towards the Nation,” and also to the “easier unification and spread of the national public spirit.”85 Public spirit and public good, education and moral improvement—these were the catchphrases of the contemporary Hungarian and Saxon Vereinsmeier. How did this combine with the sociocultural background of the contemporary Transylvanian towns? As suggested earlier, the first half of the nineteenth century is a period of consolidation; it was the educated and wealthy urban population, aristocratic or not, who could afford the pleasures of sociability

82  On Hungarian civic self-organization in Hungary, see Nemes, “Associations and Civil Society,” esp. 35. 83  András Gergely, “Der ungarische Adel und der Liberalismus im Vormärz,” in Liberalismus im 19 Jahrhundert, ed. Dieter Langewiesche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 458–483. 84  Nord, “Introduction,” in Civil Society, xiv–xx. 85  “A Kolozsvári Casino vezetősége Gróf Kemény Józsefhez” [The board of the Kolozsvár Casino to Count József Kemény], 25 December 1832, ANC, Fond 594, Colecţia personalǎ József Kemény, 594.

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and cultural uplift.86 A look at the associational landscape of two of the largest towns of the 1840s, Kolozsvár, which had hosted the diets and the residence of the governing council since 1790,87 and Hermannstadt,88 the previous political center, is telling. The social selectivity is evident in both cases, where before the revolution, the founders of associations emerged from the cultural and social elite. In Hermannstadt, on the one hand, there was a preponderance of voluntary associations founded by state functionaries, teachers, professors, and pastors, and those active in trade, music, education, banking, and agriculture. The same types of associations emerged in Kolozsvár, too, with a small but significant difference. The National Casino was established separately from the Burghers’ Casino, and other nobility-based voluntary associations, such as the fencing school and a women’s charity association, suggest a social distance between the town’s patricians and the diet-attending nobility that the associations did not overcome.89 No formal Romanian voluntary associations have been identified from this period, which could be partly a consequence of the relative social obscurity of town-dwelling Romanians at that time. Their elites gathered around the church or formed informal circles, as did the merchants from Kronstadt, the patrons of Gazeta de Transilvania (Transylvanian Gazette) and Foaie pentru minte, inimǎ şi literaturǎ (Journal for the Mind, Heart, and Literature).90 Although Romanians could not participate in politics at the national level, they could increasingly gain access to the army and public administration, or

86  See Nord, “Introduction,” in Civil Society, xvi. According to the calendar Siebenbürger Volksfreund [Transylvanian friend of people], the trade associations gathered only the “better off burghers”; cited in Weisenfeld, Die Geschichte der politischen Publizistik, 58. 87  The total population of the town in 1857 was 20,615. Hungarians amounted to 65%, Romanians 18.4%, Germans 8.5%, and others 8.1%. Gábor Sonkoly, Erdély városai a XVIII–XIX. században [The towns of Transylvania in the 18th–19th centuries] (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2001), 257. 88  Hermannstadt’s population in 1857 amounted to 18,588 inhabitants; Germans comprised 68.8%, Romanians 16.4%, Hungarians 7.3%, and others 7.5%. See ibid. 89  The acknowledgement of social exclusion practiced by voluntary association has been widely acknowledged in recent literature. For a few examples, see Nord, “Introduction,” in Civil Society, passim; Craig Calhoun, “Introduction,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, 1–48, 13; Nemes, “Associations and Civil Society,” 34–39, etc. 90  This circle also supported plans for a prospective Romanian academy and a literary society in the neighboring Romanian principality of Muntenia. See Marica, Hajós, and Mare, Ideologia generaţiei române, 26–29.

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become ­lawyers. Jewish associations, on the other hand, were already present during the Age of Reform, such as one in Gyulafehérvár.91 The socially exclusive associations were the meeting place of the intellectual elite and liberal reformers, as was the case of the National Casino in Kolozsvár and the Gewerbeverein (Trade Association) in Kronstadt. The Gewerbeverein campaigned against the “obsolete and stifling” monopoly of guilds and demanded trade liberalization, but it also engaged in educational activities, establishing a library, art gallery, and courses for trade employees, among other things.92 It was founded by Johann Gött (1810–1888), cultural entrepreneur, journalist, as well as associate and friend of Count Kemény. Gött’s Gewerbeverein was an exceptional group in contemporary Transylvanian society, attracting a significant part of the liberal opposition of any national appurtenance. An outspokenly liberal businessman, Gött’s publishing house printed the most progressive newspapers and magazines in German, Hungarian, and Romanian editions. By 1848, there existed about 20 reading associations or casinos for men and women in Transylvanian towns.93 The early associations of the Age of Reform assumed cultural and philanthropic functions; the casinos and the trade associations in particular supported newspapers and public libraries. They were sites of socialization and centers for philanthropic activities for progressive urban elites. Despite the social exclusivity, by the 1830s intellectual exchange was expanding in comparison to previous decades. The newly emerging societies, the press, and the book market were the sites of műveltség/Bildung (self-­improvement) in the vernacular languages. They constituted the “arenas of cultural practices” where “Bildung and sociability [was] a path to the moral improvement of the individual human being and thus of humanity as a whole.”94 Not only in the German states, but also in the eastern half of the Austrian monarchy, the neohumanist ideal of self-formation accompanied the process and projects of social modernization; in both places, Bildung was the marker of the autonomous citizen, freed from feudal bondage. These norms were well understood by the Transylvanian reformers, who set out to preach its gospel. A letter 91  Jegyző-Könyv, 538–539. 92  Bielz, Handbuch der Landeskunde, 234–235. 93  The latter included a 320-member club in Hermannstadt, two Casinos and a women’s reading association in Kolozsvár, a casino and a reading association for ladies in Torda, two Casinos in Schäßburg, and other groups in smaller towns such as Mühlbach, Broos, Sächsisch-Regen, Deva, Dej, Szilágysomlyó, Tasnád, Zilah, Nocrich, Marpod, Reps, and Fogaras. Ibid., 237. 94  Hoffmann, Geselligkeit und Demokratie, 27.

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addressed to Count József Kemény praised exactly this type of communicative sociability: Associate! This is the watchword of our age. Associations create and maintain all those things that single forces attempt in vain. Associations are most successful in putting forward the common good. The warmhearted patriot associates enthusiastically for the bliss of his country. It was for this aim that the Casino Society of Kolozsvár was established in 1833 . . . whose splendid fruits are already ripening: improved sociability, the merging of different ranks, the founding of Vasárnapi Újság [Sunday Magazine] for popular education, and especially the conspicuous growth of the reading public.95 The reception of the idea and practice of Bildung shaped contemporary concepts about regional scholarship. The emerging public was the echo chamber of discussions about the modernization of ‘national’ education. These debates sought the modalities to create the intellectual and moral assets of the individual, in his quality “as a man, as a citizen and as a family father.”96 Proper education was a “patriotic duty” and also “the only path for national regeneration.”97 The gymnasium and higher learning played a key role in this process, and the norm was the Prussian school reform. Saxon intellectuals argued that gymnasium professors had to be familiar with the modern curricula, the latter planned to introduce new disciplines, such as psychology and pedagogy, as well as new methods in the teaching of history and philosophy. The author of the article, “Reflections about the higher schools of the Saxons in Transylvania,” underlined the importance of the mother tongue, not simply as a tool for reproducing memorized data but as the “purest product” of the creative spirit, whose teaching was the best means to develop the human mind. Furthermore, a balanced education of the youth also required knowledge of the “outer world,” nature (natural history and natural science), the history 95  “A Kolozsvári Casino vezetősége Gróf Kemény Józsefhez” [The presidency of the Casino of Kolozsvár to Count József Kemény], 1 April 1836, ANC, Fond 594, Colecţia personalǎ József Kemény, 474. 96  The articles reflect the Europe-wide consensus that only men qualify as citizens, and therefore were the chief beneficiaries of the educational reform. Women were considered worthy of education in regard to their classical place in the family: mothers and spouses of (prospective) citizens. See: L. Hüttenmayr, “Andeutungen zu nothwendigen Reformen in unserem Volkschulwesen,” Blätter, no. 5 (1 February 1841): 33–36. 97  “Reflexionen über die höheren Lehranstalten im Lande der Sachsen in Siebenbürgen,” Blätter, no. 34 (20 August 1840): 269–272, 269.

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of mankind, and the fatherland.98 The history of the Saxon people was to be taught as part of the history of Transylvania, the latter providing the ‘general’ framework of the national history of the Transylvanian Saxons. It is understandable thus that public discussion and civic effort were crucial motors of scholarship in a period when the central authorities displayed a striking passivity when it came to supporting higher learning and scholarly institutions in the province. Indeed, before turning into a forum to “compel public authority to legitimate itself before public opinion,” the press discussed matters of education and self-improvement at length. It assumed the task of informing, enlightening, and civilizing by providing information that, according to contemporary understanding, an educated citizen had to know. While this necessary knowledge did include the abstract disciplines of science and philosophy, the focus was on the more mundane Landeskunde, the exploration of the Transylvanian fatherland. This dynamic pressed its stamp on the emerging Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, which carried the traits of contemporary associationism. These included the ideal of stated social openness and the tendency toward social exclusivity, the oscillation between a highbrow academic profile and popular pedagogic engagement, and the aspiration to all-encompassing knowledge on the region’s diversity while in practice focusing on the cultural advancement of the ‘nation.’ Initially, the newspapers’ cultural/literary supplements provided “useful and amusing” information about diverse topics from Transylvania and abroad. These publications attempted to present a harmonious picture of Transylvanian life. Until the end of the 1830s, the tone was rather nonpolemic, stressing the unity and not the discrepancies in the ethnopolitical complexities of the province. Even controversial subjects on Transylvanian history were discussed in a moderate tone. The content and style of these publications echoed the patriotism of Austrian periodicals such as the Taschenbuch für vaterländische Geschichte, the Vaterländische Blätter für den österreichischen Kaiserstaat in der Kaiserstadt, or its popularized version, the Pfennig Magazin.99 Unterhaltungsblatt für Geist, Geschichte und Publizität,100 for instance, announced in its first issue that the 98  Ibid. 99  See Ilona T. Erdélyi, Politikai restauráció és irodalmi újjászületés: értékek és eszmények a reformkor hajnalán [Political restoration and literary revival: Values and ideals at the dawn of the Age of Reform] (Budapest: Balassi, 1998), 63; Weisenfeld, Die Geschichte der politischen Publizistik, 33. 100  The supplement of the Siebenbürgische Wochenblatt (Kronstadt, 1837–1838) was printed and edited by Johann Gött and W. Németh and was the predecessor of the liberal Blätter für Geist, Gemüth und Vaterlandeskunde.

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editors wished to provide the “diligent citizen” (that is, the average person with no professional training) the “necessary teaching” to enhance the “love of the fatherland.”101 Analyzing the tables of contents of Nemzeti Társalkodó (National Conversant, 1830–1844), the literary supplement of the largest Transylvanian Hungarian newspaper, Erdélyi Hiradó (Transylvanian Messenger), one can identify the typical subjects of contemporary educated conversation. Along with columns of news, information on international trade and industry, and announcements on associations and public institutions in Transylvania and abroad, they published writings on Transylvanian geography, statistics, history, and on archeological finds from Roman and pre-Roman times. They also informed their readers about new publications in these fields. A recurrent theme was the ‘traveling at home’ genre, that is, short and possibly entertaining descriptions of a locality with geographic, topographic, statistical, and historical data for reasons of ‘self-perfection,’ since, to be a useful patriot, “one had to know his patria” and the ‘nations’ that lived there.102 There was an underlying ambiguity in these patriotic statements. Besides the polite nod to Transylvanian diversity, the actual interest of the authors carved out distinctive entities from the Transylvanian cultural conglomerate. Hungarian, Saxon, and Romanian journals were not supranational. They often emphasized the mother tongue, its importance as a medium of communication, and its potential to create national publics. The journals aimed at supplying their audiences with writings in the vernacular about the past and present, the language and history of their respective ‘nation.’ The emphasis on encyclopedic knowledge yielded to the de facto inquiry about the linguistic community. This focus can be seen in the same article from the Blätter, which stressed ‘the love of fatherland’ in general, and then specified a few lines further down its own understanding of the audience in terms of the linguistic community: “The reading public reaches as far as the language, that is, far beyond the sphere of scholars and far beyond the borders of the country . . . [Common] literature unites the Germans with Germany, the Hungarians with the Hungarian Kingdom, and the Wallachs with their linguistic kin.”103 Compared to earlier references to the related countries, the national rhetoric grew richer in meaning. Cultural belonging united not those within the political border, but rather the ethnonational and ethnoreligious confreres, 101  Cited by Weisenfeld, Die Geschichte der politischen Publizistik, 33. 102  Ferencz Nagy, “Egy szó a hazábani utazásról” [One word about traveling in the patria], Nemzeti Társalkodó, no. 1 (2 January 1838): 41–46, esp. 44. 103  “Andeutungen zu nothwendigen Reformen in unserem Volkschulwesen,” Blätter, no. 6 (8 February 1841): 42–45.

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and directed the attention of provincial intellectuals to the rapidly developing cultural centers outside Transylvania. Indeed, the Társalkodó, which recommended for Transylvanians the emulation of Hungarian polite sociability as early as in 1830, insisted one decade later on the organic national link between the two cultures: “It is fair and justified that the center of our national and literary life should be Budapest; but for the perfect unfolding of the whole life it is necessary that ever more smaller centers be created on the territory of the country; so can the life of the national body come to the fore, with all its characteristics and sides.”104 Creating loyal citizens via education was also the stated purpose of the Romanian Foaie pentru minte, inimǎ şi literaturǎ (Journal for the Mind, Heart, and Literature, echoing the title of the Blätter), the literary supplement of the Transylvanian Romanian newspaper, Gazeta de Transilvania (Transylvanian Gazette). Especially in the late 1830s, it published biographies, writings, and maxims of the two ‘enlightened monarchs,’ Joseph II and Frederick II. In Foaie, George Bariţ (1812–1893), editor and chief contributor of the paper until 1849, defined the Romanian nation in a similar manner, emphasizing a common language—“the sacred wealth and property of the nation”—and the bond between its components separated by political borders: “the deepest physiognomies of humanity separated by climate and other circumstances.”105 Contemporary Romanian approaches to education and improvement were, in the light of earlier research, more strongly related to the church than those of their Hungarian and Saxon counterparts. Accordingly, Romanian reformers created an individualized ‘spiritualized Christianism,’ which allowed for detachment from religious institutions, but not for secularization.106 Recent studies on the Romanian national movement, in general,107 and on Foaie, in

104  “Kolozsvári Napló,” Erdélyi Hiradó, no. 14 (17 February 1843). 105  Foaie pentru minte, inimǎ şi literaturǎ, no. 25 (1840), cited in Paul Cornea, Originile romantismului românesc. Spiritul public, mişcarea ideilor şi literatura între 1780–1840 [The origins of the Romanian romantic movement. Public spirit, the movement of ideas, and literature, 1780–18401] (Bucharest: Minerva, 1972), 468. 106  Marica, Hajós, and Mare, Ideologia generaţiei române, 54–55, 66–68. 107  Alex Drace-Francis, The Making of Modern Romanian Culture: Literacy and the Development of National Identity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006); Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček, eds., Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europa (1770–1945), vol. 2, National Romanticism—The Formation of National Movements (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007); Ahmet Ersoy et al., eds., Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europa (1770–1945), vol. 3, pt. 1, Modernism—The Creation of Nation States, and vol. 3, pt. 2, Modernism—Representations of National Culture (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010).

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particular,108 create a much more progressive and up-to-date image of a specific brand of liberal cultural-political agenda, in which the journal played a prominent role until the Revolution of 1848. This project was in many ways similar to and entangled with the Hungarian liberal agenda, especially concerning the positing of a Romanian cultural space, which transcended the political borders and united Transylvania with the two neighboring Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Concerning its political stake, the Romanian project was comparable to the Saxon one inasmuch as its territorial scope involved Transylvania only and distanced itself from the Hungarian political union. George Bariţ and his closest associates formulated a radical politics of cultural identity. It was envisaged as robust enough to resist assimilation to Hungarian culture. Furthermore, Bariţ favored the institutionalization of national corporations based on ethnic belonging (in contrast to participating in a potentially polyglot local politics) and the maintenance of cultural ties with trans-border Romanians. Romanian and Saxon politics thus shaped stances in opposition to the main tenet of Hungarian liberalism, since the latter envisaged from the 1830s onwards the union of Transylvania with Hungary under Hungarian leadership. Opposing such dominance, the shaping Saxon and Romanian national politics relied on support from Vienna and a claimed separate political status for the province. This was what they saw as the guarantee for the maintenance of an ethnic balance in the province, which would be jeopardized by the diametrically opposed Hungarian state-building.109 The ethnic dissonances turned into ethnic tensions in the politics of the 1840s. Hungarian political liberalism in this decade exposed various stances, yet all of them had adhered to ‘Magyarization,’ or the cultural dominance of Hungarians in the process of state-building. Such a co-opting of the ‘nationalities’ that would not tolerate an ethnoculturally heterogeneous polity made the Hungarian project unacceptable for Saxon and Romanian nationalists.110 George Bariț accepted the liberal program of the social emancipation of serfs, affecting a large part of the Romanian population, while discarding the agenda of forced assimilation. This drew him closer to the more moderate stream of Hungarian aristocratic liberalism, which remained loyal throughout to the 108   Kinga-Koretta Sata, “The People Incorporated: Constructions of the Nation in Transylvanian Romanian Liberalism, 1838–1848,” in We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, ed. Diana Mishkova (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009), 79–105, 81. 109  Ibid., 93–98. 110  Ibid., 85.

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imperial house, like Count Imre Mikó (1805–1876) or Bedeus, an aspect also characteristic for most Transylvanian Romanian politicians.111 The political conception of nation, according to Bariț, involved the entitlement to autonomous (or at least semi-independent) political existence. He emphasized the need for guaranteeing the corporative rights of the Romanian nation in the Transylvanian ‘constitution.’ This idea of being ‘incorporated’ into the Transylvanian constitution has been characterized as an enduring characteristic of the modern Romanian national discourse.112 On the other hand, the two Danubian principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia—desirous of independent status from the Ottoman Empire and unity—acted as “strong magnets for the Romanians in Transylvania” in cultural terms.113 An explicitly formulated demand for cultural progress intended to reach the level of the more advanced and more developed external centers of culture, whose attraction started to outweigh the intra-Transylvanian focus by the 1840s.114 The advocates of progress legitimized their projects by diagnosing their own backwardness vis-à-vis these centers. For instance, when talking about modernizing education, one of the most important issues of the period, self-comparison to ‘our German brothers,’ cast Saxons as inferior, and the introduction of German curricula and educational methods, as well as socialization in the German states, as desirable: “Whom should we take as an example? Are we not Germans with a responsive spirit and mind? Are we not Germans, whose pious and deep spirit, whose inquisitive mind, and the result of both, the restless striving for Bildung, has to be acknowledged? . . . In education should we stand behind our German brothers as many years as the distance separating us from them?”115 Some went even further, contending that imitation was not enough; Saxon culture should dissolve ‘naturally’ into the larger German unit: “The Saxon’s nationality will solidify only if it dissolves within the German [nationality], if our national life engendering our language, constitution, mores, and intellectual, technical, as well as religious education joins our glorious core nation, becoming one of its branches.” This was, a­ ccording

111  Ibid. 112  Ibid., 95. 113  Ibid., 98. 114  Marica, Hajós, and Mare, Ideologia generaţiei române, 47; László Makkai, András Mócsy, and Zoltán Szász, eds., Erdély története [History of Transylvania], vol. 3, Erdély Története 1830-tól napjainkig [From 1830 to 1919] (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1986), 1263–1269. 115  “Andeutungen zu nothwendigen Reformen in unserem Volkschulwesen,” Blätter, no. 6 (8 February 1841): 42–45.

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to the author of the article, not shortsighted “political egoism and separatism,” but a necessity.116 Among Romanians, the problem of cultural backwardness was connected to deeper social and political exigencies. Consequently, it was presented as more threatening, more encroaching than in the relatively optimistic Saxon case.117 Thus, as historian Sorin Mitu so poignantly illustrates, for the Romanian modernizers, the absence of education entailed moral degradation and corruption. The motif of cultural backwardness established itself as the “expressive instantiation of one of the darkest spots of Romanian self-perception,” furthering the established clichés about the regional educational-civilizational hierarchy.118 A lamentation over Transylvanian decay was also voiced in Hungarian newspapers. Its topoi were “the smallness of our fatherland in expanse and population, its poverty, its isolation, the insignificance of our intellectual and material standing, our notorious prejudices, our disagreeing and often conflicting interests, the lack of our own institutions [i.e., not the ones imposed by the Habsburgs], and the absence of a beneficial public opinion.” In terms of civilization, “we live in a small hidden valley, where even the noon light can hardly enter; destitution and misery are the lot of those who choose the scientific career.” But here the remedy was not cultural-educational regeneration, but rather political union: “nothing can save us from this stagnation but the union of the two countries . . . Hungary is already on the threshold of the European nations, and this could raise us up from our isolation.”119 The Transylvanian national perspectives were conceived on a symbolic map of hierarchically arranged differences. Cultural relations were conceived through transregional, intraethnic comparisons between the province and its cultural centers. But the competing Transylvanian stances also evolved in the framework of intraregional, interethnic lines as well. Saxon, Hungarian, and Romanian advocates of national reform measured their own standing against that of their neighbors, thus creating a—permanently challenged and rebuilt— civilizational hierarchy of the Transylvanian ‘other.’ In the debate over primary school reform, the author of the article, “Intimations of the necessary reforms in our elementary education,” contrasted the Saxon situation with the almost ‘state of nature’ of their neighbors: “Although the level of improvement of our 116  “Ueber die Einrichtung einer juridischen Lehranstalt in Mitte der sächsischen Nation,” Blätter, no. 38 (19 September 1839): 313–314, esp. 313. 117  Timotei Cipariu, Jurnal [Diary], ed. Maria Protase (Cluj: Dacia, 1972), 32–33. 118  Sorin Mitu, Geneza identitǎţii naţionale la românii ardeleni [The genesis of national identity of the Transylvanian Romanians] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1997), 71. 119  Mihály S zentiványi, “Unio” [Union], Nemzeti Társalkodó, no. 6 (6 August 1841): 39–42.

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schools, the elementary schools of the Saxon territory, is considerably high in comparison to the peoples living among and near us, should we be content if we surpass those who have been barely elevated from the state of nature?”120 The Saxon press displayed a strong collective self-understanding through education: “the culture of the Saxon people . . . rests on a solid ground, and coarseness and ignorance has vanished even amidst the lowest ranks. The advantage in comparison to other peoples is eye-popping, because not only have the Saxon schools in towns been frequented by Wallach and Greek [Orthodox] children, but also the Wallach villagers living in Saxon communities do occasionally send their offspring to Saxon schools.” The Romanian George Bariţ reconfirmed this asymmetry of Transylvanian primary education.121 Bariţ also intimated the political hindrances for Romanian progress, namely, the political gap between the privileged ‘nations’ and Romanians: “There has not been as much improvement among the Romanians in Transylvania as among the two other [peoples], who have a much better standing thanks to their privileges. The consequences of this absence are still to be seen.”122 On the opposite side, Hungarian nationalists blamed the fragmentation of Transylvanian society for hindering progress, with progress defined as the formation of an integrated Hungarian political community.123

The Image of Transylvania in Foreign Travelogues

Self-formation as the pendant of national progress became the battle cry of Transylvanian intellectuals with an eye on the emerging external cultural centers that in their turn monitored German, French, and British developments. Similar to their country of origin, Bildung became more than a tool for social mobility in a modernizing society. It was transformed into an ideology.124 120  “Andeutungen zu nothwendigen Reformen,” 43; “Über die Landschulen der Sachsen in Siebenbürgen,” Blätter, no. 42 (19 February 1838): 347–349. 121  George Bariţ, “Din Transilvania. O plînsoare veche” [From Transylvania: An old worry], Gazeta de Transilvania, no. 40 (1843): 157–158, cited in Mitu, Geneza identitǎţii naţionale, 69. 122  George Bariţ, “Benigni. Caracterul popoarelor Transilvaniei” [Benigni: About the character of Transylvania’s peoples], Foaie, no. 12 (1841): 92. 123  Farkas Sándor Bölöni to Count László Lázár, Transylvanian chancellor, 28 January 1829, in Emlékkönyv az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület félszázados ünnepére 1859–1909 [Memorial volume on occasion of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Transylvanian Museum Association], ed. Pál Erdélyi (Kolozsvár: EME, 1909–1942), 135–138. 124  Compare Assmann, Arbeit am nationalen Gedächtnis, 45–46.

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The press presented it as a measure of social and political status: the privileged nations (Hungarians, Saxons) had access to it, whereas the unprivileged (Romanians) claimed to be deprived of its benefits. These differences, condensed into ethnic stereotypes, were reinforced by the epoch’s favorite genre, travel literature. Travelers from abroad were often puzzled by Transylvanian heterogeneity.125 The English-born pastor John Paget noted in his description of the province published in 1839: The distinction and differences among the population of Hungary have offered us a singular spectacle enough, but the Transylvanians far outpass them in these matters, as they vary among themselves, not only in language, race, religion, but in civil laws and political institutions. The Hungarian, the Szekler, the Saxon, and the Wallack, have all their rights, but differing most materially in nature and extent from each other. The whole population of the country does not amount to more than two millions, yet they have among them four established religions,—besides several others tolerated,—at least four languages, and I know not how many different national customs, prejudices, and modes of feeling.126 In their writings scholarly curiosity mixed with orientalizing condescension. In these accounts, the Transylvanian universe was constructed, along the lines described by Larry Wolff, of disconcerting contrasts between ‘Eastern’ barbarism and ‘Western’ civilization.127 In the spontaneous ethnography of Paget, social, educational, historical, and geographical differences collapsed into national characteristics. Here the reader encountered the ladder of civilization again, starting with the image of the “wandering, roguish, degraded Gypsy” through the barbarian ‘Wallack’ suffering under “seven hundred years of subjection” and even more under the novel experiences of philanthropic reformers. Hungarians fared better and were depicted chiefly from the angle of their liberalism and their love of freedom. The independent-minded, proud, 125  For a detailed analysis of the impact of travel literature on Transylvanian Romanian scholarship, see Mitu, National Identity, chap. 1, 15–56. The author analyzes how “foreign” comments on Romanians preoccupied contemporary historians and linguists. 126  John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania: With Remarks on their Condition, Social, Political and Economical, vol. 2, new ed. (London: John Murray, 1855; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1971), 8. 127  Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1994), 357.

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and poor Székely, similar to “our Scotch,” were “believed to receive a strong bias towards Liberalism,” while the proud hustling of a Hungarian deputation from Hunyad County stroke a familiar cord: “four fat little burgesses as could be found in any snug country town of our island.” Saxons were presented respectfully as “undoubtedly the most industrious, steady, and frugal of all the inhabitants of Transylvania.”128 This juxtaposition of barbarism and civilization, the differences among the inhabitants of such a tiny land, were tragic and laughable at the same time for the Western traveler. In his account, the ironic presentation of the market in Kronstadt, “composed of as motley a crew as can well be imagined,” became the emblem of the Transylvanian universe. It was an anarchic and wild mixture of peoples and customs, resulting from the social order and caste-like separation: The sober plodding Saxon is jostled by the light and cunning Greek; the smooth-faced Armenian, the quaker of the East, in his fur cloak, and high kalpak, meets his match at a bargain in the humble-looking Jew; and the dirty Boyar from Jassy, proud of his wealth and his nobility, meets his equal in pride in the peasant noble of the Szekler-land . . . Hungarian Magnates and Turkish merchants, Wallack shepherds and Gipsy vagabonds make up the motley groups which give life and animation to the streets of Kronstadt.129 The work of Paget with its elements of ethnography can be read as an ironic counterpoint to the efforts of Landeskunde and honismeret to describe Transylvanian society in the categories of natural history, geography, politics, history, and statistics. Paget was aware of his own parodical exaggerations. On the other hand, he was compelled to use his imagination to describe a province that challenged his categories, and about which no reliable scholarship existed. Paget was not the only educated visitor who eventually settled in Transylvania and published his description of its ‘nations.’ There were a handful of more or less sympathetic foreign travelers whose observations contributed to the spread of collective images and collective clichés. But they triggered scholarly ambitions as well, especially the study of Romanian, Hungarian, Saxon philology, history, and folklore. Equally important was their evaluation of Transylvania as a territory of archaic particularities, which became the reference point for local scholars when assessing regional progress and backwardness.

128  Ibid. 129  Ibid., 358.

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Their social role was not negligible, as these early ethnographers were well integrated into local networks. Paget, like another contemporary author of a travelogue, August de Gerando, was a frequent guest of the Hungarian Casinos and acquainted with those knowledgeable in history, law, and language. Such personal contacts enhanced the local emulation of the ‘Western’ pattern, for instance in the ‘traveling at home’ genre in the papers. Travel writing and Landeskunde provided mutual inspiration for each other, not only in the case of Paget, but also in the production of László Kőváry’s sketch on the Székely districts and an ensuing work on Transylvania’s politics, history, geography, natural history, and folklore.130 Another evidence for the mutual emulation of the two genres was the passionate plea of the gymnasium professor Johann Karl Schuller (1794–1865), when publishing in the Blätter the notes of another traveler, the French Marshal Marmont. Schuller added the remark that “the image of the fatherland would be caricatured” by foreigners as long as “we do not take it in our hands, and collect diligently all the materials for Vaterlandeskunde.”131 As argued in the previous chapter, the discipline of Landeskunde originated from the exploration of the political territory, which was the backdrop of the scholarly aspirations that had emerged in Transylvania since the second half of the eighteenth century. The earlier polymath interest in data collection on Transylvania had been manifest among the multilingual provincial elite of a Masonic milieu, an elite that occupied central positions in the provincial administration. Although the post-Josephist politics had been already fraught by the conflicting allegiances of the Hungarian and the Saxon estates, to be further complicated by Romanian pressure from below, the shared goals of promoting Landeskunde had become a reality, at least in the Saxon intellectual milieus, first during the Transylvanian Age of Reform. The initiators of the Transylvanian public sphere were aware that national improvement and the related study of cultures were part of the larger European setting. To prevent sinking into self-centered parochialism, the past and present of the ‘nation’ was to be studied within its larger surrounding. Yet, as the debates and larger social environment around the creation of the two 130  László Kőváry, Székelyhonról [On Székelyland] (Kolozsvár, 1842); Kőváry, Erdélyország statistikája [Transylvania’s statistics] (Kolozsvár, 1847). To illustrate the significance of networks of sociability, whose role in scholarly exchange between “home and abroad” have not been evaluated yet, let it suffice to say that not only Kőváry was a Casino member, but also his mentors, Sámuel Brassai, professor at the Kolozsvár Unitarian college, and János Tiltsch, the printer of his book. 131  Cited by Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereins,” 141.

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Transylvanian institutions illustrate, the early nineteenth-century civic ideals of moral improvement and Bildung emerged in combination with divergent perspectives on the fatherland. The coexistence of different, even antagonistic, perspectives in the developing regional scholarship illustrates a process whereby cultural differentiation pushed ‘special’ or ‘national’ traits to the foreground. This chapter on the institutionalization of polymath scholarship in the Age of Reform captures the moment when intellectual identification with the nation as a cultural community (transcending social boundaries) overwrote the territorial vision of the feudal order. This process was inseparable from the emergence of national politics in the province and of the modern public sphere. Contemporary ideas of self-formation, the essence of educated sociability, gave a new impetus to scientific interest. Modern sociability offered novel forms of education shaped by the liberal and neohumanist trends of the age. Nevertheless, the universalist program of improvement was translated into national terms. It was shaped in reference to and exchange with cultural centers external to the multiethnic province. Emulating national education in their ‘external homelands,’132 Transylvanian intellectuals diagnosed their own public as underdeveloped in comparison to these advanced centers. Scholarship and voluntary self-improvement in the associations free from political pressure was presented as the remedy. Founded by the Transylvanian ‘middling sorts,’ both the Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde and the Erdélyi Múzeum had all-­encompassing programs for the scholarly exploration of the province in a European context. The intended ‘discoveries’ of the hitherto ‘ignored’ or ‘barely known’ Transylvanian territory created new symbolic maps based on ethnic distinction. Nowhere else were these differences better articulated than in the cultural realm, illustrated also by the different strategies the provincial intellectuals employed to create national institutions of scholarship. The Landeskundeverein was established as such a civic project, launched by learned bureaucrats, professors, and pastors, with no formal ties to the political arena. It did not apply for funds from the diet. Its regional outlook reflected both a territorially- and an ethnically-oriented patriotism. In the parlance of Schuller and his friends, the ‘nation’ designated both the privileged estate and those of the same linguistic and confessional identity, and was seen in the framework of a hierarchically ordered Transylvanian universe. The Hungarian Transylvanian museum project, on the other hand, was advocated by the progressive faction of the 132  Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 61.

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d­ iet-attending nobility and was part of an emerging Hungarian cultural politics in the province. Its horizon did not exceed the linguistic sphere; Hungarian honismeret was concerned with the study of the nation. Planned as an institution of national prestige, it was a costly enterprise, and the application for state funding was legitimized by references to a ‘weak’ Hungarian public sphere in need of state support. In this regard their orientation towards external institutional models in the German states and Pest, respectively, were as decisive as domestic resources and prospects. TABLE 3

Donations for the Transylvanian National Museum at the diet of 1841–1843.

Person

Date

Donation

Counts József and Sámuel Kemény

February 1841

Ca. 15,000 books, and an ­unorganized collection of documents and ­numismatic and mineral collections (of this ca. 400 manuscripts, ca. 5,000 books, 93 numismatic items, several Roman archeological finds133 from József Kemény134) mineral collection 269 books Numismatic collection from Transylvania and Hungary, plus 5,000 florins custodian’s fee

Count Lajos Gyulay Jr. Pál Kolozsváry Count László Esterházy

January 1842 June 1842

133  Vincze Zoltán, “Az érem- és régiségtár” [The numismatic and archeological collection], in Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület gyűjteményei [The EME collections], ed. Gábor Sipos (Cluj: EME, 2009), 69–136, 72. 134  According to Gábor Sipos, the EME library contained in 1859 a total of 15,439 books and 1,083 manuscripts and official documents, out of which one-third originated from József Kemeny. His cousin Sámuel donated ca. 10,000 volumes and a “rich manuscript collection” to the society, as well. Zsigmond Jakó, ed., Erdélyi okmánytár [Transylvanian manuscript collection], vol. 1, (1023–1300) (Budapest: EME, 1997), 19, cited in Gábor Sipos, “Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület könyvtárának története” [The history of the EME library], in Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület gyűjteményei, 11–68, 13.

The Friends Of Progress In The Transylvanian Age Of Reform Person

Date

Count József Teleki Governor of Transylvania

August 1842

Dániel Lészay, medical doctor from Fogaras János Zeyk Count Schomberg Ottó Degenfeld, Gubernial Councilor, and brothers József Woititz, Jewish merchant from Marosvásárhely Lajos Góró, royalist and engineer lieutenant Miklós Kovács, Catholic Bishop Ignácz Reinpold, army surgeon János Ágotha, Prof. of drawing, Székelyudvarhely Antal Báternay, deputy of Zaránd County, and family Baron Farkas Wesselényi Jr., deputy of Középszolnok County

105

Donation

Several hundred documents, ­including incunabula, all the publications of the Transylvanian Hungarian Language Society, Hungarian books, plus 3,000 florins for book purchases August 1842 For a Hungarian national museum: 700 Roman and Greek coins, 300 European coins December 1842 70–80 printed documents, ca. 150 manuscripts, 1,500 books December 1842 5,000–6,000 books

December 1842 200 florins, esp. for the purchase of books in the Hebrew language December 1842 351 books, 450 Roman coins, other items January 1843 5000 florins January 1843

January 1843

Monumenta romana—drawings of Roman archeological findings in Zalatna County Portraits of ‘King’ Ferdinand, István Széchenyi, Mihály Vörösmarty

February 1843

Mineral collection

February 1843

A rare book

Source: Az Erdélyi Nagyfejedelemség s hozzá vissza kapcsolt Részek három nemes Nemzeteiből álló Rendeinek Kolozsvár szabad királyi várossában 1841-ik Év November 15-ik napján kezdődött ország Gyülésökről készített Jegyző-Könyv(Kolozsvár, 1841), 330–702.

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Hubs of knowledge: Transylvanian map of higher education from the 1840s based on the map “Közép- és főiskolák 1846-ban” [Highschools and colleges in 1846] by Lajos Palovics, in: Zoltán Szász, ed. Erdély története 1830-tól napjainkig [The history of Transylvania from 1830 until today]. Vol. 3 of Erdély története [The history of Transylvania], edited by Béla Köpeczi (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986), 1281.

CHAPTER 3

The Nationalization of Landeskunde and Civic Ethos after 1848 The decades after 1848 were the age par excellence of voluntary associations in Central Europe, and the most significant difference compared with the beginning of the century consisted in their socially more inclusive character. This applied particularly to those serving specialized purposes, including the scholarly societies. If the patriotic circles of the late Enlightenment and the Age of Reform belonged to the more exclusive sphere of the higher administrative circles, the new wave of the civic movement recruited its members from a broader basis. Hermann Heimpel called the German and Austrian scholarly associations founded in the early 1850s, “the group [dedicated to] the conservative recovery achieved after the liberal compromise.”1 Their most typical representative was the Gesamtverein der Deutschen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine (Overall Association of the History and Archeology Associations) and its creation, the Germanisches National-Museum (German National Museum), founded in Nuremberg in 1852. The museum of the “German People” upheld the ideal of the unified German nation during the failed 1848 revolution.2 This was patriotic and amateur scholarship in a new sense, intending to educate and thus mobilize the broad public towards moderately liberal and national goals. The post-revolutionary decades also fostered specialization, which recreated in certain circumstances social exclusivity on the basis of professional achievement. In the German and Austrian lands Landeskunde gradually transformed into historical scholarship, being affected by the professionalization of history as a discipline and the institutionalization of historical research

1   Hermann Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine einst und jetzt,” in Geschichtswissenschaft und Vereinswesen im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Hartmut Boockmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 45–73, at 52–53. 2   Susan A. Crane, Collecting and Historical Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2000), xiii; David M. Wilson, “National Museums and Nationalism,” in The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe, ed. Ernő Marosi and Gábor Klaniczay, Collegium Budapest Workshop Series 17 (2006): 43–60, at 56.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004303058_005

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as science.3 Associations specializing in historical inquiry were competing in research with the traditional loci of the universities, academies, and the older types of polymath learned societies. Membership in these new institutions was no longer defined on the basis of voluntary participation, but the quality of the scholarly work. Leopold von Ranke and Heinrich von Sybel for instance received permission from King Maximilian II of Bavaria to found the German Historical Commission as a separate institute of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, which recruited its members solely on the ground of professional expertise. The same selectivity was applied in the case of the separate body of the Hungarian Academy of Science, entitled Történelmi Bizottság (Historical Commission, 1854), later Történelmi Társulat (Hungarian Historical Association, 1867). This took place at a time when the boundary between lay and expert knowledge was still blurred—yet it was a symptom of a slowly differentiating landscape of institutionalized knowledge. The rank-and-file of the booming German and Austrian Landeskunde associations was still the Bildungsbürger, whether he be an educated merchant, lawyer, medical doctor, or gymnasium professor. This social category was the beneficiary of a modern educational system, for whom studies in gymnasia and universities, i.e, a meritocracy, promised the chance for social mobility.4 This chapter seeks to position the emerging Transylvanian scholarly associations in the broader institutional panorama while tracing their intra-regional relations. The late 1850s and early 1860s brought about the foundation in Kolozsvár of the Transylvanian Museum Society and later in Hermannstadt the Asociatia Transilvană Pentru Literatura Română şi Cultura Poporului Român (Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Culture of the Romanian People, hereafter ASTRA).5 Both were founded as 3  Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine,” 53. 4  Aleida Assmann, Arbeit am nationalen Gedächtnis. Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Bildungsidee (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1993), 27; Georg Bollenbeck, Bildung und Kultur. Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters, 1st ed. (Frankfurt: Insel-Verlag, 1994), 199. For Hungary see: Viktor Karády, “A főiskolai elitképzés első történelmi funkcióváltása (1867– 1910)” [The first historical functional change of higher elite education], in Iskolarendszer és felekezeti egyenlőtlenségek Magyarországon, 1867–1945 [Schooling and denominational inequalities in Hungary, 1867–1945] (Budapest: Replika Kör, 1997), 169–194, at 169–172. 5  Tanya Keller Dunlap, “A Union in Disarray: Romanian Nation Building under Astra in LateNineteenth-Century Rural Transylvania and Hungary” (PhD diss., Rice University, 2002); Dunlap, “Astra and the Appeal of the Nation: Power and Autonomy in Late-NineteenthCentury Transylvania,” Austrian History Yearbook 34 (2003), 215–246; Pamfil Matei, Asociaţiunea Transilvană pentru Literatura Română şi Cultura Poporului Român (ASTRA) şi rolul ei în cultura naţională. 1861–1950 [Transylvanian Association for Romanian literature and

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voluntary associations, adopting the institutional form of their Saxon predecessor, the Landeskundeverein. This current chapter inquires further into the political meaning of scholarship and learned sociability in general, in post1848 Transylvania. Several factors have to be taken into account here. One is the immediate social environment and the attitude of the state towards these institutions. The other is the more internal development of the humanities at the mid-nineteenth century. If regional scholarship in Central Europe reflected the impact of specialization, this was certainly observed in the Transylvanian settings.

Politics, Public Life, and Self-Formation during the Neo-Absolutist Decade

The revolution of 1848 represented a break with the established political order.6 Hungarian liberal politics abolished serfdom and declared legal equality among the citizens. The Hungarian Diet passed a Union Law, that is, a political union with Transylvania, which was also endorsed by the Transylvanian Diet. The latter dissolved itself together with the regime of the three estates the culture of the Romanian people and its role in national culture, 1861–1950] (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Dacia, 1986); Teodor Ardelean and Victor V. Grecu, Limba română şi cultiviarea ei în preocupările ASTREI [The Romanian language and its cultivation in the framework of ASTRA] (Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Limes, 2009). 6  The interpretation of Transylvanian politics in this passage relies on the following works: Zsolt K. Lengyel and Ulrich Andreas Wien, Siebenbürgen in der Habsburgermonarchie: vom Leopoldinum bis zum Ausgleich, 1690–1867, Siebenbürgisches Archiv 3 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999), 34; László Kontler, “Neo-Absolutism and the Compromise,” in Millenium in Central Europe (Budapest: Atlantisz, 1999), 264–279; Carl Göllner, ed., Die Siebenbürger Sachsen in den Jahren 1848–1918 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1988); Rolf Kutschera, Landtag und Gubernium in Siebenbürgen 1688–1869, Studia Transylvanica 11 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1985); Domokos Kosáry, “Önkényuralom, emigráció, kiegyezés, 1849–1867” [Tyranny, emigration, compromise, 1849–1867], in Újjáépítés és polgárosodás 1711–1867 [Restoration and embourgeoisement, 1711–1867] (Budapest: História/ Holnap Kiadó, 2001), 303–146; Keith Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860–1914 (Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1999); László Péter, “Introduction,” in Historians and the History of Transylvania, ed. László Péter (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1992), 1–51; Zoltán Szász, “Az abszolutizmus kora Erdélyben (1849–1867)” [The era of absolutism in Transylvania], in Erdély Története. Harmadik Kötet 1830-Tól Napjainkig [The history of Transylvania. Third volume, from 1830 until today], ed. Zoltán Szász (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986), 1425–1507; Friedrich Gottas, “Der lange Weg zum Ausgleich,” in Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas. Land an der Donau, ed. Günter Schödl et al. (Berlin: Siedler, 1995), 255, 290.

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as the revolutionary government in Pest was acknowledged by the Magyar majority of the Diet as having authority over the province. The majority of Saxon Diet members voted initially with the Hungarian and Székely deputies for the union. But the consensus came to an end when the demands for a Saxon administrative-territorial self-administration, with German as the official language, were ignored by the revolutionary government. In response, the Saxon deputies boycotted the new order. The Romanian political leaders, who, except for the Uniate bishops, continued to be excluded from parliamentary politics, developed a separate program of national emancipation, which was incompatible with the Hungarian agenda. Similarly as with the Saxons, moderate leaders envisaged a Swiss-type canton division of the region into Hungarian, Romanian, and Saxon constituencies, whereas the majority opted for an autonomous Transylvania. The gap that separated the now dominant Hungarian elite from the Saxon and Romanian ones manifested itself in divergent political attitudes. Romanian leaders, irrespective of religious or social background, demanded the recognition of national rights, that is, political self-administration, proportional political representation in politics and public administration, unrestrained language use, religious freedom for both the Orthodox and Uniate churches, genuine economic and social equality with their Magyar and Saxon peers after the abolishment of serfdom, freedom of speech, national militia, the protection of culture and education in the vernacular, and, above all, a “new constitution for Transylvania to be drawn up by a constituent assembly of all nations of the land.”7 Also, the Romanian national political project extended its territorial focus by the vision of a unitary Romaniandom, joining together Romanians from the two Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with the Romanians of Transylvania and Hungary.8 We see here a comparable constellation with those of the Hungarian demands on both sides of the Transylvanian-Hungarian border before and during the Age of Reform. To be sure, Transylvanian Romanians had participated by that time in two distinct discourses, one concerning the political status quo in the Habsburg Empire, the other referring to the cultural unity of all Romanians—Transylvanian, Wallachian, and Moldavian—while tacitly addressing political issues.9

7  Keith Hitchins, A Nation Discovered: Romanian Intellectuals in Transylvania and the Idea of Nation 1700–1848 (Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1999), 188–192. 8  Kinga-Koretta Sata, “The People Incorporated: Constructions of the Nation in Transylvanian Romanian Liberalism, 1838–1848,” in We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, ed. Diana Mishkova (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009), 79–105, at 80. 9  Ibid., 86.

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The Hungarian revolutionary government refused the Romanian national program that would have compromised the project of a nationally homogenous citizenry. Its position was that “creating” a new nation would mean the return to the old system of privileges and “particularisms,” whereas a liberal state would guarantee all citizens the same political rights. Emancipation was to be individual, and guaranteed by the future civil rights of the future Hungarian nation-state. Nationality was considered a private issue; civil society and not the state had to be the shelter of vernacular language use, religious practice, and national customs. As a consequence, Romanians, even more than Saxons, found themselves on the periphery of the new politics. During the civil war, the polarization of national attitudes reached a climax. The Saxon and Romanian militias joined the imperial army against Kossuth’s insurgent Hungarian troops. The ensuing battles escalated into interethnic bloodshed and scarred the collective memories deeply. Hitherto existing ethnic clichés were radicalized and became cemented into antagonistic, xenophobic images. After the end of the war, the union with Hungary, together with the constitution of 1848, was declared null and void. The province became a separate crownland again, but the old political institutions were not restored; the Hungarian counties and the Székely and Saxon districts were governed centrally. During the first five years of the post-revolutionary administration (1849–1854), the so-called Provisorium, Transylvania was divided into five districts and placed under military control. A mixed committee involving Hungarian, Romanian, and Saxon members was to achieve the “equal rights for the nationalities” in the regional and local administration, which favored Romanians at the expense of Magyars. The leveling policy gave little room for Saxon initiatives to achieve a special territorial-legal status, or to Romanian claims to unify all Romanians in the monarchy in the framework of a political-administrative and ecclesiastical self-government. To the disappointment of the ‘winners’ of the revolution, their demands were considered “anti-constitutional.”10 In face of the new centralization, which allowed no local political activity, the former elites withdrew into the sphere of cultural and ecclesiastical self-organization. Transylvanian Hungarian newspapers of the early 1850s expressed a general sense of humiliation by the Austrian administration. The imperial government introduced measures for establishing equal status in public administration for the three main ethnic segments of the Transylvanian population, especially by securing the right of using the mother tongue in administration of the hitherto marginalized constituencies. At the same time, a reinstated censorship muzzled the grievances of the Magyar nobility, and the discussion of the revolution became taboo. A coded public language was characteristic in Transylvania, 10  Lengyel and Wien, Siebenbürgen in der Habsburgermonarchie, 100–102.

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and one learned once more to talk obliquely about the forbidden subjects. Magyars observed jealously an emerging Saxon-Romanian rapprochement that took place in the 1850s. In their turn, Saxon papers from Hermannstadt expressed incomprehension when the government planned to lead the future Transylvanian railroad through Kolozsvár, “favoring” this “nest of revolution.”11 It was not until the heavy external military losses of the Habsburg Empire, and the ensuing liberalization of Austrian politics in the 1860s, that regional political interests could be voiced at all. With the advent of semi-constitutional life in the 1860s, the political differences re-emerged around the incompatible agendas of the Transylvanian national political elites. Hungarian politicians acted in concert with the “Centralists,” that is, the liberal advocates of a centralized Hungarian state, and demanded the implementation of the 1848 Union Law. The official Saxon standpoint requested safeguards of national autonomy, and Romanian leaders advocated a separate Transylvania with democratic rules based on national proportion. As the Orthodox Bishop Andrei Şaguna (1808–1873) formulated, “just as Transylvania could not be Germanized, so shall it not be Magyarized. It must exist as Transylvania, that is, all its nations must live as nations of Transylvania equal in all things.”12 The prospect of a separate Transylvania as part of a decentralized system did not seem impossible in the conjuncture of a conservative federalist politics. But as the liberals gained the upper hand in Vienna, and Budapest followed suit, the plan was abandoned; similar was the fate of an autonomous Transylvanian Diet in 1863–1864. The breakthrough of the Hungarian Centralists occurred finally with the AustroHungarian Compromise of 1867 with the recognition of the 1848 Laws, when the emperor also accepted the re-incorporation of Transylvania into Hungary. Voluntary organizations became the only outlet for self-organization in Magyar liberal circles in the decade after the defeat of the revolutionary and civil war. In light of the Magyar nobility’s preference for state-funded scholarly institutions in Pest and Kolozsvár during the Age of Reform, resorting entirely to civic support represented a significant brake in political strategies. Thus they developed a peculiar political symbolism when the hope for any governmental support had to be set aside under the “iron stick of absolutism.” Scholarship too became a civic project, to be supported by the Transylvanian 11  Ágnes Deák, “Az abszolutizmus vas vesszeje alatt. Erdély magyar szemmel 1850–51-ben [Under the iron stick of absolutism. Transylvania from a Hungarian angle],” Holmi 5 (1996): 713–735; Akten der Minister-Confrenz (MCZ) (1850), no. 4618, cited in Ernst Weisenfeld, Die Geschichte der politischen Publizistik bei den Siebenbürger Sachsen (Frankfurt and Limbourg an der Lahn: Diesterweg, 1939), 5. 12  Cited by Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed, 57.

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and Hungarian aristocracy and nobility. Its initiator was no lesser a personality than the Calvinist Count Imre Mikó of Székely origin, provisional governor in 1861. Beyond his political engagements, Mikó was also a dedicated collector of historical sources and, equally important, a committed practitioner of the local Magyar civil society. He was president of the Erdélyi Országos Gazdasági Egyesület (Transylvanian National Economic Society, initiated in 1844, suspended in 1848–1853, and relaunched in 1854 under the presidency of Mikó), the association of Transylvanian Magyar landowners, and the Hungarian Theater of Kolozsvár, while also being trustee of the Transylvanian Calvinist Church. As a young friend of the ageing Count Kemény, in the early 1840s, Mikó took part in the parliamentary committee that drafted the aborted plans of the Transylvanian National Museum. Using the press and his informal networks in Hungary and Vienna, the count managed to convince the Transylvanian Magyar social elite in the mid-1850s to support the project of a learned society by exploiting the language of civic republicanism and imbuing it with the rhetoric of a competitive nationalism: “Now, when all of our work and impact is restrained to the narrow circle of family and friends, we . . . who are [the academic strength] behind the kin patria when it comes to the work done, we are not able to show results either in source collection or in historical writing which could compete with . . . the Academy [in Vienna] . . . or the new Series published by the Landeskundeverein.”13 In the 1850s, the cultural aspects of public life intensified: journals and newspapers, informal sociability and voluntary associations provided spaces for exchange, compensating to a minimal extent for the lack of a political arena. These sites of sociability appeared in the eyes of contemporaries as spaces where “the compassionate society could lay quietly the ground of future nation-building.”14 Not only (ex-)politicians, but journalists and scholars too, noted that “in our country much social work has increased since the political

13  Imre Mikó, “Tájékozódás az erdélyi történetírás és adatgyűjtés körül, vonatkozólag a magyarországi hasonirányu törekvésekre” [Orientation concerning the historical writing and collection of data in Transylvania, in relation to similar attempts in Hungary], in vol. 1 of Erdélyi történelmi adatok [Transylvanian historical data] (Kolozsvár, 1855), i–xxxi, at xvi–xvii. 14  Weisenfeld, Die Geschichte, 86. Practically all Transylvanian literature on voluntary associations starts from the axiom that “without doubt, the associations belonged to that type of cultural institution which pursued not only social mobilization but also served national causes.” Günter Schödl, “Das Vereinsleben,” in Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas, ed. Schödl, 269–276, at 269.

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sphere narrowed.”15 Older historiography attributes this development to a decisively anti-Habsburg attitude, where cultural and other types of associations counted as “bulwarks against the almighty state.”16 In a time when political associations were forbidden, the Austrian authorities often suspected civil organizations of masking political ones.17 Censorship, eliminated by the revolutionary legislation, was now reintroduced. At the same time, loyalty pledges to the government were encouraged, an “adequate press” being expected to “steer the movement of minds”.18 The neo-absolutist regime of the 1850s was as inimical to the national aspirations emerging in the territories it administered as towards political liberalism. Yet Magyar politicians on both sides of the Hungarian-Transylvanian border saw the premises of constitutionality only in the restoration of the status quo of 1848 and boycotted the Austrian regime in the name of “lost sovereignty.” Hence their massive alienation from official public life and their attachment to the civic, “second public sphere.”19 This form of opposition was practiced by part of the Transylvanian Romanian elite as well, although with an opposite political finality. Beyond social emancipation affecting primarily the Romanian peasants, their loyalty to the crown expressed opposition to the Hungarian politics of 1848. The conflicting political agendas left their traces in the post-revolutionary sociability: both the press and the voluntary associations propagated mutually exclusive ethnic loyalty.20 Count Mikó dwelled on the compensating function of civic action in his work Irányeszmék (Guiding ideas): “Do not ask me to claim that we own a public life now. This name cannot be encompassed by the small amount of work done in associations and in the literary field.”21 But in the circumstances of political restraint, civic movements counted as the only possible contribu15  János Hunfalvy, “Magyarország viszonyainak statisztikai vázlata” [Statistical outline about the domestic issues of Hungary], Statisztikai Közlemények 5, no. 1 (1863): 3–88, at 85. 16  Göllner, Die Siebenbürger Sachsen, 254. 17  Dániel Szabó, “A magyar társadalom szerveződése a dualizmus korában. Párt és vidéke” [The organization of the Hungarian society in the time of Dualism. The party and its environment], Történelmi Szemle 3–4 (1992): 199–230, at 234. 18  Ágnes R. Várkonyi, A pozitivista történetszemlélet a magyar történetírásban [The positivist perspective in the Hungarian historiography], 2 vols. (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1973), 2: 123; Weisenfeld, Die Geschichte, 71–84. 19  Kontler, Millenium in Central Europe, 270. 20  Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed, 53–86; Weisenfeld, Die Geschichte; Göllner, Die Siebenbürger Sachsen, 104–128. 21  Imre Mikó, Irányeszmék [Guiding ideas], separatum of the journal Budapesti Szemle (Pest: 1861).

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tion to the public good: “There is a large field, the field of associations, . . . the everlasting resource of public and private welfare. Let us extend our attention to this activity too, let us forward the cause of the patria and of our own.”22 As leader of several voluntary associations that resumed their activity in the more relaxed phase of the post-revolutionary rule, the so-called Definitivum (1854–1860), he emphasized the self-governing capacity of civil society. Mikó’s statement transformed the Tocquevillian message, which was well understood in liberal circles23 and adapted to local circumstances. Together with his contemporary Magyar interpreters of the French philosopher, he saw a nationally organized civil society as the rudiment of self-organization vis-à-vis the hostile and foreign government. He was not alone in this opinion; by the mid1850s the press often linked voluntary participation in associations with the idea of national autonomy on the ground of moral commitment to the public good.24 Voluntary associations acquired, later, in the time of the transition to constitutional law (1861–1865), reputations as schools of politics, when prospects of parliamentary politics became more plausible. Their liberal principle, the asserted democratic rules of governance within, presented them as ideal institutions for practicing self-government. The following is how the Saxon Schützenverein (Markman’s Club) from Kronstadt (1861), attracting young liberal politicians, for example, was praised in the Siebenbürger Blätter: The future representatives should make their preliminary schooling in the Schützenverein. One should learn in the Schützenverein how to handle elections in matters of the nation and religion, without the support of the family. The future parliament members should be nominated by the Schützenverein; it should be the point of departure for new initiatives in literature and industry.25 This was by no means an isolated case and voluntary associations often hosted political meetings, even functioned as proto-political parties.26 These networks 22  Cited by László Tokaji, in Pál Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv az EME félszázados ünnepére 1859–1909 [Memorial volume on occasion of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Transylvanian Museum Association] (Kolozsvár: EME, 1909–1942), 275. 23  István Fenyő, “Eötvös és Tocqueville,” AETAS 22, no. 1 (2007): 127–134. 24  See for instance the 1856 editions of the Kolozsvári Közlöny. 25  Siebenbürger Blätter (1861). 26  Dániel Szabó, “A magyar társadalom szerveződése a dualizmus korában. Párt és vidéke” [The organization of the Hungarian society in the era of dualism. The party and its environment], Történelmi Szemle, nos. 3–4 (1992): 199–230.

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provided the context in which the plans of the Transylvanian National Museum became institutionalized as a voluntary association, supporting a museum, in 1859. We should not ignore the patriotic and political semantics of this institutional form when analyzing the public function of the incipient Museum Society, or of contemporary Transylvanian scholarly sociability in general. It is difficult to tell however in retrospect whether the incipient civic movement was indeed subversive. The entire European continent experienced a new wave of civic activism after the revolutions of 1848. From the 1860s onwards, the scene expanded geographically from the large cities to the provinces: not only the educated urban elites but increasingly lower middle classes and small-town intellectuals utilized the association form for collective action and building pressure groups. After the cessation of tight public control in the early 1850s, associational activity started again in Transylvania too, and regained its full dynamics in the liberalizing 1860s.27 Especially in the Saxon urban areas, associations were connected to economic, educational, and infrastructural modernization.28 Similar was the concern of the Hungarian press. Kolozsvári Közlöny (Courier of Kolozsvár) discussed in great detail the benefit of credit and insurance institutions already in the 1850s, and accompanied the activity of the rejuvenated Transylvanian National Economic Society.29 “There is a lot to do in this field even now, our social and especially charity organizations are still precarious,” commented the statistician Pál Hunfalvy, on the pragmatic orientation of associations of sociability in contemporary Hungary. His survey in Transylvania evidenced 579 voluntary associations, nearly half of which served purely sociable purposes, the rest being vocational or profit-oriented.30 In the late 1850s, a flourishing Romanian associational landscape established 27  See Hans-Georg von Killyen, Das Vereinsleben in Hermannstadt. Manuscript (Gundelsheim: Siebenbürgen-Institut, n.d.); Eduard Albert Bielz, Handbuch der Landeskunde Sieben­ bürgens (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996), 231–237; János Hunfalvy, “Magyarország különböző egyletei” [The various voluntary associations of Hungary], Statisztikai Közlemények 4, no. 1 (1862): 256–269. 28  A chronological list of association foundations in Hermannstadt illustrates the faster pace of “associationism” received from the 1860s onwards. Within eight years, 11 new associations received authorization in the town compared to 13 ones founded between 1840 and 1848. In contrast to the culturally and socially exclusive institutions of the Age of Reform, several of the new ones were initiated by the petty bourgeoisie and traders. See Killyen, Das Vereinsleben, 2. 29  See issues from October through December of the Kolozsvári Közlöny from 1856. 30  There were 75 with scholarly, (agro-)industrial, commercial, or self-help savings profiles; 38 profit-oriented economic societies, 264 (almost half of the total number) sociability

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itself as well with the appearance of cultural and welfare organizations, such as Reuniunea Femeilor Române Spre Ajutorul Cresceriei Fetiţelor Orfane in Kronstadt (Association of Romanian Women in Support of the School for Orphan Girls in Braşov); singers, youth, and gymnasts also organized themselves into associations.31 Public life in Transylvania developed in the period along lines of confession, occupation, increasingly on social status, and obviously language too. The phenomenon followed an international trend, where the new design of states from France to Russia after the war of 1848 generated reform debates on public life, including representative bodies, schools, armies, and voluntary organizations. As Philip Nord argues: It was this combination of material prosperity and wide-ranging institutional redesign that motored the associational mania of midcentury. Economic organizations—chambers of commerce, employer associations, trade unions—grew apace, so too fraternal bodies and civic action groups. All that might be sought after were the pleasures of good company, but the new arrivals on the associational scene often came armed with a vocabulary of reform. Nation, science, liberty, progress, such were the watchwords of the day; these were powerful symbolic weapons with an immediate bearing on current institutional battles.32

The Consolidation of the Landeskundeverein under Austrian Auspices

The Landeskundeverein launched its program already in 1843. Committee meetings and yearly assemblies were held regularly, and only the events of 1848 delayed their work. However, the recess did not last long: already on 5 December 1849 a committee meeting took place. After the war, activity resumed with new impetus in 1850/1851. Public interest was so intense that chapters with sections in history and geography were established in Hermannstadt, Kronstadt, clubs, and 46 other category ones. Hunfalvy, “Magyarország különböző egyletei,” 246. In 1856, Kolozsvári Közlöny mentioned 8–10 Transylvanian Hungarian casinos. 31  Kolozsvári Közlöny 10 (29 October 1856), 18–25. 32  Philip Nord, “Introduction,” in Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from NineteenthCentury Europe, ed. Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), xxi.

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Schäßburg, Mediasch, Mühlbach, but also in Vienna and Pest.33 These were acknowledged later in the new statutes of 1870 as independent branch associations. At this time the presidential committee was enlarged and the president was no longer elected for his lifetime but only for six years. The status of corresponding members built bridges towards Budapest, Vienna, and Berlin. The yearly meetings were divided into sections on history, natural history, law, and education, and the members of the associations received now the association’s journal, the Archiv, in exchange for a higher membership fee.34 The number of enrolled members grew despite the climbing fees, reaching 799 enrolled persons in 1883. Heinrich Herbert mentions an average of 614 members for the period of 1871–1897, in contrast to the average of 389 from 1851–1870, that is, a near doubling in size during the lifetime of the Hungarian national administration, established by the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. The increase in the number of members was paralleled with the adoption of multiple strategies of communication to reach out for a broader audience, which is a topic of the next chapter. Soon after the cessation of the 1848–1849 battles, the association recouped with surprising speed. There was a meeting already in the winter of 1849, but the first large public assembly took place in 1851. A contemporary report describes the meeting with words reminiscent to those of the Schützenverein from Kronstadt the association is the school of reasoned discussion, where the “people’s most competent men discussed and acted.”35 The symbolism of this self-representation was political. The members of the association cast themselves as the representatives of the nation, the symbolic parliament of an educated and moral community. Association president Bedeus von Scharberg addressed his audience, in the face of the Hungarian and Romanian threats of assimilation: “We do not need to hate our neighbors, and we also do not need to sacrifice our personality, to melt with them together into a formless creature or a tasteless mishmash, but we have the space to stay, to flourish and prosper peacefully and happily one near another. What the others require from us, the same we can demand from them as well.”36 Equally widespread was the symbolism of the Landeskundeverein as a national academy with philhellenic references to antiquity. A neohumanist 33  Heinz Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” Archiv 28 (1898): 139–236, at 158. 34  Compare “Statuten des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 1840,” and “Statuten des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 1870,” in ibid., 185–189. 35  Ibid., 71. 36  Cited in ibid., 165.

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pathos lingers in the reports of the yearly meetings, presented in the classical style of the Olympic Games. Members gathering from all parts of the Saxon areas celebrated themselves as the symbolic representatives of the Saxon Volk overcoming internal social and geographical fragmentation.37 The central figure of the allegory is the debutant historian Georg Daniel Teutsch (1817–1893), the “young Transylvanian Herodotus,” reading out of his prize-winning Geschichte der Siebenbürger Sachsen für das Sächsische Volk (History of the Transylvanian Saxons for the Saxon people). The image left enduring traces in the memory of the members with good reason, as Teutsch held such readings on seven consecutive yearly public meetings.38 Saxon Bildung-rhetoric, championing social openness and the ethos of work, was a staple of the Saxon public image of such events, which were contrasted with the threatening “uneducated” mass of the Orthodox population.39 The yearly meetings customarily held on the first weekend after Pentecost attracted a growing audience. In the late 1850s, the Siebenbürgisch-Sächsische Landwirtschaftsverein (Saxon Agricultural Association, founded in 1845) joined the meetings, followed later by a third partner, the local branch of the pedagogical Gustav-Adolf-Verein (Gustav Adolf Association, founded in 1863). The “association days” swiftly grew into national celebrations. Held each time at a different place, they involved large segments of the population. They consolidated the image of the “Saxon nation,” its voluntary, independent, and grassroots nature, its culture and high level of education.40 The concern of the 1840s was organizational; the most immediate need being the creation of the infrastructural and organizational conditions, whether it involved hunting for documents in the archives or in the field of natural history, the latter though with a now decreasing interest.41 By the 1850s the conditions of operation were consolidated thanks to energetic committee work and successful cooperation with the Austrian authorities and academic 37  Ibid., 160. 38  See “Vorlesungen und Vorträge, welche bei Gelegenheit der Generalversammlungen gehalten wurden,” in ibid., 210–218. 39  Address of Dr. Gottfried Müller to the assembly of the Landeskundeverein, Reps, 1851, cited in ibid., 160. 40  Ibid. 41   Georg Paul Binder, “Über einigen wünschenswerte naturwissenschaftliche Unter­ suchungen in Siebenbürgen,” Archiv I (1843): 1–20; Josef Heinrich, “Auch einige Bemer­ kungen über Quellen zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens,” Archiv III (1847): 37–62; Eugen von Friedenfels, “Die Archiven Siebenbürgens, als Quellen vaterländischer Geschichte,” Archiv II (1845): 3–29; Johann Karl Schuller, “Entwicklung der wichtigsten Grundsätze für die Erforschung der rumänischen oder walachischen Sprache,” Archiv I (1843): 67–108.

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institutions. So it was more than mere lip service paid to the authorities when the preface of the new Archiv series, restarted in 1853, announced that “the new political institutions of the country open a wonderful perspective for the knowledge of Transylvania’s past and present. They link the scientific endeavors of this crownland more closely to the scholarship of the whole Austrian Empire and so they give encouragement and support.”42 The contrast with the chances of institutionalizing Magyar scholarship both in Transylvania and Hungary could not have been greater, as will be shown further below. Saxon education in general benefited from a novel wave of modernization that began in 1849–1850 with the adoption of Austrian school reforms and the establishment of the eight-year gymnasium. The Nationsuniversität supported financially the establishment of 89 new schools in the Saxon districts until 1867, while the number of enrollments at high schools grew steadily. Between 1850 and 1870, 4,234 Saxon, 1,225 Romanian, and 267 Hungarian students had their Matura at the gymnasium of Hermannstadt. Many of the graduates continued the tradition of academic peregrination to the German and Austrian universities, most of whom became professors and pastors upon their return home. They were the motor of modern schooling, they organized also the related pedagogical and scholarly associations, and they championed German Bildung— in contrast to vocational and specialized education.43 Their intellectual profile also determined, as will be shown further below, the scholarly and thematic foci of the society. These included close bonds to secondary education and their curricula, and a broad historical interest in Saxon culture, its origins, its present stage and artifacts, as well as its legal basis. Looking at the publication record of the Archiv, it is possible to identify this Bildungsbürger clientele through even subtler thematic nuances, such as the growing number of articles on Saxon students at German universities.44 The Landeskundeverein participated even through personal ties in the educational boom under Austrian auspices—another harsh contrast with the Magyar counterparts caught in the windmills of Austrian bureaucracy. Johann Karl Schuller, elected secretary .

42  “Introduction,” Archiv, new series, vol. 1, unpaginated. Before 1848, there appeared three volumes of the “original” format, in 1850/1851 the fourth volume was published. In the following issues from the old series will be marked by Roman number, the new series with Arabic ones, conform to the practice of the association. 43  Walter König, “Thesen zur ‘Bildungsrevolution’ bei den Siebenbürger Sachsen,” in Beiträge zur siebenbürgischen Schulgschichte, ed. Walter König (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996), 273–313, at 297–299. 44  See Mathilde Wagner, Register der Periodika des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 1840–1944 (Gundelsheim am Neckar: Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 2005).

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and one of the intellectual pillars of the society, was charged by the minister of religion and public instruction, Leo Thun, with the reorganization of the Transylvanian school system.45 Similar to other contemporary scholarly societies, a person with the necessary social capital in the provincial administration was required to secure the smooth running of affairs—in this case Joseph Bedeus von Scharberg, lifetime president since 1842—as were the notables in the steering committee of the association, or the elected honorary members of the society.46 Scharberg’s successor in 1858 was another political notable, the director of the police from Kronstadt, Franz Joseph Trausch (1795–1871), who served, however, “only” until his retirement in 1869. Both men had key positions in the Transylvanian Saxon public administration, and regarding scholarly activities, legal history was a key aspect of their activity.47 This fact reinforces the de facto belonging of the Landeskundeverein to that large family of German learned societies during its first two decades, where the preoccupation with the fatherland followed the pragmatic interest in improvement under the leadership of high-rank bureaucrats. The choice of prestigious patrons, for whom scholarship was not only a matter of scholarly leisure, but made up part of their work, also built bridges to the provincial administrative archives, which increasingly became one of the central sources and a premise for scholarly work. The presidential committee involved in the initial years the administrative as well as the Lutheran ecclesiastical elite, such as Georg Paul Binder and Georg 45  The secretaries of the Landeskundeverein included Johann Karl Schuller (1842), Joseph Benigni von Mildenberg (1842–1849), Michael Fuß (1849–1853), Karl Schwarz (1853– 1855), Jakob Rannicher (1855–1856), Ludwig Reissenberger (1856–1857), Friedrich von Schuler-Libloy (1857–1858), Karl Fuß (1858–1862), F. v. Schuler-Libloy (1857–1858), and Adolf Lutsch (1862–1866); see Harald Zimmermann, “Bemerkungen zur Geschichte des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde. Vortrag anläßlich der 2. Hauptversammlung des Arbeitskreises für siebenbürgische Landeskunde in Ansbach am 5. Januar 1964,” in Studien Zur Geschichtsschreibungim 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Paul Philippi (Cologne: Böhlau, 1967), 24–53, at 28; Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines,” 198. 46  Zimmermann, “Bemerkungen,” 30; Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine,” 63. 47  Joseph Bedeus von Scharberg, Die Verfassung des Großfürstenthums Siebenbürgen aus dem Gesichtspunkte der Geschichte, der Landesgesetze und des bestehenden öffentlichen Redites (Vienna, 1844). Trausch edited the chronicle Chronicon Fuchsio-LupinoOltardinum sive Annales Hungarici et Transsilvanici . . ., 2 vols. (Kronstadt, 1847–1848), which counted as his greatest merit in the Landeskundeverein. Another indispensable publication was his three-volume biographical lexicon of Transylvanian Saxon scholars, entitled Schriftstellerlexicon oder biographisch-literarische Denkblätter der Siebenbürger Deutschen, vols. 1–3 (Kronstadt, 1868–1871).

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Daniel Teutsch. These men represented Saxon interest in conformity with Vienna, and in firm opposition to Hungarian unionist politics, which indicated that political reliability was crucial for securing the sympathy of the imperial bureaucracy. Georg Binder had been member of a delegation sent in 1848 to the emperor to oppose the union; Teutsch had fought against the Székely troops in defense of his hometown Schäßburg. They were active in maximizing culturaleducational autonomy in conformity with the authorities, and only secondarily interested in keeping neighborly good relations with the subsequently created Hungarian and Romanian scholarly institutions. That the leadership of the Landeskundeverein already before 1848 co-opted not only bureaucrats but also a more diverse clientele is well illustrated by the career of Teutsch, and is a sign of changes in the social and scholarly profile of the society. Preparing for his profession as a gymnasium professor and pastor, Teutsch studied in Berlin, his professor in history being no lesser a scholar than Leopold von Ranke. After his return to Transylvania in 1839, he found employment in the gymnasium of his hometown Schäßburg, where he joined the Landeskundeverein, and soon became its committee member. An adherent of moderate liberal nationalism, Teutsch also tried his hand at a political career and represented his hometown at the 1848 diet in Kolozsvár. He was elected a pastor, soon becoming bishop from 1867–1893.48 His figure became the symbol of the union between confession, Bildung, and nationality politics, which became crucial in the subsequent era of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. But he made a name for himself already in the 1850s as a keen historian, mastering both the critical use of historical sources, and authoring the first popular, yet professionally documented history of the Transylvanian Saxons. He is thus emblematic for a beginning institutional shift in similar learned societies in Germany and Austria, characterized by a growing propensity towards historiography, often with antimodernist and conservative overtones.49 Already in the decades before the revolution, the honorary members elected to the ranks of the Landeskundeverein had established individual ties to Austrian scholarly institutions and in particular to the Viennese Academy of Sciences. Several of these men who were of Transylvanian origin had important positions in the Viennese cultural and confessional hierarchies. Such scholars included the Orientalist Johann Georg Wenrich (1787–1847), who became professor at the newly created Lutheran theological institute in Vienna in 1821, and later secretary of the Academy, and Andreas Gunesch (1799–1875), advisor of 48  Andreas Möckel, “Einführung,” in Georg Daniel Teutsch, Geschichte der Siebenbürger Sachsen für das sächsische Volk, vol. 1 (repr., Cologne: Böhlau, 1984), v–xxii, at vii–ix. 49  Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine,” 48.

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the Lutheran Consistory and later its superintendent. Conversely, renowned Austrian scholars, such as Joseph Chmel (1798–1858), vice president of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, also became honorary members of the Landeskundeverein.50 Ties to Germany were as important as ever, especially if the distinguished German colleagues ever conducted research in the Transylvanian archives, as was the case for the historian Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903).51 Other scholars, such as the Heidelberg-based professor of history, Wilhelm Wattenbach (1819–1897), even campaigned in the German press for the cultural autonomy of the Lutheran Saxons surrounded by “foreign nations.”52 After 1847, the share of qualified teaching staff, including mostly gymnasium professors, was relatively constant. The percentage of professors and pastors was the highest among the members, amounting to ca. 40 percent. Beyond the celebrities of the caliber of Mommsen or Chmel, other university professors from Germany, Austria (mainly from Vienna), and Budapest enrolled as external members or were offered honorary membership status, a sign of the successful establishment of the Landeskundeverein in the German-speaking academic milieu in Central Europe. The Saxon political and economic elite counted as the other social foundation stone of the association. In the 1850s the high-ranking city and state functionaries were the second largest occupational group besides professors and pastors, and their proportional share remained relatively constant until the First World War. The liberalization of politics in 1867 brought parliamentary politicians and ministerial functionaries as well. Their presence was highest in the years following the Saxon-Hungarian “Compromise” in 1890—the settling of tensions caused by the previous campaign of the state to Magyarize the church-led elementary education of the nationalities—including in the 1890s even the Minister of Agriculture, Count András Bethlen (1847–1898). The urban economic sector supported the Landeskundeverein too. Directors of savings banks, cooperatives, and lending institutions, the commercial middle class (factory and sawmill owners, timber traders, etc.), but also less affluent booksellers, faithfully

50  Zimmermann, “Bemerkungen,” 39. 51  Friedrich Teutsch, “Theodor Mommsen, Römische Geschichte,” Korrespondenzblatt 9 (1886), 58–59. 52  About Wattenbach, see Friedrich Teutsch, “Denkrede auf Wilhelm Wattenbach zur Eröffnung der 51. Generalversammlung des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” Archiv 30 (1901): 5–27; Wilhelm Wattenbach, Die Siebenbürger Sachsen; ein Vortrag (Heidelberg: Fr. Bassermann, 1870–1882).

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attended the yearly meetings and supported the association with donations. All this is evidence for the social prestige of the Landeskundeverein. Indeed, intellectuals, the Lutheran Church, politicians, and state bureaucrats were the producers and consumers of the cultural goods produced by the association, which included popular editions of Transylvanian Saxon history and culture, such as the Sachsengeschichte by Georg Daniel Teutsch, its subsequent series completed by his son, Friedrich Teutsch (1852–1933), or the first folktale collections by Joseph Haltrich (1822–1886). Accomplished maps and painted images, later lithographs, of Saxon townscapes were also prepared and sold at the yearly meetings of the association, thus demonstrating that not only the production but also the consumption of cultural goods was an important part of the scholarly agenda. From this standpoint it is understandable that the association was less attractive for lower status workers, especially when compared with their higher proportion before the revolution (ca. onefourth of the total). In comparison to the 130 members in 1847, there were only 22 members from this vocational background in 1914. This detail partly confirms the hypothesis that the Landeskundeverein became an institution of social prestige for the Transylvanian Saxon society and a space of sociability for the middle-class Bildungsbürgertum under the leadership of the cultural and political elite. Further evidence of social authority was the enrollment of institutions, schools, religious congregations, even town and village councils to the association. It was a continuous process stretching across the entire century and reaching its peak in the 1880s. The desire for permanent public presence and local pressure from the pastors and teachers also did its share in recruiting the congregations, communities, and civil organizations. The Saxon Lutheran bishop and the church deans made significant efforts in this regard—according to the ambitious plans of the president, all Saxon congregations had the patriotic and religious duty to subscribe. The plan was never accomplished, but due to the conscientious agitation of individual parish priests, congregations joined the association in growing number. Thus on the occasion of the yearly meeting in 1879, Samuel Schiel, dean of the Kronstadt church district, reported that all the congregations from his district joined the Landeskundeverein.53 The dynamics of membership had its financial logic as well. From its earliest days, the association relied on membership fees. But already in the 1850s, it received donations, for instance from the printers Gött (Kronstadt) and Samuel Filtsch (Hermannstadt), who subsidized the printing of the asso53  Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines,” 169.

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ciation’s journal, Archiv, and several other publications. The cultural fund of the Nationsuniversität, the feudal Saxon self-government, also contributed occasional help for source publication until its dissolution following the Compromise. Since 1873, the Ministry for Religion and Education allowed the public sponsoring of scholarly and educational associations, which brought additional support from Saxon town council and district administrations.54 Also, the councils of Hermannstadt, Kronstadt, Mühlbach, and Schäßburg subscribed as full members of the association, and so did several credit institutions, such as the Sparkassa (savings bank) from Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, as well as the savings and loan associations from Mühlbach. Apart from that, the Sparkassa from Hermannstadt offered the Landeskundeverein generous extra yearly support since 1880, which amounted by 1896/97 to 2500 gulden.55 Saxon Landeskunde between Erudition and Popularization The publication record of the Landeskundeverein from the 1840s through the end of the 1860s illustrates how scholarship functioned as a collective and collaborative enterprise. The chief activity of the learned society was data publication and in particular the critical edition of Transylvanian historical sources that focused in Saxon matters. The focus on the origins and evolution of historical rights conferred upon the Landeskundeverein a conservative note. On the other hand, there were changes, to be felt in particular after the revolution. The civil war demanded the life of several members of the founding g­ eneration, including Joseph Benigni von Mildenberg, Anton Kurz (1799–1849), and Stefan Ludwig Roth (1796–1849). Others, like Friedrich Hann (1817–1852) and Josef Göllner, left Transylvania for good. Johann Karl Schuller, Georg Binder, Count József Kemény, and Josef Bedeus von Scharberg, also from the generation of the founders, survived the turmoil and had no small role in helping the association return to the normal regime. In the meantime, a younger generation stepped forward, visible above all in the persona and work of Georg Daniel Teutsch. The future Sachsenbischop, who acquired his sobriquet after his draft law for a new ecclesiastical constitution of the Transylvanian Lutheran Church, emerged as the emblematic Saxon romantic national historian. Teutsch started his scientific career with two major source publications under the auspices 54  In total, 853 gulden were allocated by the towns and the counties from 1873 to 1891, according to the association’s report. Ibid., 168, 174–179. 55  Ibid., 168.

126 TABLE 4

CHAPTER 3 Social-professional distribution of Landeskundeverein members, 1853–1914 (the table includes also institutions who fulfilled the requirements of membership).

Profession

1853

1863

1883

1893

1914

Middle-ranking employees: secretaries, drafters, archivists, etc. Highly qualified teaching staff: univ., gymnasium professors, etc. High-ranking state officials Ecclesiasts Traders Free professions, lawyers, physicists Other: military, lower teaching staff (teachers), landowners, artisans Institutions: congregations, communities, associations Total

14.3%

11.81%

3.52%

5.88%

4.10 %

13.5%

19.40%

18.38%

14.11%

16.71%

31.4% 21.4% — 6.0%

17.84% 21.51% — 5.69%

17.39% 19.94% 7.49% 7.21%

23.05% 18.82% 9.17% 9.76%

21.08% 19.87% 6.62% 8.28%

13.14%

23.75%

13.26%

12.74%

14.31%

—

—

12.81%

6.47%

9.03%

397 = 100%

474 = 100%

850 = 100%

664 = 100%

707 =100%

Sources: Bericht über die Entstehung, die Schicksale und Leistungen des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde bis zum Jahr 1853 vom Vereins-Vorsteher (Hermannstadt: Georg v. Closius, 1853), 3–14; Jahresbericht des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde für das Jahr 1863–1864 (Hermannstadt: Georg v. Closius, 1864), 4–19; Jahresbericht des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde für das Jahr 1883–1884 (Hermannstadt: Georg v. Closius, 1864), 4–19; Jahresbericht des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde für das Jahr 1893–1894 (Hermannstadt: W. Krafft, 1894), 3–24; Jahresbericht des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde für das Jahr 1914 (Hermannstadt: W. Krafft, 1915), 3–23.

of the Landeskundeverein.56 Source editions had been the foundation also of his later national historical narrative, entitled Die Geschichte der Siebenbürger 56  One of them was the Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens, vol. 1 (Fontes rerum Austriacarum, Diplomata et acta, vol. 15) (Vienna, 1857), no further volumes were published. The other one was a seventeenth-century chronicle entitled Siebenbürgische Chronik des Schäßburger Stadtschreibers Georg Krauß, also published in 1862–1864 in the series Fontes rerum Austriacarum of the Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften. Zimmermann, “Bemerkungen,” 48.

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Sachsen für das sächsische Volk, which won the prize of the society.57 His work indicates clearly the shift of focus of Landeskunde to historically grounded scholarship on the Transylvanian Saxons. Indeed, among the range of disciplines, history was by far the most widely practiced, the most significant achievement of the first two decades being the collecting and editing of historical sources. The Landeskundeverein decided already in 1844 on the compilation of a Transylvanian Codex diplomaticus, comprising unedited documents from the provincial private, state, and city archives.58 As mentioned, the historical underpinning of the feudal Saxon “constitution” had been a major political concern since 1790. The association had acquired by the mid-1840s the necessary manpower and infrastructure for the task. Senators, members of the Provincial Court, and archivists affiliated with the association were requested by Martin Reschner (1791–1872),59 a member commissioned with copying the documents, to facilitate the perusal and publication of the relevant archival material. In the contemporary circumstances, this was indeed a major step, since private and corporate archives had been hitherto under the control of town magistrates, aristocrats, and private owners. Count Kemény, one of the first to open up his manuscript collection for research,60 prepared a blueprint for the work and put his own manuscript library at the disposal of the Landeskundeverein. The history of historical source editions in the post-revolutionary decades marks the beginning accessibility of administrative archives in Transylvania. In the early 1850s, Teutsch was commissioned with the task of the collecting and editing process. He promptly planned further explorations in the administrative archives of Kolozsvár and Gyulafehérvár and was granted immediate access to 57  Möckel, “Einführung,” vii–ix. 58  “Vorwort,” in Georg Daniel Teutsch and Friedrich Firnhaber, ed., Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens. Erster Theil (Vienna: Kaiserl.-Königl. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1857), iii–x, at vii. See also Gustav Gündisch, “Das Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen,” in Wege landeskundlicher Forschung. 25 Jahre Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 1962–1987, ed. Konrad Gündisch (Cologne: Böhlau, 1988), 73–82, at 73–74. 59  Martin Reschner (1791–1872), gymnasium professor and pastor, had started already in 1828 the compilation of a critical edition of records. Reschner’s works on Transylvania published abroad or in other periodicals were also reviewed by the Archiv. Gündisch, “Urkundenbuch,” 74–75. 60  Teutsch and Firnhaber, Urkundenbuch, ix. Kemény had already published together with his private secretary, Anton Kurz, a document edition titled Deutsche Fundgruben der Geschichte Siebenbürgens (Klausenburg, 1839), and Erdélyország Történeti Tára (Kolozsvár, 1837, 1845); Elemér Mályusz, “Gróf Kemény József oklevélhamisítványai” [The forged historical documents of Count József Kemény], Levéltári Közlemények 59 (1988): 197–216.

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these “loca credibilia,” hitherto closed to historians—a further sign of the prestige of the Landeskundeverein in the Habsburg administration. The scholar could view and copy original records for the first time from before 1301, the date marking the extinction of the first royal dynasty in Hungary.61 While on his official mission in Vienna, Johann Karl Schuller initiated cooperation between the Landeskundeverein and the Historical Commission of the Viennese Academy of Sciences for the edition of Saxon historical sources. As soon as the first volume, entitled Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens (Collection of documents on the history of Transylvania), was prepared by Teutsch and the archivist and Academy member Franz Firnhaber, it could be published in the Academy series Fontes rerum Austriacum.62 The Landeskundeverein also envisaged the complete edition of medieval Transylvanian historical documents, but even the concerted effort of its members proved insufficient in the absence of more active support on the part of the authorities. While at the University of Vienna an entire Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsfor­ schung (Austrian Institute of Historical Research) could dedicate itself to the critical edition of historical sources since 1854, the Landeskundeverein found it difficult to keep up the pace and since 1866 focused its energies on the smaller administrative units of the counties districts.63 The publication of sources contributed in the longer run to the professionalization of historical writing. It became possible for the first time to initiate a comprehensive provincial legal history, but also a historically documented narrative of the “Saxon nation.” The 1850s witnessed the birth of both these versions. Best known is the prize-winning work of Teutsch, the emblematic Sachsengeschichte. The narrative expands from the “arrival” of German colonists in Transylvania until the end of the seventeenth century, laying its focus on the Saxons as an ethnic and legal category, distinguished by legal autonomy, participation in Protestantism, and humanist learning. His Saxons were a political corporate nation, and in the construction of their image Teutsch took inspiration from the narrative of the Hungarian liberal national historian, Mihály Horváth (1809–1878), who wrote the history of the Hungarian people

61  See Gündisch, “Urkundenbuch,” 75. About the collection and edition of manuscripts in the Landeskundeverein since the 1840s and the 1850s, see Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines,” 155–162. 62  Gustav Gündisch, “Der Verein für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde. Eine Wissenschfts­ geschichte,” in Wege Landeskundlicher Forschung, 13–51, at 24. 63  Gündisch, “Urkundenbuch,” 76.

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from the early migration of semi-nomadic tribes into the Carpathian Basin, the settlement and state foundation in the tenth century, until the end of the reign of Joseph II in 1792.64 We do not know if it was the avoidance of politically risky topics, widespread at that time, that made Teutsch halt his narrative before the advent of the “Habsburg century of Transylvania,” and with it the sensitive topic of Counter-Reformation, taking place in the eighteenth century as Transylvania lost its quasi-autonomous status.65 As a follower of Ranke, who coined the term ‘Counter-Reformation,’ Teutsch found it important to emphasize “that in the case of this [i.e., Saxon] national history one does not have to do with an ethnic splinter group, but with an autonomous people.”66 He reinvented the feudal nation as a modern Kirchenvolk at a time when the traditional institutions of self-administration were just being crushed by the emerging modern state.67 Obviously, autonomy was relative; it always meant resistance to the overpowering state, whether Habsburg or Hungarian, whereas being open culturally and politically towards the Protestant milieus in Germany. Furthermore, Teutsch was the first Saxon historian projecting a liberal national community into the past, where “nobody was either a servant or a master.”68 So great was the public resonance of his narrative that it took until the end of the nineteenth, beginning of the twentieth century to point out that, together with the city dwellers and the peasants, there was also a sizable nobility who settled in Transylvania. Even then, such critical voices had difficulty finding their way to the major publications in Transylvania. The Siebenbürgische Rechtsgeschichte by Friedrich Schuler von Libloy (1827–1900), professor at the Law Academy in Hermannstadt and committee member of the Landeskundeverein, was also one of the first beneficiaries of

64  Mihály Horváth, A magyarok története [The history of the Hungarian people], 4 vols. (until 1792) (Pest, 1842–1846). 65  About the widespread apolitical patriotism of historical associations, and the avoidance of historical polemics, see Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine,” 51. 66  Beyer, “Geschichtsbewustsein,” 75. 67  Ibid., 86. Andreas Möckel, “Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewustsein bei den siebenbürger Sachsen,” in Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Philippi, 1–23, at 7–9. 68   Georg Adolf Schuller, “Die Gräfen.” See Beyer, “Geschichtsbewustsein und Nationalprogramm der Siebenbürger Sachsen,” in Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, 56–115, 76; Gündisch, “Wissenschaftsgeschichte,” 25.

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the source editing.69 It describes the development of the feudal Transylvanian government, on the basis of German and Magyar archival material at a time when the Austrian authorities reinstated the separate status of the province.70 The three-volume Rechtsgeschichte was a teaching manual at the academy, thus not published by the association. Yet its first volume on the structure and history of state law in Transylvania received a prize as “particularly serving our goals”: “This work is for the time being only a manual for a semester’s lectures, but it regards itself as the beginning of a legal historiography encompassing the entire crownland of Transylvania.”71 The history publications of the Archiv addressed questions located broadly around these two thematic poles, namely, the national history and the legaladministrative history of Transylvania. There were a growing number of archival and archeological documentations of the settlement of the medieval Saxon colonists, their integration into and relations with the Magyar and Székely estates, as well as to the host sovereigns.72 The periodical also explored the Roman and pre-Roman, that is, Dacian past, and the origins of the Transylvanian Romanian population. The publication of sources began to shed light on the legal and economic history of medieval Saxon Transylvania, the situation of the Saxon estate, and the Church before the Reformation; moreover commerce, agriculture, litigations, and the taxing of soil in medieval Saxon legislation. The movement for monument protection, which was institutionalized in Austria during the decade after 1848, found in the Landeskundeverein an eager partner of cooperation and initiated a wave of cultural-historical interest. The exploration of church fortresses as art and military historical monuments started in the 1850s on the pages of the Archiv, when the Landeskundeverein participated in the monarchy-wide program for the registration and preservation of historical monuments. Jahrbuch der k.k. Central-Kommission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale (Yearbook of the Imperial and 69  Friedrich Schuler von Libloy, Siebenbürgische Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 1 (Hermannstadt, 1854–1858; 2nd ed., Hermannstadt, 1867), 5. Joseph Trausch, “Bericht über den Bestand und Leistungen des VSL,” Archiv 6 (1865): 266–290, at 285. 70  Ibid. 71  Schuler von Libloy, “Vorwort zur ersten Auflage,” in Siebenbürgische Rechtsgeschichte, unpaginated. 72  Register der Periodika des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde (1840–1944), ed. Mathilde Wagner (Heidelberg: Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 2005). The diagrams about the dynamics of publications in the Archiv and in the Korrespondenzblatt are based on the data from the register.

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Royal Central Commission for the Research and Preservation of Historic Buildings) was the broader Viennese avenue for introducing the archeological treasures of the Saxon past to the German-speaking scholarly audience beyond Transylvania.73 The image of the province as a buffer zone between the warring Ottomans and Habsburgs, from the Middle Ages until the end of the seventeenth century, started to become known abroad. This was enabled by the industrious collective work of the Saxon authors, who published partly in the Archiv, partly contributed to publications in Vienna and beyond, and thus facilitated the circulation of Transylvanian cultural goods among the Germanspeaking public beyond the province. The articles dwelled on the armed conflicts and their sites, the picturesque Saxon Kirchenburgen or fortress churches, which were built, as their name suggests, also as defense against the invasion of external foes. Cultural history, complete with the history of confessions and humanist education under the auspices of the history of Transylvanian Protestantism, started to establish itself at the expense of older Saxon constitutional history. More general writings on ecclesiastical history alternated with data on individual churches, ecclesiastical chapters, and bishoprics, while the emerging interest in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation in the post-revolutionary decades reflected the establishment of romantic historiography and historicism. The Transylvanian acolytes of Ranke also started to document the history of primary and secondary schools in towns and in the countryside, and write the biographies of long forgotten teachers and pastors, who had peregrinated in the past centuries to the German Protestant universities only to return home and teach the next generation in the traditional spirit of Protestantism and ‘national’ autonomy. In addition to the German and Austrian trend of historicization, which was developing visibly in the domain of Landeskunde in the 1850s, in Transylvania there was still much exploration to do in the auxiliary disciplines of history, including geography, cartography, and ethnography. These were further important domains for the Saxon ‘collecting collective’ as the coexistence of several generations of scholars resulted in a plurality of older encyclopedic and newer positivist scholarly styles. Even the initial interest in natural history was kept, albeit showing a slightly decreasing tendency: the Archiv published in average 10.5 articles in the 1850s and 1860s on the topic in comparison to 13 articles in the 1840s. The effect of scholarly differentiation did not lead to the disappearance of natural history from the agenda of the Landeskundeverein, despite the foundation of the Siebenbürgischer Verein für Naturwissenschaften zu Hermannstadt 73  Gündisch, “Wissenschaftsgeschichte,” 23–24.

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(Transylvanian Association for Natural History in Hermannstadt) in 1849. Even if the latter increasingly monopolized the publications in the field in the ensuing decades, the politically relevant geography and cartography remained under the auspices of the Landeskundeverein. One can speak about the persistence of the encyclopedic outlook through the practice of several disciplines throughout the lifetime of the association. This composite perspective centered now firmly on the Saxon nation and its history, whether seen as a feudal corporation or as a modern ethnoreligious community, whereas the original attention on the entire province with all its inhabitants shifted more in the background. Yet it did not disappear! Similar to the history section, the geographystatistics section too set prizes for works on Transylvanian counties and districts, but the most significant work became a full description of Transylvania, the prize-winning monograph, Handbuch der Landeskunde Siebenbürgens, which was published by committee member Eduard Albert Bielz (1827–1898).74 If Teutsch was the modern national historian of the nation, Bielz’s book reflected the older perspective of the enlightened sciences of state. It is an emblematic piece of the 1850-er, celebrating emancipation and reforms from above, the progress of civilization, and technical knowledge. After graduating from the law faculty in Hermannstadt in 1848, the author made a career in various offices of public administration, being appointed in 1867 as secretary of the Hungarian Department of Finances and later a member of the Hungarian Statistical Office, established in 1869. Bielz was keen on taking his regular scientific tours through Transylvania, serving for over 30 years as committee member of the Landeskundeverein, while functioning also as secretary and later president of the Siebenbürgischer Verein für Naturwissenschaften and as vice president of the Siebenbürgische Karpatenverein (Transylvanian Carpathian Association, founded in 1880), and member of the Transylvanian Museum Society too.75 Bielz consciously situated his Handbuch into a century-old tradition of state description, featuring noted Hungarian and German scholars, such as József 74   Eduard Albert Bielz, Handbuch der Landeskunde Siebenbürgens. Eine physikalischstatistisch-topographische Beschreibung dieses Landes (Hermannstadt: Filtsch, 1857; repr. Cologne: Böhlau, 1996). 75  On the Transylvanian Association of Natural Science, see Heinz Heltmann and Hansgeorg von Killyen, Der Siebenbürgische Verein für Naturwissenschaften zu Hermannstadt. 1849– 1949 (Hermannstadt and Heidelberg: Hora-Verl., 2003); Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde (AKSL) e.V (Studii şi comunicări Muzeul de Istorie Naturală Hermannstadt, 2003), 28.

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Benkő (1740–1814), Michael Lebrecht (1757–1807), and their followers from the nineteenth century, Benigni von Mildenberg (1782–1849), Lucas Joseph Marienburg (1770–1821), and László Kőváry (1819–1907). His handbook promises to provide a full and up-to-date description of the province, involving geography and natural history but also demography, economy, political history, law, as well as secular and ecclesiastical administration. The author could use fresh data gathered by his colleagues and published by the Landeskundeverein, and, more importantly, from the legal-administrative reorganization under the Provisorium involving a census carried out in 1850.76 It is indeed a comprehensive account of all ethnic, occupational, confessional, and other social categories of his time, a complete account of all schools and their place in the contemporary educational system, and includes data about the various voluntary associations of the province as well. It reflects the statistical gaze of the central authorities, including contemporary measures of the leveling ethnic politics on Transylvania. The closing part describes each of the administrative districts and localities, providing their names in all used languages. The study distinguishes itself by maximum neutrality in ethnopolitical matters, relating in the decreasing order of their proportion Romanians, Hungarians and Székelys, Saxons, as well as the smaller ethnic and religious communities: Roma, Jews, Armenians, Slavs, and Greeks. Issues of national history are brief and presented without comments.77 The book, published in 1857, registers the state of the art of Transylvania in the early 1850s. After the issuing of the October Diploma in 1860, and the ensuing partial reestablishment of regional administration, much of its data became, of course, obsolete. Other publications imagined the modern Saxon cultural identity built on confession and culture. The former continued to mobilize references to autonomy, and also cast the non-Saxon surroundings as culturally inferior. The hierarchical collective image was not confined to the erudite publications, but mediatized in the popular editions of the Landeskundeverein too. It made part of the public lectures performed at the yearly celebrations of the Transylvanian Saxon civic movement, which served as the political orientation of the audience. If the Saxon nation occupied center stage in the scholarly agenda of the Landeskundeverein, considerable effort was spent representing the provincial context, including the two rival communities, that is, the Hungarian and Székely estates, as well as the Romanian inhabitants of the Saxon lands. The 76  Eduard Bielz, “Vorwort,” in Handbuch der Landeskunde Siebenbürgens (repr., Cologne: Böhlau, 1996), i–ii, i. 77  Ibid., 140.

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emblematic image of the Orthodox Romanian majority, presented as a tangible political threat, surfaced again in 1848, along with the event of the dissolution of the feudal legislation in the settlements of Königsboden, the largest territory with Saxon self-administration in Transylvania.78 The imagination and exploration of Saxon collective identity in these decades are manifest in the support of the publication of works written by authors not enrolled in the Landeskundeverein, but regarded as particularly relevant contributions to Saxon politics, history, and culture. Such works include Joseph Haltrich’s Deutsche Volksmärchen aus dem Sachsenlande in Siebenbürgen (1856), Eugen von Trauschenfels’s Deutsche Fundgruben zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens (1860), Eduard Albert Bielz’s Beitrag zur Geschichte und Statistik des Steuerwesens in Siebenbürgen (1861), Viktor Kästner’s Gedichte in siebenbürgisch-sächsischer Mundart (1862), Die römischen Inschriften in Dacien by Johann Michael Ackner and Friedrich Müller (1865), and the threevolume Schriftstellerlexikon oder biographisch-literärische Denkblätter der Siebenbürger Deutschen by Joseph Trausch and Friedrich Schuler von Libloy (1827–1900). Such representative works of Saxon scholarship were then separately commissioned by the presidential committee of the association and sent as exchange publications to partner institutes.79 The scholarly contacts were not confined to Vienna only. During the 1850s and 1860s, the association established exchange relations with the Hungarian Academy, the academies in Berlin and Munich, and other European and overseas institutions of scholarship.80 The spanning of international networks for exchanging learned publications contributed again to a growing visibility of Transylvania and within it the Saxon culture in Europe and beyond. Involvement in education was the third main domain of activity alongside producing politically relevant legal-administrative and historical knowledge as well as cultural goods for the Saxon book market. The Landeskundeverein wrote school curricula under the auspices of the Lutheran Church and understood itself as the mediator between the Ministry of Education and the Lutheran schools. The new syllabi, entitled Programmschriften, for the five 78  Carl Göllner, Vortrag gehalten in der Versammlung des VSL, am 28 Mai 1847 in Großschenk (Kronstadt: Gött, 1847). 79  Joseph Bedeus von Scharberg, Bericht über die Entstehung, die Schicksale und Leistungen des Vereines für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde bis zum Jahr 1853 (Hermannstadt: Georg v. Closius, 1853), 23–24. 80  In 1853 the number of partner institutions, with whom the Landeskundeverein exchanged publications, amounted to 22, in 1870 it grew to 76. Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines,” 163.

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gymnasia and the two German-speaking Normalschulen were prepared almost exclusively by members of the association.81 The association also initiated a contest for preparing a mineralogy guidebook for the gymnasia, and offered a collection of minerals and numismatics, a geographical map of Transylvania, and free copies of the Archiv to each of them.82 This fact explains further the preponderance of gymnasia teachers in the ranks of the society as well as the specific educational tasks of Landeskunde in Saxon Lutheran education. The voluntary character of the Landeskundeverein made possible in the two post-revolutionary decades the parallel existence of older and newer scholarly patterns, while the historical perspective on the ‘nation’ was central to both periods. The encyclopedic disciplinary and thematic structure of Landeskunde, encompassing all social clusters and the entire territory of the province, was represented by the handbook by Bielz, but was already at an impasse in comparison to the gross number of publications in Saxon history in the journal of the Landeskundeverein. The narrowing of the focus on a historicized concept of the nation indicates the eclipse of the older polymath knowledge, the encompassing mapping of the province’s Land und Leute. The generation of Georg Daniel Teutsch, Imre Mikó, and Bariț were already exponents of pronouncedly national perspectives, both in politics and in scholarship. Their interests revolved around their ‘nation’ and its origins and myths, social anatomy, and linguistic and cultural peculiarities. The leading discipline of the mid-nineteenth century became, as will be shown below, history in a ‘national’ framework, whereby a considerable task had been to reconcile it with the social heterogeneity of Transylvania. The result was a tacit division of labor with other newly created organizations specializing in the study of Hungarian and Romanian cultures in Transylvania at the end of the 1850s.

81  Cf. fn. 34. 82  Alongside the Transylvanian mineralogy guidebook (the prize-winning study was Michael Ackner, Mineralogie Siebenbürgens, 1855), the association announced competition for various themes including a register of the archival sources of Transylvanian history until 1300, historical-topographical-statistical monographs of Saxon seats, Transylvanian fauna and flora, history of the Union of the three estates in Transylvania and its consequences, legal history from the time of the Árpád dynasty (Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereines,” 153). See also the Protocols of the yearly meetings of the Landeskundeverein between 1844 and 1846.

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The Transylvanian Museum Society: historia magistra vitae

The experience of the failed revolution in Hungary generated in many contemporary scholars a desire for understanding its larger historical dimensions. According to Ágnes R. Várkonyi, “for anyone pondering the questions of the past and present, the revolution in Hungary was to be assessed in a general European context or in the totality of humankind, as a link in the chain of centuries-long historical processes, whether conservative, whether looking for solutions within the framework of the Monarchy, or searching for the possibilities of an autonomous Hungarian state.”83 The expulsion from politics of the liberal political elite in Hungary after 1849 and their confinement to the study of culture and civilization gave new impetus to the rather conservative Academy of Sciences in Pest, while specialization led to the foundation of a new branch of the academy, the Hungarian Historical Association, but also of other historical societies, including the influential Catholic Szent István Társulat (Society of Saint Stephen, founded in 1852) and the Protestáns Irodalmi Egyesület (Protestant Literary Society). In Transylvania, it was at the end of the 1850s when the first Hungarian learned society was established, thanks to the initiatives of Imre Mikó and his appeals to the patriotism of the Transylvanian nobility. From its inception in 1859, the Museum Society continued the gentlemanly and polymath tradition, with an emphasis on the patriotic legal history of the Transylvanian nobility. The press of Kolozsvár was its ally, upholding the idea of national improvement with an anti-Habsburg edge. National műveltség (self-formation) was contrasted with the foreignness of the absolutist regime, but also with cosmopolitanism and the radicalism of the revolution. Magyar education and culture was to receive not only its place among other peoples of the empire, but its primacy.84 Mikó himself was already practiced in the publication of historical sources. His 1855 Erdélyi történelmi adatok (Transylvanian historical data), published six years after the defeat of the revolution, announced in the introduction a robust political vision of the role of scholarship: In order that a country and a nation should possess a written history, one which is worthy of attention among the world of readers, or at least 83  R. Várkonyi, A pozitivista történetszemlélet, 2: 244. 84  János Veliky, “A szociális mozgalmakat szervező Kossuth társadalomfelfogása” [The social concept of the social reformist Kossuth], in Nemzeti és társadalmi átalakulás a XIX. században Magyarországon [National and social transformation in 19th-century Hungary], ed. István Orosz and Ferenc Pölöskei (Budapest: Korona Kiadó, 1994), 329.

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in the public at home, it is necessary for it to have possessed in one or another era an independent statehood, for . . . it [to] have had an important sphere of activities in the public life of the peoples, for it to have been civilized, moreover, for it to have had a civilizing role and therefore an impact on the progress of mankind.85 According to the author, Transylvania had possessed such a role from the earliest settlement of Székely and Magyar tribes on its territory. Marked off by the Carpathians, Transylvania had been an autonomous unit and simultaneously the border zone of “Western civilization,” whether as part of the Hungarian Crown in the Middle Ages, as an independent state with its own “constitution” during the Ottoman domination in Hungary, or under the Habsburg scepter in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century.86 The historical achievement of the young Hungarian civilization, that is, the accomplishment of statehood within less than a century after settlement, was regarded as a most significant achievement. While the 1840s and 1850s witnessed the maturation of Magyar historiography in Hungary, it still remained fragmentary in Transylvania. The reasons included, according to the author, the lack of unity among the historic ruling estates, representing “two hearts of the same political body,” and the lack of continuity in its political history, which led to its secondary role in comparison with the Hungarian state.87 Furthermore, the political animosity of the Magyar, Székely, and Saxon estates had been compounded by cultural and geographical fragmentation—the arguments are already familiar from the Quartalschrift!—which not only led to a subordinated role of the patria vis-à-vis its mightier neighbors, but diminished the prospects of a comprehensive and systematic exploration of its historical past.88 Peragit tranquilla potestas quod violenta nequit—“power can do by gentleness that which violence fails to accomplish”—the Claudian maxim cited by Mikó became a watchword referring to the familiar attitude of leading Hungarian historians in the post-1848 decade. Both in the understanding of the Hungarian statesman and political thinker József Eötvös (1813–1871) and the literary historian and secretary of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Ferenc 85  Imre Mikó, “Tájékozódás az erdélyi történetírás és adatgyűjtés körül, vonatkozólag a magyarországi hasonló törekvésekre” [Orientation regarding the Transylvanian historical writing and data gathering, in relation to similar incentives in Hungary], in Erdélyi történelmi adatok [Transylvanian historical data] (Kolozsvár, 1855), v–xxxi, at v. 86  Ibid., v. 87  Ibid., vi. 88  Ibid., ix.

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Toldy (1805–1875), the maxim set a new moral standard after the upheavals of the glorious but defeated revolution. According to them, the past was more than a “dry aggregation of military, religious, and political data,” but the repository of the values that nourished the flagging national consciousness. A rich and promising past implied a similar future, and the task of contemporaries was to collect and represent the memory of the former. Historical writing had thus a pragmatic function for the national audience, namely, a therapeutic one, offering solace and intellectual preparation for rising from the political defeat.89 His was a religiously optimistic view of history, according to which the thorough knowledge of the past made the correction of the present possible. The stance of Mikó is evidence of the resilient concept of historia magistra vitae in the post-revolutionary Central and Eastern European scholarly practice.90 Mikó understood scholarship as a continuation of the beginnings of critical and empirical historiography as practiced in the enlightened circles of Aranka, Schlözer, Brukenthal, and later in the source publishing endeavors of Karl Schuller, Trausch, Count Kemény, and the Landeskundeverein. According to him, scholarship was incomplete without a patriotic finality, and while “foreigners” were able to accomplish the scientific perusal of the past, it required the personal experience of a Transylvanian to render a deeper and authentic understanding, indispensable for handing it down to further generations. Mikó could find such masterpieces in Hungary, for instance in the historical synthesis of the Hungarian liberal historian Mihály Horváth, yet there was no similar comprehensive achievement to find in Transylvania.91 As we can see, he too envisaged nation-building via scholarship in the vernacular par excellence; not only did the historian have to be an unfailing teacher of the nation, but he himself had to form part of the national reading community, in order to best accomplish his mission. Mikó judged the efforts of his contemporaries to be outstandingly insufficient when it came to the documentation of the Magyar and Székely aspects of the Transylvanian past. His appeal to more public involvement in the collection of historical data reprimanded the passivity of his (national) audience, but also the novelty of his approach. Diplomas, written privileges, and legal documents were once the source of the legitimate order and therefore of 89  Ibid., x–xi, xxvi. 90  For comparisons with German, British, Romanian, Czech, and Polish examples, see Monika Baár, Historians and Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 91  Mikó, “Tájékozódás,” xvi.

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political power in feudal Transylvania. As a consequence, the former estates continued to keep their archives secret, an attitude that had become dangerously anachronistic with the arrival of the new regime. In fact, the popular uprising in 1848, which escalated into bloody massacres, showed to the author that “sometimes one era declares war on another and in the case of the clashing of principles and the changes of regimes, human revenge annihilates not its actual object, that is, the case of the legal principle itself, but instead turns against its written memorials, i.e., books, records, engravings, and coins, that is, its [representatives].”92 These arguments, as seen in the previous subchapter, are similar to those of contemporary Saxon Landeskunde authors, especially the references to the abolished provincial political structure in the aftermath of the revolution. The writing of Mikó exposed several features of romantic historiography: the emancipation of one’s nation was contemplated in comparison with other peoples. The dynamics of historical development were seen as being essentially determined by the criteria of universal civilization and by the existence and continuity of statehood—a developing topos of romantic and post-romantic Hungarian historiography and bearing strong similarities with the legalhistorical arguments of Saxon historiography as practiced by Teutsch.93 The ensuing reference to the devastated mansions of the Transylvanian Hungarian aristocracy landed a more specific ethnic and social connotation to the general historical dialectic of barbarism, since an eyewitness could understand them as a coded accusation addressing the Romanian uprising in 1848, which turned both against their Hungarian lords and Magyar neighbors. As if echoing the lost dreams of the revolutionary statesman Lajos Kossuth about a Danubian confederation of peoples including Hungary, Transylvania and their southern neighbors, Mikó cast his glance towards Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria. Yet six years after the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, the gesture served now only for a negative contrast: “I would find it reprehensive to see our little patria and nation and our fellow brethren compared with those provinces. Our land, our genius, our civic life, and our past political structure differ from those like heaven from the earth—and I believe our future mission is different as well.”94 There was an unresolvable tension in the attempt of Mikó, similar to Saxon scholarship. The memory of past Transylvanian statehood involved the mastering of the past and present of the entire political territory. However, his stance was shaped by the exclusive concern for Magyar national politics. If 92  Ibid., xix, xxi. 93  Baár, Historians and Nationalism, 61–64. 94  Mikó, “Tájékozódás,” xxi.

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Saxon scholars kept their patronizing attitude towards the rest of the provincial inhabitants, the same attitude was displayed by the Hungarian nobility towards their social inferiors. This is how the writing of the composite Transylvanian Landeskunde and honismeret, with their most prominent component of historical writing, turned out to be a much narrower enterprise in scope, in the service of national political exigencies. This implied that nonMagyars and their cultural achievements became a secondary priority, either for their presumed cultural inferiority, or for the lack of their political autonomy, the only exception being the former elites of the province. Scholarly pragmatism created a division of labor among Saxon and Magyar scholars. Yet the dividing principle was much more than language and geographical focus, but a political attitude towards scholarship, no longer in the service of general improvement or progress but rather the moral integrity of the national community. These features were familiar both from contemporary Hungarian as well as from Transylvanian Saxon historical writing, especially as represented in Teutsch’s Sachsengeschichte. Another similarity with the approach of Teutsch was that the national community imagined by Mikó was marked by a more inclusive internal social vision. The sources presented in his book were Székely chronicles about the invasion of Transylvania by the Ottoman army, consisting also of Wallachian troops, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Mikó explained that his choice had been guided by considerations of linguistic and cultural kind (the language of the sources was Hungarian), but apparently they also nested methodological and political considerations. If the historical record of the past centuries had been dominated by aristocrats, time had come to render the voice of the common people: This memoir, that the Hungarian reading public receives from me, is the nearly two-hundred-year-old spiritual monument of a middle-class Magyar writer. I would like to place some weight on this [fact]. It is right that sometimes voices from the mass be heard, and since they have been present at the developments and their solutions during those centuries, it is necessary that one or two of them speak about the contemporary course of events; what were the pains of the people and how did they feel when their fate took a better course, even temporarily.95 The “democratization of the subject” was the feature of the liberal romantic historiography of the time, which extended the scope of the inquiry from kings and rulers to the common people. The focus on the middling sort indeed 95  Mikó, “Előismertetés,” in Erdélyi történelmi adatok, 3–8, 5.

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linked the endeavor of Mikó to the progressive course of the emerging professional Hungarian historiography, but also to that of Teutsch, exploring the historical experience of the masses that made up the liberally conceived nation. This feature distinguished Mikó from the more enhanced social conservatism of his aristocratic peers.96 The former political elite in the 1850s and the 1860s isolated itself namely in political passivity and mistrusted the lower classes. They developed an increasingly paternalist attitude towards the “public” and conceived of the Magyar nobility as the only embodiment of the cultural and moral values of the nation.97 On the other hand, it is impossible not to miss a hardly concealed animosity towards Romanians. The above source published in Erdélyi történelmi adatok rendered the tormented early modern Transylvanian past, complete with Ottoman-induced bloodshed involving the Southeastern neighbors, a parallel to the Habsburg terror and ethnic bloodshed in the recent past. It was in the following regard that Mikó shared the conservatism of the Magyar nobility: the scholarly construction of the nation as an increasingly democratic community was based on the categorical exclusion of Romanians. Was it to set the dominant pattern in Transylvanian Hungarian historical writing? One year after the publication of his writing, Mikó launched a campaign for setting up a voluntary association in support of a Transylvanian scholarly museum. Here he regarded the resolutions of the 1841–43 diet as the legally binding basis of negotiating with the Austrian authorities for permission. In a series of articles in the Kolozsvári Közlöny, he cast his work as the continuation of the “decision of the constitutional majority, the public will of the Hungarian and Székely nations.” He filled his articles with hints at national sovereignty and its historical tradition in Transylvania. The references to “legality” and “constitutionality” sounded well to the ears of the Hungarian public, as the considerable support for his plans showed later. Administrative urgencies were well considered in his plan. The donations for a future national museum from the 1840s, including 20–22 thousand books, several thousand original documents, a mineral collection of several thousand items, and 13,200 florins cash, awaited shelter. Count József Kemény, who passed away in 1855, also bequeathed his private library for a future Transylvanian institute of scholarship, and should it not materialize, the collections were to be transferred to the Hungarian Academy in Pest. This was the

96  About the socially inclusive liberal stream in the Hungarian historical writing, beginning with the 1840s, see R. Várkonyi, A pozitivista történetszemlélet, vol. 2, chap. 2, 50–68. 97  Veliky, “A szociális mozgalmakat,” 225–234.

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moment when Mikó stepped in and mobilized public support.98 The museum and the association were advanced as the basis of a robust Magyar culture in possession of a “centuries-old constitution” and political participation, unlike those Romanian “upstarts.”99 The aging members of the Systematic Committee of 1841–43 were contacted for support.100 The public response was enthusiastic, with almost two thousand private individuals and institutions signing the donation lists.101 Private letters sent to Mikó document the intention to have a museum in Kolozsvár, “according to Magyar plans and Magyar involvement,” despite the fact that the institution had to be announced as regional in its scope.102 The political overtones of the seemingly simple procedure are illustrated by a letter of Mikó to a friend: There are some who blame me for having written in my announcement that I would make a general call for participation without national discrimination, and they are afraid that if this will not be explicitly a Magyar but Transylvanian Museum, it will jeopardize our national interests; the Magyars will be oppressed in it by elements of other nationalities, and thus we should contribute to our self-destruction instead of progressing our cause.103 Further correspondence with János Somlyai, Mikó’s emissary in the Viennese ministries, who was negotiating for the “national” content of the project, illustrates the limits of official tolerance. According to Somlyai, “the Government did not want to hear about nationalities, it was [among] none of its aims to cultivate them, and it did not know about a Magyar Transylvania but only of a Transylvanian hereditary land, and that the Gubernium too found it correct to modify the name to a Transylvanian Museum.”104 The formal anti-nationalism of the government made several supporters worry that the new insti98  “Gr. Mikó Imre beszéde a szászokhoz” [Count Mikó’s address to the Transylvanian Saxons], Kolozsvári Közlöny (4 August 1863), Direcţia Generalǎ a Arhivelor Naţionale Cluj (ANC) (General directorate of the national archives), M-R, F56, 43–45. 99  Ibid. 100  See the letter of Imre Mikó to Dániel Lészai (Kolozsvár, 15 December 1856), ANC, Fond 594, Colecţia personalǎ József Kemény (Personal collection József Kemény), M-R F54, 152–153. 101  Beginning with issue no. 27 (31 December 1856), the Kolozsvári Közlöny regularly published the list of benefactors and donations to the EME. 102  A NC, Fond 594, Colecţia personalǎ József Kemény, M-R F54, 168–169. 103  Ibid. 104  Somlyai to Mikó (Vienna, 27 August 1856), ANC, Fond 594, Colecţia personalǎ József Kemény, M-R F54, 97b.

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tution would be made trilingual, a fact the Magyar supporters vehemently opposed.105 How different this rhetoric was from the more inclusive public discussion in the (censored) Saxon papers of the 1840s on the foundation of the Landeskundeverein! The fears of a cultural invasion on the part of the Transylvanian masses were unfounded. It was only the Greek Catholic Bishop Ioan Alexi (1800–1863) who greeted Mikó politely as an erudite “citizen of our common patria.”106 He expressed his formal gratitude for the novel attempt to establish a museum for the precious antiquities of the “common patria,” and hoped that “His Majesty and Emperor will bid everybody to support this cause, without discriminating between religions and nationalities.” The bishop subscribed as a life-long founding member and made his endowment in the hope that: “the numerous Romanians who live in this patria, and especially the Romanian youth studying in the Catholic lyceum in Kolozsvár, should benefit from the scientific Bildung emanating from the future Museum, together with students of other nationalities.”107 This was not to be the case. Soon there came first the permission to take over the library Nachlass of Kemény and transport it to Kolozsvár. Later a provisional administrative body was authorized to manage the affairs of the society and museum until the arrival of the final permit. In 1857 the presidential board of the society held its first assembly, while in 1858 the Gubernium was still asking for statute modifications. The association was now officially named Erdélyi Múzeum Egyesület (Transylvanian Museum Society), and the institution it supported bore the title of Erdélyi Országos Múzeum (Transylvanian Landesmuseum), which was never in common use later on. The rules were identical with those applied to the Landeskundeverein in 1840, regulating in great detail the rights and duties of the members. Another similarity was the formal negation of the academic character; the association obliged itself to be “only” a public promoter of Landeskunde.108 The repetition of the Saxon pattern is impossible to miss in the Magyar case, due partly to emulation of the earlier successful model, partly to the same political constraints. The founders’ meeting was held in Kolozsvár with 383 members. It was a major public celebration involving the presence of the Transylvanian Governor 105  See Count Domokos Teleki to Imre Mikó (22 November 1856), cited by Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv, 29. 106  Ioan Alexi to Imre Mikó (Szamosújvár, 24 December 1856), ANC, Fond 594, Colecţia personalǎ József Kemény, M-R F54, 107–108. 107  Ibid. 108  Az EME Szabályai [The regulations of EME] (Kolozsvár, 1859), 1.

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Duke Friedrich Lichtenstein, notables from several Transylvanian towns, the Protestant churches from Transylvania, and a delegation of the Hungarian Academy and the National Museum from Pest. The Museum Society received friendly regards also from the Landeskundeverein.109 The event united symbolically the two countries, and the assembly voted for Hungarian language use.110 In his greeting on behalf of the Academy, József Eötvös advocated the decentralization of Hungarian research via the founding of new regional institutions.111 In contrast, the sharper tones of the second man at the Academy, Ferenc Toldy, absent from the festivities, claimed the subordinated role of a mere “learned society” vis-à-vis the professionalism of the “national academy.”112 It turned out later on that his doubts about the legitimacy of provincial scholarship reflected more than the arrogance of the Magyar cultural capital. His assertion pointed at the professionalization of scholarship and the foundation of specialized research institutions in Europe, a process that started to render the hitherto practices of Landeskunde and elite scholarly sociability obsolete. The assessment of the social identity of the clientele enables the first insight towards an answer. The survey is especially interesting in comparison to the Landeskundeverein with its predominantly Bildungsbürger background, a pattern familiar from the Central European German-speaking regions. A glance at the membership list reveals an exclusive social composition, illustrating the fact that during the first decade of existence, Mikó’s project enjoyed the backing of the Transylvanian aristocracy and the upper stratum of landowning nobility. The high fees and the hierarchically structured categories of membership might have served the common public good, but actually targeted the Hungarian social elite. One could become a life-long “presidential member” in the case of significant donations to the museum (valuable prints, manuscripts, objects of artistic or archival value) or by contributing a correspondingly significant sum.113 In the 1860s, the old Transylvanian families lined up behind Mikó in support of the young institute. In 1868, out of the 126 board 109  “Az erdélyi muzeum-egylet alakító közgyűlésének jegyzőkönyve” [Minutes of the founding meeting of the Transylvanian Museum Association], in Az EME Évkönyvei, vol. 1, (1859–1861), ed. Sámuel Brassai (Kolozsvár: Ev. Ref. Főtanoda, 1861), 1–25, at 24 (hereafter: Évkönyv). 110  Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv, 33. 111  “Az erdélyi muzeum-egylet alakító közgyűlésének jegyzőkönyve,” 4. 112  About the echoes in Hungary see R. Várkonyi, A pozitivista történetszemlélet, 2: 272–273. 113  One could become a “board member” by paying at least 500 florins into the Museum Society fund or donating artifacts for the future museum of the same value (these members became life-long members of the association). Az Erdélyi Muzeum Egyesület szabályai [The rules of EME] (Kolozsvár: Az evang. Ref. főtanoda könyvnyomdája, 1959), 6.

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members, 97 were aristocrats and 12 of them countesses and baronesses. To the second most prestigious category belonged the “founding members,” those who made a donation in the value of 100 florins. In 1868 the 382 founding members comprised 70 aristocrats, half of whom were women. The third category was reserved for the “shareholders,” who obliged themselves to contribute five florins per year for a certain period. This category experienced much fluctuation: the initial 930 members (with 30 nobles, 52 women) dwindled to a mere 80 by 1903, consisting mainly of highly qualified professionals (35 members with titles of Doctorate).114 In the 1860s, the (Hungarian) aristocracy of Transylvania embraced the national cause. Even if their initial enthusiasm about the scholarly project subsided after the first years, many of them returned later as ordinary, fee-paying members, forming ca. 4 percent of the academic sections by the turn of the century (see Tables 5 and 6). Their actual share must be higher, “hidden” in the category of the high-ranking state officials (forming 12 percent of the sections), recruited typically from the higher tiers of nobility.115 By that time the size of the Museum Society membership would oscillate between eight hundred and one thousand, which meant that it would never become a mass organization like the Romanian ASTRA or the populist Erdélyi Magyar Közművelődési Egyesület (Transylvanian Hungarian Cultural Society, founded in 1885). It was rather at its start a transitional form between Mikó’s planned Transylvanian “academic hearth” and a meeting place of the regional Hungarian social elite. In contrast to the Landeskundeverein, presided after 1869 by the Lutheran bishops, the presidents of the Museum Society were until World War I mostly high-ranking politicians of aristocratic extraction, while the professoriate of the future university would become “only” vice presidents at most.116

114  “Az EME névkönyve” [The name register of EME], in Az EME Évi tudósítása 1866–1867 [Yearly report of EME, 1866–1867], edited by Henrik Finály (Kolozsvár, 1868), 97–130; “Az EME névkönyve,” in Az EME Évi tudósítása 1868, edited by Finály (Kolozsvár, 1869), 47–64; “Az EME névkönyve,” in Az EME Évi tudósítása 1869, edited by Finály (Kolozsvár, 1870), 48–68; Az EME névkönyve, 1882 (Kolozsvár, 1882); Az EME névkönyve, 1903 június 15 (Kolozsvár: Ajtai K., 1903); Pál Erdélyi, Az EME évkönyvei [Yearbooks of EME] (Kolozsvár, 1914), 13. 115  Béla Köpeczi, ed., Erdély története 1830-tól napjainkig [The history of Transylvania from 1830 until today], vol. 3 of Erdély története [The history of Transylvania] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986), 1586–1591 (in the following: ET 3). 116  In the 1910s these positions were fulfilled for instance by parliamentary representative Count Kálmán Esterházy, and the vice presidents were Baron Miklós Wesselényi, prefect of Szilágy County, and Dr. János Szamosi, prof. emeritus at the University of Kolozsvár. See the list of members from 1908 in Évkönyv 1908 (Kolozsvár, 1909), 105–123.

146 TABLE 5

CHAPTER 3 Categories of membership in the Transylvanian Museum Society, 1859–1914. 1867

Board members Founding members Shareholder members Ordinary members Supporting members Beneficiary supporters Total

126 382 930 —

1868

124 371 898 —

1869

121 371 121 —

1438 1393 613

1882

1903

89 236 34 271

168 431 80 562

?

1241

1908

1910

1913

18 47

20 63

21 65

574 110 60 809

632 111 76 902

625 117 72 900

Sources: “Az EME névkönyve,” in Az EME Évi tudósítása 1866–1867, edited by Henrik Finály (Kolozsvár, 1868), 97–130; “Az EME névkönyve,” in Az EME Évi tudósítása 1868, edited by Finály (Kolozsvár, 1869), 47–64; “Az EME névkönyve,” in Az EME Évi tudósítása 1869, edited by Finály (Kolozsvár, 1870), 48–68; Az EME névkönyve, 1882 (Kolozsvár, 1882);117 Az EME névkönyve, 1903 június 15 (Kolozsvár: Ajtai K., 1903); Pál Erdélyi, Az EME évkönyve (Kolozsvár, 1914), 13.

The membership lists of names are not sufficient for the proper assessment of the confession of the members—they probably were of the typical “Hungarian religions,” that is, Calvinists, Roman Catholics, and Unitarians—let alone their mother tongue. The participation of well-known Protestant scholars is conspicuous in the planning committee. There were surprisingly many notable Unitarian intellectuals in this group (throughout the period they amounted to ca. 2.5 percent of the Transylvanian population), a minority particularly conscious of its history of religious marginalization, liberal traditions, and scholarly ethos. One finds Unitarians among the well-known advocates of the society already in the 1840s, such as the Freemason Farkas Sándor Bölöni and (the Scot) John Paget, as well as the scholars László Kőváry, Elek Jakab, Sámuel Brassai, and János Kriza. The presence of Jews is even more difficult to evaluate. Most prominent was Henrik Finály (1825–1898), one of the first Jewish university professors in Kolozsvár, together with Mór Ballagi (1815–1891). The adherence of assimilating Jewish, German, or Romanian members would reveal the liberal social attitude among the Hungarian social and intellectual elite. Lacking reliable indicators of mother tongue and religion, other clues are German surnames traditionally adopted by Jews, but also names indicating an

117  The name register from 1882 is incomplete and contains only the first three categories. It provides no information about the number of ordinary members.

The Nationalization Of Landeskunde And Civic Ethos After 1848 TABLE 6

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Social-professional distribution of ordinary members in the Transylvanian Museum Society, 1907–1914118 (the table includes also institutions who fulfilled the requirements of membership).

Profession

1907

1914

Middle-ranking employees (secretaries, drafters, archivists, etc.) Highly qualified teaching staff: university and gymnasium professors University staff High-ranking officials Ecclesiasts Traders Free professions: lawyers, physicists Military Teachers Artisans Unidentified Aristocrats Institutions (congregations, communities, associations) Total

6.3%

7.5%

18.3%

13.8%

19.3% 12% 2.6% 6.1% 13.2% 0.9% 6.1% 0.3% 5.4% 4.2% 4.4% 491=100%

14.8% 12.8% 1.6% 5.2% 11.2% 0.6% 6.4% 0.2% 2.4% 3.1% 4.9% 606=100%

Sources: Az EME évkönyve, 1906 [The EME yearbook, 1906] (Kolozsvár, 1907), 5–17; Az EME évkönyve, 1908 [The EME yearbook, 1908] (Kolozsvár, 1909), 107–119; Az EME évkönyve, 1914 [The EME yearbook, 1914], (Kolozsvár, 1914).

ethnic provenance different from Magyar.119 Here one can take into consideration Viktor Karády’s assessment of the widespread adoption of Hungarian names by the culturally assimilating Jews in turn-of-the-century Hungary. This was typically the case in the milieu of higher education, for instance among the medical students of the University of Kolozsvár, established later in 1872. The Museum Society, spearheaded by Count Mikó, championed the establishment of a state university in Kolozsvár, which did foster the “massive involvement of Jews striving simultaneously for cultural assimilation—‘Magyarism

118  There are no professions registered in the early name lists; only in the yearbooks beginning from 1906. 119  Ibid.

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proper’—together with mobility through education.”120 However, the identification of German surnames is but a weak indicator of the Jewish constituency of the association, or for that matter, of German-tongue provenance. The Museum Society did recruit female members, which was particularly conspicuous in comparison with the male-dominated scholarly institutes of the time. The findings are less spectacular in light of the fact that most of them were family members of supporting aristocrats, or themselves benefactors. The active and publishing members were almost exclusively men. There were, however, a few exceptionally active women scholars, such as the archeologist Zsófia Torma (1832–1899), owner of an extended collection of Neolithic findings, her work earning much attention on behalf of both the Museum Society and the Landeskundeverein.121 The Baroness herself had a lineage of wellknown archeologists, and she discovered vast material traces ranging from the Copper Age through Roman antiquity, and until the early medieval migrations. One encounters three other female scholars, namely Antonina de Gerando (1845–1914), who held lectures on women’s education,122 Josephine Lorenz, and later on the archeologist and art historian Irén Magoss. The acceptance of women reflects more an aristocratic liberalism and the intimacy of salons than a democratic impetus. In his earlier writings, Mikó was already preoccupied with women’s education, and the Museum Society would continue to involve high-rank women until World War I. All these facts contribute to an image of an exclusive liberalism with gestures of tolerance towards certain segments of the society. The Museum Society attracted prominent intellectuals and politicians from the region and abroad. Institutions were among the members too. There were 23 international learned societies and museums, including the Smithsonian Institution, Institut imperial de France, Königliche Sozietät of Göttingen, the Royal Academy of Berlin, the Royal Academy of Bavaria, the Serbian Learned Society of Belgrade, and so on. Fifteen high schools and gymnasia from 120  Victor Karády and Lucian Nastasǎ, The University of Cluj/Kolozsvár and the Students of the Medical Faculty, 1872–1918 (Budapest and Cluj Napoca: Central European University and the Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center, 2004), 98. 121  The director of the archeological collections, Béla Pósta, was commissioned by the Hungarian Academy to prepare a publication about the Nachlass, which took place in the 1910s, lasting until the war. See Márton Roska, “Bevezetés” [Introduction], in A Torma Zsófia-Gyűjtemény az Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeum érem- és régiségtárában [The Zsófia Torma collection in the numismatic and archeological collection of EME] (Kolozsvár: Minerva, 1941), 3–6. 122  “A legújabb nevelési reformok Francziaországban” [The newest educational reforms in France], Erdélyi Múzeum (1890): 111–115.

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Transylvania and Hungary, 25 municipalities, and 64 civil institutions figured in the donation list from 1868. The elite of the Hungarian Academy and of the Landeskundeverein, as well as leading personalities of the Transylvanian Romanian ecclesiastical-political elite, including the Greek Catholic ecclesiast and polymath scholar, Timotei Cipariu (1805–1887), the Greek Orthodox bishop Andrei Șaguna, and the Greek Catholic bishop Ioan Alexi, contributed with generous donations. Some of these contacts were formal gestures made in the name of common regional scholarship; others were based on genuine scholarly interest, as in the case of the first decade of exchange with the Hungarian Academy, the Landeskundeverein, and the Saxon Verein für Siebenbürgishe Naturwissenschaften. But the older barriers of communication between Hungarians and Romanians remained in force, and both the Museum Society and the Landeskundeverein were far from addressing directly the region’s deepest conflicts. Magyar honismeret: An Appendage of Pest? The political changes of 1867 brought abrupt changes in the life of the entire society of Transylvania, which did not leave the Museum Society unaffected. During the first years after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise and the enshrinement of the Hungarian state with Transylvania as its constituting part, the character of the society as a symbol of civic resistance lost its cause. Diminishing public interest was the barometer of new conjunctures. In the relaxing Transylvanian public life, the institution “did not have to substitute the genuine political sphere and could resume its real academic-educational role.”123 But the path from the symbolic function of national resistance to a scholarly institution was not self-evident. While at the height of civic patriotism in 1859, the Museum Society boasted 800 “shareholders,” this figure dropped to 300 by 1869, and became a meager 50 in 1870.124 Pál Erdélyi, secretary of the society, explained the lagging interest as a result of insufficient strategies of communication: missing public presence, lack of contact with the members outside Kolozsvár, political animosities. Was he right? Was not the suddenly dropping popularity symptomatic also of a crisis of the traditional “sociable society,” confronted by processes of modernization and professional differentiation, as it took place throughout Europe? The laments of the chronicler lead

123  Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv, 56–57. 124  Ibid., 47.

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to questions about the dynamics of sociability, but also to problems of institutionalizing academic activity in the new political framework. The Museum Society’s mission was to assist the scholarly mapping of the fatherland. Mikó was the first to announce these goals: “we have to know the history of the patria: its peoples, its former state, its system of government, and its industry, its scholarly and literary development.”125 He was intent on building a professional institute with the best scholars available, able to systematize, catalogue, and further develop the collections in the possession of the Museum Society. Indeed, the announcements of the positions of the museum staff attracted not only local scholars—mostly gymnasium professors several of whom later would make a scholarly career in Pest, such as the literary historian, critic, and author Pál Gyulai (1826–1909), but also young professionals outside the province: the historian Károly Szabó (1824–1890) or the botanist Ottó Hermann (1835–1914). The first decade was the one of orientation, both in its internal agenda as well as in developing contacts with other institutions. Cooperation started with the Landeskundeverein, which was both a model for the Museum Society, as well as its rival. The young collective of the society had scientific ambitions; the accomplished historian and bibliographer, Károly Szabó, announced that “pure speculation without relevance to the historical facts is weightless.”126 These ambitions coincided with the Hungarian Academy’s embracement of empirical methods of history writing, based on a critical evaluation of sources. Professionalism was to help correct the distortions of romantic nationalism, its exaggerated assertions of originality. In Kolozsvár as well as in Pest, the most important desideratum was the history and civilization of the Magyars at the time of their settlement, and their medieval and modern history.127 The specific Transylvanian subject was the history of the Székely estates, and soon Károly Szabó set out to clarify their enigmatic origins. Was this scholarly decentralization taking place, according to the optimistic forecast of Eötvös? We shall see that concerning the emergence of local themes and research objects, the philosopher-statesman was right. As far as the conceptual orientation was concerned, the situation was less clear. In certain respects, the Museum Society emulated the strategy of the Hungarian Academy and of the Landeskundeverein. If the latter gravitated towards the Austrian Academy of

125  Jakab Elek, “Az EME alakító gyűlése” [The founding meeting of the Transylvanian Museum Society], Budapesti Szemle 12 (1859): 3. 126  Cited by R. Várkonyi, A pozitivista történetszemlélet, 2: 343. 127  Ibid., 2: 438.

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Sciences, then the Museum Society had the Hungarian Academy as its scholarly model. The authorities did not favor an academic institute in Transylvania, yet the society was not content with a program confined to the maintenance of its collections, and launched two scientific sections as early as 1860. The first one was dedicated to the humanities, whereby the historical disciplines and their auxiliary sciences predominated, including the history of the fatherland, historia litteraria, legal history, archeology, diplomatics, heraldry, sigillography, genealogy, numismatics, geography, Staatenkunde proper, ethnography, and philology. The second one was the natural scientific section, including physics, meteorology, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and astronomy.128 This academic structure corresponded to the structure of the Landeskundeverein in the 1840s, the only difference consisting in the launching of a full-fledged natural history section. The Unitarian gymnasium professor Sámuel Brassai (1797/1800–1897) was appointed custodian of the natural history collections and director of the society; he edited the first six volumes of its yearbook. His scholarly persona represented well the initial eclecticism of the society. Born in 1797, then an editor of Nemzeti Társalkodó in the 1830s, the very first Transylvanian mouthpiece of patriotic investigations about the fatherland, he remained throughout his life committed to teaching science and popularizing it in the media.129 His encyclopedic scholarly outlook, comprising a broad range of subjects—from Sanskrit to mathematics, from scientific methodology to philology, from geography to the sciences of the state—left its imprint on the yearbooks. They too showed a disregard for the separation of the natural sciences from the humanities. His idealism was of religious and conservative bent, which made him an avid debating partner, whether in the defense of the life force, or the negation of Darwinist theory. His writings condemned the secular, that is, “foolish opinions,” which grew on the soil of natural science. He defended the authority of the Bible and championed the “unity of science” or the “unity of the material and spiritual universe.”130 His well-known polemics, often in a combative tone, 128  “Az Erdélyi Muzeum-Egylet Ülései Jegyzőkönyve 1860, Hatodik Ülés, Február 1, 1860” [Proceedings of EME, 1 February 1860, sixth session], in Évkönyv, 1: 43. 129  Ákos Egyed, “Brassai Sámuel (1797–1897),” in Hivatás és tudomány. Az Erdélyi MúzeumEgyesület kiemelkedő személyiségei [Vocation and science. The eminent personalities of EME] (Kolozsvár: EME, 2009), 37–80, at 55. 130  Ibid., 321; Sámuel Brassai, “Az ‘exact’ tudományok követelései” [The demands of the exact sciences in regard to philosophy], in Évkönyv, vol. 2, (1861–1863) (Kolozsvár: Stein János, 1863), 54–80.

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were directed equally against Marxist and materialist scholars and the conservative authority of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which he nevertheless was intent to join.131 Similar to the Landeskundeverein, history was the dominant discipline in the society’s humanities section. Like in the Saxon association, here too the search for historical documents of the provincial past and their critical editing was most intense; the library and manuscript collections, including the papers of the bygone Manuscript Society, allowed the first explorations of a Transylvanian codex diplomaticus.132 The yearbook published series of historical data from the territory of Transylvania from antiquity to recent history, in a similar fashion as its Saxon peer. The Landeskundeverein generously commissioned the copying of relevant sources and preliminary assessments about early modern chronicles on the origins of the Székely population from Saxon archives and sent them to the Museum Society.133 Ármin Vámbéry (1832–1913), the well-known Turcologist in the decades to come, presented official documents and correspondence between Transylvanian governors and the High Porte from the time of Ottoman domination.134 Károly Szabó started cataloguing the library of the Museum Society and published on the aristocratic and ecclesiastical libraries of Transylvania.135 A growing archeological collection, sign of the enthusiasm of the openhanded Magyar public, triggered questions about systematizing Roman, medieval, and more modern history on Transylvanian territory. Henrik Finály and the classical archeologist Károly Torma (1829–1897) undertook an exploratory mission to examine recently discovered ruins of a Roman military fortress.136 Archeology was indeed a prolific field not only in the Museum Society but also in the Saxon institution, with prize questions and the impetus to discover the “social, as well as private legal whereabouts” of the Romans once stationed in

131  Egyed, “Brassai Sámuel,” 65. 132   Sándor Szilágyi, “Adalék egy erdélyi codex diplomaticushoz [Contribution to a Transylvanian codex diplomaticus],” in Évkönyv, 1: 161. 133  Károly Szabó, “A székely krónika ügyéről” [About the case of the Székely Chronicle], in Évkönyv, 1: 10–25. 134  Ármin Vámbéry, “Feridun Begnek ‘Szultáni okmányok gyüjteménye’ [Collection of the documents of sultans],” in Évkönyv, 1: 63–68. 135  Károly Szabó, “Az Erdélyi közkönyvtárak régi, Magyar könyveiről. I. közlemény” [About the old Hungarian books of Transylvanian public libraries], in Évkönyv, vol. 5, (1868–1870) (Kolozsvár: Stein János, 1871), 33–72, at 33. 136  See “Tudományos ülések jegyzőkönyve” [Protocol of the scientific sessions], in Évkönyv, 2: 142–147, at 147.

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the province.137 The ethnographic collections of Balázs Orbán (1829–1890), in the Székely districts belonged to the monographic descriptions of folklore, while the ethnographic map of Transylvania by the bicultural Eduard Albert Bielz, author of the handbook on Landeskunde and affiliated with both the Saxon and the Magyar institutes, represents an encompassing quantitative study of the question.138 More peripheral were for the time being the disciplines of philology and literary history. The former was represented by only one lecture by another author of dual membership, Wilhelm Schmidt, on the Slav elements of the Romanian language, and contesting Romanian continuity in Transylvania.139 The patriotic explorations of the first years uncovered the past traces of Magyar culture, embedded in a kaleidoscopic image of the province’s ancient past, flora, and fauna. Was Transylvania an emerging Hungarian center of knowledge, competing with Pest and the German academic centers? During its first decade and a half of existence, the Museum Society had much to do to catch up with its older institutional counterparts in Hungary and in the Saxon lands. The start was promising though: the society managed to attract the best practitioners of Transylvanian Magyar (and partly German) scholarship. Yet its yearbook rendered a fragmentary outlook. It did not formulate a conception of its own, but seemed to be a satellite of the Hungarian Academy. Károly Szabó did not publish his important contribution on the origins of the Székely tribes in the organ of the Museum Society, but only a corollary article on it.140 It was 137  See Károly Torma, “Dacia felosztása a rómaiak alatt” [The division of Dacia under Roman rule], in Évkönyv, 2: 108–114; Torma, “Tizenkét római felirat Dáciából” [Twelve Roman inscriptions from Dacia], in Évkönyv, 2: 129–134; “Az Alsó-Ilosvai római állótábor s müemlékei I” [The standing Roman military camp from Alsó-Ilosva and its monuments], in Évkönyv, vol. 3, (1864–1865) (Kolozsvár: Stein János, 1866), 10–85; Henrik Finály, “Római nyomok Erdély észak nyugati részén” [Roman traces in the northern part of Transylvania], in Évkönyv, 3: 5–9; Finály, “Az erdélyi bányákból került viasztáblák és az ősrómai folyóírás” [The wax plates excavated from Transylvanian mines and the ancient Roman cursive handwriting], in Évkönyv, 1: 75–88. 138  “A tudományos ülések jegyzőkönyve nov. 26-dikától 1860 aprilis 10-dikéig 1861” [Protocol of the scientific sessions from 26 November 1860 until 19 April 1861], in Évkönyv, 1: 156–158, at 156–157. 139  Vilmos Schmidt, “A szláv elem a rumun vagy oláh nyelvben” [The Slavic element in the Romanian or Wallachian language], in Évkönyv, vol. 4, (1866–1867) (Kolozsvár: Stein János, 1868), 18–37. 140  Szabó, “A Székely krónika ügyéről,” 10–25; Szabó, “Österreichische Geschichte, von Max Büdinger. Leipzig 1858,” Budapesti Szemle 2 (1858): 398; Szabó, “A román Attila mondák Thierry után” [The Romanian Attila legends, according to Thierry], in vol. 2 of Család

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among the specialized public in Pest where the fights over the HungarianHun, Székely-Hun theories were voiced and challenged, not Kolozsvár, neither Hermannstadt. Pest was where the young professionals such as Antal Reguly and Pál Hunfalvy scandalized their audience with their iconoclast vision of the “lowly” social origin of Hungarians and their ties to the family of Finno-Ugric peoples, including even the semi-nomadic Inuits or the Vogul population from the Urals. Here the Transylvanians seldom emerged among the fearless taboo breakers. Szabó for instance defended the Székely-Hun theory, which was dear to the Magyar nobility, even if, together with his Transylvanian colleague, László Kőváry, he formulated criticism on the leading role of the nobility in Hungarian history. One had to be careful not to alienate the conservative gentleman scholars, such as Ferenc Szilágyi, or the aristocrat Count Miklós Lázár, the pillars of the Society and its Évkönyv (Yearbook). The relatively strong interest in natural history of the initial years, the public chemistry experiments and lectures about the French and British museums of natural science, witness little scholarly dependence on Pest.141 A broad range of topics were treated in these lectures, intended to cover all fields of the natural science section.142 But again, the essays do not build up into an autonomous academic program on Transylvania, but can only be understood in reference to programs and debates in the Hungarian capital about the place of scientific outlooks in contemporary society. When Count Kálmán Lázár defended natural science with the claim “truth by all means,” or when Brassai spent several dozen pages placing natural science within philosophy, they both positioned themselves in a fight over the emerging positivism in the Hungarian cultural capital.143 This debate began already in 1850, when the historian Gusztáv Szontagh demanded the reconsideration of science and its social relevance in relation to ethics, nationality, and religion. Szontagh championed “positive” methodologies, irrespective of religious transcendence and the national taboos, including the myth of the political and cultural primacy of the Hungarian könyve. Hasznos ismeretek és mulattató olvasmányok [Family book. Useful knowledge and entertaining readings], ed. Greguss and János Hunfalvy (Pest, 1856). 141  “A tudományos ülések jegyzőkönyve,” in Évkönyv, 1: 158; Sámuel Brassai, “A természetrajzi múzeumokról” [About the natural scientific museums], in Évkönyv, 2: 115–123. 142  Oscar Kirschberg, “Catlogus Coleopterorum Transylvaniae,” in Évkönyv, 5: 73–91; Albert E. Bielz, “Adatok Kolozsvár csigafaunájához” [About the snake fauna of Kolozsvár], in Évkönyv, 5: 97–99; Ottó Herman, “Franzenau József emléke” [The memory of Joseph Franzenau], in Évkönyv, 4: 1–17, at 1–4. 143  R. Várkonyi, A pozitivista történetszemlélet, 2: 312; Count Lázár Kálmán, “A madarakról, különösen az Erdélyben honos fajokra” [About the birds, especially those from Transylvania], in Évkönyv, 1: 69–74. Brassai, “Az ‘exact’ tudományok követelései,” 54–77.

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nobility. As a contrast, conservatives claimed that the true object of scholarship was not progress but the cultivation of national consciousness. Very quickly the debate, which involved all prominent scholars in Hungary, became a polemic on the primacy of humanities versus natural sciences.144 The center of scholarly innovation was Pest, and Transylvanians, Mikó notwithstanding, preferred the Akadémiai Éretesítő (Bulletin of the Academy) before they submitted their manuscripts to the Museum Society Yearbook (EME Évkönyv). The candid remark of Brassai, editor of the yearbook, is illustrative: he chose the venue of the association after his essay had been rejected by the Bulletin.145 The development of the collections shows much more autonomous growth in comparison, where the library and the manuscript collection developed at a fast pace. The Museum Society was hungry for a comprehensive collection of written documents of the Transylvanian past, while launching a small scientific library with international journals and secondary literature. Szabó started the cataloguing and very soon an assistant librarian was required to face the mountain of work; by 1870 the first alphabetical author-based card catalogue was completed. Alongside the library, the society owned numismatic and archeological collections, and a mineralogical one, as well, which would find their temporary home in a palace donated by Mikó in the center of Kolozsvár.146 Similar to the library, the antiquities and mineral collection underwent quick growth and systematization through the acquisition of Transylvanica. The records of the 1860s showed an enthusiastic Transylvanian public, mostly old Magyar families, eager to give up or sell antique book collections, arms, coins, paintings, herbaria, and mineral collections, as well as space-consuming stone carvings of ruined medieval and renaissance mansions. As the donating fever diminished, the Society launched the extension of the collections as early as 1860, an activity, which in the case of the library, soon transcended the provincial network of supporters and led to library exchanges with the Austrian and Bavarian academies, the Berliner Botanische Sozietät, and the Smithsonian Museum. The goal of the appointed librarian, Szabó, was namely the building of a modern professional library alongside the historical collections.147

144  Gusztáv Szontagh, “Tudomány, Magyar tudós” [Science, Hungarian scientist], Új Magyar Muzeum 1 (1850–1851): 377–390; R. Várkonyi, A pozitivista történetszemlélet, 2: 316–337. 145  Brassai, “Az ‘exact’ tudományok követelései.” 146  Gábor Sipos, “Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület könyvtárának története” [The history of the library of the Transylvanian Museum Society], in Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület gyűjteményei, ed. Gábor Sipos (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2009), 11–68, at 17. 147  Ibid., 16–17.

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The steps toward professionalization were costly, and once the euphoria of the beginnings was over, the society struggled with a financial impasse. The number of “shareholders,” that is, those ordinary members who were obliged to the payment of a fee over five or ten years, dropped dramatically at the end of the first decade (from 930 in 1867, to 121 in 1869). The decrease in this largest group was a clear sign: the association failed to bind its aristocratic audience, the chief sponsor of activities in the 1860s, in the longer run. The chroniclers of the association mentioned internal problems too: the museum collections and its library were not yet accessible in this period, and the public grew quickly disappointed. There was no Transylvanian Hungarian counterpart to the bestseller written by Georg Daniel Teutsch, the Sachsengeschichte, to fascinate and mobilize the readers. The distraction of the educated clientele in the second half of the liberalizing 1860s towards new goals was indeed a major aspect contributing to relative public indifference.148 The fundamental problems, however, had to do with the fragility of the local scholarly institution facing the academically much more sophisticated Pest. When the practice of cultural improvement transcended gentlemanly sociability or economic necessity, a gap opened up between the local audience and the Society.

ASTRA and Romanian Cross-Border Scholarly Communication

The birth pangs of the nascent Transylvanian Romanian Academy and its political semantics showed many similarities to the Landeskundeverein and the Museum Society. ASTRA also could look back at decades-long preparations and exchanges between scholars. Here too, attempts to secure state support for institutionalizing Romanian scholarship shipwrecked on the disinterest of authorities.149 Another common feature was the prominent role accorded by the Transylvanian Romanian political elite, both ecclesiastical and lay, to civil self-organization in the second half of the nineteenth century. Voluntary associations were recognized instruments of self-administration in education and scholarship, although not entirely free of state control. In the expanding network of Romanian clubs and cultural associations, similar to the Magyar and Saxon organizations, common agendas emerged for the education of a confessionally and geographically heterogeneous population, turning them into self-conscious Romanians. If the academic agenda made ASTRA similar 148  Kelemen Lajos, “Az EME története” [The history of the EME], in Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv, 47–48. 149  Matei, Asociaţiunea Transilvană, 17–34, 18–24.

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in its intentions to the Landeskundeverein and the Museum Society, the future spectacular development of its popular programs of education, welfare, and economic development at the turn of the century confer upon the Romanian association its distinguishing character. This direct and pragmatic involvement of ASTRA in Romanian nation-building and a program more eclectic in its social breadth than the Museum Society (and in this quality closer to the future configuration of the Landeskundeverein), has been the reason why historians place it in the ranks of the large cultural associations, and not the more specialized scholarly societies and academies. Matica srbska (Pest, 1826), Matica česká (Prague, 1831), Matica morovská (Brno, 1836), Matica ilirska (Zagreb, 1842), Matica slovenská (1863), and also the Erdélyi Magyar Közművelődési Egyesület developed to satisfy the educational and welfare demand of the mostly rural regions of the Habsburg Monarchy.150 At the constituting meeting of the ASTRA in 1861, the assembly elected Șaguna as the president of the association. His position at the helm harbored a similar strategy as in the case of the two other Transylvanian learned societies, namely maximizing social patronage. It also indicates the power balance between the majority Orthodox and minority Greek Catholic constituencies of the Transylvanian Romanian society. The actual academic work was to be then coordinated by the urban lay “professionals,” that is, vice president Timotei Cipariu and secretary George Bariț, the latter a man of many talents, including scholarship, business entrepreneurship, politics, and journalism. Bariț had not only been the éminence grise of ASTRA, but also a prominent cultural gobetween, relaying across Hungarian, Saxon, as well as the various Romanian milieus on both sides of the political border. Several features of the academic program of the association, such as the demand for collecting and editing historical documents, are unimaginable without his mediation.151 Initially the academic program was predominant. The study of the Romanian language and its wordstock, folklore, and history was crucial for conceptualizing a common national character in the emerging scholarly public on both sides of the Carpathians from the 1830s onwards.152 This was also the intellectual foundation of the political program of Romanian nation-building, 150  Ibid., 35. 151  The literature has hitherto focused on the activities of Bariț within his Romanian milieus. The article by Sata, “The People Incorporated,” reinforces the hypothesis about the existence of dozens of cultural go-betweens, creating entanglements and interferences between the Romanian, Saxon, and Hungarian circles. 152  Balázs Trencsényi, “History and Character: Visions of National Peculiarity in the Romanian Political Discourse of the 19th Century,” in We, the People, ed. Mishkova, 139–178, at 140.

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developing as its future prospect the unification of all territories populated by Romanians. The following decades witnessed the projecting of a wouldbe Romanian “national culture,” while the humanities were both its scholarly and political instruments. In the absence of a continuous political framework across time and space, nationality could be defined only in reference to shared and—continuous—customs and language.153 Standing in the tradition of the Supplex Libellus Valachorum, the postulation of Romanian cultural continuity in Transylvania was further extended by the claim “to have been here first,” and thus vindicating the corporate rights of the most ancient settlers of the land. The documentation of Transylvanian Romanian history and the controversies around it established itself from the earliest institutional beginnings in provincial scholarship. It represented the Romanian counterclaim to Hungarian and Saxon assertions of past statehood and evolved into most controversial aspect in provincial history. Towards the end of the nineteenth century it was already the lightning rod along which antagonistic positions regarding the political and cultural order of Transylvania discharged, as shown in the next chapter. ASTRA developed a double-focused activity. On the one hand, scholarship would cultivate disciplines considered essential for the building and propagation of a modern and secular cultural identity. Philology was of primary 153  The first “statistical” work positing the cultural union of the three principalities was written by a French scholar: J. A. Vaillant, La Roumanie, ou Histoire, langue, littérature, orographie, statistique des peuples de la langue d’or, Ardialiens, Vallaques et Moldaves, résumés sur le nom de Romans (Paris, 1844). Some of the most important philological works that fostered the standardization of Romanian across the Carpathians involved: Titu Maiorescu, Despre scrierea limbii romane [About the writing of Romanian language] (Iassi: Junimea, 1866); Timotei Cipariu, Principia de limba si scriptura [The rules of language and writing] (Blaj: Tipariul seminariului, 1866); Ion-Heliade Rădulescu, Principie de ortografia romana [Rules of Romanian orthography] (Bucuresci: Noua Tipografie a laboratoriloru romani, 1870); Timotei Cipariu, ed., Archivu pentru filologia si istoria: Revistă pentru studiul limbii romîne [Archives of philology and history: Review for the study of Romanian language] (Blaj, 1867–1870, 1872); Bogdan Petriceicu Hașdeu, Istoria critica a Romanilor [The critical history of the Romanians], vol. 1 (Bucuresci, 1873); A. T. Laurian and Ion C. Massim, Glossariu care coprinde vorbele d’in limb’a romana: straine prin originea sau form’a loru, cumu si celle de origine indouiosa [Glossary containing the phrases of the Romanian language, either foreign after their origins or forms, or domestic] (Bucuresci: Noua typ. a laboratoriloru romani, 1871); August Treboniu Laurian and Joan C. Massim, Dictionariulu Limbei Romane [The dictionary of the Romanian language], vol. 1, (A–H) (Bucuresci: Noua Typographia a Laboratoriloru Romani, 1871); George Baritiu and Iosefu Hodosiu, Dictionariulu limbei Romane [The dictionary of the Romanian language], vol. 2, (I–Z) (Bucuresci: Noua Tip. a Laboratoriloru Romani, 1876).

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concern, and indeed, the 1850s witnessed the heightened scholarly exploration of the Romanian language both in Transylvania and Pest, as well as in the Danubian Principalities. Equally important were the disciplines of history and ethnography, as domains exploring the ethnic origins of Romanians. On the other hand, similar to Landeskundeverein, ASTRA placed much emphasis also on popular education, including not only plans to supply the Romanian gymnasia in Hermannstadt and Kronstadt with manuals, but also conveying practical education to the rural adult population.154 The shaping of academic sections started hesitantly over the first three decades of ASTRA’s existence. The former included philology (initiated at the assembly of 1862), followed by the sections on history and natural science (initiated at the assembly meeting of 1864). Transylvania, the journal of the association, was launched in 1868, having Bariț as its editor. The assembly of 1872, held in Mühlbach, proposed an award for the best historical writing about the Romanian peasant revolt of 1786 and the revolution of 1848, whereas the assembly meeting of 1880 initiated a natural history museum. Yet an article published in 1895 on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the journal Transylvania drew a negative balance sheet: the academic program had not materialized.155 The reasons for the temporary failure of the regional scholarly focus were multiple, the most important being insufficient local support. This was achieved elsewhere, namely through the foundation of the Romanian Academy of Sciences (in 1866, as Societatea Literară Română, becoming an academy in 1879), with princely support in Bucharest. A National Museum of History and Antiquities, initiated by Alexandru Ghica in 1834, and several other historical and cultural institutes, preceded the event. The inauguration of the Romanian Academy signaled the end of a gradual shifting of the scholarly focus south of the Danube, involving the cooperation and presence of ASTRA members there, together with scholars from Moldavia and Muntenia. After the creation of the independent Romanian state in 1878, Bucharest emerged as the new Romanian academic center, rivaled only by the Moldavian center of Romanian philology, history, ethnography, and archeology in Iași. These disciplines also would be institutionalized in the courses of higher education at the Academia Mihaileana in Iași (founded in 1835), as well as at the philology departments

154  Matei, Asociaţiunea Transilvană; Dunlap, “Astra and the Appeal of the Nation,” 215–246. 155  Cited by Matei, Asociaţiunea Transilvană, 158.

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in Budapest,156 and Vienna,157 with which ASTRA, based in the Transylvanian towns of Hermannstadt, Blaj, and Kronstadt, had to position itself in the last decades of the century. The 1880s witnessed the regeneration of a Transylvanian Romanian national movement, and the foundation in 1881 of the Romanian National Party laid the focus on the rural population. This was reflected in the profile of the ASTRA too, namely in the endorsement and promotion of a popular cultural image of the nation through publications and the founding of numerous libraries in small towns and in the countryside.158 Targeting primarily small-town dwellers and a rural audience, the association organized ethnographic, agricultural, and handicraft exhibitions in Kronstadt and Hermannstadt, events well received and generating vivid participation.159 The academic focus received new impetus after 1900. A large new museum of history and ethnography was opened in Hermannstadt in 1905, while smaller ones followed later in Hațeg, Săliște, and Lugoj. Scholarly works were published,160 academic conferences held, and the organization provided bursaries for students from the elementary until the academic level, with useful training for villagers, including agriculture and artisan crafts. One may remember the slightly ironic comments of foreign travelers to Transylvania during the Age of Reform, about the alleged exoticism of the space, and the irritated self-consciousness of Transylvanians about the unflattering image of their civilization. About twenty years later, the inhabitants of the province had already experienced a civil war followed by a military regime and new centralization, while in 1867 they found themselves citizens of a new nation-state. During this time of reform, revolution, deprivation, and political change, the provincials consolidated their bonds outside, to diverse academic institutes and universities, whose input visibly shaped the scholarly agendas at 156  There were 2,626 Romanian students enrolled at the University of Budapest between 1867 and 1918, out of whom 1,333 studied at the Law Faculty, 389 at the Philosophy Faculty, and 305 at the Theology Faculty. Ibid., 248. 157  A Chair for Romanian Language and Literature started at the University of Vienna as early as 1872. 158  Matei, Asociaţiunea Transilvană, 198–287, 212–219. 159  “Astra and the Appeal of the Nation,” 222. 160  For instance the Enciclopedia română [Romanian encyclopedia], by Corneliu Diaconovici, vols. 1–3 (Sibiu: W. Krafft, 1809–1904), while the journal Transilvania merged an academic profile in “popular style” with columns on the political and cultural life of Transylvanian Romanians. Matei, Asociaţiunea Transilvană, 198–287, esp. 209–212.

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home. The peregrination of scholars and knowledge took place along German, Hungarian, and Romanian affiliations to geographically disparate regions, and was shaped by centrifugal political sympathies and antagonisms. Saxons looked at the German and Austrian university centers, while enjoying in the 1850s the political trust of Austrian authorities. The Hungarians experienced the solidarity of the defeated political elite both in Transylvania and in the Hungarian capital. Commencing scholarly cooperation and international exchange shaped the triple scholarly contours of the province beyond the borders—one in German, one in Hungarian, and one in Romanian. Although the polymath German and Hungarian scholarly tradition was still robust until 1870, the national thrust of the humanities became dominant in practice. Indeed, the territorial paradigm of Enlightenment Landeskunde showed less of a trace on the orientation of ASTRA, engaged in the scholarly imagining of the Romanian nation across political borders. That these centrifugal geocultural orientations had a shared background is witnessed by the use of similar local concepts of history and historiography in all three contexts. Saxons, Hungarians, and Romanians regarded history as a source of political rights and the quasi-political unity of linguistically related constituencies. Political support played an immense role in the flourishing of institutional life, as did communication with the more immediate social environment. The Landeskundeverein had a situational advantage from the start when it came to these infrastructural resources. Its advantage grew further during the 1850s, when the Austrian authorities adopted entirely different attitudes vis-à-vis Hungarian and non-Hungarian milieus. These are reflected in the different chances for formal and informal support for the Saxon and the Hungarian scholarly associations. The start of scholarly work coincided with the end of the feudal era and the Saxon Transylvanian associations took a lion’s share in the construction and popularization of a historicized understanding of national identity, well before the state took an active role in the process. One can see various agendas shaping up in the Saxon, Hungarian, and Romanian associations, depending on the assets of the respective clienteles. Their success depended to a large extent on internal coordination, but also on the degree of their embeddedness into local education and cultural consumption. In this respect the Landeskundeverein was the most resourceful, while the Museum Society could also boast of an initial mobilization of its aristocratic and noble supporters. Yet both the Hungarian and the Romanian associations were still struggling to find their place in Transylvanian society by the beginning of the 1870s.

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ILLUSTRATION 1 Transylvanian treasures: fortified churches. Siebenbürgen: Der Hermannstädter Stuhl, Chromolithograph by Alois Leykum, based on a drawing by A. Trichtl. In: Johann Michael Ackner and Johann Karl Schuller, eds. Der Hermannstädter Stuhl im Großfürstenthum Siebenbürgen (Land der Sachsen): mit einer Karte und fünf Chromolithographien (Vienna: Müller, 1840), 29. Reprinted with the permission of the Bavarian State Library, Munich.

CHAPTER 4

Uneven Development during the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867–1914) The second half of the long nineteenth century has been known as the classical age of the modern sciences, institutionalized throughout Europe in the framework of nation-states. The timespan stretching from the end of the 1860s until World War I coincides too with the lifetime of the Hungarian state created out of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The last chapter probes into the nature and practices of provincial scholarship, Landeskunde and honismeret, while inquiring into the relation of the two learned societies to the new nation-state. The transformation of scholarship into professional science had a profound resonance in Compromise Hungary, involving the development of a state-funded higher educational network in Transylvania. In 1872 the second Hungarian university of the country opened in Kolozsvár, thanks not least to the efforts of Imre Mikó, then Minister of Public Works and Transport in the first government of Hungary after the Compromise. The older teaching academy system was abrogated in favor of new establishments, and the university in Kolozsvár, built in cooperation with the Museum Society, was followed by other state-funded universities in Zagreb (1874) and in Debrecen (1912).1 The roughly five decades seem disproportionally long in comparison with the timespans discussed in the previous chapters. They also represent the most prolific segment in the activity of the two Transylvanian learned societies. However, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise brought new legislation and new priorities in education and research, the effects of which needed a longer time to unfold. After an overview of the activity of the Museum Society and the Landeskundeverein during the entire period, the chapter shall focus on the decades around the fin de siècle. After several setbacks and much fine-tuning, the Museum Society achieved by that time its most mature and sophisticated stage, regarding both the diversity of scientific activity and the optimization of contact with its wider publics. Its activity unfolded as an integral part of the state-funded Hungarian higher education to an extent that jeopardized its very institutional identity. In contrast to the prominent status 1  Walter Rüegg, ed., A History of the University in Europe, vol. 3, Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945) (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004), 41, 64–65.

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of the Museum Society in Hungarian cultural politics, it was now the turn of the Landeskundeverein to emphasize again its belonging to a second, statefree Saxon public sphere. The newly created Hungarian state differed sharply from the Austrian neoabsolutist administration in its liberal cultural and educational policies. Yet support for the scientific activity of the institutions run by the “titular nation” carried on the politics of difference practiced by the post-1849 Austrian Ministry of Education. The foundation of the first modern Transylvanian university was but the most spectacular change in this regard, opening new prospects of regional development in education and research, and expressing a policy that sought adaptation primarily to the regional Magyar-speaking titular nation. Yet the universities in general brought a new professional awareness and exchange manifest in the organization of international conferences, societies, and journals. This overarching new “invisible university” carried an ethos of open cooperation of scholars in specific fields, based on scientific standards that could become a counterweight to nationalist ideologies.2 The most intriguing aspect of this process of scientific standardization in regard to Landeskunde and honismeret was the degree to which they absorbed the new standards in research, the latter delivered primarily via the state-funded universities. How did the exploration of the patria and scholarly sociability combine with the new standards of professionalism? If state-led scientific modernization was one profound challenge, the transformation of scholarly sociability was another. The five decades saw the development of diverse strategies to communicate with the members and to induce broader consumption of the scholarly products. The chapter will argue that by the turn of the century, expert exchange developed as an international crosscultural dialogue, which kept a critical distance from politics. At the same time both associations tightened their links with their own larger publics, while using competing and in certain cases mutually antagonistic national rhetoric.

Landeskunde: Virtual Collection of the Transylvanian Saxon Past

Landeskunde had been affected by the transformation of the humanities already since the middle of the nineteenth century. The differentiation of the this knowledge field and the emergence of modern ethnography, historical philology, and non-classical archeology rejuvenated the two scholarly asso2  Ibid., 75.

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ciations’ activities. At center stage was the history and putative ethnic origins of the (respective) nation.3 As seen in the previous chapter, these “national antiquities”4 involved the collection of historical data now joined by philological and other types of inquiries. The Landeskundeverein was the first to mobilize its members for collecting linguistic samples enabling comparative analysis with other dialects spoken in Central and Western Europe. The launching of a new forum of exchange in 1878 served this purpose. The Korrespondenzblatt was a review journal that monitored domestic research in the humanities and the relevant publications in Austria, the Romanian Kingdom, and Germany in short article format.5 It was a lively periodical and served as the official mouthpiece of the association on academic and political matters. It accompanied Saxon civic activity, publishing the yearly reports of other Saxon associations.6 A separate column was reserved for the questions and inquiries of the audience, and for the editors’ replies. One finds here a combination of erudite content and a digestible format, meant to satisfy both a specialized audience and interested amateurs. The latter were to include, according to its first editor Franz Zimmermann (1850–1935), “peasants and manual laborers” as well, so that the number of its members would grow and spread also into the countryside. The editorial of the first issue in 1887 invited data contributions from the reading societies in villages and praised the scientific value of peasant lore. This was the case even if the informants for journal queries were not found as qualified enough for contacting the journal directly,

3  For a larger context of this development see Monika Baár, Historians and Nationalism: EastCentral Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010). 4  On the meaning of the term designating the quest for putative ethnic ancestries, which squared with the search for common ancestors of European languages, see ibid., 167–195. On the necessity to apply archeological, ethnographic, and linguistic research together for the documentation of the migration period in Hungarian history, see János Banner, Posta [sic] Béla születésének százados ünnepe, 1862–1962 . . . Pósta Béla oroszországi tanulmányútján készült naplószerű feljegyzései, 1897–1898 [The centennial celebration of Béla Pósta’s birth . . . The diary of Pósta’s research trip to Russia] (Budapest: [Életrajzok. Múzeumtörténet sorozat. sz. 1.], 1962). 5  Franz Zimmerman edited the paper until the end of 1879, followed by Johann Wolff (1880–1886), Johann Roth (1887–1891), and Adolf Schullerus (1892–1910). Heinrich Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” Archiv 28 (1898): 139–236, at 170. 6  Including, among others, the Allgemeine Evangelische Frauenverein, the Turnverein, the Karpathenverein, Männerchor Hermania, Hermannstädter Musikverein, Hermannstädter Allgemeine Sparkassa, and the Heltauer Konsumverein.

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but only through the mediation of the “spiritual leader of the reading societies” for proper communication.7 More than two-thirds of all articles published by the Landeskundeverein during this period appeared in the Korrespondenzblatt.8 The wide circulation of such “collections,” together with other contributions to mostly local culturalhistorical themes, ranging from music to art, from literature to dialectal expressions, from ethnography to the local development of crafts, could strike chords of familiarity within the larger Saxon audience. Reading these contributions, the readers could fill with details the historical image of their hometowns and villages, complete with historical buildings, schools, and increasingly their better-known personages, teachers, and pastors. The new focus on the micro dimension of a now predominantly culturally and historically conceived Landeskunde, widespread throughout Germany and Austria by that time too, made it also possible to channel contributions of educated laypersons into larger research projects. The role of the reader as an information supplier was invented anew. If in the 1840s this contribution had materialized as an article, now much smaller bits were sufficient, as was the case with collecting material for a map of the Transylvanian Saxon dialects. Thanks to the dense network of chapters, the range of the contributors could be extended to the smaller towns and the countryside. The Korrespondenzblatt could be efficiently used to funnel popular knowledge to scholars, which was transmitted between the editors and the public in both directions—it published digestible sections of Transylvanian Saxon culture, while it simultaneously requested information from its readers in many subjects. The journal intended to obtain folk legends, tales, songs and much more from its readers. There were also less traditional items of Saxon lore to collect, such as specific elements of the Transylvanian Saxon vernacular, family and geographical names, alongside seal imprints of historical ecclesiastical and political bodies, reports about historic sacred art items, documents, and more. The information collected via the journal was then organized into exhibitions and albums, which could be sold, or were used as gifts to exchange with persons and organizations.9 The question of the geographical origins of the Transylvanian Saxon population preoccupied the scholars of Landeskunde since the 1840s, and Johann 7  Die Redaction [the editors], “Gruss und Bitte,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 1 (January 1887): 1–3. About the initial program see, “Unser Programm,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 1 (January 1878): 1–2. 8  See fn. 19 in the present chapter. 9  Herbert, “Geschichte der Vereins,” 170–171.

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Karl Schuller and later Joseph Haltrich were the first to initiate inquiries in this regard.10 Johann Wolff (1844–1893) launched a large-scale philological inquiry in the 1870s, facilitated by the development of modern philology at Germanlanguage universities.11 Philosophically and historically based philology grew out of the romantic movement for the collecting of German popular literature, and studying it as an expression of the “spirit of the people at a particular time.” In German academia, it always maintained its Herderian connotation and an atmosphere of national engagement.12 Though the methods of modern philology were shaped by developments in classical philology, its institutional recognition via university seminars in German studies took place only in the period of 1872–1894. The activity of Wolff falls within the latter period and betrays a new, interdisciplinary treatment of language in its broader sociocultural, ethnographical, and historical environment. Moreover, the historical analysis of the Saxon dialects also considered those of other German vernaculars in Europe.13 On his suggestion, the committee of the Landeskundeverein worked out a plan for a Transylvanian Saxon idiomatic dictionary based on ethnographic, historical, and linguistic studies in the Rhine region, the latter regarded as the “home of origins.”14 The project brought a considerable number of publications by the Archiv and the Korrespondenzblatt both on the topics of the Saxon dialect (46 contributions between the years 1871 and 1920) and its grammar (13 contributions during the same period) (for these two categories see Figure 11), which were complemented by writings on toponyms, such

10  Johann Karl Schuller, “Über die Eigenarten der siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Mundart und ihr Verhältniß zur hochdeutschen Sprache,” Archiv I (1841): 97–130; Joseph Haltrich, “Bericht an den Ausschuß des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde über den Stand der Vorarbeiten zu einem siebenbürgisch-deutschen Wörterbuch,” Archiv 12 (1874): 176–183. 11  Rüegg, A History of the University, 429. 12  Ibid., 431–432. 13  Anneliese Thudt, “Das Siebenbürgisch-Sächsische Wörterbuch,” in Wege landeskundlicher Forschung. 25 Jahre Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 1962–1987, ed. Konrad W. Gündisch (Cologne: Böhlau, 1988), 83–97, at 83–84. Ethnography as a modern discipline was a latecomer, whose popularity—6 articles in the Archiv and 116 in the Korrespondenzblatt for the five decades before World War I—arrived not entirely without precedent. See Mathilde Wagner, Register der Periodika des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 1840–1944 (Gundelsheim am Neckar: Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 2005). The recording of folk tales and customs began in the late 1840s. 14  Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereins,” 172–173; Johann Wolff, “Vorarbeiten zum siebenbürgischdeutschen Wörterbuch,” Archiv 27 (1897): 587–650.

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as locality and geographical names (20 and 3 contributions, respectively) and botanical names (3 contributions). Wolff’s study meant to “show how the internal and external history of dialectal expressions encloses a precious part from the social and moral history of the people.”15 After his early death, another trained philologist, Adolf Schullerus (1864–1928), carried on the historical linguistic analysis at the turn of the century. Besides the material published in the journals of the association, he also could rely on existing micro-regional linguistic surveys in the north of Transylvania. The latter provided the sample for studying the shifts in the various Saxon dialects, as well as the impact of the surrounding languages and of High German. Thanks to the published historical sources, Schullerus could even analyze the dynamics of the linguistic stock of the Transylvanian German documents.16 He initiated a debate about the documented diversity of the Transylvanian Saxon dialects,17 which led to the abandoning of the common geographic origins of the Saxon “community,” and the positing instead of waves of migrations of disparate social clusters over several centuries. By 1913–1914 the documentation reached a new phase through the development of a historical atlas of the dialects, related to the European distribution of other German vernaculars. The survey, which was launched on the pages of the Korrespondenzblatt, illustrates how scholars of Landeskunde could by that time use information obtained from the public in the countryside. The key gobetweens twixt the village-dweller speakers of the vernacular and the urban scholars were the pastors, but also qualified teaching staff and members of the local administration. It was the usual protagonists of Saxon civic life who could be entrusted with conducting the interviews, registering the nuances of rural dialects, and sending back the sheets of information to the editorial headquarters.18

15  Ibid.; Wolff, “Zum Wörterbuch. Anregungen und Fragen,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 8 (August 1880): 77–82; about the interaction with the public in the collection of information see Wolff, “Rheinische verwandte des siebenbürgisch-deutschen Ortsnamen,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 5 (May 1881): 52–54. 16  Thudt, “Das Siebenbürgisch-Sächsische Wörterbuch,” 86–87. 17  Ibid., 87. 18  The name of the contributors was published in the journal. Obviously, the question about the reliability of the data does not concern us here—the use of a phonograph was mentioned, but appeared an unreachable dream—more important is the function of the Korrespondenzblatt as a channel between the interviewers and the interviewed. Richard Huss, “Siebenbürgisch-deutscher Sprachatlas,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 3 (March 1914): 25–34.

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The historical documentation of Saxon settlement in Transylvania, a topic as old as the association itself, remained a major topic of Landeskunde. It covered the histories of the settlement localities of the colonists, with an emphasis on Hermannstadt, throwing side-glances at the history of the surrounding Romanians and Magyars. In the period 1871–1920, the Archiv published 95 contributions on Saxon “colonization” (ca. 19 publications per decade), while the Korrespondenzblatt published 264 pieces on said topic before 1920 (amounting to ca. 53 publications per decade).19 The medieval and early modern history of the Transylvanian Saxons continued to be the second largest thematic building block of Landeskunde from the inception of the association.20 The topic included the publication and commentary of historical sources (Figure 1); the political history of Transylvania (combining both journals, 8, 8.5, and 11.4 writings, respectively, per political period [Figure 2]); the history of Saxon corporate rights and the legislative system of Transylvania, including the royal foundation charter securing these rights, issued by the Hungarian King Andrew II (1177–1235) (Figure 5); as well as aspects of social and economic history (Figure 7). These developments were contemporary with the international institutionalization of Rankean historicism in the university curricula.21 A culturally oriented ecclesiastical history had featured in the scholarly agenda since the 1850s, the initial focus being on the foundation of religious orders and bishoprics by the Saxon settlers. The topic was part of the exploration of the origins of Saxon life in Transylvania. From the later 1850s this was further extended by contributions on the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, or “Habsburg” period, topics which almost tripled in number during the decades

19  I used the publication list of the Landeskundeverein, which accumulates all articles published in the Archiv and the Korrespondenzblatt to calculate averages per decade for the three main historical periods: the Age of Reform (1840–1849), the transitional period from neo-absolutism to the consolidation of the Compromise Era Hungarian state (1850–1869), and finally the liberal/Compromise Era proper (1870–1920). Despite the artificiality of the chronological division, it was possible to develop a sense of the chronological dynamics of disciplines and research questions. Figures 1–11 offer glimpses into the most prominent ones. Based on: Wagner, Register der Periodika. 20  In the Archiv this amounted to 43 writings per decade during the Reform Era, 47.5 per decade in the neo-absolutist era of the 1850s–60s, and 43.6 per decade coinciding with the Compromise, that is, 1871–1920. 21   Dorothy Ross and Theodore M. Porter, The Modern Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003); Adolf Armbruster, “Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte der siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Historiographie,” Südostdeutsches Archiv 19/20 (1976/1977): 20–52, 42–46.

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of Hungarian administration.22 Looking back at the Reformation, the historian Armbruster found “the great spiritual, moral, and religious rebirth”; the “development of our national spirit”; the foundation of Saxon scholarship through the Saxon humanist, Johannes Honterus; and the early intellectual ties to the Motherland.23 The bulk of publications by the fin de siècle further embedded the subject into local history. The Saxon church fortresses, whose registration as protected artistic monuments had begun as early as the 1850s, were another subject worthy of exploration. In the Archiv and in the Korrespondenzblatt this category received about 3 articles per decade until 1920.24 The association continued to support financially the publication of scholarly or cultural works of “patriotic” significance: source editions, political and local histories, editions of folk tales, renderings of Saxon folklore, ethnographic treatises (Haltrich), as well as the three-volume bibliographical lexicon of Transylvanian Saxon scholars.25 The documentation of the history of Saxon schooling, ranging from elementary village schools to the gymnasia, continued in the Hungarian era as well. As in the case of other topics of cultural-historical and national relevance, inquiries into the history of Saxon education boomed at the turn of the century (26 writings in the Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt in contrast to 1 article each per decade in the previous two eras), being extended by an increasing documentation of academic peregrination to German Protestant (though not Austrian Catholic) universities (20 articles in the two journals, in contrast to the previous 4 articles in Korrespondenzblatt and none in Archiv). The proliferation of writings on these particular themes of cultural history towards the end of the century corresponded with the narrowing of the focus on local history, including for instance the documentation of individual universities sought by Saxon peregrini, as well as individual biographies (see Figure 9). Essays on famous scholars too were often embedded in local history. This is how contributions about the gymnasium towns of Mühlbach, Birthälm, or other towns of Saxon learning could be integrated into Transylvanian Saxon historiography.26 The 22  For a joint publication ratio in the Archiv and the Korrespondenzblatt see Figure 8. 23  Armbruster, “Vorarbeiten,” 42–46. 24   For further measures for the documentation of “kirchliche Kunstdenkmähler aus Siebenbürgen” and its support on behalf of the emperor, see Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereins,” 173. About other, larger publications published by the Landeskundeverein on medieval and early modern Saxon cultural history, see ibid., 176. 25  Ibid., 177; Ambruster, “Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte,” 42, 44. 26  Georg Daniel Teutsch, “Rede zur Eröffnung der 41. Generalversammlung des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” Archiv 22 (1889): 5–25; Teutsch, “Rede zur Eröffnung der

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publication of these portraits in the Saxon Schriftstellerlexikon (lexicon of ­writers) and later in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie was the formalization of the symbolic inclusion of Saxon scholarship in German academia.27 Here the events of the national past were emphasized, while the interferences with other cultures in Transylvania were left out or stylized into national c­ lichés. This is how for instance the biography of Bedeus von Scharberg never mentioned the exchange with the learned politician Imre Mikó.28 One witnesses a well-running management of information circulation between informants and scholars, between town and the countryside, and between producers and consumers of knowledge, on Saxon cultural-historical matters. Also novel was the field of prehistoric archeology, which shed light on the ancient inhabitants of Transylvania within a broader European and even Eurasian framework (Figure 3). The discipline was built partly upon the earlier results in classical archeology from the 1850s and 1860s, and thanks to contacts with mainly German specialists, it provided an avenue for Transylvanian scholarship to join international exchange. The history of classical antiquity, including the Roman and Dacian past of Transylvania, had been a steady scholarly focus in the activities of the Landeskundeverein since its inception. Excavations were undertaken by the association as early as the 1840s in Kastenholz and Schäßburg,29 to be continued in 1874 with ministerial support in Kastenholz, Salzburg, Burghalle, between Großschenk and Tarteln, in Rabeburg/Burgberg in the search of “Hüllekupen” (tumuli), as well as at Bun, Kerz, Werd, and Kirchberg at the Almási Cave. The findings were transferred either to the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest or to the Brukenthal Museum in Hermannstadt. Some of them, as was the case of a large Roman numismatic finding at Frauendorf in 1875, were offered to the Saxon gymnasia to complete their collections, used in teaching.30 The Archiv published articles about the excavations, while focusing mostly on the classical archeological remains of the Roman period. Contributions to pre-Roman archeology grew in number later, joined by publications on prehistoric times, including excavations of tombs, and analysis of archeological finds from the Bronze and Iron 42. Generalversammlung des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” Archiv 22 (1889): 507–617. 27  Joseph Trausch, Schriftsteller-Lexikon oder biographisch-literärische Denk-Blätter der Siebenbürger Deutschen, vols. 1–4 (Kronstadt: Gött, 1868–1902). 28   Eugen von Friedenfels, Josef Bedeus von Scharberg. Beiträge zur Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, vols. 1–2 (Vienna: Braumüller, 1876–1877). 29  Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereins,” 153. 30  Ibid., 179.

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Age. The ratio of writings on classical antiquity combined with prehistoric archeology in the Archiv amounts to 3, 14, and 16 articles, respectively, during the three major political periods of nineteenth-century Transylvania.31 The most notable authors of the discipline included Friedrich Müller (1828–1915), Friedrich Teutsch (1852–1933), and Carl Gooß (1844–1881), Gooß publishing by 1877 the first systematic assessment of Bronze and early Iron Age findings in Transylvania and placing them in a European interpretative framework.32 While a gymnasium professor in Schäßburg, Gooß concentrated in his research on the Thracian inhabitants of Transylvania and Hungary. His categorization of the metal tools and weapons used by these early populations belongs to the first attempts, within an emerging international debate, to identify the local metallurgy in the Carpathian Basin in the context of a southern and northern commercial exchange with the Mediterranean as well as the Upper Rhine regions. It also provides a historical overview of the subsequent cultural waves on the territory of Transylvania, including the Dacians, until the establishment of Roman military rule.33 The study is an outstanding example of the seamless incorporation of “local” or “provincial” knowledge on Transylvania into the German-language literature of specialization in Europe. It renders a sovereign up-to-date knowledge of the field with an obvious slant towards German academic emphases on Germanic settlements in Northern Europe. It also reveals intimate familiarity with the beginning archeological excavations and exhibitions in Hungary and 31  For a joint ratio of publications in the Korrespondenzblatt and the Archiv see Figures 3 and 4. An exhibition of the prehistoric collection of Zsófia von Torma took place in 1877 in Hermannstadt, to which the entire plenary assembly of the Landeskundeverein was invited. Ibid., 183. 32  Carl Gooß, “Skizzen zur vorrömischen Culturgeschichte der mittlern Donaugegenden. Mit 15 Tafeln Ab-bildungen. Abschnitte: I. Die Periode der vorherrschenden Steingeräthe. II. Die ältesten historischen Be-wohner der mittlern Donaugegenden. III. Aufzählung der wichtigsten Fundstücke aus der sogenannten Bronze- und älteren Eisenzeit. IV. Die Herkunft der im vorigen Abschnitt beschriebenen Gegenstände. Verzeichnis der in den Tafeln abgebildeten Gegenstände,” Archiv 13 (1877): 407–537; Gooß, “Skizzen zur vorrömischen Culturgeschichte der mittlern Donaugegenden (Fortsetzung und Schluß). Abschnitte: V. Der Handelsverkehr mit dem Süden. VI. Der vorrömische Geldverkehr in den mittlern Donaulandschaften. VIII. Alte Ansiedlungen. VIII. Lebensweise, Beschäftigung und Todtenbestattung der vorrömischen Bevölkerung,” Archiv 14 (1877): 47–175. 33  Carl Gooß, “Die ältesten historischen Bewohner der mittlern Donau-Gegenden,” in Skizzen zur vorrömischen culturgeschichte der mittlern Donaugegenden (Hermannstadt: Michaelis, 1876), 431–465.

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Transylvania. The book was presented at the Eighth International Congress of Prehistoric Archeology and Anthropology that took place in Budapest, attended by the German, Austrian, and Hungarian crème of the profession, including Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), professor at the University of Berlin and foremost German representative of prehistoric archeology; Henri Schaffhausen, professor at the University of Bonn; Albert Voß, director of the prehistoric section of the Völkerkundemuseum in Berlin; József Hampel, director of the archeological section of the Hungarian National Museum; and many others. The exceptionality of the congress series consisted in its capacity to create an international venue of exchange and research on the then little-known prehistory of the Carpathian Basin. It brought together scholars of archeology, ethnography, anthropology, history, and paleontology from Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy, including the Landeskundeverein and the Transylvanian Museum Society. The exchange played no small role in creating recognition for the peculiar role of the region as a separate cultural space during the Neolithic Age, as formulated in the writings of Gooß, but also in those of the Hungarian doyen of prehistoric archeology, Ferencz Pulszky (1814–1897).34 A lasting cooperation emerged among the former and the Transylvanian aristocratic amateur archeologist, Zsófia von Torma, discoverer of the first findings from the so-called Copper Age (before the Bronze Age) in Tordos, Transylvania, a collaboration which also left institutional traces. Gooß dedicated a longer study to the description of the Tordos findings in the association journal in 1878,35 based on a lecture held by the baroness in Hermannstadt for the historical section of the Landeskundeverein, where she was accorded the title of honorary member. The innovations in the field of archeology and their adaptations in Transylvania exemplify the potential of Landeskunde to incorporate new disciplines, the broadening of the horizon of provincial scholarship, and the facilitation of new cooperation at home and abroad. Indeed, the contacts established at the International Congresses of Prehistoric Archeology and Anthropology in Budapest, Berlin, Vienna, and elsewhere also brought several international practitioners to Transylvania, including the eminent German classical scholar and politician Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) and his equally distinguished peer and colleague, Rudolf Virchow, founding father of German 34  Ferencz Pulszky, Magyarorszag archaeologiája [The archeology of Hungary] (Budapest: Pallas, 1897). 35  Carl Gooß, “Bericht über die von Fräulein Sofie von Torma in der Sitzung der historischen Section des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde im August 1877 ausgestellte Sammlung prähistorischer Funde,” Archiv 14 (1878): 590–626.

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prehistoric anthropology and archeology. Virchow placed this new discipline in an interdisciplinary perspective and he was the one to initiate the German Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistoric Archeology in 1869, three years after the first meeting of the congress.36 Virchow attended the fiftieth anniversary of the Landeskundeverein in Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, where he was greeted with the intimate cordiality reserved for a dear friend.37 He returned the friendly gesture with a detailed account of the cultural merits of Transylvanian Saxons, written in a tone of gratitude, which did not spare criticism when addressing the chauvinist Hungarian cultural politics. The case was far from unique, and illustrates the patterns of political elective affinities and antipathies modulating the cooperation of experts. These brought Saxons and Germans increasingly onto one side by the turn of the century against a shaping Kolozsvár-Budapest alliance of Magyar scholars, the latter united in the defense of official cultural politics. Politics affected other disciplines in an even more direct way. Interpreted as an aspect of recent history, one finds the discipline of population statistics. In an age when inquiries into demographic development justified political aims and fears, it is of little surprise that the author of the first extensive account of the Saxon rural population was a prominent Saxon politician.38 The study was an inquiry into the demographic, economic, and cultural relations of his object, with detailed rows of data on church, schooling, and also the associations. It illuminated the evidence “that the Saxon did not diminish but multiply, that also in the most recent time they gained ground against their other fellow nations.” Similar intentions moved Eduard Gusbeth (1839–1921), the physician author of Das Sanitätswesen in Kronstadt (The sanitary conditions in Kronstadt).39 Legal history as the source of former political rights kept its presence during the period. Yet after the dissolution of the Nationsuniversität as a self-governing body in 1868, attention shifted to the now most significant cultural institution, the Lutheran Church. The liberal era featured indeed the documentation of the history of the Transylvanian Lutheran Church Council with respect to 36  Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 235. 37  “Virchow Rudolf jelentése Erdélyi útjáról” [The report of Virchow Rudolf about his Transylvanian journey], Erdélyi Múzeum (1899): 634–647, at 642. 38  Oskar von Meltzl, “Statistik der sächsischen Landbevölkerung in Siebenbürgen,” Archiv 20 (1886): 1–215. 39  Eduard Gusbeth, Zur Geschichte der Sanitätsverhältnisse in Kronstadt (Kronstadt: Römer und Kammner, 1884).

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its most important contemporary function: self-governance in cultural matters. Another bulk of the cultural-historical inquiries regarded schooling and scholarship, all under ecclesiastical institutional tutelage. All in all, the Archiv focused on topics of ethnonational relevance.40 Professionalization meant a difficult process with many setbacks, as illustrated by the attempts to collect and publish authentic historical evidence, the basis of historical research. The primary source editing had begun, as previously shown, already in the late 1840s with the activity around a codex diplomaticus by Georg Daniel Teutsch.41 This was to be continued several decades later when the committee of the Landeskundeverein decided in 1866 on its continuation. Yet it was not until the emergence of a professional archivist in the ranks of the association that the work could begin. Franz Zimmermann received his training at the Viennese Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung (Austrian Institute for Historical Research), and was the city archivist in Hermannstadt from 1875 onwards. He worked out a research plan involving administrative and ecclesiastical archives, public and private manuscript collections in Transylvania and Hungary, as well as selected places in Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, and the Vatican. The introduction to the first volume of his large compilation, coedited with his two assistants, reflected the satisfaction of well-accomplished work.42 Zimmerman evoked the memory of Schlözer in the introduction, rendering homage to the father of modern Saxon source editing. Yet the results of Zimmerman’s work resulted in a rather fragmented image of Saxon history. Similar to Schullerus, he laid out the historical and territorial discontinuities of Saxon settlement in Transylvania, the latter stretching from the mid-thirteenth century until the Battle of Mohács (1526), the closing date of the first volume. 40  Like many similar scholarly institutions and voluntary associations, the Landeskunde­ verein was also concerned with its own history and role as a motor of national scholarship. The formal addresses of the president to the members on the occasion of the yearly meetings contained obituaries and biographies of important scholars and politicians. 41  Other source editions published parallel with the Landeskundeverein included: “Quellen zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens aus sächsischen Archiven”; “Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Kronstadt in Siebenbürgen,” 1–3; “Rechnungen aus dem Archiv der Stadt Kronstadt von 1503–1550”; and also for the period 1475–1571: “Die Siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Schulordnungen” (vols. 12–13 of the Monumenta Germaniae paedagogica), edited by Karl Kehrbach. See Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereins,” 174–175. 42  Franz Zimmerman and Carl Werner, “Einleitung,” in Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen, ed. Franz Zimmermann, Carl Warner, and Georg Müller (Hermannstadt: Franz Michaelis, 1892), vii–xxx, https://archive.org/stream/ urkundenbuchzur00mlgoog#page/n12/mode/2up, accessed 26 July 2014.

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Similar to his colleagues gathering material for the language map, Zimmerman too relied on collaborative work. The introduction to his work, enlisting all the sites of his research, also underscores the encompassing and synthetic nature of his undertaking. The manuscript collections of the Brukenthal Museum as well as the Transylvanian Museum Society are mentioned as particularly precious sources of documents. The latter harbored one of the most valuable parts of the Urkundenbuch, the manuscripts originating from the personal collection of the late Count József Kemény. Zimmerman honored this extraordinary personality with respect as an ideal figure of the savant beyond political and philosophical-theological particularities: His large manuscript collection, to a great extent copied by himself, bears no particular national, secular, or ecclesiastical character, but Kemény is a veritable Transylvanian collector in the truest sense of the word. He offered his support to all sides, wherever it was required. The editors of the Transylvanian source edition [Teutsch and Firnhaber, Siebenbürgische Urkundenbuch, p. vii] acknowledge it gratefully, the collections by Martin Reschner, Joseph Trausch, and those of the Association for Transylvanian Landeskunde refer to it; and the collection by Count Kemény constitutes today a valuable property of the Transylvanian Museum in Klausenburg. The assumption that nearly everybody working in the Kemény collection will find something of interest will be hardly ever contested.43 The words of the editor reflect a new professional ethos based on the collaborative effort of experts. The exhaustive lists of the consulted archives indicate the cooperation and information exchange between specialists, irrespective of their domicile, language, and national and political conviction, a fact that had become by the time of Zimmerman a desirable attribute of professional work. He made knowledge flow across linguistic and political borders indispensable, that is, the acknowledgement, use, and criticism of one another’s work, based on the shared standards of the profession. This was the level where Transylvanians and those outside of it could interact, despite the aggressive nationalist agitation of politicians, those counterexamples to the attitude of the generous Count Kemény. The episode could be closed as an important instance of a shaping professional habitus that made the invisible yet valuable cooperation between the nationally divided scholarly associations possible. Yet in the same year as the Urkundenbuch was published, Kemény’s integrity as an historian was called 43  Ibid., xvii.

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into doubt by the historian András Komáromy, who identified as forgeries two texts, one of them published in the erstwhile document edition by Teutsch and Firnhaber. The scandal swelled the next year as the archivist Károly Tagányi identified as forgeries eight further documents, this time from Zimmermann’s Urkundenbuch, and all stemming from the Kemény collection. The exposure of the count as a crude manipulator was an even more telltale sign of the codes of new professionalism being established in Hungary too. They signaled the eclipse of the older amateur scholarship and its attendant codes of behavior shaped by aristocratic patronage.44 Such a faux pas notwithstanding, Landeskunde continued to be a pragmatic scholarship, whose disciplinary setup, the preponderance of individual disciplines within, and the central scholarly themes were constantly adjusting themselves to the general trends affecting the humanities, as well as the most burning questions regarding the history and ethnic origins of the Transylvanian Saxon ‘nation.’ As more professional standards became established around the turn of the century, and thus a more critical perspective upon the staples of Saxon historiography, the greater was the chance of exchange irrespective of the social, cultural, and political cleavages separating the individual scholars.

“The Border between History and Political Essay is Difficult to Draw”: Public Landeskunde

If the state was a distant and not always benevolent buttress, the public sphere with its growing network of voluntary associations, schools, and museums was the most immediate environment of the two societies. But there were significant differences between the status of the Magyar and nationality publics. If liberal Germany provided the model for reshaping the educational system, this was not the case when it came to the legal sanctioning of civil and political self-organization. The right of assembly and association was not guaranteed by law during the entire span of the Compromise.45 The constitution of 1867 provided no legal definition of a voluntary association, and did not codify the 44  Martin Rady, “The Forgeries of Baron József Kemény,” The Slavonic and East European Review 71, no. 1 (1993): 109. 45  Gábor Halmai, Az egyesülés szabadsága. Az egyesülési jog története [The freedom of association. The history of the right of association] (Budapest: Atlantisz, 1990), 41; László Péter, “Volt-e magyar társadalom a XIX. században? A jogrend és a civil társadalom képződése” [Was there a Hungarian society in the 19th century? The order of law and the formation of the civil society], in Az Elbától keletre. Tanulányok a magyar és kelet-európai

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difference between civil and political associations. The lack of formal differentiation opened the way for state intervention and control, especially over the organizations of extra-parliamentary opponents of the Dualist system. In the long run it secured unlimited discretional powers of state intervention into civic and political networks.46 After 1875, a ministerial decree restricted the right of ethnic self-organization to only literary and cultural goals.47 On the one hand, this led to the proliferation of cultural and educational organizations, in Transylvania too. On the other hand, the suspicion against the putatively subversive opponents of the Compromise (radical nationalists, social democrats, irredentist national minorities, or politically active workers clubs) adopted some of the traits of old regime control.48 The administration of associations became increasingly complicated by the turn of the century, as illustrated by legal handbooks counterbalancing the lack of explicit legal premises by proliferating ministerial decrees of regulation. These were then applied whenever official misgivings were raised about the putatively “subversive” and “dishonest” goals of nationality organizations, suspected with the “pursuit of clandestine goals.”49 When it came to the sensitivity of the nationstate towards putatively or de facto renegade nationalities, there was a striking resemblance with the older Austrian practice. It would be nevertheless anachronistic to pass a too harsh judgment on associational policies in the face of decrees and official propaganda. Not only historians of Hungarian voluntary associations warn of it, but the sheer dimension of the “sociable society” during the dualist era suggests considerable state tolerance. The associational boom came after the dissolution of the guilds in 1872, when the rapidly diversifying associational movement signaled a trend shift. Voluntary associations were welcome, especially if they removed some of the “heavy loads upon the state.”50 The statistician Gyula Vargha applauded történelemből [East of the Elba. Studies in the Hungarian and East European history], ed. László Péter (Budapest: Osiris, 1998), 169. 46  Adalbert Toth, “Die Genehmigungspraxis politischer Vereine und Parteien in Ungarn. 1892–1896,” in Ungarn Jahrbuch, vol. 18 (Munich: Verlag Ungarisches Institut, 1990), 75–105, at 85. See for instance the decrees of 1875 concerning the restriction of political associations. Ibid., 45. 47  Béla Grünwald, A törvényhatósági igazgatás kézikönyve [Handbook of public service legislation] (Budapest, 1889), 214, cited in Toth, “Die Genehmigungspraxis,” 78. 48  Ibid., 75–76. 49  Rezső Márkus, ed., Magyar Jogi Lexikon [Hungarian legal lexicon], vols. 1–5 (Budapest: Pallas, 1900), 3:125–130. 50  Gyula Vargha and József Kanitz, Magyarország egyletei és társulatai 1878-ban [The associations and societies of Hungary in 1878] (Budapest: Statistikai Hivatal, 1880), 7.

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the 3,995 voluntary associations registered on the territory of Hungary in 1878, which, for all the modesty of their number (ca. one-fourth of the total figure counted for the entire monarchy), indicated that Hungary too embarked on the international trend of “associational mania.”51 The associational landscape also reflected the social differences: at the end of the 1870s, it remained primarily an urban phenomenon—the ratio per capita in the 25 free royal towns was four times higher than in the counties—and more than one third of these were handcraft unions. It did not come as a surprise that in Transylvania the areas with the highest associational density were the economically prosperous counties with a Saxon majority, while the lowest were the mostly agrarian and rural counties. The liberal legislation of 1867–1868 seemingly guaranteed the exercise and maintenance of cultural identity for the national minorities in the framework of church-run educational systems, and within the framework of a grassroots civil movement, based on voluntary associations. From the 1880s onwards, however, growing national populism and an imperialist rhetoric accompanied the attempt of the authorities to control education and the cultural life of nonMagyars. These developments prompted a tone of defensive nationalism in the Saxon and Romanian public sphere. The Landeskundeverein, fashioning itself as the center of Saxon civic movement, culture, and education, led by the Lutheran bishop, became the foremost agent in shaping the Saxon identity discourse by supplying its themes and tonality. The new strategies of communication introduced in the Korrespondenzblatt reflected both the institutional boom and the adoption of a populist tone. The Landeskundeverein had established headquarters in Hermannstadt, Mediasch, Schäßburg, and Reps already in 1851 and a chapter in Bistritz was added later on as well. In 1870 the association changed its statutes in order to accommodate an increase in membership—for instance the doubling of the committee members from 12 to 24, the introduction of the category of the corresponding member, the introduction of section meetings on the occasion of the yearly plenary assemblies, and the foundation of further chapters in smaller towns and in the countryside. The new statutes decreased the lifetime presidency to six years only, and secured the continuity of committee work by regulating the duration of membership here as well.52 In the 1880s, the minister of education encouraged municipalities, local authorities, and other legal bodies to support cultural and educational organizations, and the Landeskundeverein 51  Ibid., viii–xxi. 52  “Statuten des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde vom Jahre 1870,” in Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereins,” 187–189.

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s­uccessfully contacted a number of these with an invitation to join its ranks. The most significant new partners became the local chapters of the Hermannstädter Sparkassa, which, together with the Bodenkreditanstalt in Hermannstadt, were an important sponsor of the activities of the association.53 In Germany, historical associations established after the foundation of the Reich in 1871 became self-evident participants in the public sphere. Their object of research, the regional Fatherland, was no longer the utopian “realm of patriotic fantasy” any more but a confident member of the unified greater “German Fatherland.”54 Their Transylvanian counterpart, the Landeskundeverein, played a more distinctively political role after 1867. Much of the scholarship it produced, especially its studies on Saxon culture and history, found direct application in the school curricula. Through its active involvement in education it continued to be an important agent in nationality politics. In spite of all the formally required abstinence from politics, the association was active in shaping public opinion by transmitting and legitimating the stance of the dominant Saxon elite vis-à-vis the state. Its outlook on politics and history reflects the ideology of its leadership, recruited from prominent Saxon political, ecclesiastical, and intellectual circles. In 1869, the national history of Hungary became a compulsory subject in the school curricula that sought to “cultivate national consciousness, patriotism, and state loyalty through introducing the thousand-year past and struggles of our nation, as well as the national virtues.”55 Nevertheless, patriotic education left enough room for interpretation for Saxon authors to define what was meant by “encouraging fatherland patriotism” (that is, Transylvania) and “loyalty to the people” (that is, Saxons). Maintaining the idea of regional distinction, the authors continued to give Saxon culture a distinct voice both in relation to Germany and in reference to the Hungarian state. This multiple loyalty between state, fatherland, and the German “motherland” characterized the mainstream Saxon collective identification throughout the decades of the Compromise.56 The Landeskundeverein authors provided the content by documenting its historical, cultural, and political dimensions. 53  See the list of members and also Herbert, “Geschichte des Vereins,” 168–169. 54  Hermann Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine einst und jetzt,” in Geschichtswissenschaft und Vereinswesen im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Hartmut Boockmann, Arnold Esch, and Hermann Heimpel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 45–73, at 53. 55  Cited by Joachim von Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn. Slowaken Rumänen und Siebenbürger Sachsen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der ungarischen Staatsidee, 1867–1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003), 255. 56  Ibid., 259.

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The standard works in history, geography, ethnography, and philology were mostly written or initiated by the members of the Landeskundeverein. The most prominent exemplar had been the Sachsengeschichte by Georg Daniel Teutsch, completed later by his son, Friedrich (see below). Other contributors from the ranks of the association, just to mention a few, included the already mentioned Eduard Albert Bielz, as well as Carl Werner, Karl Thomas, and Eduard and Wilhelm Morres.57 Patriotic education comprised also adult education, a program also adopted by ASTRA.58 Landeskundeverein authors worked in concert with the Lutheran Church Consistory from the 1880s to strengthen the Saxon collective identity for fear of Magyarization and assimilation to the Romanian countryside, recommending evening readings to the congregations. A thorough bibliography in Landeskunde, including the Sachsengeschichte, was to instruct the mature male population in natural history, ethnography, the history of the fatherland, as well as the daily (political) events and economy.59 A stronger emphasis on the ethnic and geographical origins of the Saxons, on regional and local history, was placed in school education, conforming to the research agenda of Landeskunde. Scholarship and education were closely united, as best shown by the person of the Lutheran bishop, who not only supervised Saxon nationality education but also presided over the Landeskundeverein. It is no wonder that Friedrich Teutsch urged the teachers to register the schools of their congregation as members of the association as early as the late 1870s.60 Georg Daniel Teutsch’s son, Friedrich, followed his father both in his profession as bishop and as a prolific historian.61 When the Landeskundeverein 57   Such as Johann Michaelis, Erdbeschreibung und Geschichte von Ungarn (reprint, Hermannstadt: E. Albert Bielz, 1880); Carl Werner, Geschichte Ungarns mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Siebenbürgens. Ein Leitfaden für höhere Volksschulen, Bürgerschulen und die unteren Klassen der Mittelschulen der ev. Landeskirche A.B. in Siebenbürgen (Hermannstadt, 1880); Karl Thomas, Bilder aus der ungarischen Geschichte (Kronstadt, 1894). 58  Georg Manchen, Bilder aus der ungarischen Geschichte. Ein Hilfs- und Lesebuch für Schule und Haus (Kronstadt, 1889); Friedrich Teutsch, ed., Bilder aus der vaterländischen Geschichte, vols. 1–2 (Hermannstadt, 1895–1899). 59  Cited by Dr. Oskar von Meltzl, Statistik der sächsischen Bevölkerung in Siebenbürgen (Hermannstadt, 1886), 253–254. 60  See Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration, 263. 61  Andreas Möckel, “Einführung,” in Georg Daniel Teutsch and Friedrich Teutsch, Geschichte der siebenbürger Sachsen für das sächsische Volk, edited by Friedrich Teutsch, reprint edition with an introduction by Andreas Möckel, vol. 1 (Böhlau: Cologne and Vienna, 1984), v–xxii, at vi–ix.

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decided in 1882 on the continuation of the Sachsengeschichte from the year 1699, he overtook the task. Teutsch Jr. did not plan a major revision, since according to him his father “had hit the target and posterity could make a small modification of details but not changes in the overall image.”62 However, the new Sachsengeschichte was written under the impact of German state formation, and the national historicist approach of Wilhelm Wattenbach, Heinrich von Treitschke, and Theodor Mommsen. The enlarged edition, published in Leipzig, stressed therefore the unity of Protestant Germans.63 While abroad, Friedrich Teutsch studied theology, philology, and history in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Leipzig from 1870 until 1872.64 On his return home, he published on a vast array of topics including Saxon political, cultural, and economic history, archeology and historiography. He was involved in several revised editions of his fathers’ Sachsengeschichte, before he decided to write its continuation. The new parts came out in 1907 and 1910 respectively, the time of deepest domestic political crisis in Hungary. The second volume covered the period beginning with 1816 until the turn of the century and is an expressive document of the contemporary political climate. It bore the suggestive title Hundert Jahre sächsischer Kämpfe (One hundred years’ national struggle), and was the Saxon conservative answer to state nationalism.65 The “complete” Sachsengeschichte continued the national romantic tone of Teutsch Sr. in its “heroic elevation of the past and the leading men.”66 Saxons were presented here as the “first ranking cultural factor” and “teaching master” of the Transylvanian “tribes,” colonists who had been initially received and treated with respect by the Hungarian kings, only to be marginalized and antagonized by their descendants.67 The author’s attitude towards Vienna has remained a matter of dispute between its Hungarian and Saxon critics until today; in 62  Friedrich Teutsch, “Unsere Geschichtsschreibung in den letzten zwanzig Jahren (1869– 1889),” Archiv 22 (1889): 619–687, at 620. 63  Georg Daniel Teutsch, Geschichte der Siebenbürger Sachsen für das sächsische Volk, vols. 1–2 (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1874). 64  Andreas Möckel, “Nachwort,” in Friedrich Teutsch, Kleine Geschichte der Siebenbürger Sachsen, ed. Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde (reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965), 367–380, at 373. 65  Friedrich Teutsch, Hundert Jahre sächsischer Kämpfe (Hermannstadt, 1910). According to Andreas Möckel, Teutsch, elected bishop in the meantime, waited with the publication of recent history, which was ready by the time of the Hungarian parliamentary crisis, until the politics of Hungarian-Saxon rapprochement was on firm ground. Möckel, “Nachwort,” 372. 66  Ibid., 374. 67  Ibid.

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any case he demanded “national tolerance” and the cultural-ecclesiastical self-determination of Saxons, the watchwords of contemporary fin-de-siècle nationality politics.68 The new volume of the Sachsengeschichte was written with the intention of a synthesis. Edited almost twenty years after the first publication of the first volume, it profited from published monographs and source editions, most of them written and edited by authors of the Landeskundeverein from the 1850s onwards. In the historical and Landeskunde associations in Germany the specialist slowly gained the upper hand towards the 1870s. It was not necessarily the trained historian, but the pastor and philologist having a university degree, or the lawyer with an education in legal history. Once they made their appearance on the scholarly scene, the conflict with the amateurs began.69 In Transylvania, similar disputes emerged later, at the end of the century. The first such dispute concerned the authenticity of the Sachsengeschichte, especially its recent closing parts. The critic was no less an authority than Franz Zimmermann. His critical analysis flunked Friedrich Teutsch’s work as one of serious scholarship. The initial volumes of the Sachsengeschichte by the elder Teutsch had been written with the awareness of a limited knowledge of the past, according to the trained archivist. This accounted for the modest ambitions of the father to write “only” Volkslektüre (popular literature). According to Zimmermann, “the attempt [of the son] to appropriate scholarly qualities and criticalmethodical qualities for the Volksbuch several years after its publication” was inappropriate.70 In his harsh judgment the national romantic image of the Volk was nothing but dilettantism. Zimmerman wished a more serious source criticism and a better scientific foundation of historical writing, standards often evoked, especially in regard to the revered history professors from Germany, but less often applied in practice.71 He attacked the romantic Saxon historical narrative, and in particular the myths surrounding the medieval Saxon settlement of Transylvania. He dismissed the idealizing interpretation that the Saxons were the guests of the Hungarian kings, but also the supposed social equality of the settlers, the l­ egend 68  Hans Beyer, “Geschichtsbewußtsein und Nationalprogramm der Siebenbürger Sachsen,” in Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Paul Philippi (Cologne: Böhlau, 1967), 56–115, at 68; Möckel, “Nachwort,” 374. 69  Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine einst und jetzt,” 62–64. 70  Franz Zimmermann, Zur siebenbürgisch-deutschen Geschichtsschreibung, besonders die Siedlungsfrage (Innsbruck: Druck der Wagnerschen Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1901), 714–715. 71  Ibid., 736.

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of archaic democracy in opposition to the “morally inferior” Hungarian aristocracy. Zimmermann posited in this early article the presence of nobles among the settlers, to be confirmed by later research. Furthermore he cast a less glamorous image of the settlement of Transylvania than imagined by the Teutsches. Thus Saxon colonization had not been induced only by the friendly insistence of the Hungarian king, but also triggered by domestic misery in the home provinces. To discard another historical myth, Zimmermann also pointed out that the colonization was not a short event (1141–1161) as asserted previously, but encompassed centuries, from the eleventh until well into the fourteenth century.72 Presenting a socially and historically dispersed image of Saxon colonization and existence in Transylvania, Zimmermann criticized eventually the central myth of Saxon collective identity, based on learning and the reformation. He attacked what he identified as the dogma of Kulturprotestantismus, both in the more recent Sachsengeschichte, but also as the adopted ideology of the Landeskundeverein. It is symptomatic how little an effect his criticism had on the mainstream national historiography. His essay, published abroad, received an angry reply in the Korrespondenzblatt, which kept defending the theses of Sachsengeschichte.73 The case illustrates well the chances of fin-desiècle positivist scientific professionalism against provincial scholarship, when it came to the political use of the latter. Art history was another field where the professional made his entrance at the turn of the century. The objects of dispute were this time the beautiful fortress churches built by the colonists. Here too, the criticism was formulated by a trained art historian, Victor Roth (1874–1936). Like Zimmermann, Roth approached Saxon art history from a comparative standpoint, and instead of highlighting national originality, he documented the various stylistic and functional similarities with Western and Oriental architecture. The fortress church was a part of a more general tableau of the European cultural and political history, Roth claimed. Yet the Landeskundeverein did nothing but diligently gather minute data, seldom venturing towards comparison and interpretation in a larger European context.74 Dilettantish works might have sufficed for popular editions on “our fortresses” within the yearbooks of tourist’s associations, 72  Ibid., 730. 73  Adolph Schullerus, “Auch ein Wort zu unserer Geschichtsschreibung,” Korrespondenzblatt, nos. 5–6 (May–June 1901): 57–65. 74  Victor Roth, “Zur Geschichte der siebenbürgischen Kirchen-Architektur,” Korrespondenz­ blatt, no. 33 (1910): 64–70; Roth, “Zur Charakteristik der romanischen Kirchenarchitektur in Siebenbürgen,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 34 (1911): 33–36; Roth, “Kritik und Wissenschaft. Eine Entgegnung auf Michael Auners ‘Zur Geschichte des Abendmahlskelches in

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yet they could not replace adequate historical analysis. As a measure towards that latter direction, Roth presented at the Landeskunde assembly meeting in 1903 a research plan and prepared the ground for extensive comparative research in architecture, sculpture, painting, and applied arts: “On the background of the political and cultural image of the period, the author of such a work should be particularly attentive of the artistic movements of the civilized West, above all Germany, and to find an answer to the most important question, namely, to what extent and by what exchange the waves of these movements reached this country.”75 Neither Zimmermann, nor Roth dealt with the tacit political background behind the nationalist overtones of more recent Saxon historiography. The reaction of Friedrich Teutsch is similarly cryptic—his answer defended dilettantism as the price of writing popular works. He downplayed the scholarly merits of the Landeskundeverein, presenting it as an institute in an inferior situation: “we are working more or less randomly, not everybody can afford the peace of mind to immerse in one or the other question, and then to enjoy the results of a long and uninterrupted work.”76 The circle of active researchers was limited, and since they were mostly gymnasium professors and pastors, they worked under worse conditions than their luckier German (and Hungarian) counterparts. Unlike university professors, they split their time between daily work and scholarship, without the support of research facilities. Due to these institutional and social conditions, the activity of the Landeskundeverein could not help but remain eclectic, despite repeated demands for more coordination and professionalism. In the end, according to Teutsch, amateurism was more compatible with the “inner freedom of the individual scholar.”77 For Teutsch, popular literature was valuable as it transported the scholarly message to the masses—in contrary to strictly scientific prose: “except for the so-called ‘educated,’ how many businessmen, artisans, village teachers are sharing the pleasure of scholarship . . . [n]ot to mention the peasants, who do not read our works?”78 The pretense of dilettantism—by that time the Landeskundeverein Siebenbürgen,’ ” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 37 (1914): 73–96; Teutsch, “Unsere Geschichts­ schreibung,” 661–663. 75  Victor Roth, “Aufgabe und Ziel der siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Kunstgeschichtsforschung,” Archiv 32 (1903): 631–666. 76  Teutsch, “Unsere Geschichtsschreibung,” 684–686. 77  Ibid. 78  Ibid., 684. Compare: “Verzeichnis der Akademien, Vereine und Gesellschaften, mit welchen der Verein für siebenbürgische Landeskunde in Verbindung steht, samt Angabe der im gegenseitigen Schriftentausche gewechselten Druckwerk,” in Jahresbericht des Verein für siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 1879–1880, 25–33.

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was corresponding with more than one hundred academic institutions in Europe and America, a number never achieved by its Transylvanian Hungarian counterpart—was an excuse for appealing for “help” from German academia as well. The Landeskundeverein adapted itself to a certain degree to the demand of its lay clientele, which made the introduction of critical scholarship difficult. However, it never became a mass organization, but remained under the tutelage of the intellectual-ecclesiastical and political elite (see Chapter 3, Table 4). Its academic agenda was never abandoned, on the contrary, the newer studies in comparative dialectology and archeology intensified cooperation with German and Austrian academies. But under the leadership of Friedrich Teutsch, the character of the institution became more diverse to accommodate divergent tastes, including eventually even works with a markedly political character. Such writings were intended also for a larger audience and especially the younger generation to not “lose the continuity of our historical sense of community.” It was also a concession in response to the pressures of more radical nationalists. According to Friedrich Teutsch, in these writings “politics used historical weapons . . . and the border between history and political essay is difficult to draw, or is impossible altogether.”79 The authors were journalists like Franz Gebbel (1835–1877), active politicians like Carl Wolff (1849–1929), or politically engaged civilians like the medical doctor Eduard Gusbeth. Friedrich Teutsch welcomed the “political turn” as a recent development of national historiography. He hoped that beyond uncovering the “laws of being,” scholarship “shaped the will” of the reader and would become a tool for “developing our national consciousness.” Itinerant conferences jointly organized with other voluntary associations had been a further successful way for the Landeskundeverein to stage itself before the large public since its inception; this was continued and perfected at the turn of the century. Scholarship and education as a component of the collective identity continued to be celebrated on the occasion of its yearly meetings, confronting uncomfortable critical voices from the German and Hungarian academe. During the two decades before the turn of the century, the Vereinstage (association days) grew into a celebration of the educational and religious morale, regarded as the epitomes of Saxonness. “Our ‘associations’ are in some respects even more Saxon than our Church, as the latter includes some, although insignificant, splinters of the Magyar people,” so

79  Teutsch, “Unsere Geschichtsschreibung,” 643.

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the comment of a chronicler of the association days.80 In a time of social fragmentation the Landeskundeverein symbolically created the unity of the town and village, young and old, peasant and Bildungsbürger as an imagined community of Transylvanian Germans. Here the Hungarian state was mentioned, if at all, as a disturbing coercive force. The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Landeskundeverein with invited German, Romanian, and Hungarian guests illustrates well how scholarship and not only Bildung and religion were the most eloquent evocation of Saxonness. Among the numerous honorary guests who visited the festive anniversary, including the abovementioned Rudolf Virchow, were also other guests on behalf of the Romanian Academy of Science from Bucharest, and the Hungarian Academy.81 An address on behalf of the Lutheran Church Council opened the event, and highlighted the achievements of the Landeskundeverein in spreading the “scholarly spirit in the Saxon schools.” That the round jubilee coincided with the four-hundred-year anniversary of the Saxon humanist and religious reformer Johannes Honterus gave the festivity a special note. It spanned the achievements of Saxon national culture and scholarship from the Renaissance until the current day.82 The festivity was not free from GermanHungarian confrontation on the symbolic possession of Transylvania, as illustrated by the incident between Virchow and the Hungarian historical journal Századok. What about opponents of the Landeskundeverein within the Saxon milieu? The national mainstream did not have to fear substantial attacks either from the völkisch nationalists, social Darwinists, or social democrats. It is true that the “Kirchenvolk”-theses were rejected by representatives of the first group, such as Rudolf Brandsch, who sought contacts with the initiators of a federalization. The social democrats Karl Renner, Oskar Wittstock, and the Christian socialist Adolf Bach criticized the moral basis of Saxon civil society. Wittstock asserted that “the men grow silly in associationism, cultivate a lot of petty bourgeois jealousy and sensitivity, and the whole national body shows clear signs of senile decay.”83 Overworked pastors, who did most of the organization work, seldom protested. So it is rather by accident that the complaints about Pastor Georg Scherg about the instrumentalization of religious faith 80  Rudolf Briebrecher, “Unsere Vereine,” in vol. 2 of Bilder aus der vaterländischen Geschichte, ed. Friedrich Teutsch (Hermannstadt: W. Krafft, 1899), 480–491, at 481. 81  For descriptions of the anniversary, see “Die 50. Generalversammlung des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 9 (15 September 1898), 86–96. 82  Ibid., 86. 83  Beyer, “Geschichtsbewußtsein und Nationalprogramm,” 105.

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have been preserved: “all our concern has been the maintenance of Saxonhood, which became our national idol, so that we do not care any more about our Christianity.” His list concerning the multiple duties and roles of clergymen is an ironic comment on the impossible civic mission they were expected to fulfill: 1) politician, 2) again, politician, 3) agricultural leader, 4) organizer of cattle exhibition, 5) wine merchant, 6) Raiffeissen agent, 7) entertainer of the congregation by organizing balls and theater performances, and 8) priest and spiritual leader too.84

The Museum Society: Facing Professionalization

In the first years after the formal union of Transylvania with Hungary, the leadership insisted on modernization and the model to follow was no less than the “glorious British Museum.” The latter stood for scientific rigor and was the compass to follow, at the risk of becoming a mere “cabinet of curiosity.”85 Indeed, the double agenda, combining the activities of an academy and running a museum, threatened to overburden the limited capacities of the Museum Society, as well its Transylvanian public. Once the society lost its anti-Habsburg luster, even the aristocratic benefactors, the closest allies of Imre Mikó, stopped paying their generous membership fees.86 Despite the warning signs, the insistence remained on the combination of a museum and an academy, despite the fact that such a hybrid character had long been replaced elsewhere by more specialized institutions. The double agenda constituted a structural difference with the Landeskundeverein, which did not own a museum of its own. While the latter certainly benefited from the rich Brukenthal collections, it never affiliated itself with the museum in Hermannstadt.87

84  Ibid., 64. 85  Sámuel Brassai, “A természetrajzi múzeumokról” [About the natural history museums], in Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület Évkönyve [Transylvanian Museum Society yearbooks], vol. 2, no. 1, (1861–1863) (Kolozsvár: Stein János, 1863), 115–123, esp. 118, 122 (the yearbooks hereafter: Évkönyv). 86  See, Ákos Egyed, “Gróf Mikó Imre” [Count Imre Mikó], in Hivatás és tudomány. Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület kiemelkedő személyiségei [Vocation and science. The eminent personalities of the Transylvanian Museum Society], ed. Gyöngy Kovács Kiss (Cluj: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2009), 367–432, 392. 87  See also James P. Niessen, “Museums, Nationality, and Public Research Libraries in Nineteenth-Century Transylvania,” Libraries & the Cultural Record 41, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 298–336, 308.

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Another structural difference between the practice of Landeskunde and honismeret was that the former was to be channeled from the beginning into secondary and adult education, and the Landeskundeverein kept its close contact with schooling throughout. It even cared for the maintenance of the various archeological, mineralogical, and other kinds of collections owned by the Saxon gymnasia. In contrast, the Museum Society addressed the Magyar educated public, wishing to become a regional center of research.88 During the first two decades the society was the meeting place of savants and patriotic amateurs, and the connection to secondary education had never been a pragmatic necessity, as it was in the Saxon case. The Museum Society depended thus entirely on the willingness of provincial Magyar society to support a costly and complex research institution, a situation that would change with the reconfiguration of the higher educational system in Hungary after 1867. A Transylvanian university had been the old concern of local elites, and after 1867 room opened for a regional institution in the framework of a developing national educational network. The establishment of a state university in Kolozsvár in 1872 served the task of “national emancipation and unity,” that is, the integration of nationalities and the harmonization of the eastern geographic region within Hungary proper.89 Compared to its peer in Budapest, the Franz Joseph University was smaller, with the initial number of its academic chairs counting 40, which grew to 50 until World War I, while the junior teaching staff grew from 43 assistants and Privatdozents to 135. The university started with 285 student enrollments, out of whom 173 studied law, 18 were enrolled in the humanities, 21 were medicine students, and 26 matriculated at the faculty of natural sciences and mathematics.90 During the negotiations with the Ministry of Religion and Education that started as early as 1868, the Museum Society placed its facilities at the disposal of the future university, an unequaled bid to tip the balance in favor of 88  See “Az erdélyi museum-egylet alakító közgyűlésének jegyzőkönyve” [Protocol of the founding meeting of the Transylvanian Museum Society], in Évkönyv, vol. 1, (1859–1861), ed. Sámuel Brassai (Kolozsvár: Ev. Ref. Főtanoda, 1861), 1–45, at 5. 89  For an overview of these requests see Lucian Nastasǎ, “University Education and Culture in Kolozsvár/Cluj,” in The University of Kolozsvár/Cluj and the Students of the Medical Faculty, 1872–1918, ed. Viktor Karády and Lucian Nastasǎ (Budapest and Cluj: CEU Press, 2004), 15–45. 90  Pál Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület félszázados ünnepére, 1859–1909 [Memorial volume in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Transylvanian Museum Society] (Cluj-Kolozsvár: Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület kiadása, 1942), 54; Zoltán Pálfy, National Controversy in the Transylvanian Academe: The Cluj/Kolozsvár University, 1900– 1950 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2005), 76.

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Kolozsvár. The negotiations ended with a contract between the two parties in 1872, regulating in great detail the competences and autonomies enjoyed by the society and the university in the new setup. The university declared itself responsible for the maintenance of the collections, and the association was granted a yearly rent of 5,000 forints (10,000 crowns), which nearly covered the personal costs and part of the material expenses. The contract was claimed binding for 50 years (i.e., until 1922) and unless contested by any of the members before the expiration, it was to be automatically extended for another 40 years (until 1962). The subsidies secured the most urgent expenses of the museum, that is, the housing of the collections, and left financial room for organizing academic work.91 The Franz Joseph University was to bring scientific effervescence to the region, benefiting first of all a Hungarian-speaking academic clientele, and triggered high hopes within the society. One found thus several prominent members among the planners and the later academic staff of the incipient university. The director of the natural science collections, Sámuel Brassai, association secretary Henrik Finály (1825–1898), and librarian Károly Szabó were but a few who paved the way for the university under the coordination of Imre Mikó as royal commissioner; while the chief benefactor, József Eötvös, served as Minister of Religion and Education. The former three scholars were honored with high functions at the university. Other scholars of Transylvanian origin and attached to EME, like the literary historian Pál Gyulai (1826–1909), philologist Count Géza Kuun (1838–1905), historian Sándor Szilágyi (1828–1899), Zsófia Torma, and László Kőváry, later on received honorary titles. Finály, the first appointed rector, did not spare effort to turn the Museum Society into the university’s research institution.92 As a sign of the intermingling of the two institutions, by the turn of the century around one-third of the ordinary association members were recruited from the academic staff. Yet in the initial decades, cooperation with the young university faculty was faltering. The lack of communication was probably aggravated by the fact that less than one-third of the teaching staff was recruited from Transylvania (and the neighbor Banat and Partium), outsiders having less of an interest

91  Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv, 50–53. 92  See Nastasǎ, “University Education,” 21–29; László Makkai, “A kolozsvári kir. Ferenc József Tudományegyetem történelme 1872–1919” [The history of the Ferenc József University of Kolozsvár], in Erdély magyar egyeteme [The Hungarian university of Transylvania] (Kolozsvár, 1941), 153–185, at 163.

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in the local organization of scholarship.93 Unlike the more evenly developing Landeskundeverein, the institutional fusion resulted in the Magyar case in waves of mutual adjustments. The Museum Society managed to establish a distinguished academic profile only after several decades of internal struggle between the specialized university staff and local scholars. On paper, the society was still a voluntary association with no stated academic ambitions. Conforming to the restrictions of the Austrian Ministry of Religion and Education at the time of its inception, the statutes regarded the foundation of a regional museum (Erdélyi Országos Muzeum), while abstaining from scientific activity (tudós-társaság). In other words, the society formally was founded as a voluntary circle of scholars, and as such was identical with the Landeskundeverein.94 This article of foundation changed shortly after 1867 to underline the research-oriented character, in addition to the development of the collections. Its section in the humanities and the natural sciences were now designed as “laboratories” and “workshops,” while the general meetings were to present the results, which would then appear in print.95 This so-called “academic” orientation came to the fore again in the late 1870s when contacts with the university induced a rapid process of specialization and a metamorphosis into “a genuine learned society, that is, one cultivating and spreading science.”96 The natural sciences became formally separated from the study of humanities (Section of Natural Science, 1879), to be joined later by the Section of Medical Science (1879), and finally the Section for Legal and Social Science was 93  See Viktor Karády, “A bölcsészkarok oktatói és az egyetemi piac szerkezete a dualista korban (1867–1918)” [The teaching staff of the Arts and Sciences faculties and the structure of the academic market in the Dualist Era], Educatio 16, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 393–417. 94  Conforming to the restrictions of the Austrian Ministry of Religion and Education, the statutes read: “4§. The Museum Society does not claim any title or rank peculiar to a learned society, but will contribute to the spread of Landeskunde through its museum . . . 6§. The association engages itself in waking public interest in Landeskunde and the related sciences by the fact that apart from the administrative meetings it will hold committee meetings as well, having as their object mostly treatises and readings in the fields related to Landeskunde.” Az EME szabályai [The rules of EME] (Kolozsvár, 1859), 3–4. 95  1869: “4§. The association intends to foster scientific endeavors at home, to create a venue for the amateurs of science.” Az EME szabályai [The rules of the EME] (Kolozsvár: EME, 1869), 3; Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv, 42. 96  Henrik Finály, “A közgyűlés után” [After the plenary meeting], Erdélyi Muzeum 4 (1878): 49–54, at 50–51; see also Lajos Kelemen, Az Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeum tárai [The collections of the Transylvanian National Museum] (Kolozsvár: EME, 1909), 17.

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established (1906). From the early 1880s onwards the pressure towards specialization turned the sections into quasi-independent institutions with separate budgets and with the right to elect internal members who had no obligations towards the society. This was attended by infrastructural development. Between 1892 and 1909, the university facilities were enlarged via considerable state investment, which made room, after several decades of waiting and petitioning, for the more adequate storage of the growing collections. A new central building was inaugurated in 1895 in the presence of the emperor, and in 1896–1910 a row of other dependencies followed suit.97 Thanks to a renewed contract with the government in 1905, the museum collections were attached now closer to the university, their directors being appointed by the state.98 The yearly subsidy was rounded up in the final phase of the construction to 20,000–28,000 crowns (10,000–14,000 forints) over the years 1906 to 1908.99 The institutional and organizational consolidation at the turn of the century coincided with a generation shift in the ranks of the directorate, which drew research and work on the holdings into a common research program on Transylvanian themes.100 The new generation of trained specialists who managed the collections included Professor Béla Pósta (1862–1919), at the fore of the archeology collection; the philologist Pál Erdélyi (1864–1936), director of the library; Professor István Apáthy (1863–1922), leading the zoological collection; Dr. Gyula Szádeczky-Kardoss (1860–1935), director of the mineralogy collection; and Dr. Aladár Richter (1868–1927), head of the botanical garden. 97  Pálfy, National Controversy in the Transylvanian Academe, 82; see yearly reports from 1906 through 1911. Lajos Schilling, ed., Évkönyv 1906 (Kolozsvár: EME, 1907); Schilling, ed., Évkönyv 1907 (Kolozsvár: EME, 1908); Schilling, ed., Évkönyv 1908 (Kolozsvár: EME, 1909); Schilling, ed., Évkönyv 1909 (Kolozsvár: EME, 1910); Gyula Szádeczky, ed., Évkönyv 1910 (Kolozsvár: EME, 1911); Szádeczky, ed., Évkönyv 1911 (Kolozsvár: EME, 1912). 98  See 4.§ of Statutes 1905: “According to the contracts made with the Minister for Religion and Public Education, in the year of 1872, renewed in 1895, the society offers its collections to the use of the Scientific University of Kolozsvár. 42§. In accordance with the contract made with the state, the [museum] librarian is the librarian of the University of Kolozsvár appointed by his Majesty, all other directors of the museum collections are professors of the University of Kolozsvár, appointed by his Majesty professors of the respective scientific field . . . The directors are according to their office regular members of the directorate of the Museum Society; they are responsible about the state of the holdings vis-à-vis the directorate of the museum and are prone to report yearly to the plenary meeting. 43§. According to the contract with the state, the latter bears material and moral responsibility for the collections.” Az EME alapszabályai [The statutes of the EME] (Kolozsvár, 1905), 5, 19–20. See also Lajos Kelemen, Az EME múltja és jelene (Cluj: EME, 1909), 18. 99  See yearly reports in the Yearbooks from 1906–1908. 100  Erdélyi, Emlékkönyv, 70–71.

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The professionalization of the holdings was particularly visible in the new field of prehistoric and non-classical archeology, and in the simultaneous development of the history library, joined by a Transylvanian archive and a manuscript collection. By that time, more attention could be devoted to the members outside of Kolozsvár as well. Newly launched itinerary conferences and specialized public-oriented programs raised the preponderance of provincial Transylvanians in the ranks of the society: in 1908 almost half of the association members were outside Kolozsvár (372 members out of 809).101 Tragically, the internal consolidation came on the eve of World War I, at the end of which the society was left with immense material and manpower losses and faced new beginnings in a hostile new state. The academic staff joined the humanities section, where the number of enrolled members grew from the initial 73 to 380 by 1900. The adaptation to the academic environment affected the venue of publication as well. The yearbook format was abandoned and a new periodical entitled Erdélyi Múzeum (Transylvanian Museum)102 was put at the disposal of the university, while remaining in the property of the association.103 The complicated property relation was an attempt to retain editorial control over the publications, to no avail, as the faculty of the university appropriated the journal without regarding the regional priorities. Section president, János Szamosi (1840–1909), also a university professor, later dean and rector, found the Transylvanian focus insufficient and too narrow for a proper scientific program.104 It was now the turn of the lay members to protest: The Society has a large fund. On paper the Society has [some] obligations to fulfill towards this [fund]. The Society is preoccupied with Greeks, Romans, and all kinds of dead nations and hapax legomena and alliterations of poems forgotten by the world. Yet we live now and there are [enough reasons] to explore us, our intentions, our poetry, and our future. Does the Society have any purpose with the hapax legomena?105 101  See list of members, Schilling, Évkönyv 1908, 105–123. 102  Volumes 6 (1879)–9 (1882) were titled as Erdélyi Muzeum, without accent on the letter u. 103  Henrik Finály, “A szerkesztőség bémutatja magát az olvasó közönségnek” [The editors introduce themselves to the reading public], Erdélyi Muzeum 5, no. 1 (1874): 1–4, at 3–4. 104  János Szamosi, “Elnöki megnyitó beszéd” [Opening remarks of the president], Erdélyi Muzeum 5, no. 1 (1888): 70–74. 105  P. I. [István Petelei], “Szerény kérés” [Modest request], Kolozsvári Közlöny, 10 August 1886, cited in Dezső Kozma, “Az Erdélyi Múzeum első két évtizedének történetéből” [From the history of the first two decades of the Transylvanian Museum] (Bucharest: RSZK Akadémia, 1971), 113–121, at 115.

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Such frictions between the association members and the university staff did not spare the natural science section either, until the emergence of a new generation of scholars, such as Antal Koch (1843–1927), professor and director of the mineralogy collection, who successfully combined his research agenda with a focus on the specificities of regional geology.106

Musealization of honismeret: National History in Context

What made the German university so attractive, not only for East-Central Europeans, but for the entire continent? Secularization, bureaucratization, specialization—these are the notions indicating the most important changes that distinguished the Humboldt-type research university, and which became a reality in the German lands after 1830. While important discoveries were being made everywhere else too, the German system institutionalized the freedom of the researcher as a “professional, bureaucratically regulated activity” already before the mid-nineteenth century. By comparison, in Great Britain or France, pioneering research in the natural sciences and medicine continued to take place as the private initiative of amateurs or institutions outside the academic domain.107 The new Hungarian universities adhered to the German model, inasmuch as the university tended to absorb research previously organized by the learned societies outside its walls. The limits of this capacity vis-à-vis various social groups, such as women and nationalities, remained less pervious. Indeed, in view of the confessional and linguistic diversity, and the largely peasant hinterland of the new universities of Hungary, a friction between different nationalities and confessions was inevitable.108 This was particularly evident in the politicized attitude of professors in Kolozsvár towards the no less ideological assertions of Romanian historiography, a debate not sparing the Museum Society either. The alliance with the state-funded university changed the dormant Museum Society into a dynamic and up-to-date research institute. The society experienced a spectacular scientific expansion once the university staff found their place in its framework. Some of the sections became specialized institutes, as was the case of the medical section or the legal and social welfare section, 106  Lajos György, Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület háromnegyedszázados tudományos működése, 1859–1934 [Three-quarters of a century of scholarly activity of the Transylvanian Museum Society, 1859–1934] (Cluj: EME, 1937), 47–48. 107  Rüegg, A History of the University, 17. 108  Ibid., 64.

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which had nothing more to do with the original program. Honismeret proper developed mainly in connection with the collections, out of which the library and the archeological holdings constitute the basis of comparison with the Landeskundeverein. The botanical, zoological, and mineralogy collections were also built around the Transylvanian research agenda, developing parallel with the Siebenbürgische Verein für Naturwissenschaften. A comprehensive history of the holdings in the humanities, published on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the society in 2009,109 has recently documented their rich and variegated activity, lasting until the end of World War I. The incipient collections of the Museum Society from 1860 reflected an Enlightenment encyclopedic concept of scholarship. This was modelled on the earliest large public collections of the British Museum,110 the National Museum in Pest, as well as the smaller private museums of Transylvanian aristocrats: Brukenthal, Teleki, Batthány, and Kemény. When Brassai took the British Museum as an example, he had in mind an institution that incorporated a library and comprised various holdings from archeology to botany, from zoology and mineralogy to art, maps, and books. Similar to the British model, the Transylvanian Museum was planned as a public institution, where scholars could accomplish research by using the library and other facilities.111 Finally, if the British Parliament established the museum as benefiting the “nation,” the main beneficiary of its Transylvanian emulation designated the Magyar public in the first place. Similar to the Landeskundeverein, the collections and the humanities section of the Museum Society had its focus on the history of Transylvanian Magyars, while the two main other ethnocultural clusters provided the background for this central topic. The core of the Museum Society was indeed the library with a manuscript collection including the early nineteenth-century heritage of György Aranka, as well as that of József and Sámuel Kemény. It also possessed from its inception an archeological collection, including a coin and a stone collection. Botanical, zoological, and mineralogical sections made up the natural history portion. Imre Mikó donated his villa in Kolozsvár as the seat of the society; the facility also housed the collections and a botanical garden. The library collections 109  Ákos Egyed and Eszter Kovács, Okmány- és irománytár az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület történetéhez I. (1841–1859) [Document repository for the history of the Transylvanian Museum Society, vol. 1] (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum Egyesület, 2009); Kovács Kiss, Hivatás és tudomány; Gábor Sipos, ed., Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület gyűjteményei [The collections of the Transylvanian Museum Society] (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2009). 110  See fn. 84. 111  Niessen, “Museums, Nationality, and Public Research Libraries,” 302.

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were kept for a while in the city residence of another benefactor, Count Sándor Bethlen.112 By the turn of the century the collections underwent a spectacular growth and differentiation. The library now comprised historic prints and periodicals; manuscripts as well as archival and manuscript materials; numismatic and archeological collections holding historical and ethnographic items, as well as objects of art; a zoological and a botanical collection with comparative morphological, taxonomical, and biological sections; while the mineral collection enclosed subsections on mineralogy, geology, and paleontology. Their maintenance was the most cost-intensive task of the society, which was now financed by the state. The statutes of 1869 named private donations and members’ fees as the single source of income for EME.113 These were turned into various endowments and funds accorded for special purposes,114 as well as other categories, indicating the diversification of activities.115 From 1872 onwards the rent paid by the university in return for the use of the collections figured in the yearly balance sheet as a separate income. From the early 1900s on, further subsidies made the adequate housing of the collections possible. The state contributed indirectly to the development of the collections, for instance by according the status of deposit library or by granting stamp exemption to official correspondence, which benefited the society as well. The more the association depended on the state, the more its contribution to national education was underlined and practiced: We maintain a museum, we are practicing and spreading scholarship, we do social work, and all this on the territory of constitutional Transylvania . . . The larger the circle we reach, the better we secure our development and impact, and the better we fulfill our duty, the more 112  Sipos Gábor, “Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület könyvtárának története” [The history of the library of the Transylvanian Museum Society], in Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület gyűjte­ ményei, 11–68, at 66; Niessen, “Museums, Nationality, and Public Research Libraries,” 312. 113  Az EME szabályai, 4; Kelemen, Az EME múltja, 12. 114  In 1896 these included: a) the interest rates of the funds; b) the interest rates of the Parliament funds; c) the interest rates of the Building Golden Funds; d) the interest rates of the botanical Haynald foundation; e) the interest rates of the natural science fund; f) the interest rates of the Count László Esterházy foundation; g) the interest rates of the Sámuel Kovács scholarship fund. Az EME alapszabályai. Módosítva 1896 [The rules of EME, modified in 1896] (Kolozsvár, 1897). 115  These included the income of the Museum’s Collections from exhibitions, income after the publications, and rent paid by the state for the use of the collections by the university. Az EME alapszabályai. Módosítva 1896.

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support we have to expect from all factors of our national (public) life. This mutual impact is nowhere more legitimate than in our activity, because we fulfill a whole series of museum-related scholarly and public educational work, which is the task of several institutions.116 It is instructive to compare the balance sheets from these years with those of the Landeskundeverein. While the Museum Society closed the fiscal years just breaking even, the Landeskundeverein managed to end the years with a positive balance. Given the nearly identical size, the income after member fees was almost similar, with a small advantage to the Saxon association.117 Both societies had various bank stocks and endowments, the interest of which covered part of the daily management costs. The collections of the Museum Society received the rent paid by the state amounting to 10,000 crowns or more, while the Landeskundeverein received yearly grants too, although at a more modest scale, from the Hermannstädter Allgemeiner Sparkassa (with 1,500 crowns) and from the Bodenkreditanstalt in Hermannstadt (600 crowns). From these and other endowments the Landeskundeverein established separate funds for archeological excavations (ca. 2,000 crowns of yearly interest), publications about church monuments (ca. 600 crowns yearly interest), for the publication of Transylvanian historical source editions (ca. 1,800 crowns yearly interest, a fund established by the Nationsuniversität Foundation), and for writing of a monograph on Kronstadt (ca. 1,000 crowns yearly interest). The budget plan of the two institutions was therefore fairly similar. The first difference, beyond the high costs involved in the maintenance of the museum holdings, consisted in the identity of the sponsors: while the two Saxon savings banks belonged to the realm of private business and more generally to the civic sphere, the Magyar peer affiliated itself with the state. The expensive collections of the Museum Society increased dependency from the only sponsor, while receiving no support from the business realm or other civic institutions. The second difference consisted in the management and

116  Pál Erdélyi, “A választmány jelentése az egyesületnek az 1914 évi működéséről” [Report of the presidential committee to the association about the activities from 1914], in Évkönyv 1913, ed. Pál Erdélyi (Kolozsvár: EME, 1914), 3–10, 8. 117  The distribution of these sums was as follows: 1907: Landeskundeverein 3,750 K; Museum Society 3,736 K. 1909: Landeskundeverein 3,642 K; Museum Society 3,326 K. 1910: Landeskundeverein 3,656 K; Museum Society 3,078 K. 1912: Landeskundeverein 3,656 K; Museum Society 3,042 K. 1914: Landeskundeverein 3,522 K; Museum Society 2,954 K. See relevant yearbooks.

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­ arketing of academic/scholarly products. While the Landeskundeverein m made a profit, or at least could avoid the red numbers, by selling its publications at home and internationally, and could secure financially its more costly projects (in particular the publication of historical documents), this was not the case with the Museum Society, which was dependent on the available funding.118 Thus the directors of the museum holdings saw the state as the only guarantor of the professional financial assistance of the collections, an opinion often emphasized in the yearly reports during the decade preceding World War I. At the same time, the Transylvanian public was often criticized for its lack of sympathy—an unjust accusation in regard to the lengthy list of donations of books, documents, and archeological items. A more plausible explanation is that science was a costly undertaking, and the rapid growth prevented the development of strong ties with local society.119 By the turn of the century the Museum Society did not have to legitimate its regional character any more. The unity of the Hungarians seemed uncontested, and Transylvanian identity could be asserted within the national framework.120 During these decades the society developed a competitive and state-legitimating patriotic language, in addition to its professional discourse in the various disciplines. The “nationalization” of the Transylvanian Museum itself came to be expressed in its new name, the old Országos Múzeum (Landesmuseum) being replaced in the new statutes of 1905–1906 by the term Nemzeti (National).121 Its variegated research program addressed both locally specific themes and more general ones, and the combination of both characterized also the section meetings and popular lectures. The society established itself as the regional academic center, asserting scientific authority over many subjects that went beyond a strictly national and provincial agenda. My account does not endeavor the complete description of all collections and scientific sections of the society but focuses instead on two of the collections that reflected the main directions of research in the humanities, which provided the contours of the contemporary practice of honismeret, that is, the library and the archeological collection (for a general overview of the disciplines covered in the journal of the Society see Table 8). Indeed, the library 118  This was particularly the case in archeology, especially on occasion of excavations of the Dacian-Roman military settlement Porolissum, situated in Zilah County, or the control excavations for the identification of the Torma collection. 119  See EME yearbooks from 1907 until 1914, in comparison with the Jahresberichte des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 1907–1914. 120  See Pál Erdélyi, “Jelentés a könyvtárról” [Report about the library], in Évkönyv 1908, 13–24. 121  Az EME alapszabályai [The statutes of the EME] (Kolozsvár: Ajtai, 1905), 189.

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itself expressed most directly the cultural traditions and literary taste of its social provenance, the Transylvanian Hungarian nobility. The regulations of its use were laid out as early as 1860.122 Its first long-time director, Károly Szabó, had made a name as a promising historical talent in the 1850s, before he accepted the invitation of Count Mikó to join him in Transylvania. Once he started his work, he managed to double the holdings within a decade. He embedded the cataloguing within a larger research on, as well the collection of, early Hungarian imprints in private and institutional libraries.123 If the sixteenth-century Reformation and humanism constituted a thematic focus of Saxon Landeskunde, regarded as central for collective identify formation, the seventeenth century was the golden age of Transylvanian Magyar reformed religious culture and erudition. Szabó’s project targeted the tracing of this Hungarian golden age by casting its net on noble libraries, highlighting the role of aristocratic women as culture builders.124 The first, Transylvanian, part of the catalog was published in the yearbook of the society from 1868 to 1872, while the full version appeared with the support of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1879 to 1898.125 Szabó is also noted for having created the first union catalog ever, which was a collective catalog indicating the location of individual holdings. After the establishment of the university, the teaching faculty and students were assured access to the collections and the library. With Szabó as both the university and society librarian, the number of volumes under his care amounted to around 31 thousand. Great concern was accorded to the separate management and maintenance of the two holdings, the university library possessing the modern specialized literature, as well as dissertations and curricular material related to the university, with the society developing the historical library collections. In 1891, Zoltán Ferenczi was appointed as the successor of Szabó, administering the joint library for more than a decade, followed by Pál Erdélyi in 1899. They orga122  “Utasítás az Erdélyi Múzeum könyvtárnoka számára” [Instructions to the librarian of the Museum Society], in Évkönyv, 1:12–16. 123  Ágnes R. Várkonyi, A pozitivista történetszemlélet a magyar történetírásban [The positivist perspective in the Hungarian historiography], vol. 2 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1973), 271. About the scientific portrait of Szabó in the context of historical writing in Hungary in the 1850s see ibid., 264–280 and 400–408. 124   Károly Szabó, “Az Erdélyi közkönyvtárak régi magyar könyveiről” [About the old Hungarian books of the Transylvanian public libraries], in Évkönyv, vol. 5, no. 1, (1868– 1870) (Kolozsvár: Stein János, 1871), 33–72. 125  Niessen, “Museums, Nationality, and Public Research Libraries,” 313; Szabó, “Az Erdélyi közkönyvtárak”; Szabó, Régi magyar konyvtár [Old Hungarian library], 3 vols. (Budapest: A. M. Tud. Akademia Konyvkiado Hivatala, 1879–1898).

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nized the transfer of the collections into a new, larger location in the university building, and in 1909 the entire library moved into today’s new building, the design of which, supervised by Erdélyi, fulfilled the requirements of the most modern research library with 252 seats for readers.126 Also, the arrangement of the collections and the library in the enlarged facilities of the Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeum (Transylvanian National Museum) separated the realms of research from those of the visitors and initiated temporary exhibitions (since 1911 also art exhibitions), joining thereby a new international practice. The separation of public exhibitions from the reserve collection came into usage namely in the second half of the nineteenth century and defined research and display as the two main functions of a modern museum. Separating spatially the scientists and the general public allowed more flexibility to address specific segments of the potential audience. While the modern research universities provided the home of increasingly specialized work, the museums were influential in shaping agendas of education, permitting participation in each other’s activities.127 The University of Kolozsvár and its museum collection in contrast presented a mixed model, both of them creating research space for the visitors. The success of the new-fangled institution generated a debate on the pages of the Korrespondenzblatt, some urging the emulation of the Hungarian example. In the end the idea was abandoned in regard to the Brukenthal Museum, which was found perfectly sufficient for the purposes of Landeskunde.128 A further sign of specialization was the separation of a distinct archival collection at the turn of the century from the rest of the library stock, the former enclosing the family archives of the Transylvanian nobility and the material of the former administrative seats.129 The resulting national character of the new archive was not accidental but the result of a policy regarding the collection of the “archives of families and dynasties who played a historic role,” a collection that would become the “depositary of the history and literature of the 126   Niessen, “Museums, Nationality, and Public Research Libraries”; Erdélyi, “Jelentés, 1908,” 21. 127  For the “new museum idea” see: Nicolaas A. Rupke, Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1994); Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums during the Late Nineteenth Century (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 1988); Jenny Beckman, “Nature’s Palace: Constructing the Swedish Museum of Natural History,” History of Science 42 (2004): 85–111. 128  Dr. H. Müller, “Sächsisches Nationalmuseum,” Korrespondenzblatt 21, no. 10 (15 October 1898): 123–124. 129  András Kiss and Rudolf Wolf, “The Archives of the Transylvanian Museum, 1842–1950,” Transylvanian Review 4, no. 3 (1995): 72–94.

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Transylvanian nobility and Transylvanian Hungarians.”130 This became even more emphatic a few years later, when the goal of the archive was defined anew as “Transylvanian Hungarian,” in which “all layers of the nation lean together.”131 The yearly report from 1907 mentioned 26 family archives that had been stored in the museum’s archive.132 The national character of the museum’s library and archival collections was the Magyar correspondent of the Saxon historical source edition. In both cases the emphasis was on the selective documentation of the past, while the criterion of the selection was the modern definition of the nation as a sociological and ethnolinguistic community. In both cases, the documents spoke not only for themselves—they became, in their totality, monuments on the nation’s past. The archeological collection developed into an autonomous holding under the direction of the Museum Society secretary Henrik Finály. A classical philologist by formation, Finály had an equally long time of service and proved no less enthusiastic in establishing a professional museum than his historian colleague Szabó; Finály too led the archeological collection until his death. Like Szabó, he launched a quest within the Hungarian society of Transylvania for archeological donations, and the quickly expanding collection was completed with further purchases. Finály was offered assistance by Baron Károly Torma (1829–1897), his closest collaborator and initiator of a series of excavations related to the Roman military life on the territory of Dacia, including the territory of Transylvania. A generous and thankful member of the society, Torma donated ca. 1,800 items from his excavations, of which around 1,200 were of Roman provenance. His publications in the yearbook of the society documented the beginning of a rich academic career, complete with a chair of archeology at the University of Budapest and the foundation of the Archeological Museum of Roman antiquities in Aquincum, Óbuda (Old Buda).133 130  Erdélyi Múzeum (1906): 218, cited in Zsigmond Jakó, Az Erdélyi Nemzeti Muzeum levéltárának múltja és feladatai (Kolozsvár: EME, 1942), 12. 131  Ibid. 132  Schilling, Évkönyv 1907, 20. 133  Károly Torma, “Dacia felosztása a rómaiak alatt” [The division of Dacia under Roman rule], in Évkönyv, 2:108–114; Torma, “Tizenkét római felirat Dáciából” [Twelve Roman inscription from Dacia], in Évkönyv, 2:129–134; Torma, “Az Alsó-Ilosvai római állótábor s müemlékei I” [The standing Roman military camp from Alsó-Ilosva and its monuments, vol. 1], in Évkönyve, vol. 3, (1864–1865) (Kolozsvár: Stein János, 1866), 10–85; Henrik Finály, “Római nyomok Erdély észak nyugati részén” [Roman traces in the northern part of Transylvania], in Évkönyve, 3:5–9; Finály, “Az erdélyi bányákból került viasztáblák és az ősrómai folyóírás” [The wax plates excavated from Transylvanian mines and the ancient Roman cursive handwriting], in Évkönyve, 1:75–88.

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The later trajectory of the archeological collection is comparable with the one of the library. In 1872, the university took over the task of managing the numismatic and archeological collections, without interfering with the property rights of the Museum Society. The new directorate of Béla Pósta, from 1899 until 1919, himself a disciple of Károly Torma, brought a professional consolidation manifest in the development of sub-holdings on prehistoric, classical, early medieval, and migration periods, as well as early modern, ethnographic, and so-called piety holdings.134 Pósta was the first archeologist by training to become a university professor in Kolozsvár, after participating in the last of a series of highly acclaimed scientific expeditions to Russia at the turn of the century. The triple expedition to the Caucasus was conducted by a well-known aristocrat, Count Jenő Zichy, in search of the home of origins of the Magyar tribes. Pósta, as well as his linguist and ethnologist colleagues, played no small role in dispelling much of what had been left of the romantic air of the “noble” Asian/Turkic provenance of the Hungarians, while bringing home a wealth of archival and ethnographic evidence about the smaller Finno-Ugric ethnicities in the regions under scrutiny.135 Pósta’s sharp criticism of provincial dilettantism is comparable to that of Franz Zimmermann or Victor Roth against the romantic nationalist mainstream within the Landeskundeverein. Similar was his comparative method, which sought to embed his local research within a broader Eurasian-Balkan context. Since his predecessor Finály was a classical philologist and lacked a formal archeological training, the inventories produced by him were based merely on the location of the items in the depository. Pósta and his students replaced these with a new classification based on material, chronology, and site of provenance. Laying weight on modern standards, Pósta invested much energy into the systematization of the collections and often lashed out at “prefect dilettantism,” paired with the “great irresponsibility” of scholars in Transylvania, where archeology in particular suffered from the “ravages of educated looters,” with the consequence that items of great value were shipped out of the region to Budapest and Vienna, and the better-equipped archeologists 134  Zoltán Vincze, “Az érem- és régiségtár” [The numismatic and archeological collection], in Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület gyűjteményei, 69–136, 106–133. 135  Gerő Csinády, Zichy Jenő oroszországi és kínai expedícióinak története új megvilágításban [The expeditions of Jenő Zichy in Russia and China in a new perspective] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1963); Jenő Zichy, János Jankó, and Béla Pósta, Kaukázusi és Közepázsiai utazásai. Voyages au Caucase et en Asie Centrale (Budapest: Ranschburg, 1897); Béla Pósta, Régészeti Tanulmányok az Oroszföldön. Archaeologische Studien auf russischem Boden (Budapest: V. Hornyanszky, 1905); Banner, Pósta Béla.

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from the cultural capitals reaped the fruits of local fieldwork.136 Obviously, Pósta was among the first professionals in Transylvanian public life to raise public awareness about the value of the material remains of the local past. His anxiety about the inadequate and irresponsible treatment of the monuments of the past indicated the dark side of a contemporary wave of grassroots cultural self-organization encompassing even the remote provincial towns of Hungary and Transylvania. Pósta drew attention to the fact that many of these “modern tomb raiders” pursued only profit, whose activity in the end benefited only the international market and the big national museums in the capitals. The development of the Transylvanian holdings of the Museum Society and the attendant scientific work was set against such unwanted dynamics. Both the library and the archeological collection emerged as regional centers, with a coordinating and counseling function vis-à-vis other initiatives in Transylvania, but also beyond. Pósta enlarged his holdings through purchases and excavations, and the results appeared soon in the collection’s new bilingual journal, Dolgozatok az ENM érem-és régiségtárából (Travaux de la Section numismatique at archéologique du Musée National de Transylvanie à Kolozsvár (Hongrie) avec un abrégé francais), I–IX, under his direction between 1909 and 1919. After the turn of the century, outreach into the smaller towns of Transylvania could be initiated—Zilah County commissioned the society with an excavation on its Roman archeological site, the costs to be covered by the county.137 In 1911 Pósta could report about the promising beginnings.138 Comparative analysis of excavations in Central Europe and the Balkans contributed to the establishment of non-classical and prehistoric branches. Being in tune with international research enabled also the authentication of the items, including one of the holding’s most spectacular acquisitions, the so-called Zsófia Torma collection from 1891. This formerly private collection, consisting of more than 10,000 objects, had been assembled by the sister of Károly Torma, and constituted one of the first material evidences of Neolithic settlements in the Carpathian Basin. The items of the collections originated from the banks of the Transylvanian Maros River in the localities of Tordos, Nándorválya, and the Algyógy Cave. The authentication of the collection

136  Béla Pósta, “Jelentés az Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeum Érem- és Régiségtárának 1908. évi állapotáról” [Report about the archeological collection of the Transylvanian Museum Society in the year 1908], in Évkönyv 1908, 34–54. See also his “Jelentés az Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeum Érem- és Régiségtárának 1910. évi állapotáról,” Évkönyv 1910, 32–33. 137  Schilling, Évkönyv 1907, 8. 138  Pósta, “Jelentés 1910,” 36.

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required external help and was carried out with the financial assistance of the Hungarian Academy of Science. Indeed, the second half of the century saw the establishment of prehistoric archeology as a collaborative interdisciplinary science. Its research agenda grew from initial speculations about the links between present and past ethnicities into increasingly precise inquiries into “unknown” peoples and the circulation of cultural knowledge in the distant past. While Pósta and his disciples represented the later, professional phase of archeological thinking, the history of the Torma collection demonstrates the earlier phase, linked to one of the most hotly debated question of the day, the ethnic origins of the various Transylvanian peoples. Mistaken authentications, failed hypotheses, and even the purchase of fake collections (the so-called “Mojgrad” findings) were the customary companions of the attempts of interpretation also in Transylvania, not sparing even the cautious Pósta, so keen on professional standards. Less difficult was the management of the medieval and early modern collections, documenting the military, social, and cultural history of the Transylvanian Hungarian and Székely nobility, as well as the urban life of the craft guilds. The more recent pharmacy collection was established as a separate museum, while the ethnographic collections on fishery, agriculture, and pottery documented the “ancient industry” of the Magyars.139 All these holdings had in focus the development of Hungarian material culture on Transylvanian soil, but smaller collections of Saxon and Romanian lore were also present, indicating a policy similar to that of the Hungarian National Museum, which accorded the titular nation the central role on the symbolic map of the province while rendering the two largest nationalities also visible. This too was a feature common with the Landeskundeverein, which placed its theme in front of a Hungarian and Romanian background. The Hungarianness of the more recent archeological collection was enhanced by the so-called piety section, which commemorated emblematic historical events and periods of Transylvanian history. Another part consisted of particularly valuable donations and memorabilia of former benefactors, the regional Magyar nobility; the amateur collector Countess Ottilia Wass for instance left her palace and cultural and art collection consisting of 1,200 items to the society.140

139  Gyula Orient, “Szemelvények az Erdélyi Múzeum kebelében felállított gyógyszerészeti múzeum gyűjteményéből” [Selected items of the pharmaceutical museum’s collection within the EM] (Cluj-Kolozsvár: Minerva, 1922); Pósta, “Jelentés 1909.” 140  Vincze, “Az érem- és régiségtár,” 69–136, 1121–1128.

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Middle-Class Academics against Aristocratic Amateurs? The Case of the Torma Collection

By the 1880s, the university, its laboratories, and its trained staff were not merely an institution imposed on local scholarship. It could provide the beneficial effect of generating cross-disciplinary synergies, necessary for the establishment of new fields of research, such as prehistoric archeology. Such cooperation took place on account of the analysis of the archeological discoveries by Baroness Zsófia von Torma, who belonged to the first generation of savants in the field and was among the first female archeologists to devote her entire activity to the study of the Neolithic Age. The development and interpretations of her findings illustrate the institutionalization of a new research field, facilitated by the Museum Society, acting as a scientific laboratory. The process also sheds light on the interaction of the academic staff with external lay members and the tensions created by the exchange in a time of rapid professionalization in the national context. Last but not least, the figure of the female savant begs the question about the gendered nature of a regional scientific life in the process of becoming established. Woman scholars were so rare in late nineteenth-century Transylvania, that nearly all publications by and about Baroness Torma began with an excuse for her preoccupation so “untypical for a lady.”141 The pre-World War I Landeskundeverein had no female members at all. Somewhat better was the situation in the Museum Society, which allowed a few aristocratic women to publish in its journal. Zsófia von Torma was born into a well-to-do noble family of archeologists; her father, József Torma, Member of Parliament and a passionate amateur archeologist, belonged to the founding generation of the Museum Society, while her brother, Károly Torma, was a celebrated specialist of the classical Roman period. Growing up in a family where excavations and the study of ancient Dacian military castra belonged to the educational routine, Zsófia became a keen practitioner herself, despite lacking a formal training in the profession. Her attention was drawn to a hitherto little-known site in Tordos in Hunyad County, identified previously by Saxon scholars of archeology as a Roman cemetery. She started her investigations in 1875 and already after her first field visit assessed rightly her findings as originating from the Neolithic. Her commencing excavations were soon interrupted by the protest of the landowners, and in the following years she could only collect findings 141  See for instance: Zsófia Torma, “Hazánk népe ős mythosának maradványai” [Remains of the ancient myths of our fatherland’s people], in A Szolnok-Dobokamegyei nők emléklapja [Almanach of the women of Szolnok-Doboka County] (Dés, 1896), 33–36, 33.

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exposed by the land erosion on the banks of the neighboring river Maros. She also collected a vast amount of archeological material from the village Tordos and smaller surrounding settlements, as well as the caves of Algyógy. The discovery was a sensation, announced first in the Transylvanian press, while during the following year the baroness could introduce the material to an international audience at the Congress of Prehistoric Archeology and Anthropology held in Budapest. Here, the reception of the collection by the international crème of prehistoric anthropology was no less enthusiastic, acknowledging the merits of Torma as being among the pioneers in Europe in the discovery of Neolithic remains. In the next decades the baroness received visits from leading personalities of the field, including Albert Voß (1876) and Rudolf Virchow (1896) from Berlin, Paul Reinecke (paying two visits between 1893 and 1896), and József Hampel, secretary of the Hungarian National Museum and director of its archeological collections. The baroness maintained the right throughout her lifetime to interpret the broader cultural context of her findings, which she developed through regular exchange over nearly twenty years with the German and Austrian as well as Hungarian elite of the field. Her writings and correspondence reflect the close knowledge of these persons, and the works by Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890), discoverer of Hellenic Troy, and a controversial celebrity of the field. Her work at home was aided by collaborators in the person of Gábor Téglás (1848–1916), historian and archeologist, member of the Museum Society. The chronological, paleontological, botanical, and zoological identification of the findings took place in cooperation with a number of specialists of the society and is documented by its journal. Professor Antal Koch (director of the paleontological section of the natural science collection) analyzed the provenance and functions of the shells, bones, and minerals, while Professor Antal Genersich (director of the natural science and medicine sections) identified the two human skeletons found at the site. The Erdélyi Múzeum published a series consisting of three large articles142 about the description and functionalchronological interpretation of the findings, authored by the baroness, whose work has been judged by professionals today as “displaying a correct concept, 142  Zsófia Torma, “Neolith kőkorszakbeli telepek Hunyadmegyében” [Neolithic settlements in Hunyad County] Erdélyi Múzeum (1879): 129–155, (1879): 190–192, and (1879): 193–211; Torma, “Ősrégészeti újabb leletek” [Newer prehistoric archeological findings], Erdélyi Múzeum (1879): 311; Torma, “A nándori barlangcsoportozat” [The cave group from Nándor], Erdélyi Múzeum (1880): 153–171, and (1880): 206–209; Torma, “A római uralom előtti Dácziának planeta cultusáról” [About the pre-Roman planet cult in Dacia], Erdélyi Múzeum (1887): 73–77.

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a mature thinking, and conformity with the contemporary level of knowledge about prehistoric archeology, employing the disciplines of the natural sciences and the humanities for the better understanding of the problem area.”143 The case is an example when the manifold specialization in the framework of the Museum Society, as well as the university, produced creative synergies. Inspired by the recent discovery of Troy by Schliemann, Torma set out to interpret the decoration and shape of the vast amount of pottery that made out the bulk of her collection. Employing the documentation of the signs found on the Trojan pottery as a basis of comparison for the ornaments on her own objects, she considered the latter as having a religious symbolism. Moreover, the similarities between the two cultures brought her to conclude that the Trojan and Transylvanian prehistoric societies had been ethnically related, being both of Thracian origin. Torma formulated a hypothesis about the capacity of the Tordos civilization to possess an alphabet, which she assumed to be of Middle Eastern origin. Her conjecture, forwarded at the congresses of 1876 in Budapest and in 1880 in Berlin, was awaited with great interest. While many of her observations concerning the way of life of the Tordas society brought her international acclaim, her cultural conjectures earned also much criticism. In the end they alienated most of her distinguished audience.144 Noteworthy is the fact that her work in the international and home arenas unfolded gradually and over nearly twenty years. These decades were marked by a deep epistemological uncertainty regarding the origins, development, and geographical spread of prehistoric societies. Her assumption about the migration of cultures and languages from the Middle East through the Balkans to Central Europe belonged to a strain of thoughts that came to dominate the field for a long time. Yet her fundamental method of interpretation, which presumed that identical or similar artefacts and material signs had the same underlying cause, namely, the same technology, the same mentality, and eventually the same ethnicity, belonged to a practice soon labeled as faulty, and decidedly discarded fairly soon already by Virchow.145 Especially the speculation about the ethnic relation between present and past societies came to be rejected as false and prone

143  Sabin Adrian Luca, Aşezări neolitice pe Valea Mureşului [Neolithic settlements in Mureş valley] (Alba Iulia: Bibliotheca Musei Apulensis, 2001), chap. 2, http://arheologie.ulbsibiu .ro/publicatii/carti/cpvm/capitolul%202.htm, accessed 10 October 2014. 144  Luca, Aşezări neolitice, 2–3. 145  Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought, 511–516; Gisela Eberhardt, Deutsche Ausgrabungen im “langen” 19 Jahrhundert. Eine problemorientierte Untersuchung zur archäoligischen Praxis (Darmstadt: WBG, 2011), 181–187.

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to political speculation. What were the incorrect and correct elements in the conjectures? A regular member of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archeology and Anthropology, Baroness Torma published the much-awaited result of her long research in 1894 in Leipzig. The work, bearing the title Ethnographische Analogien. Ein Beitrag zur Gestaltungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Religionen (Ethnological analogies. A contribution to the history of the shaping and development of religions),146 compared specific ethnic customs, bearers of quasi-religious symbolism, of Transylvanian Székelys, Saxons, Romanians, and Roma. The analogies established between these and the ancient Dacian and Thracian ones resulted in further hypotheses about the common origin of the variegated Transylvanian ethnic groups, from the Balkan Getae-Dacians and Hellenic Thracians, and eventually from the Middle East.147 The last paragraph of her 76-page treatise reveals a singular political stance, going against the nationalist stream of her time: If this work, this feeble effort could contribute somewhat to the immense labor of improving our society, if I could fulfill something of the holy task of answering the great questions of mankind and of the nationalities, and therefore putting an end to all the national prejudices and national skirmishes and contributing to permanent Freedom, than I would achieve my goal.148 The surprising theoretical conjectures, the unorthodox political view, as well as the gender of Torma would have been sensational even individually, but the combination of all three was explosive. Certainly, the presupposition of common origins of the hierarchically construed “nations” of Transylvania was a challenge to all scholarly canons of the province. No less of an authority than the aged former curator of the archeological collection, Henrik Finály, wrote the review, which was a devastating pamphlet.149 The first half of the fourpage long text ridiculed counterfactual historical phantasmagorias in general that produced false analogies. A further page categorized analogies as possible sources of error. The last page pondered on the possible psychological sources 146  Zsófia Torma, Ethnographische Analogien. Ein Beitrag zur Gestaltungs- und Entwicklungs­ geschichte der Religionen (Jena: Hermann Costenoble, 1894). 147  Ibid., 74–76. 148  Ibid., 75–76. 149   Henrik Finály, “Ethnographische Analogien-recenzió” [Review of Ethnographische Analogien], Erdélyi Múzeum (1894): 560–563.

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of inventing analogies, including exhaustion, overextension, strong emotions, and prejudices. Solely the very last paragraph was dedicated to the “small book of Lady von Torma,” which he dismissed: “The soil on which she walks is too shaky, here we could follow her only on the wings of fantasy, yet we do not possess such wings.”150 The review refused to engage in any detail with the arguments and findings of the book, yet the rhetoric of the text showed clearly that the “ethnographic analogies” were not worthy of critical analysis, according to Finály. The intimation of psychological instability was a similarly grave and boorish argument, and hardly could have been applied to a man. By the time of this cruel labeling as a daydreaming dilettante and a hysterical woman, the collection of Zsófia Torma had been in the possession of the Museum Society for nearly three years, while several museums in Europe, including St. Petersburg, Vienna, Stockholm and various German cities, acquired individual specimens of her collection.151 Having spent her fortune on the development of the collection and establishing her international fame as a prehistoric archeologist from the largely unknown Carpathian Basin, the baroness faced financial failure in her final years, which caused her to sell the celebrated possession to the society in exchange for 5,000 forints and a yearly rent of 800 forints. Zsófia Torma died in November 1899, only five months after being accorded an honorary doctorate by the University of Kolozsvár.152 Ten years after her death, Pósta solicited the Hungarian Academy of Science for financial assistance in conducting validating excavations in Tordos and its surroundings. The scholar in charge was Pósta’s student and close collaborator Márton Roska (1880–1861)153 who worked on all related sites. After World War I, Roska could channel in new research conducted in the territories of the northern and western Balkan territories. The consolidation of prehistoric archeology in Romania helped him complete a map of broad cultural exchange, originating from the Middle East, proceeding through the Balkans, and involving the territory of Transylvania and Hungary. Later, he thus proposed the affiliation of the Tordos settlements with the larger north Balkan so-called Vinča culture. All these were novelties not only in Transylvanian terms, but also at the level of international research. To this end Pósta had supported several 150  Ibid., 563. 151  Márton Roska, Thesaurus antiquitatum Transilvanicarum (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Tud. Int., 1942), 288. 152  Márton Roska, A Torma Zsófia-gyüjtemény az Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeum érem és régiségtárában [The Torma collection in the numismatic and archeological collection of EME] (Kolozsvár: Minerva, 1941), 4. 153  Ibid., 34.

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control excavations on Transylvanian territory still before the war, the most important exploring other newly discovered Neolithic sites in Erősd (Ariusd), proving the existence of the so-called Tripolje-Cucuteni-Erősd culture, that is, hitherto uncharted influences from the East towards Western Europe, from Ukraine to the Székely lands.154 The detailed analysis of the Torma collection, which used the notebooks and manuscripts of Baroness Torma, was published several decades later in 1942, when eastern Transylvania was re-annexed to Hungary for a short while. The publication now duly highlighted the lasting merits of Torma’s work, including significant steps of the fieldwork, such as her stratigraphic observations, her reconstruction of the local history of the site, and other observations of technical kind, while discretely bracketing her conjectures as having “historical value only.” Roska conducted also a new chronological analysis of the findings, sorting out more recent items, as well as fake ones. In regard to the interpretation, Roska adhered to a by then internationally accepted theory, based on the geographical diffusion of technology. He found the decorations on the pottery effected by cross-fertilizing influences from the northwest and from the southern parts of Europe, and located Transylvania at the crossroad of several, mutually cross-fertilizing cultural impacts. Instead of speculating on the specificity of ethnic descent, a question instrumentalized also through the Romanian-Hungarian antagonisms, Roska forwarded more peaceful generalizations about Transylvania being (pre)historically connected to the “blood circulation of universal mankind.”155 Obviously, the publication was also a much needed contribution to restore the merits of the pioneering lady archeologist, while demonstrating at the same time the capacity of professionalism to disentangle itself from raging nationalism. The interaction of Torma with the society illustrates well the limits of embracing innovation in the provincial scholarly setting. The Ethnographische Analogien had been rightly described by the baroness as a series of conjectures, based on presumed (even if mostly unproven) analogies. Seeking similarities and variations in the shape and decoration of the archeological items in order to determine their origin and cultural belonging was the leading methodology of her time. The efficiency of the method hinged on the availability of contrastive cases, as well as the precision of the analyses (stratigraphy, seriation, synchronisms) employed via excavation.156 Yet Zsófia Torma was working in circumstances aggravated by refusals to allow excavations on the key 154  Vincze, “Az érem- és régiségtár,” 108–109. 155  Ibid., 37. 156  Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought, 244.

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archeological sites. Why had she not received any help, while being a popular figure of the discipline on the international scene? How and why did Pósta and his disciples acquire the necessary permission only ten years after her death? Torma was in possession of a sizable, yet heterogeneous collection of findings, whose beginning classification in East-Central Europe was concurrent with the discovery. Her hypothesis not only resonated with the theory, dominant until the end of the century among British and Scandinavian specialists, about the Middle Eastern origins of mankind. This view converged strongly with another established, biblical perspective upon human genesis, which saw the gradual transmission of power and creativity westward from the Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic Greek, and Roman empires.157 Moreover, her hypothesis was backed by fresh evidence from the spot at a time when Hungarian prehistoric archeology buttressed the theory of the so-called Copper Age on the eastern margins of Europe at the end of the Neolithic. The thesis was based on the large quantity of chiseled copper tools in Hungary, Transylvania, and also sporadically in Austria (Mondsee), but had no contemporary equivalent on the rest of continental Europe. The findings led to the formulation of autarchic cultural centers on the geographical margins of the continent (including also Ireland and Cyprus), which challenged the Eurocentric view of mostly British and Danish archeologists.158 The lay views of Zsófia Torma about the Eastern cultural influence on the peoples of the Carpathian Basin have been partly confirmed by later research, but were uttered at a time when the field at home was not yet prepared to assess them properly. Finally, the religious pacifism of the baroness was a further challenging feature of her work, because it stood in opposition to the sweeping nationalist stance put forward in the domain of the humanities by her peers. Her views had their conceptual foundation in cultural-historical archeology, shaped by German, Austrian, and Swiss contemporaries, which posited the identification of prehistoric “cultures” and “civilizations.” The interpretation by Roska reflected a mature and nuanced phase of this branch of archeology. The latter did not tap into the pitfall of directly relating the unknown prehistoric peoples with known ethnic clusters of the present. He was able to chart the effect of variegated cultural influences on Transylvania, in particular through the analysis of the Tordos findings. These came partly from the west (Hungary: Tisza, Lengyel culture) and partly from the Balkans, proving thus the

157  Ibid., 216, 228–229. 158  Pulszky, Magyarorszag archaeologiája, 122.

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rightness of the revolutionary intuition of Torma regarding one of the main directions of cultural transfer into the Carpathian Basin.159 The analogy-seeking procedure of Torma’s writing was pre-scientific, yet the rhetoric of her dismissal by Finály seems for today’s reader unjustly overstated. Was it the impatience of the first generation professional against the aristocratic amateur, trampling on the sacred ground of science? Was it the overreaction of the assimilating middle-class intellectual, feeling the calling to defend his national idol from the anti-nationalist pacifism of an aristocrat and a woman at that? If the former was the case, Finály’s was an extreme yet not entirely isolated reaction. Béla Pósta, successor of Finály and member in his youth of the scientific expedition led by Count Zichy into the Caucasus, was raging, even though privately, about the ignorance of his aristocratic patron.160 As a Minister of Transportation and a wealthy man, Zichy could easily defend himself and had other means than his much weaker Transylvanian peer. However, he shared the fate of the baroness in one aspect: lacking a scientifically consistent organizing principle, the Caucasus collection could not be established as a lasting holding, but was sold eventually in Budapest and distributed among several museums.

“Our Leading Hungarian Race”: The National Edge of honismeret

Similar to the Landeskundeverein, the Museum Society never defined the scope or the disciplinary setup of honismeret in a binding way. The coexistence with the university further complicated the character of regional science. The first ten years after the start were fairly unproductive for the humanities section (there were only two section readings held altogether, in 1878), yet the following 23 years show a regained balance. During this time, the number of enrolled members in the humanities section of the Museum Society—both academics and lay persons—grew from an initial 73 to 380 persons, while 253 lectures were presented during 136 section meetings.161 Thematically this was the most eclectic period in the life of the society, reflecting the divergent and often disparate research interests of the new university staff and the local concern of the traditional members. This did not change substantially even in the decade following 1906, when the journal of the humanities section came to be edited by library director Pál Erdélyi, who demanded more focus on Transylvanian topics. 159  Márton Roska, Erdély őskora [The prehistory of Transylvania] (Budapest, 1936), 12–14. 160  Banner, Pósta Béla. 161  György, Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 12–14.

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It followed from the nature of contacts with the university that the range of disciplines and themes was much broader than in the case of the Landeskundeverein. Thus, the Erdélyi Museum published articles in the fields of sociology, law, pedagogy, classical and modern philology, philosophy of history and political thought, and economics, which were typical university disciplines and as such missing from the Saxon agenda.162 Though liberal and secular in spirit, the stance of the Erdélyi Múzeum publications was far from revolutionary,163 but rather tended towards social exclusivism. It entrenched itself against democratic and socialist views, and regarded feminism with critical distance.164 Though numerous publications dealt with questions about women’s education and enfranchisement, they relegated female power into the politically harmless private sphere.165 Women were welcome in social welfare and lower teaching positions, but not in the academe. This was the dominant view of the journal during the lifetime of Zsófia Torma and also around the time when the first female student was enrolled in the Transylvanian university in 1895.166 Between 1883 and 1906, Transylvanian topics made up about 40 percent of the articles published in the journals of the humanities section. From 1906 until 1918 this ratio did not change significantly.167 The bulk of the writings with a Transylvanian focus were published in the field of history, archeology, 162  A few examples: Károly Békésy, “A természettudományos felfogás a politikában” [About the natural science approach in politics], Erdélyi Múzeum (1893): 220–235, 323–343, 401– 406; Lajos Felméri, “Draper J. W. legújabb műve: a vallás és tudomány bírkózása” [The newest work of J. W. Draper: The struggle of religion and science], Erdélyi Múzeum (1875): 41–44; Kelemen Gál, “Nietzsche Frigyes,” Erdélyi Múzeum (1900): 196–212; Gerő Bárány, “Lapozgatás a filozófia történelmében” [Browsing the history of philosophy], Erdélyi Múzeum (1909): 311–322; and others. 163  “A társadalmi forradalom” [The social revolution], Erdélyi Muzeum (1890): 48–60, 161–173, 258–270. 164  Béla Erődi Jr., “A szabadtanítás története és jelentőségeinek társadalombölcseleti alapjai” [The history of free education and the bases of its social-philosophical importance], Erdélyi Múzeum (1908): 101–111; Károly Békésy, “A választási rendszer bírálata” [The critique of the suffrage], Erdélyi Múzeum (1894): 127–139, 202–214, 359–372. 165  Lajos Felméri, “Nők a társadalomban” [Women in the society], Erdélyi Múzeum (1893): 489–506, Felméri, “Dühring a nők iskoláztatásáról” [Dühring about the schooling of women], Erdélyi Múzeum (1878): 12–16; “Nők az egyetemen” [Women at the universities], Erdélyi Múzeum (1896): 285; “Nők, mint vizsgáló-bizottsági tagok” [Women as members of examining committees], Erdélyi Múzeum (1893): 141. 166  Pálfy, National Controversy in the Transylvanian Academe, 82. 167  According to Lajos György, out of the 253 public lectures held during 36 meetings of the humanities section in the period of 1883–1906, “only” 103 were closely related to Transylvania. The publications were much more numerous, counting 459 contributions.

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literature, philology, ethnography, and the emerging library science. Contri­ butions to history emphasized the Hungarian aspects of medieval and early modern Transylvanian political and cultural life. Much similarity could be observed thus between the two Transylvanian learned societies when it came to the specific details of the practice of Landeskunde and honismeret. In both cases the political and thematic orientation and disciplinary structure of Landeskunde/honismeret proper were identical, being determined by the scholarly construction of the modern nation on the territory of the fatherland, whether Saxon, Magyar, or Székely. Essentially, it was a historical approach to the material and intellectual evidence of the origins and historical dynamics of the imagined community. By the turn of the century, contributions on local history, ecclesiastical history, and in general on cultural history equaled the articles of similar kind in the Archiv. The history of Hungarian literature investigated the pivotal historical periods of the modern national movement during the Enlightenment and Romanticism, as well their “predecessor,” the vernacular humanist tradition of the sixteenth to seventeenth century. The question of Magyar and Székely original homeland and the route of migration to the Pannonian plains remained, after a century of ideological controversies, still debated between advocates preferring an Asian, and later Turkic theory, of descent, as well as the advocates of the Finno-Ugric origins of Magyars. The lack of historical records concerning the early centuries of ethnogenesis before the settlement of Magyar tribes in Pannonia at the end of the tenth century called for the joint work of archeology, linguistics, and ethnography. Writings in the latter discipline were written by young professionals, who took their baptism of fire as members of the notorious Zichy expedition, namely linguist Gábor Bálint (1844–1913) and the ­ethnographer János Jankó (1868–1902).168 Philology was another tool applied in the quest and since 1906 Hungarian philology in the framework of the Museum Society assumed a decidedly Finno-Ugric, therefore scientifically and politically innovative, position and was represented by a few yet highly professional For the period of 1906–1914, out of 79 specialized lectures, 28 had Transylvanian topics. György, Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 14, 28. 168  Gábor Bálint, “Minő fajúak a japánok (nipponiak)?” [What is the race of the Japanese (Nipponians)], Erdélyi Múzeum (1894): 583–591; about the thematic link to the Asian “relatives” see Gábor Bálint, “A tamul nyelv a turáni nyelvek sanskritja, vagy van-e a magyarnak testvére?” [Is Tamul the Sanskrit of the Turanian languages or does the Hungarian language have a relative?], Erdélyi Múzeum (1888): 33–55, and (1888): 215–236; János Jankó, “Az igricek a Biharhegysegben” [The minstrels in the Bihar mountains], Erdélyi Múzeum (1894): 32–38.

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writings on linguistic epistemology, philology of the migration period, as well as the comparison between Levantine and Finno-Ugric linguistic stocks.169 The abovementioned archeology was the second richest field, more prominent than in the case of the Landeskundeverein, and the growth of the society’s most dynamic collection and output expresses the significance of the discipline in the scientific construction of national identity. In contrast, the Museum Society did not reach the output in art history of the Landeskundeverein, especially when it came to the documentation of the emblematic material manifestation of Saxonness, the church fortresses. The amplitude of writings on prehistoric and ancient themes, on the documentation of Roman and Dacian settlements, as well as the Roman Limes in Transylvania indicate that the society joined international research. As a result of linguistic, ethnographic, and archeological research, the question of origins became more complex, refusing to yield an unequivocal answer. While the Finno-Ugric linguistic origins of Hungarian language had established itself as the dominant paradigm among university academics, in contrast to the thesis of a Turkic descent, the ethnic provenance was still a debated question at the turn of the century. It guided the writings in the domain of Hungarian and comparative linguistics, of folk poetry and the analysis of the “ancient” crafts, that is, fishery, agriculture, and pottery. The interpretation of “national antiquities” had acquired a specific political twist in Transylvania, as it had made part, since the Supplex Libellus Valachorum, of the ongoing strife about collective rights. Like in the case of the Magyars, Saxons and Székelys, the ethnic origins of the Romanians remained no less controversial, constituting a common concern of Hungarian, Saxon, and Romanian scholarship. The debates branched out into the history and archeology of Dacian and Roman Transylvania, as also into the philological analysis of toponyms and the comparative ethnographic exploration of folk customs. Finde-siècle debates on an increasingly plausible Balkan descent marginalized the theory of Latin origins entirely and argued for a migrationist (i.e., Balkan) or local (i.e., Transylvanian/Dacian) Daco-Roman origin of Romanians. These debates too were heavily tainted by the political rivalries between Hungary and the Romanian Kingdom. The Museum Society engaged itself with great élan in the unfolding strife, where the Landeskundeverein increasingly assumed the role of mediator between the adversaries. The Erdélyi Muzeum brought a number of contributions on Romanian language, ethnography, and history.170 169  Ibid., 24. 170  A few exmples: Endre Veress, “Erdély- és magyarországi régi oláh könyvek és nyomtatvá­ nyok” [Old Romanian books and prints from Transylvania and Hungary], Erdélyi Múzeum

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The chief contributor on Romanian ethnogenesis became Grigore Moldovan (1845–1930), professor of Romanian philology at the University of Kolozsvár and rector in the years 1906–1907. In Moldovan the society found its truest ally in the strife. The professor devoted his work to the ethnographic research and the linguistic analysis of the place names of the Romanian-majority Alsó-Fehér County, being convinced of their predominantly Hungarian and Slavic character. Moldovan rejected the theory of Roman continuity on Transylvanian soil, locating Romanian origins in Southeast Europe, echoing thus the presupposition of the Budapest-based Hungarian philologist-historian Pál Hunfalvy: While we find no Dacian traditions of any kind among the Romanians, the preponderance of Balkan traditions and influences is decisive regarding the determination of their place of origin . . . The ethnographic facts of my book demonstrate that the [theory of] Dacian origins is untenable. If the Romanians buried the [theory of] Dacian continuity in the Hurul Chronicle and the linguistic bravados in the Testament and Dictionary by [Treboniu] Laurian without any impair, they will also bury this Dacian continuity as well, which will not affect by any means their vitality, their cultural efficiency, and their promising future.171 Contrary to the more diplomatic Landeskundeverein, Moldovan criticized the “tendentious intentions of Romanian historiography” and the “tale of Dacian continuity and its falsifications.” With the same breath he condemned the political movement of Transylvanian Romanians for more autonomy as irredentist and in effect, “dangerous for the Hungarian state,” a fact which indicated how strongly the intellectual and political claims interlinked in contemporary thinking. Against the pan-Romanian agitation of the Bucharest-based Liga Culturalǎ Românǎ (Romanian Cultural League), he praised the Magyarizing

(1910): 143–176 and 313–383; Veress, “Documentele lui Stefan cel Mare” [The documents of Stefan cel Mare], Erdélyi Múzeum (1914): 279–284; Lajos Kropf, “A lipcsei rumén szeminárium” [The Romanian seminar in Leipzig], Erdélyi Múzeum (1900): 61–70. For a thematic and disciplinary overview see the chapters on Romanian philology, the Romance languages and literatures, as well as Romanian and Transylvanian history: Antal Valentiny and Géza Entz, Az Erdélyi Múzeum név-és szakmutatója. 1874–1917, 1930–1937 [Systematic catalogue of Erdélyi Múzeum] (Cluj: EME, 1942), 41, 66–67, and 82, 88–90. 171  Gergely Moldován, “A románság balkáni eredetéhez” [On the Balkan origin of Romanians], Erdélyi Múzeum (1899): 61–71. See also Moldován, “Székelyek-e a mócok?” [Are the Moţi Székelys?], Erdélyi Múzeum (1894): 343–358; 403–416.

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efforts of the nationalist Erdélyi Magyar Kulturális Egyesület as “useful and excellent work.”172 For all its diplomatic skills, the Landeskundeverein participated with gusto in the unfolding debates on the ethnic origins of Romanians and their history on the territory of Transylvania. The Korrespondenzblatt took the position of the critical observer, but forwarded no theory of its own. Aiming at scholarly objectivity, the journal was nevertheless interested predominantly in the Hungarian and German-Austrian side of the debate, demonstrated by the selection of the works. In the forefront were the works of the Austrian Romanist Robert Rösler and his Austrian critic Julius Jung,173 as well as the Hungarian Pál Hunfalvy,174 while the Romanian and Transylvanian contributions appeared merely briefly as a listed bibliographical reference.175 This changed after the turn of the century, as soon as the Landeskundeverein could recruit a member living in Bucharest to inform the home audience about the developments in the field.176 By this time the editors of the Korrespondenzblatt arrived at firm position concerning the difficult question: Our compatriot, who has been living in Bucharest more than twenty years now, scrutinizes anew in this 300-page book the question about the origins of the Romanians based on relevant sources and specialized literature. His answer is largely identical with those of Rösler and the followers of the latter. This view has not only been shared nowadays by all 172  Gergely Moldován, “A román nemzetiségi törekvések” [The Romanian national movements], Erdélyi Múzeum (1896): 392–394; Moldován, “Nyílt levelek a bukaresti román kulturális liga elnökéhez” [Open letters to the president of the cultural league of Bucharest], Erdélyi Múzeum (1895): 38–39; Moldovan, “Román kérdés—magyar nemzetpolitika” [Romanian question—Hungarian national politics], Erdélyi Múzeum (1895): 40–44, 450, 512, 561; Moldován, “Magyar-szász szövetség” [Hungarian-Saxon coalition], Erdélyi Múzeum (1904): 431. About the pro-Magyar nationalist stance of Moldovan see also Makkai, “A kolozsvári kir. Ferenc József,” 298–299. 173  Julius Jung, Römer und Romanen in den Donauländern. Historiographisch-ethnographische Studien (Innsbruck: Wagnersche Buchhandlung, 1877), cited in Karl Gooß, “Die neuste Literatur über die Frage der Herkunft der Romänen,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 2 (February 1878): 18–22; Gooß, Korrespondenzblatt, no. 3 (March 1878): 28–39. 174  Carl Gooß, “Zur Rumänen-Frage,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 3 (March 1879): 26–31; N.N., “Die Landsnahmen Siebenbürgens. Von Paul Hunfalvy,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 4 (April 1887): 37–40; N.N., Korrespondenzblatt, no. 5 (May 1887): 49–52. 175  Gooß, “Zur Rumänen-Frage,” 26–31. 176  E. Fischer, “Die rumänische Volkssprache,” Korrespondenzblatt, nos. 6–7 (June–July 1911): 1–93.

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relevant German and Hungarian scholars, but seems to evoke a less vehement resistance even in Romania than it used to earlier. Fischer too sees in the Romanians not the successors of the Romanized autochthonous inhabitants of old Dacia, but later migrants from the Balkan peninsula. The Romanian people has been formed here, in the middle of the Balkan Mountains, through the Romanization of the Thracian Dardanians and Bessens [?], and their Christianization. The first traces of the new Romanian dialects can be located here for the sixth and the tenth centuries and this is also the point of departure of Romanians to the left banks of the Danube in the ninth century . . . [H]e sees in them the carrier of several Slavic settlement names in Transylvania, which were then borrowed by Magyars and Saxons—a conjecture that has its positive sides.177 Moreover, Transylvanian philologists discovered in the Romanian colloquial language a deposit of several cultural layers originating from the Balkans,178 but also as one in close linguistic interaction with the Transylvanian Hungarian and Saxon dialects.179 Brevity usually indicated that the academic debate drifted towards political polemics, like the following remark on a new publication by the chief combatant of the thesis of Romanian continuity in Transylvania, the professor from Budapest, Hunfalvy: For those knowledgeable with the writings of Hunfalvy, most of what they find here is already known. The book follows not exclusively scientific objectives, but also political ones, and it places itself into the service of Hungarian nationality politics. He will reap [among Romanian scholars] what he sows, and that will be no friendly reply. As long as he deals with the history of the Romanians, we can ascertain that he argues in a transparent way and is right in the details. The way he applies the linguistic evidence for the internal and external history of the Romanians is valuable in many respects, but has also many weaknesses. As always, 177  R[udolf] Br[iebrecher] and Dr. E. Fisher, “Die Herkunft der Rumänen,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 2 (February 1904): 30. 178  Fr. W. Seraphin, “Zur Geschichte der siebenbürger Bulgaren,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 19 (1896): 143–146; D. [Gustav Weigand], “Die Aromunen,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 4 (April 1897): 54–55. 179  A. Schullerus, “Brenndörfer János. Román (Oláh) elemek az erdélyi szász nyelvben, (Rumänische Elemente in der siebenb.-sächs. Sprache), (Budapest: Franklin, 1902),” Korrespondenzblatt, nos. 2–3 (February–March 1903): 36–45.

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H. puts forward his usual etymologies of the names of land, rivers, and settlements. Should these be his best weapons, he will be soon defeated.180 The controversial topic of Romanian ethnic origins was only simmering during the decades preceding World War I, erupting in full force between Hungarian and Romanian scholars in the interwar era. The relentless opposition of the adversaries was, however, fully present already at the turn of the century, in which the scholarly debate became instrumentalized by politics. The intransigence of the writings of Moldovan on the pages of the Erdélyi Múzeum becomes particularly palpable after contrastive reading of the more nuanced, more informed and comparative approach, despite all mentioned biases, by the authors of the same question in the Korrespondenzblatt. One finds in the Hungarian case an attitude that embraced the impatient nationalist propaganda of the state when it came to its most neuralgic spot, namely the governance of the large and politically increasingly active national minorities. Thanks to its privileged status in the academia, the Museum Society became a research institute in the service of secular and state-loyal higher education, a fact visible, among others, in the low percentage of clergy in the membership lists. In contrast to the Landeskundeverein or the ASTRA, members of the churches did not play a leading role here. The decades of institutional search for identity alienated the larger public as well, which became a major weakness by the turn of the century. The reconfiguration in 1906 brought a breakthrough in this regard, and the society sought new contacts by holding popular lectures in Kolozsvár and itinerary congresses beyond it, in Kronstadt, Marosvásárhely, Zilah, Déva, Dés, and Szamosújvár.181 Similar to the public lectures, the themes addressed on these occasions combined the local, Magyar and patriotic, and specific (on the prehistoric economy in Transylvania, the Habsburg-opponent Prince Rákóczi, Romanian folk tales, Hungarian folk songs, silversmiths in premodern Hungary, etc.), with more general or exotic topics, ranging from China, America, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Scandinavia, and Tripoli, to the history of the

180  “Paul Hunfalvy, Die Rumänen und ihre Ansprüche. Wien und Teschen, Prohaska, 1883,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 12 (December 1884): 143. 181  See Lajos Schilling, “Az Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeumról” [About the Transylvanian National Museum], in Az EME Marosvásárhelyt, 1906 június 4–5 napján tartott első vándorgyűlésének évkönyve [Memorial volume of the first itinerary congress of the Transylvanian Museum Society held in Marosvásárhely on 4–5 June 1906] (Kolozsvár: Steif Jenő, 1906), 6–12, 8.

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book, the goals of modern pedagogy, and the nature of music.182 Here again the society acted as a regional academy, whose modernity consisted in its ability to combine the local, the patriotic, and the specific into a more universal and international outlook of the university curriculum. The festive and patriotic fashioning of these conferences was reminiscent of the yearly meetings of the Landeskundeverein. However, while the Saxon institution underlined the status of the minority asserting itself against the state, the Museum Society emphasized the merits of its mighty patron. On such occasions, the leaders of the society tended to adopt a sharper nationalist rhetoric: Our museum can fulfill its modern destination only through the common effort of the society and the state . . . A Transylvanian Museum, supported in this way, could be the pride of this part of the fatherland. Our leading Hungarian race would not need to blush at the fact that the handful of Saxon people achieved on its own, without state support, in creating a museum which is in many respects in advance of us.183 This defensive attitude determined the atmosphere of the itinerary congresses, which brought together local notables and leading intellectuals to perform the known national rituals: send committees, hold orations, unveil the statues of national heroes. “The former Partium feels itself honored, and the bastions of Hungarian culture will be thereby reinforced,” greeted the mayor of Zilah his audience at one of the official receptions in 1907.184 In the very year of the Apponyi laws, introducing compulsory teaching in Hungarian in exchange for state subsidies in private and church schools, the members of the Museum Society returned the greeting with patriotic furor: “What is the task of Hungarians in the face of the serious nationality danger?” “Let us enforce the general use of Magyar.”185 Similar was the script of previous and later events in Marosvásárhely (1906), Nagyenyed (1908), Dés (1910), and Kronstadt (1911). This was the dominant public voice of the decade preceding World War I, even if the society did make gestures of inclusion towards Saxons and Jews. Thus in 182  See the contents of the memorial volumes of the itinerary conferences from the years 1906–1910. 183   Lajos Schilling ed., Az EME Zilahon, 1907 június 1–2. napján tartott harmadik vándorgyűlésének emlékkönyve [Memorial volume of the third itinerary congress of the EME held in Zilah, 1–2 June 1907] (Cluj: EME, 1908), 4. 184  Ibid. 185  Ibid., 13.

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1906 Ferencz Lővy, chief rabbi of Marosvásárhely, lectured on the seventeenthcentury Sabbatarian, and in 1908, the festive delegation honored in Kronstadt “God’s evangelist in Hungary,” Johannes Honterus.186 How did the two main characteristics of scientific life, that is, professionalization and the national framework, modify the character and content of Transylvanian Landeskunde and honismeret? Was there any convergence in the disciplinary practices and themes of the two societies? Both institutions continued their pioneering work on Transylvania in the humanities, and, in the case of the Museum Society, in the natural sciences. The leading role consisted predominantly in the indigenization/local adaptation of the modern disciplines and their auxiliary sciences into the local scholarly agenda. The successively published four-volume “Transylvanian Saxon” primary source edition by Franz Zimmermann and the three-volume bibliographical edition of the “Old Hungarian Library” by Károly Szabó are the most prominent examples of the processing of the traces of the early modern Transylvanian past into national source editions, and integrating these into distinct cultural canons. This was made possible by the local emergence and rising visibility of a new scholarly type, the university-trained specialist. The entry of professional librarians, archivists, and university faculty into the field of Landeskunde and honismeret is indeed the most important novelty of scholarly life in Transylvania towards the end of the nineteenth century. Modernization of provincial scholarship in the second half of the nineteenth century put the two learned societies on divergent institutional trajectories. The University of Kolozsvár and the Museum Society benefited each other mutually, the latter offering its facilities for use to the former, which in its turn generated an unprecedented knowledge flow, propelling the provincial society into a modern research institute within a few decades. Eventually, as shown above, the impact of the innovation was so significant that the question of commensurability with the Landeskundeverein emerges. However, the Museum Society was not transformed into a research appendage of the university. In particular its historical-archeological collections and library helped in developing a distinct regional research program on Transylvania, which allows one a comparison with its peer Saxon association. In contrast, the Landeskundeverein maintained its ties with secondary education under the aegis of the Lutheran church, and its scholarly profile developed at a more 186   Lajos Schilling, ed., Az EME Brassóban 1908 június 7–9 napjain tartott negyedik vándorgyűlésének emlékkönyve [Memorial volume of the fourth itinerary congress of the EME held in Kronstadt on 7–9 June 1908] (Kolozsvár: EME, 1908), 1–11.

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steady, if less spectacular fashion. While the Transylvanian German-speaking Lutherans made up ca. 9.5 percent of the population in comparison to ca. 33 percent Magyars,187 the two institutions became nearly identical in size and also in regard to research agendas. Eventually, in face of the great differences of the social context and support, the output in Saxon Landeskunde and Magyar honismeret produced surprisingly similar results regarding the main research themes, the disciplinary configuration of provincial scholarship, and also the volume of contributions. Both institutions established themselves as new regional centers of research in the historical sciences and the scholarly work they conducted gained international visibility in many disciplines. Saxon Landeskunde and Magyar honismeret produced almost similar research questions and a nearly identical disciplinary configuration of regional science in geographically and culturally distinct intellectual milieus. Their comparable research agendas also placed the focus on national histories, and within that ambit onto the national origins. Further commonality was the canonization and scientific exploration of national heritage, and this commonality resulted in the tapping into of international research, even if by divergent cultural channels. While the Hungarian side never set its watchful eyes off from its older and better established brother in Budapest, the Saxon institution linked first of all to German and Austrian sources of knowledge and inspiration. Differences occurred less in the scholarly program and its changes, and rather in the specific emphases placed on one or another discipline. Archeology was better financed and was more prominently supported in the Hungarian case, and its direct relevance to the fundamental questions of national historiography was more palpable than in the Saxon one. The Landeskundeverein in its turn invested more effort and finances into comparative historical linguistics, in order to locate the Saxon “home of origins” (see Figure 10). Yet, the parallel development is unimaginable without the close monitoring of each other’s work. Calculating a yearly median number of research articles for the Compromise Era, the figures are 12.26 (Landeskundeverein) against 19.02 (Museum Society, not including an additional 5.9 articles/year on general themes, nor the articles appearing since 1909 in the journal of the archeological collection of the Museum Society). This represents an approximate value, counted in the case of the Landeskundeverein for 1870–1919, while having in mind the gap of scientific output from 1870–1883 187  For a rough orientation, the census of 1900 counted ca. 233,000 Germans, 815,000 Magyars, 1,397,000 Romanians, and 32,000 other nationalities on the territory of Transylvania (57,804 km²). Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1995).

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in the case of the Museum Society. The fluctuation and systematic refashioning of the latter during this timespan indicates a shock of modernization and contrasts with the steadier trajectory of the Saxon institution. Both Landeskunde and honismeret institutionalized into learned societies relatively late, in the mid-nineteenth century, representing an early modern form of polymath scholarship in the second half of the nineteenth century. Being a practical and synthetic scholarly practice, Landeskunde and honismeret were, however, decisively shaped by the knowledge, curiosity, knowledge interests, and education of their practitioners. Hence the differences between the two intellectual milieus, but also between the shifting disciplinary structures of nationally fashioned scholarship. The Saxon learned society was, before the foundation of the Hungarian liberal legislation, more in tune with the international process of specialization, which separated the academies from museums, and contributed to the historicization of the study of the fatherland as well. After 1872 the Museum Society took over the stake, benefiting from its coalition with publicly funded higher education. If the Landeskundeverein was the product of a certain degree of differentiation, the polymath pattern remained longer integrated into the agenda of the Museum Society, before the final separation of the natural science disciplines from the humanities. Like the Brukenthal Museum, honismeret integrated various collections as material “evidence needed to facilitate the expression of the modern . . . nation”188 in the provincial context. This type of national museum persisted mostly in German-speaking Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular in Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy. Long before the end of the nineteenth century, the encyclopedic exploration of the fatherland gave way to the historical disciplines on one’s nation, within an increasingly comparative and transregional framework. Scientific ethos, based on increasingly standardized methods, the dissemination, verification, and validation of scientific results, had a double effect. On the one hand it enhanced the distillation of separate national narratives, by creating the material and scholarly evidence of its basis. At the same time the emerging new disciplines of the humanities called for a new exchange between Saxon and Hungarian experts, whether it was the mammoth source edition by Zimmerman, or the evaluation of the archeological discoveries of Baroness Torma. This “invisible university” consisted in the creation of new pathways among experts via the systematic review and evaluation of each other’s work. The ethos of professionalization contributed occasionally, as was the case with 188  Niessen, “Museums, Nationality, and Public Research Libraries,” 324.

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Zimmermann and Roth, to the criticism of the romantic representation of national history. Yet the nation-building character of Landeskunde and honismeret remained largely unquestioned when it came to performing it in public, as witnessed by the attitude of Friedrich Teutsch, or could assume a combative polemical character, as witnessed by the writings of Grigore Moldovan. The long-lasting antagonisms based on the hierarchical concept of the nations of the province did not disappear but were refashioned around the historical, archeological, linguistic, and ethnographic narratives and the material and immaterial evidence of putatively glorious national antiquities. Its Transylvanian Romanian manifestation and the vehement reaction it caused among Magyar scholars indicate the high political charge of this scholarly construct at the end of the nineteenth century. While the strife was exasperating in its RomanianHungarian dimension, Saxon scholars increasingly took the role of the attentive yet less emotional arbiter between the embattled parties. Although the Museum Society underwent quick modernization, the strategies of the Landeskundeverein to communicate with different target audiences reveals a more mature institutional concept. The establishment of the Korrespondenzblatt alongside the scholarly journal served the targeting of a broader audience and involvement in the projects run by the association. Its reviews monitored Transylvanian scientific life more intensively than in any other institution did, while not missing the relevant developments in the scientific and political life of Hungary, Romania, Austria, and Germany. The Erdélyi Muzeum too transmitted the important results of Saxon Landeskunde, yet the lesser intensity of the coverage points towards an asymmetry of communication between the Magyar and Saxon practitioners. The reasons for the difference are not entirely clear and may have to do with the different status of the national minority and the titular nation. In any case, the Korrespondenzblatt never missed the opportunity for a critical remark when addressing the Hungarian capital, which was often found deficient whenever compared to Berlin. In historical writing nobody could surpass Ranke, just as no Hungarian equal was to be found for the archeologist Mommsen, from whom “all our knowledge originates,” regarding the Roman and pre-Roman history of Transylvania.189 Also his archeological and epigraphic institute and seminars in Berlin were heartily recommended for Budapest, since Transylvania had been the frontier zone between three Roman provinces.190 189  Friedrich Teutsch, “Theodor Mommsen, Römische Geschichte,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 5 (May 1886): 58–59. 190  N.N., “Karl Torma über dacische Inschriftenkunde,” Korrespondenzblatt, no. 3 (March 1887), 34–35.

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Saxon-Hungarian exchange remained relatively cordial at the professional level, which survived the nationalist populist tone, and which increasingly characterized not only the daily press, but also communication between the learned societies and their respective larger publics too. By the end of the century the popularization of scientific results was attached to a nationalist rhetoric in both cases. While both associations remained formally apolitical, they managed to transmit their worldview to the respective public. Both remained adherents of a moderate, relatively liberal national stance. Both of them represented a paternalist approach to science, although the aristocratic atmosphere of the Magyar institution allowed more space to women of higher status. Yet the educational and infrastructural possibilities of women were highly limited in pre-World War I Transylvania, as witnessed by the case of Zsófia Torma. As far as the participation of daily politics is concerned, the Korrespondenzblatt discreetly commented on the political developments from the point of view of the Saxon political elite. After the Hungarian-Saxon “Compromise” it became more sympathetic towards the government and more critical towards minority nationalism. All in all it kept a critical distance towards the state, which contrasted sharply with the state-legitimating stance in the public language of the Museum Society. The divergent rhetoric harbored divergent resources and institutional forms, and this makes the second great divergence between the status of the titular nation and those of the minority. For the Museum Society, professional emancipation took place through an alliance with the state-sponsored university and at the expense of financial, political, and to a great extent also scholarly autonomy. Its Saxon competitor instead managed to carve out a central space in the sphere of education and civic life, while securing through its private sponsors an independent status. All this took shape amidst policies that encouraged the development of a specialized and differentiated educational and civic infrastructure. They abolished the vestiges of the traditional order in Transylvania, and contributed to social emancipation. However, the nationstate introduced new inequalities between the privileged Hungarian “titular” nation and the less privileged national minorities. Ethnic discrimination was already part of the liberal constitution that did not erase political antagonisms, but reconfigured them. This was reflected by the outlook and the modi of organizing provincial scholarship. The case thus allows questions about the institutionalized inequalities between the dominant nation and the nationalities regarding support for research in the humanities during the Compromise Era. The unequal opportunities for developing scholarly infrastructures did not depend on the institutions only, nor on the government. Society itself went through a fundamental transformation. In general, civic networks expanded; they became more open and covered now the urban areas and spilled over to

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the countryside. By the turn of the century a tightening network of cultural associations and local museums competed for the attention and financial support of Transylvanians. They could become either a support for or a challenge to the two learned associations, which could or could not assert themselves within the changing environment. The Landeskundeverein was successful and established itself over the decades as the center of Saxon education and the Saxon public sphere. The Museum Society, on the contrary, chose alliance with the state, which resulted both from its historical path dependency and from its weaker ties with civic society.

48.2

25

1840s (1840‒1849) FIGURE 1

27.5

1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

Ratio of source publications in the Archiv and the Korrespondenzblatt (number of publications per decade per period).

11.4 8

1840s (1840‒1849)

8.5

1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 2  Ratio of publications in the political history of Transylvania (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

uneven development during the austro-hungarian compromise 10.4 7

3

1840s (1840‒1849)

1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 3  Ratio of pre-history and history of antiquity (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

4.6

4 3

1840s (1840‒1849)

1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 4  Ratio of ancient history: Dacian-Roman period—Inscriptions and numismatics (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

71.8

8 1840s (1840‒1849)

20.5 1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 5  Ratio of contributions on Saxon settlement in Transylvania (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

227

228

CHAPTER 4 86.6

47.5

43

1840s (1840‒1849)

1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 6  Ratio of contributions to the history of the Middle Ages and early modern history (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

12.8

4

4

1840s (1840‒1849)

1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 7  Ratio of contributions to social and economic history, esp. taxation (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

21.4

4 1840s (1840‒1849)

6.5 1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 8  Ratio of contributions to ecclesiastic history (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

uneven development during the austro-hungarian compromise

229

49.2

4 1840s (1840‒1849)

11 1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 9  Ratio of writings on individual persons (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

29.6

6 1.5 1840s (1840‒1849)

1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 10 Ratio of contributions to historical linguistics (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

11.8

3

1840s (1840‒1849)

0 1850/60s (1850‒1869)

1870‒1919

FIGURE 11 Ratio of contributions to dialects (Archiv and Korrespondenzblatt).

230 TABLE 7

CHAPTER 4 Themes and fields addressed by the Transylvanian Museum Society, 1860–1918 (Erdélyi Múzeum).191

Discipline/Field

1883–1906 (26 years)

1906–1918 (14 years)

Sociology Law Literature, universal Pedagogy, education Ethnography Geography Philology Historiography History, ancient (also: Dacia) History, universal (Europe, Asia, Balkans) History, Hungarian, settlement, medieval History, Transylvanian, political, material culture, local History, esoteric Historical sources, Hungarian and Transylvanian Philosophy Archeology History, auxiliary sciences Economics Hungarian folklore History, ecclesiastical History of art, monuments, architecture Commemorations Library science Music Literature, Hungarian History, military History, economy, material culture

10 12 50 55 25 10 36 7 5 9 25 47

2 1 4 7 2 1 7 1 — 1 4 13

3 16

— 4

28 (+23 reviews) 44 30 6 14 17 45 45 38 — 66 1 6

13 (1 review) 16 12 3 8 11 21 12 20 6 46 2 6

Source: Antal Valentiny and Géza Entz, Az EM név- és szakmutatója [The repertory of EM] (Kolozsvár: EME, 1942), 7–154. 191 My statistics treat only essays published in the Erdélyi Múzeum, and do not involve reviews or source publications, unless marked otherwise.

CHAPTER 5

Conclusion

Geographies (and Temporalities) of Polymath Learning

This book started with a contemplation of the “ifs” and “whens” of membership in the European Republic of Letters of the more exotic fringes of the Habsburg Monarchy. Recent historical literature on early modern knowledge communication has revealed that Brockliss’s mapping of the French provinces of the orbis litterarius1 has evoked similar questions among historians dealing with areas that did not belong to the core zones of European learning: To scholars of Renaissance and early modern Europe, the idea of a republic of letters seems obvious, natural, and well documented. To historians of early America—even intellectual historians—the category is much less familiar. I have often found myself asking whether the Americas formed part of this thing we were calling the republic of letters, and, if so, how, and when.2 Indeed, historians have in the past years probed the modern intellectual milieus both for their parochial and global dimensions.3 The interest in colonial contact zones, imperial go-betweens, and attention on the long-distance circulation and clotting of knowledge has sharpened focus on the features of the “peripheries” of knowledge production and the manifold personal, institutional, and political dependencies regulating these processes within larger imperial polities. These findings create a new background for my analysis. Transylvania too was a dependent territory within a composite Habsburg structure, yet it had no colonial status. Contemporary Transylvanian intellectuals were well aware of this difference. Though massively curtailed in the 1  Hans Bots and Françoise Waquet, La république des lettres (Paris: Belin, 1997). 2  Caroline Winterer, “Where Is America in the Republic of Letters?,” Modern Intellectual History 9, no. 3 (2012): 597–623, at 597–598. 3  Liam Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2007); Brockey, ed., Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern World (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008); Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007); Florence Hsia, Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009), cited in Winterer, “Where Is America in the Republic of Letters?,” 601. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004303058_007

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everyday practice of really existing absolutism, these composite elites had a legally grounded status within the Monarchy, which constitutes a difference with the lack of legal representation of the North American colonies in the British Parliament. Another major difference to the mightiest periphery of the European republic of letters consisted in the social conservatism and the divergent cultural loyalties of the Transylvanian Hungarian and German savants. These loyalties were also the products of mutually exclusive political affinities, embedded in a politics of difference on behalf of the Habsburg government and its Hungarian successor. The ensuing tensions prevented the shaping of a unified political program among the Transylvanian elites, let alone a republicanism of similar kind to the most prominent former British colony, the United States of America. The social and political differences conferred the Hungarian, Romanian and Saxon elites distinct places and antagonistic stances within the dynamics of liberalization that enfolded in national framework from the 1830s onwards. The more Transylvania was encompassed by the fever of nation-building, the more Hungarians dominated diet politics, exposing the fragility of the Saxon estates. Similarly significant was the gap between the elites and the numerical majority of the province’s overall population, the Romanians of Greek Catholic and Orthodox faith. The same dynamics that urged Hungarians to pursue the political union of Transylvania and Hungary had strengthened in Transylvanian Romanians the conviction that their exclusion from local politics was intolerable. Their demands of political incorporation went hand in hand with scholarly efforts that underscored their identity and historical origins as a nation. Nationalism was the most active force that divided up the republic of letters in the polyglot eastern Habsburg realms well before the creation of nation-states, and not only along cultural affinities but along mutually exclusive political claims. This makes one agree partially with Caroline Winterer, who asserted that “all around Europe and the Americas in the decades after 1800, the pre-national intellectual world of the republic of letters gave way to the international intellectual world of increasingly powerful, nationally based institutions, patronage, and reward structures.”4 In East-Central and Eastern Europe, the decades around 1800 coincide with the shaping of powerful, competing, and, as the Transylvanian case illustrates, mutually exclusive national scholarly agendas on a voluntary and civic basis, which was only selectively endorsed by the nation-states that emerged from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. On the other hand, due to the tardy formation of nation-states in this region, the traditional institutions of the scholarly 4  Ibid., 622.

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republic kept their social significance until the First World War, which runs counter to the findings from the Western part of Europe. As a result, at the threshold of the nineteenth century, Transylvania, wrought by the manifold national cultural pathways, did not gravitate around one single cultural metropolis. In contrast to the asserted England- and Londoncentrism of British America5 and the pre-eminence of Paris as a touchstone for the French provinces of letters, different Transylvanian elites of different linguistic and denominational background developed different allegiances to German and Austrian, then Hungarian, and finally Romanian knowledge hubs in the Central European and Balkan cultural spaces. These allegiances were shaped by student peregrination, but also by the migration of scholars, books, periodicals, academic disciplines, and objects of scholarly and artistic interest. The Transylvanian republic of letters had acquired ethnonational contours in the last decades of the eighteenth century via the first learned journals printed in German, that is, in a vernacular language and not in Latin. It was the creation of elites in the service and often in the direct employment of the monarchy. Built on Freemason networks, the Transylvanian intellectual milieus on the cusp of the nineteenth century embraced the utilitarian and improvement-oriented rhetoric of knowledge, and similar to their brethren in Europe and beyond created the infrastructures and practices of scholarship. My book has investigated these milieus and their scholarly outcome, Landeskunde and honismeret. Guided by the utilitarian and patriotic ideal of late eighteenth-century governance, German and Hungarian scholarship set out to chart the fatherland. My analysis revealed that honismeret was not simply the Hungarian translation of Landeskunde, but an adaptation of the German scholarly tradition. This is why I decided to keep both words in the analysis, drawing attention to the differences in the scholarly outcome of these entangled intellectual contexts. Another crucial recognition was that contemporary Romanian scholars did not adapt Landeskunde as a specific body of knowledge. We know 5  This was the case despite the more recent recognition that even the British American intellectual landscape was more variegated than hitherto assumed. See Mark Peterson, “Theopolis Americana: The City-State of Boston, the Republic of Letters, and the Protestant International, 1689–1739,” in Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Patricia Denault (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2009), 329–370; Silvia Sebastiani, “Anthropology beyond Empires: Samuel Stanhope Smith and the Reconfiguration of the Atlantic World,” in Negotiating Knowledge in Early Modern Empires: A Decentered View, Palgrave Studies In Cultural And Intellectual History, ed. László Kontler, Antonella Romano, Silvia Sebastiani, and Borbála Zsuzsanna Török (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 207–233.

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about Transylvanian Romanian historiography, philology, yet there was no Romanian equivalent to this Landeskunde in the sense of a polymath, synthetic, governance-relevant exploration of the fatherland. The scanty participation of Romanians in the higher tiers of contemporary state administration and their political marginalization seems to explain the gap. There must have been cultural barriers to the Romanian adaptation of Landeskunde too, as the latter was transported to Transylvania via the intellectual networks linking Transylvanians to the German and Austrian faculties of law and philosophy, where the predominance (at the Austrian universities) or the effect of the “Protestant international” remained uncontested. This was the case despite the political imposition of the Habsburg state on higher education since the reforms initiated by Maria Theresa. The Catholic-dominated institutions in the monarchy interfered, channeled, and controlled, without stopping or persecuting for extended period of time, the peregrination of Protestant knowledge across their territories. Transylvanian scholars criticized the social fragmentation of their patria as having a retarding effect on a unified intellectual life. Count Mikó characterized the Saxon-Hungarian duality of the pre-1848 Transylvanian Diet as one political body with two hearts. Obviously, cultural heterogeneity was only a facet of a deeply fragmented local society. This was so much the case that not only the practice but even the posited ideal of the republic of letters begs for an answer here. However, despite the parochial self-interest of Transylvanian scholarship, it also pursued more general goals. Provincial savants saw it as their duty to put their province on the broader European map of knowledge, and were deeply concerned with the ignorance and false knowledge of the world “abroad” on Transylvanian matters. Landeskunde and honismeret were not entirely wanting of a cosmopolitan agenda either, if cosmopolitanism means the ability “to encounter those unlike themselves with enthusiasm and curiosity.”6 Saxon Landeskunde was driven by curiosity in the provincial others, guided less by the effort to overcome the centuries-old social barriers of Transylvania, but rather by the wish to know and thus govern the varieties of local society. Hungarian honismeret intended further to convey knowledge about the patria and about the wider world to the “nation,” the latter understood as a modern cultural and political community stretching across the border between Transylvania and Hungary. The national thrust of these practices signaled that the mercantilist concern of contemporary scholarship that fitted 6  Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitanism in an Age of Expansion, 1560–1660 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008), 10.

Conclusion

235

the imperial logic of Vienna around 1790 was also shaped in contradistinction and in opposition to its centralizing and leveling effects. Hence a conservative aspect of Landeskunde and honismeret, both seeking to legitimate the rights of the governing estates in Transylvania after the death of Joseph II. If there was no single core of provincial intellectual life, then which were the many? As the first three chapters showed, the emerging Hungarian capital of Pest-Buda became the dominant cultural signpost for Transylvanian Hungarians until the Compromise Era, as it hosted for a while the single university of the Hungarian Kingdom. Equally important as the University of Pest was its press but also booksellers, reading circles, and Masonic networks. These were run by a patriotic nobility, absorbing with the times the emerging urban Bildungsbürgertum, and powerful enough to secure both private and public patronage for the National Museum (1802) and the Hungarian Learned Society (1825). These were the models of similar projects shaping up in Kolozsvár, both in their academic agenda and the institutional setup. The Transylvanian Saxon milieus, involving pastors, secondary school professors, and legally trained administrative staff, were of heterogeneous social composition as well. It was especially the temporary administrative seat of the province, Hermannstadt, which hosted bureaucrats of Austrian and Catholic extraction, while the ecclesiastical elite was mostly of Lutheran background. As a result, personal, cultural, and political ties to Vienna were cultivated throughout the first half of long nineteenth century and even beyond, while in scholarship most important was the scholarly practice brought home from the universities; chiefly Göttingen, then Berlin, Jena, and Heidelberg, alongside Vienna as well. Protestant Hungarian students too kept the tradition of peregrinatio to German universities, especially before 1848, which also fostered the contemporaneous development of similar scholarly practices in both linguistic milieus. Greek Catholic Romanians, who formed the minority of Transylvanian Romanians, adhered to Vienna and Rome, and to a lesser extent Buda. The model character of the “Transylvanian (Romanian) School” for the Danubian Principalities, for Bucharest and Iași, dissolved with their emancipation from Ottoman rule and Romanian state formation in the 1850s, when the two major Romanian university cities took over the lead. In all cases scholarship was by the mid-nineteenth century an urban phenomenon, and in Transylvania too it was the regional administrative seats (Kolozsvár, Marosvásárhely, Hermannstadt or educational and commercial hubs (Kronstadt, Mediasch) that hosted its infrastructure. It was only from the 1880s onwards when the associational networks first extended into the countryside. Along

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the divergent affinities, Saxon and Hungarian cultural elites had much in common, and indeed their earliest intellectual milieus show already interferences and actual cooperation. My use of the word “province” made it possible to map the shifting interactions between persons, institutions, the fatherland, the monarchy, and the nation-state in the negotiation of relevant knowledge, without reference to the presently highly contested term “periphery.” Like many other historians of non-metropolitan knowledge production,7 I too preferred to scrutinize my subject without recurring to that leveling and ideologically charged model. Yet no analysis can escape addressing the hierarchies and asymmetric power relations that govern knowledge production in dependent territories. While no binding definition can be given either of “provinciality” or “peripherality,” also because it signifies a status that is both self-inscribed as much as it is a product of external factors, it is possible to assess the relative changes of dependencies or (hinging on the perspective) emancipation. Speaking of the most prominent cultural province, namely contemporary British post-colonial America, Caroline Winterer considered the turning point of emancipation the moment, “when peripheries have absorbed enough practices of the republic of letters that while physically remote they have become intellectually quite close.”8 Driven by a comparable impetus, this book also sought to identify the moment when the Habsburg province started to turn into a self-sufficient center of knowledge. Taking account of the various ethnonationally organized scholarly regimes, I saw this moment in the advent of professionalism that took off in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. However, even this transformation affected the various linguistic milieus to a different degree. The Hungarian politics of difference after 1867 privileged the scholarly infrastructure of the titular nation in Transylvania. It benefited particularly the professionalization of the Museum Society, which developed into a research complex of Transylvanian topics both in the humanities and in the natural sciences. The Landeskundeverein in contrast, establishing itself as a center of Transylvanian Saxon education, but also a cultural instance of high prestige, fashioned itself as the core of a minority and civic movement and kept its distance from the state. In the latter regard its strategy was similar to those of the Romanian intellectual milieus. These differences show the uneven emancipation of Transylvania, which kept its multiple external dependencies and internal rivalries when it came to intellectual and financial support. 7  James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew, eds., Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (New York: Routledge, 2007). 8  Winterer, “Where Is America in the Republic of Letters?,” 614.

Conclusion



237

What was Landeskunde?

At the end of my study Landeskunde reveals itself as a pragmatic, amphibian, and cumulative set of knowledge that adapted itself to its intellectual environments and shaped local scholarship significantly over the long nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century it was a polymath and fact-finding practice, with an encyclopedic interest in the physical and human environment. It carried the mark of late eighteenth-century patriotism of German and Austrian extraction: scholarly curiosity was not boundless, but focused on the narrower fatherland. Its scope spanned all the facts considered relevant about the home territory and its inhabitants, and it was up to the curiosity, educational assets, and sources at the disposal of its practitioners, whose sum total defined its contours and contents. The fatherland could entail very different geographical and cultural spaces, as the practice of Landeskunde and honismeret illustrates. Landeskunde was not the solitary practice of individuals—the one-author journals such as the magazine Transsylvania run by Benigni von Mildenberg were short-lived—but the stock of knowledge accumulated by the “collecting collective,” usually presented in a more or less formal learned circle, to be finally published either as articles in journals, in the form of books, or displayed through the materiality of museum collections. At the threshold of the nineteenth century it was partly due to the polymath ethos and partly the result of Viennese politics, the latter reluctant to invest in higher learning and academic specialization in the province, that Landeskunde fashioned itself as a dilettantish rather than a professional academic practice. That this characteristic did not disappear in the early 1800s, but lasted well into the second half of the nineteenth century, is exemplified first by the foundation of the Verein for Siebenbürgische Landeskunde in 1840, and the even more delayed launching of the Transylvanian Museum Society and its collections in 1859–1860. The latter too reflected an encyclopedic concept of scholarship, modeled on the collections of the British Museum, the National Museum in Pest, as well as the smaller private museums of Transylvanian aristocrats from the eighteenth century. The first Transylvanian Landeskunde museum incorporated a library and comprised various holdings from archeology, botany, zoology, and mineralogy to art, maps, and books. The methodology of Landeskunde derived from in-situ observation and data gathering. In other words, the scholarly mapping of Land und Leute conveyed empirical knowledge mainly in geography, ethnography, history, archeology, philology, and population statistics. Yet it was also a critical scholarship. Whether in the domain of the legal history of the

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individual estates, or the documentation of the topography of a specific mountain region, Landeskunde had an interest in the critical proof of facts and sources for their authenticity and validity. Hence came the capacity of Landeskunde associations to establish critical studies in the humanities and the sciences of the social and natural realms well before the launching of research in the framework of state-funded institutions. Obviously, such endeavors could not but remain contingent upon the temporary manpower, curiosity, political interest, and financial resources of these associations—and the shifting conjunctures in their lives are telltale. Similar to the Landeskundeverein, the Museum Society never defined the precise scope or the binding disciplinary setup of honismeret. Yet the amassing of data was not haphazard. It was indebted to the logic and principle of governance inasmuch as it sought the systematic collection of relevant data, the Staatsmerkwürdigkeiten (state-relevant particularities). The practice of Landeskunde was inseparable from the efforts invested by the Habsburg rulers into the improvement and modernization of the ragged and unprofitable feudal administration, laying the ground of modern knowledgebased state management.9 The imperial reforms had employed for the first time population surveys in the framework of the successive military mapping of all the lands of the monarchy through the second half of the eighteenth century, registering agricultural productivity too, and in general building on the idea of extensive information of the imperial center about the whereabouts in each territory. Landeskunde appears thus during the time of the ancien régime as the preoccupation of the administrative elites, which explains its confinement to the overlapping Hungarian-aristocratic and Saxon-Austrian intellectual milieus. As Chapter 2 showed, Landeskunde reflected the conservative social vision of the provincial elites. Its improvement-oriented vision helped reconfigure traditional feudal hierarchies into new, cultural ones, and the Transylvanian case is a proof that social meliorism did not translate into an advocacy of democratic aims and social mobility before the Napoleonic wars. Hungarian scholars represented an even more particularistic voice within this choir, resenting the intervention of the Crown into local affairs. Already at its inception, 9  Hamish M. Scott, Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1990), 145–187; László Kontler, “Polizey and Patriotism: Joseph von Sonnenfels and the Legitimacy of Enlightened Monarchy in the Gaze of Eighteenth-Century State Sciences,” in Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Cesare Cuttica and Glenn Burgess (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 75–90.

Conclusion

239

Landeskunde conveyed different visions about the territorial and national scope of the patria: For Saxon scholars this coincided with the boundaries of the Transylvanian fatherland, the geographical framework of the centuries-old privileges of the German minority. They were shaken first by the imperial ambitions of the Habsburg rulers and in particular Joseph II, while the greater threat was the budding Hungarian nationalism, seeking to incorporate Transylvania into Hungary. Contemporary honismeret already served the program of cultural union, placing at the center of scholarly attention not the “land,” but the improvement of the “nation.” As described in Chapter 3, it was particularly Saxon Landeskunde that explicitly formulated an elite and hierarchical social vision over the provincial population, championing German culture and its scholarly advancements to the benefit of Hungarian, Romanian, Roma, and Jewish segments in the patria. It promptly called into being Hungarian and Romanian emulations. The century-long dynamics of the competing knowledge traditions in the vernacular can be modeled as entangled histories, a pattern well known from other ethnically mixed regions of Europe.10 Two aspects followed from this. First, neither Landeskunde nor honismeret were free from an apologetic vision on their own “nation.” Second, even if none of these scholarly representations effaced the presence of the mostly Romanian non-elites completely, the dominant attitude was paternalistic throughout the nineteenth century. The social background of the two learned societies reflected the general differences between two types of middle-class formation in the first half of the nineteenth century in the German and Hungarian context. In the former case the members of the Landeskundeverein were predominantly Bildungsbürger: gymnasium professors and teachers, pastors and members of the public administration. In the latter case the aristocracy was in the lead, while the rank-and-file of the Museum Society originated from the nobility, landed or not. It was the aristocratic character of Hungarian learned sociability in general that allowed the early participation of women, provided that they had the adequate social pedigree and did not advance revolutionary and/or democratic ideas. Another structural difference between Landeskunde and honismeret was their different status within the broader educational field. Landeskunde was channeled from the beginning into secondary and adult education, and the Landeskundeverein kept its close contact to Lutheran church-supervised schooling throughout the period. In contrast, the Museum Society addressed 10  Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, “La construction d’une référence culturelle allemande en France: genèse et histoire (1750–1914),” Annales ESC (1987): 969–992.

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the Hungarian learned public, wishing to become a provincial academy.11 During the first two decades of its existence, the society was the meeting place of predominantly Hungarian savants and patriotic amateurs, and the connection to secondary education or to the broader public had never been an urgent necessity as it was in the Saxon case. The Museum Society thus found its true place within the national higher educational system in Hungary after 1867.

The Transformation of the Republic of Letters in the Nation-State

Having in view the late emergence of learned societies in Eastern Europe, my book advanced the hypothesis about the proliferation of the republic of letters in this region even after its putative end in the European “core zones” around 1800. The crisis of polymath learned sociability has been fixed traditionally to professionalization and specialization, and these processes are regarded in connection with the formation of modern nation-states. This Eurocentric account does not regard the later transformation and disintegration of the large composite monarchies in the east and south of the continent into nationally framed polities. Provinces like Transylvania witnessed the passage in 1867 from political membership in the grudging Habsburg administration to a nationstate providing selective patronage to local scholarship. The tug of war at the Transylvanian Diet of 1841–1843 between the Saxon and Hungarian estates and finally the silence of the central authorities concerning the public patronage of the local infrastructure of scholarship revealed an ungenerous monarchy, but also the new tensions created by the vernacularization of knowledge in the composite setting. The revolution of 1848 and the ensuing decade of neoabsolutist repression further conserved the status quo, so that one can speak about a more systematic infrastructural professionalization in the scholarly domain only after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. The foundation of the state-sponsored university in Kolozsvár in 1872 marks the turning point and a breach in the dynamics of local intellectual milieus. In Great Britain or France pioneering research in the natural sciences and medicine continued to take place as a private initiative of amateurs or institutions outside the academic domain well into the second half of the nineteenth

11  See “Az erdélyi museum-egylet alakitó közgyűlésének jegyzőkönyve” [Protocol of the founding meeting of the Transylvanian Museum Society], in Az EME évkönyvei [EME yearbooks], vol. 1, (1859–1861), ed. Sámuel Brassai (Kolozsvár: Ev. Ref. Főtanoda, 1861), 1.

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241

century.12 The new Hungarian universities, also the Franz Joseph University of Kolozsvár, adhered not to these, but to the German model. Secularization, bureaucratization, specialization—these are the categories indicating the most important changes that distinguished the Humboldt-type research university, which became a reality in the German lands after 1830. While important discoveries were being made everywhere else too, the German system institutionalized the freedom of the researcher as a “professional, bureaucratically regulated activity” already before the mid-nineteenth century. This was to take place in Hungary in the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as the tendency to absorb scholarship previously organized by the learned societies outside the walls of the academe. The post-revolutionary decades that fostered specialization in the German and Austrian lands recreated social exclusivity on the basis of professional achievement. Landeskunde in these countries gradually transformed into historical scholarship, being affected by the professionalization of history as a discipline and the institutionalization of historical research as science.13 Associations specializing in historical inquiry were now the most modern form instead of the traditional loci of the universities, academies, and the older types of polymath learned societies. Membership in these new institutions was no longer defined on the basis of voluntary participation, but the quality of the scholarly work. In contrast, my two associations preserved their traditional broad social recruitment on a voluntary basis. By the 1880s, Landeskunde and honismeret incorporated research in the humanities about Transylvanian topics, with a focus on the respective “nation.” This coincided with a broader trend, namely the transformation of historica­l associations in German-speaking Europe. In Germany, such institutions estab­ lished after the foundation of the Reich in 1871 became self-evident participants in the public sphere. The object of research, the narrower patria, was no longer the utopian “realm of patriotic fantasy” any more but a member of the “German fatherland” achieved through state unification.14 Their Transylvanian counterpart, the Landeskundeverein, played a different role after 1867. Much of the scholarship it produced, especially its studies on Saxon culture and history, found direct application in the school curricula. Through its active 12  Walter Rüegg, ed., A History of the University in Europe, vol. 3, Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 17. 13  Hermann Heimpel, “Geschichtsvereine einst und jetzt,” in Geschichtswissenschaft und Vereinswesen im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Hartmut Boockmann, Arnold Esch, and Hermann Heimpel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 45–73, at 53. 14  Ibid.

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involvement in education it continued to be an important agent in nationality politics. The association was active in shaping public opinion by transmitting and legitimating the stance of the dominant Saxon elite vis-à-vis politics. Correspondingly it heavily recruited its members from prominent Saxon political circles. Transylvanian scholarly associations provided the infrastructure of knowledge production about the province before the professionalization of scholarship. The entry of professional librarians, archivists, and university faculty into the field of Landeskunde and honismeret is, by contrast, the most important novelty of scholarly life in Transylvania in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They changed not only the social fabric of the voluntary associations—one should just think about their conflict with the lay members, and the fading glory of the formerly most powerful patrons of the local republic of letters, the polymath aristocrats. The public disclosure of Count Kemény as a forger of documents and the silencing of the pioneering amateur archeologist Baroness Zsófia Torma illustrate my point. Middle-class professionals contributed to the transformation of scholarly communication across the linguistically separated intellectual milieus. They fostered the professional ethos of science, which safeguarded the regeneration of the spirit of the republic of letters. In Transylvania too, the “invisible university” was based on the benevolent cooperation of scholars in specific fields, based on scientific standards. This was the case with the source editing enterprise of Franz Zimmermann, relying in his work on the cooperation of many archivists, librarians, and historians in Transylvania, with the art historical reflections of Victor Roth and the archeological activities of Pósta; the list could be continued with the names of the many professors, also in the natural sciences, whose activity could not be considered in this book.15 Indeed, this was the professionalization of Landeskunde and honismeret, in the sense of the adaptation of international standards in research as well as participation in the international scholarly practice. The maturation of research on Transylvania in the shape of larger collective projects, such as source editions, scholarly and linguistic dictionaries, archeological excavations and the like brought the professional maturation of the patriotic exploration of the fatherland by the beginning twentieth century and its international visibility in German-speaking Europe, but also south of the Danube. The professionalization of exchange with a host of other learned societies and research institutes abroad and the institutionalization of review functions in the associations’ periodicals also secured participation in international exchange. Here, rather impersonal practices received 15  Rüegg, A History of the University, 75.

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emotional and political meaning in personal exchange with select savants, who, like professors Wattenbach or Virchow, were commenting the cultural achievements of their Transylvanian partners with enthusiasm, not entirely free of politically partisan agendas. Regional scholarship continued to be pragmatic. Its disciplinary setup, the preponderance of individual disciplines within, and the central scholarly themes were constantly adapting themselves to the main theoretical and thematic dynamics of the humanities, as was the focus on the history and ethnic origins of the (modern) nation. The professional standards being established in the humanities in Germany and Hungary were soon to find their application in Transylvania. In the Landeskundeverein, the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth were dominated by inquiries into Saxon national history in the Transylvanian multiethnic context and most specifically into the geographic and ethnic origins of the Saxon colonists during the Middle Ages. The new discipline of comparative linguistics, drawing on ethnographic and historical resources—a knowledge that had been accumulated for decades in the association—brought the awaited breakthrough in the research. Also novel was the field of prehistoric archeology that shed light on the ancient inhabitants of Transylvania within a broader European and even Eurasian framework. The latter discipline built partly on earlier results in classical archeology from the 1850s and 1860s, and thanks to contacts with specialists abroad, it provided an avenue for Transylvanian scholarship to assert itself on the international stage. A further innovation in the ranks of the association concerned the development of new channels of communication with the public and their involvement in collaborative projects on the abovementioned key themes and disciplines. The launching of a popular journal in 1878 was to serve this purpose specifically. The trajectory of the Hungarian institution was different. The University of Kolozsvár and the Museum Society benefited each other mutually, the latter offering its facilities for use to the former, which in turn generated an unprecedented knowledge flow, transforming the provincial society into a modern research institute within a few decades. Eventually, as shown over the course of Chapter 4, the impact of the innovation was so significant that the problem of commensurability with the Landeskundeverein emerges. However, the Museum Society was not transformed into a research appendage of the university. In particular its historical-archeological collections and library helped in developing a distinct regional research program on Transylvania, which allows a comparison with its peer Saxon association. The scholarly profile of the Landeskundeverein developed in a more steady, if less spectacular fashion. In the face of the great differences of the social context and support, the ­output

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in Saxon Landeskunde and Hungarian honismeret produced fairly similar results regarding the main research themes, the disciplinary configuration of the exploration of the fatherland, and also the volume of contributions. The institutional and organizational consolidation of the Museum Society at the turn of the century coincided with a generational shift in the ranks of the directorate, which drew research and work on the holdings into a common research program on Transylvanian themes.16 The society experienced a spectacular scientific expansion once the university staff found their place in its framework. Some of the sections became specialized institutes, as was the case of the medical section or the legal and social welfare section, which had nothing more to do with the original program. Honismeret proper developed mainly in connection with the collections, out of which the library and the archeological holdings constitute the basis of comparison with the Landeskundeverein. The botanical, zoological, and mineralogical collections were also built around the Transylvanian research agenda, developing parallel with the Saxon Siebenbürgische Verein für Naturwissenschaften and other specialized research institutes after the mid-nineteenth century. The professionalization of the holdings was particularly visible in the new field of prehistoric and non-classical archeology, and in the simultaneous development of the history library, joined by a Transylvanian archive and a manuscript collection. By that time, more attention could be devoted to the members outside Kolozsvár as well. Newly launched itinerary conferences and specialized public-oriented services raised the preponderance of provincial Transylvanians in the ranks of the society: in 1908 almost half of the association members were outside of Kolozsvár. Tragically, the internal consolidation came on the eve of World War I, at the end of which the society was left with immense material and manpower losses and faced new beginnings in a hostile new state. The attitude of the Hungarian universities towards the nationalities remained controversial throughout the liberal era. Indeed, in view of the confessional and linguistic diversity and the largely peasant hinterland, a friction between different nationalities and confessions was inevitable.17 This permeated the attitude of professors in Kolozsvár, who often adopted the hostile 16  The new generation of trained specialists who managed the museum collections included Professor Béla Pósta, at the fore of the archeology collection, the philologist Pal Erdélyi, director of the library, Professor István Apáthy, leading the zoological collection, Dr. Gyula Szádeczky, director of the mineralogy collection, and Dr. Aladár Richer, director of the botanical garden; see previous chapter. 17  Rüegg, A History of the University, 64.

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nationalist fin-de-siècle ideology of the state. The ideological warfare against Transylvanian Romanian ethnic politics had an impact on research as well, the sharpest being the confrontation in the journal of the Museum Society with the no less ideological assertions of Romanian historiography. The populist overtones were in a sharp contrast with the expert ethos, proving once more the permeation of modern scholarship by politics. Indeed, if professionalism could establish itself in strictly scholarly circles, communication with the larger public applied a palpably populist rhetoric at the turn of the century. Thus, if the Museum Society defended the state, the Landeskundeverein advocated the civic ethos of the nationality, free from the intrusion of the state. Behind the words there were the infrastructural differences caused by a politics of difference. The first one consisted in the identity of the sponsors: the Landeskundeverein benefited from the financial support of the largest Transylvanian Saxon savings banks, the latter belonging to the realm of private business and more generally to the civic sphere. The Hungarian counterpart on the other hand affiliated itself with the state. The expensive collections of the Museum Society increased dependency from the mighty sponsor, while receiving no commensurate support from the business realm or other civic institutions. The second difference consisted in the management and marketing of the scholarly products. While the Landeskundeverein gained profit, or at least could avoid red numbers by selling its publications at home and internationally, and could secure financially its more costly projects (in particular the publication of historical documents), this was not the case with the Museum Society. The latter remained dependent on the available funding. The directors of the museum holdings saw the state as the only guarantor of professional financial assistance for the collections, an opinion often emphasized in the yearly reports during the decade preceding World War I. At the same time, the Transylvanian public was often criticized for its lack of sympathy—an unjust accusation in regard to the lengthy list of donations of books, documents, and archeological items. The more plausible explanation is that science was a costly undertaking, and professionalization prevented the strengthening of ties with local society.18 It is hoped that my case study on the hitherto little researched areas of the “disembodied”19 republic of letters on the eastern geographical periphery of Europe further raises sensitivity towards the impact of the local political 18  See Erdély Múzeum-Egyesület Évkönyve [Museum Society yearbooks] from 1907 until 1914, in comparison with the Jahresberichte des Vereins für siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 1907–1914. 19  Winterer, “Where Is America in the Republic of Letters?,” 601.

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landscape on knowledge production. This book has been an effort to extend the geographical and chronological limits of research by drawing into its ambit a lesser-known and less typical region, while being attentive to its larger Central European intellectual surroundings. For sure, the republic of scholars did not end after 1800, but acquired new life in the nineteenth century through the activity of the learned societies, which became the intellectual centers of culturally highly segmented societies. How important the impact of politics, both formal and far-away, and informal and local, was on its dynamics and transformation into an uneven professional research landscape, can be hopefully gleaned from this book. The composite province did not render cleancut solutions, and the passage of Transylvania from a grudging monarchy to a selectively supportive nation-state left a strong mark on the provincial geography of learning.

Bibliography Archival Collections Archiv des Siebenbürgen-Instituts, Schloss Horneck, Gundelsheim am Neckar Direcţia Judeţeană Cluj a Arhivelor Naţionale (County directorate of the national archives, ANC): Fond 594 Colecţia personală József Kemény (Personal collection József Kemény). Direcţia Judeţeană Cluj a Arhivelor Naţionale (County directorate of the national archives, ANC): Fond Familial Gyulay-Kuun (Family collection Gyulay-Kuun). Direcţia Judeţeană Cluj a Arhivelor Naţionale (County directorate of the national archives, ANC): Fond 298 Societatea Maghiara Ardeleana (The Transylvanian Hungarian Society). Direcţia Judeţeană Sibiu a Arhivelor Naţionale (County directorate of the national archives, ANS): Fond 170 Societatea ştiinţifică pentru cunoaşterea Transilvaniei (The scientific society for the knowledge of Transylvania) Direcţia Judeţeană Sibiu a Arhivelor Naţionale (County directorate of the national archives, ANS): Fond 3 Fond familial Bedeus (Family collection Bedeus)

Journals/Periodicals Archiv zur Kenntnis von Siebenbürgens Vorzeit und Gegenwart [Archive of the Knowledge of Transylvania’s Prehistory and Present] (Hermannstadt), vol. 1 (1840/1841). Edited by Johann Karl Schuller. Archivu pentru filologia și istoria: Revistă pentru studiul limbii romîne [Archives of philology and history: review for the study of Romanian language] (Blaj) (1867–1870, 1872). Edited by Timotei Cipariu. Árpádia. Honi történetek zsebkönyve [Árpádia. Pocketbook of the histories about the fatherland]. (Košice) (1833–1838). Blätter für Geist, Gemüth und Vaterlandskunde [Papers for the mind, spirit, and regional scholarship. Supplement of the Siebenbürger Wochenblatt [Transylvanian Weekly] (Kronstadt) (1838–1858). Erdélyi Hiradó [Transylvanian Courier] (Cluj) (1827–1848). Foaie pentru minte, inimă și literatură [Paper for the mind, heart, and literature. Supplement of the Gazeta de Transilvania [Transylvanian Gazette] (Brașov) (1835–1865). Kolozsvári Közlöny [Journal of Kolozsvár] (Cluj) (1856–1873). Iris (Pest) (1840).

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Nemzeti Társalkodó [National Conversant]. Supplement of the Erdélyi Hiradó (Kolozsvár) (1830–1844). Siebenbürger Blätter [Transylvanian Papers]. Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift [Transylvanian Quarterly] (Hermannstadt) (1790–1801). Transylvania, periodische Zeitschrift für Landeskunde [Transylvania, periodical for regional scholarship], vols. 1–3 (1833–1838). Edited by Joseph Benigni von Mildenberg and Karl Neugeboren.

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Index Ackner, Johann Michael (1782–1862) 64, 66, 134 Adriatic Sea 13 Ágotha, János (1808–1880) 105 Aiud/Nagyenyed/Straßburg am Mieresch 50, 82, 220 Alba Iulia/Gyulafehérvár/Weissenburg 91, 127 Alexi, Ioan, Bishop (1800–1863) 143, 149 Algyógy/Geoagiu 203, 206 Almás/Merișor 171 Andrew II, Árpádian, King of Hungary (1177–1235) 169 Apáthy, István (1863–1922) 192 Arad 15 Aranka, György (1737–1817) 35, 50–55, 57–58, 62, 81, 86, 138, 195 Ariușd/Erősd 210 Austria, Habsburg Monarchy/Empire 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12–16, 19, 25, 28, 39, 57, 61, 62, 85, 91, 110, 112, 122, 123, 129–131, 137, 157, 165, 166, 173, 175, 211, 223, 224, 231, 232, 234 Avignon 6 Báternay, Antal 83, 105 Bach, Adolf 187 Baden 66 Bagosi, Sándor 83 Balázsfalva/Blaj/Blasendorf 160 Bálint, Gábor, Szentkatolnai (1844–1913)  214 Balkans 13, 202, 203, 207, 208, 209, 211, 215, 216, 218, 230, 233 Ballagi, Mór (1815–1891) 146 Ballmann, Johann Michael (1765–1804) 53 Banat 2, 14, 190 Bánffy, György, Count (1746–1822) 43, 52 Bariţ, George/Gheorghe (1812–1893) 95–97, 99, 135, 157, 159 Batthány, Ignác (1741–1798) 195 Bavaria 108, 148, 155, 175 Bayle, Pierre (1647–1706) 6

Beckmann, Johann (1739–1811) 64 Benkő, József (1740–1814) 133 Berethalom/Birthälm/Biertan 170 Berlin 18, 19, 39, 60, 118, 122, 134, 148, 155, 173, 182, 206, 207, 224, 235 Beszterce/Bistritz/Bistriţa 37, 74, 179 Bethlen, András, Count (1847–1898) 103 Bethlen, János, Count (1811–1879) 82 Bethlen, János Jr., Count 82 Bethlen, Sándor, Count (1777–1863) 196 Bielz, Eduard Albert (1827–1898) 132, 134, 135, 153, 181 Biertan/Birthälm/Berethalom 170 Binder, Georg Paul (1787–1867) 68–71, 121, 122, 125 Binder, Johann (1767–1805) 44 Birthälm/Berethalom/Biertan 170 Bistriţa/Bistritz/Beszterce 37, 74, 179 Bistritz/Beszterce/Bistriţa 37, 74, 179 Blaj/Balázsfalva/Blasendorf 160 Blasendorf/Blaj/Balázsfalva 160 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich (1752–1840) 64 Bod, Péter (1712–1769) 51 Bolla, Martin (1751–1831) 53 Bölöni, Farkas Sándor (1795–1842) 55, 86–87, 89, 146 Brandsch, Rudolf (1880–1953) 187 Braşov/Kronstadt/Brassó 15, 37, 67, 73, 74, 90, 91, 101, 115, 117, 118, 121, 124, 125, 159, 160, 174, 197, 219, 221, 235 Brassai, Sámuel (1797/1800–1897) 146, 151, 154–155, 190, 195 Brassó/Kronstadt/Braşov 15, 37, 67, 73, 74, 90, 91, 101, 115, 117, 118, 121, 124, 125, 159, 160, 174, 197, 219, 221, 235 Bratislava/Pressburg/Pozsony 29, 76 Brno/Brünn 157 Brukenthal, Samuel von, Baron (1721–1803)  7, 43, 60, 61, 86, 138, 171, 176, 188, 195, 200, 223 Brünn/Brno 157 Budapest, Pest/Buda 2, 4, 18, 19, 24, 41, 53, 60, 61, 79, 82, 87, 95, 104, 112, 118, 123, 136,

282 Budapest, Pest/Buda, (cont.) 141, 144, 149, 150, 153–156, 157, 159, 160, 171, 173, 174, 189, 195, 201, 202, 206, 207, 212, 216, 218, 222, 224, 235, 237 Bucharest 2, 19, 21, 159, 187, 216, 217, 235 Bulgaria 139 Bun/Kistövis/Subpădure 171 Bürger, Ferencz 82 Burghalle/Orheiu Bistriței/Óvárhely 171 Carpathian Basin 129, 172, 173, 203, 209, 211, 212 Carpathian Mountains 137, 157 Cârța/Kerz/Kerc 171 Caşolţ/Kastenholz/Hermány 171 Caucasus 202, 212 Chirpăr/Kirchberg/Kürpöd 171 Chmel, Joseph (1798–1858) 123 Cincu/Großschenk/Nagysink 171 Cipariu, Timotei (1805–1887) 149, 157 Cluj/Klausenburg/Kolozsvár 3, 20, 24, 47, 53, 62, 72–74, 76–78, 83, 86, 87, 89–92, 108, 112, 113, 122, 127, 136, 142, 143, 146, 147, 149, 150, 154, 155, 163, 174, 176, 189, 190, 193–195, 200, 202, 209, 216, 219, 221, 235, 240, 241, 243, 244 Cserey, Miklós (1780–1844) 82 Dacia 64, 67, 130, 171, 172, 201, 205, 208, 215–216, 218, 27, 230 Danube River 159, 218, 242 Danubian Principalities, see also Wallachia or Moldavia 96–97, 110, 139, 159, 235 Danubian region 139 Debrecen 163 Deesch (Burglos)/Dés/Dej 219, 220 Degenfeld, Schomberg Ottó, Count 105 Dej/Dés/Deesch (Burglos) 219, 220 Dés/Dej/Deesch (Burglos) 219, 220 Deva/Déva/Diemrich (Schlossberg) 219 Déva/Deva/Diemrich (Schlossberg) 219 Diemrich (Schlossberg)/Déva/Deva 219 Döbrentei, Gábor (1785–1851) 55 Dresden 18 Eder, Josef Karl (1760–1810) 44, 53 England, see also Great Britain 45 Eötvös, József (1813–1871) 137, 144, 150, 190

Index Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) 6 Erdélyi, Pál (1864–1936) 149, 192, 199, 200, 212 Erősd/Ariușd 210 Esterházy, László de Galánta, Count (1810–1891) 104 Ferenczi, Zoltán (1857–1927) 199 Fessler, Ignaz Aurelius (1756–1839) 55 Filtsch, Johann (1753–1836) 44 Filtsch, Samuel 124 Finály, Henrik (1825–1898) 146, 152, 190, 201, 202, 208, 209, 212 Firnhaber, Franz 128, 176, 177 Fischer, E., 218 Fogarasi, János 82 Fosztó, Károly 83 France 7, 44, 45, 64, 117, 148, 194, 240 Frederick II, Hohenzollern, King of Prussia (1712–1786) 95 Gál, János (1799–1891) 82 Galicia 14 Gatterer, Johann Christoph (1727–1799) 18 Gebbel, Franz (1835–1877) 186 Genersich, Antal (1842–1918) 206 Geneva 6 Geoagiu/Algyógy 203, 206 Gerando, Antonina de (1845–1914) 148 Gerando, August de (1819–1849) 102 Germany 2, 7, 44, 45, 47, 53, 64, 67, 69, 82, 94, 122, 123, 129, 165, 166, 173, 177, 180, 183, 185, 223, 224, 241, 243 Géza II (c. 1130–1162), Árpádian, King of Hungary 67 Gherla/Szamosújvár/Neuschloss 219 Ghica, Alexandru (1796–1862) 159 Göllner, Josef 125 Gooß, Carl (1844–1881) 172–173 Góró, Lajos (1786–1843) 105 Gött, Johann (1810–1888) 91, 124 Göttingen 18, 29, 38, 39, 57, 64, 81, 148, 235 Great Britain, see also England or Scotland 7, 194, 240 Grois, Gusztáv (1811–1874) 82 Großschenk/Nagysink/Cincu 171 Gundelsheim am Neckar 3 Gunesch, Andreas (1799–1875) 122 Gusbeth, Eduard (1839–1921) 174, 186 Gyarmathi, Sámuel (1751–1830) 18, 57

283

Index

Jakab, Elek (1820–1897) 146 Jankó, János (1868–1902) 214 Jena 18, 29, 38, 39, 235 Joseph II (1741–1790), Habsburg, Emperor of Austria 14, 29–32, 34, 37, 43, 46, 56, 95, 129, 235, 239 Jung, Julius (1851–1910) 217

Kastenholz/Hermány/Caşolţ 171 Kästner, Viktor (1826–1857) 134 Keisd/Saschiz/Szászkézd 68 Kemény, József, de Gerend, Count (1795–1855) 63–64, 66, 76–78, 80, 82, 91–92, 104, 113, 125, 127, 138, 141, 143, 176–177, 195, 242 Kemény, Sámuel, Count (?–1861) 76–78, 82, 104, 195 Kerc/Kerz/Cârța 171 Kerz/Kerc/Cârța 171 Királyföld/Königsboden/Pământul crăiesc 31, 84, 134 Kirchberg/Kürpöd/Chirpăr 171 Kisprázsmár/Tarteln/Toarcla 171 Kistövis/Bun/Subpădure 171 Klausenburg/Kolozsvár/Cluj 3, 20, 24, 47, 53, 62, 72–74, 76–78, 83, 86, 87, 89–92, 108, 112, 113, 122, 127, 136, 142, 143, 146, 147, 149, 150, 154, 155, 163, 174, 176, 189, 190, 193–195, 200, 202, 209, 216, 219, 221, 235, 240, 241, 243, 244 Koch, Antal (1843–1927) 194, 206 Kőhalom/Reps/Rupea 74, 179 Kolozsvár/Klausenburg/Cluj 3, 20, 24, 47, 53, 62, 72–74, 76–78, 83, 86, 87, 89–92, 108, 112, 113, 122, 127, 136, 142, 143, 146, 147, 149, 150, 154, 155, 163, 174, 176, 189, 190, 193–195, 200, 202, 209, 216, 219, 221, 235, 240, 241, 243, 244 Kolozsváry, Pál 104 Komáromy, András (1861–1931) 177 Königsboden/Királyföld/Pământul crăiesc 31, 84, 134 Košice/Kaschau/Kassa 29 Kovachich, Márton György (1744–1821) 53 Kovács, Miklós (1769–1852) 105 Kőváry, László (1819–1907) 102, 133, 146, 154 Krauss, Georg (1607–1679) 41 Kriza, János (1811–1875) 146 Kronstadt/Brassó/Braşov 15, 37, 67, 73, 74, 90, 91, 101, 115, 117, 118, 121, 124, 125, 159, 160, 174, 197, 219, 221, 235 Kürpöd/Kirchberg/Chirpăr 171 Kurz, Anton (1799–1849) 125 Kuun, Géza, Count (1838–1905) 190

Kaschau/Košice/Kassa 29 Kassa/Kaschau/Košice 29

Lázár, Kálmán, Count (1827–1874) 154 Lázár, Miklós, Count (1819–1889) 154

Gyulafehérvár/Alba Iulia/Weissenburg 91, 127 Gyulai, Pál (1826–1909) 150, 190 Gyulay, Lajos Jr., Count (1800–1869) 104 Halle 29, 38, 39, 41 Haltrich, Joseph (1822–1886) 124, 134, 167, 170 Hampel, József (1849–1913) 173, 206 Hann, Friedrich (1817–1852) 125 Hațeg/Hátszeg/Wallenthal 160 Hátszeg/Hațeg/Wallenthal 160 Heeren, Arnold Hermann Ludwig (1760–1842) 64 Heidelberg 3, 18, 19, 38, 123, 182, 235 Herbert, Heinrich (?–1905) 118 Hermann, Ottó (1835–1914) 150 Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben/Sibiu 29, 37, 44, 60–65, 73–74, 90, 108, 112, 117, 120, 124, 125, 129, 131, 132, 154, 159, 160, 169, 171, 173–175, 179, 180, 188, 197, 235 Hermány/Kastenholz/Caşolţ 171 Heyne, Christian Gottlob (1729–1812) 64 Honterus, Johannes (1498–1549) 170, 187, 221 Horváth, Mihály (1809–1878) 128, 138 Hunfalvy, Pál (1810–1891) 154, 216–218 Hunfalvy, János (1820–1888) 116 Hungary 2, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 28, 29, 34, 39, 42, 44, 51, 52, 56–61, 66, 76, 79, 82, 84, 88, 89, 96, 98, 100, 110–113, 116, 120, 128, 136–139, 147, 149, 153, 155, 163, 172, 175, 177, 179, 180, 182, 188, 189, 194, 203, 209–211, 215, 219, 221, 224, 232, 234, 239–241, 243 Iași 159, 235 Italy 13, 61, 64, 80

284 Lebrecht, Michael (1757–1807) 133 Leiden 39 Leopold II, Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor (1747–1792) 30, 33 Lészay, Dániel (1798–1872) 105 Lichtenstein, Friedrich, Duke 144 Lorenz, Josephine 148 Lővy, Ferencz (1869–1944) 220 Lugoj/Lugos/Lugosch 160 Lugos/Lugoj/Lugosch 160 Lugosch/Lugoj/Lugos 160 Magoss, Irén 148 Máramaros/Maramureș 2 Maramureș/Máramaros 2 Maria Theresa, Habsburg, Empress of Austria (1717–1780) 28, 30, 32, 37, 234 Marienburg, Lucas Joseph (1770–1821) 49, 56, 133 Marmont, Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de, Marshal (1774–1852) 102 Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureș/Neumarkt  29, 80, 219–221, 235 Mátyási, József (1765–1849) 39 Mediaş/Mediasch/Medgyes 37, 53, 72, 74, 118, 179, 235 Mediasch/Medgyes/Mediaş 37, 53, 72, 74, 118, 179, 235 Medgyes/Mediasch/Mediaş 37, 53, 72, 74, 118, 179, 235 Mediterranean Sea 172 Merișor/Almás 171 Mikes, János 82 Mikó, Imre, Count (1805–1876) 97, 113–115, 135–145, 147, 148, 150, 155, 163, 171, 188, 190, 195, 199, 234 Mildenberg, Joseph Benigni von (1782–1849)  62, 63, 125, 133, 237 Mohács 77, 175 Moldavia 96–97, 110, 139, 159 Moldovan, Grigore (Gergely) (1845–1930)  216, 219, 224 Mommsen, Theodor (1817–1903) 123, 173, 182, 224, Morres, Eduard (1851–1945) 181 Morres, Wilhelm (1849–1936) 181 Mühlbach/Szászsebes/Sebeş 74, 118, 125, 159, 170

Index Müller, Friedrich (1828–1915) 134, 172 Muntenia 159 Nagyenyed/Aiud/Straßburg am Mieresch 50, 82, 220 Nagysink/Großschenk/Cincu 171 Nagyszeben/Hermannstadt/Sibiu 29, 37, 44, 60–65, 73–74, 90, 108, 112, 117, 120, 124, 125, 129, 131, 132, 154, 159, 160, 169, 171, 173–175, 179, 180, 188, 197, 235 Nándorválya/Valea Nandrului 203 Neugeboren, Daniel Georg (1759–1822) 42, 43, 46, 47, 51, 63, 66, 70 Neugeboren, Karl (1789–1861) 63 Neumarkt/Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureș 29, 80, 219–221, 235 Neuschloss/Szamosújvár/Gherla 219 North America 12, 55, 81, 87, 186, 219, 231–233, 236 Northern Europe 18, 172 Nuremberg 107 Ocna Sibiului/Vízakna/Salzburg 82, 171 Orbán, Balázs (1829–1890) 153 Orheiu Bistriței/Burghalle/Óvárhely 171 Ottoman Empire 12, 13, 16, 97, 131, 137, 140, 141, 152, 235 Óvárhely/Burghalle/Orheiu Bistriței 171 Paget, John (1808–1892) 100–102, 146 Pământul crăiesc/Königsboden/ Királyföld 31, 84, 134 Pap, József 83 Partium 190, 220 Pósta, Béla (1862–1919) 192, 202–204, 209, 211, 242 Pozsony/Pressburg/Bratislava 29, 76 Prague 157 Pressburg/Pozsony/Bratislava 29, 76 Prussia 59, 60, 66, 92, 175 Pulszky, Ferencz (1814–1897) 173 Pütter, Johann Stephan (1725–1807) 18 Rabeburg (Burgberg)/Vurpód/Vurpăr 171 Ranke, Leopold von (1795–1886) 108, 122, 129, 131, 169, 224 Reguly, Antal (1819–1858) 154 Reinecke, Paul (1872–1958) 206

Index Reinpold, Ignácz 105 Renner, Karl (1870–1950) 187 Reps/Kőhalom/Rupea 74, 179 Reschner, Martin (1791–1872) 127, 176 Rhine region 167, 172 Richter, Aladár (1868–1927) 192 Rome 5, 32, 235 Roska, Márton (1880–1861) 209–211 Rösler, (Eduard) Robert (1836–1874) 217 Roth, Stefan Ludwig (1796–1849) 125 Roth, Victor (1874–1936) 184, 185, 202, 224, 242 Rupea/Reps/Kőhalom 74, 179 Russia 12, 25, 117, 202 Șaguna, Andrei, Baron, Bishop (1808–1873)  112, 149, 157 Săliște/Szelistye/Selischte 160 Salzburg/Vízakna/Ocna Sibiului 82, 171 Schaffhausen, Henri 173 Scharberg, Joseph Bedeus von, Count (1783–1858) 63, 66, 72, 78, 118, 125, 171 Schäßburg/Segesvár/Sighişoara 37, 64, 74, 118, 122, 125, 171, 172, 179, 235 Scherg, Georg Alfred (1863–1943) 187 Schiel, Samuel Traugott (1812–1881) 124 Schliemann, Heinrich (1822–1890) 206, 207 Schlözer, August Ludwig (1735–1809) 18, 29, 41, 50, 51, 53, 54, 57, 138, 175 Schmeizel, Martin (1679–1747) 41 Schmidt, Wilhelm 153 Schreiber, Simon 83 Schuler-Libloy, Friedrich von (1827–1900)  129, 134, 138 Schuller, Johann Karl (1794–1865) 64–66, 70–72, 74, 75, 81, 102, 103, 120, 125, 128, 167 Schullerus, Adolf (1864–1928) 168, 175 Schwartner, Martin (1759–1823) 41 Scotland, see also Great Britain 7 Sebeş/Mühlbach/Szászsebes 74, 118, 125, 159, 170 Segesvár/Schäßburg/Sighişoara 37, 64, 74, 118, 122, 125, 171, 172, 179, 235 Selischte/Săliște/Szelistye 160 Siberia 18 Sibiu/Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben 29, 37, 44, 60–65, 73–74, 90, 108, 112, 117, 120, 124,

285 125, 129, 131, 132, 154, 159, 160, 169, 171, 173–175, 179, 180, 188, 197, 235 Sighişoara/Schäßburg/Segesvár 37, 64, 74, 118, 122, 125, 171, 172, 179, 235 Somlyai, János 142 Sonnenfels, Joseph von (1732–1817) 38, 42, 48 St. Petersburg 88, 209 Stockholm 209 Straßburg am Mieresch/Nagyenyed/Aiud  50, 82, 220 Subpădure/Bun/Kistövis 171 Switzerland 64 Szabó, Károly (1824–1890) 150, 152–155, 190, 199, 201, 221 Szádeczky-Kardoss, Gyula (1860–1935) 192 Szamosi, János (1840–1909) 193 Szamosújvár/Neuschloss/Gherla 219 Szász, Károly (1798–1853) 82 Szászsebes/Mühlbach/Sebeş 74, 118, 125, 159, 170 Szelistye/Săliște/Selischte 160 Szilágyi, Ferenc (1797–1876) 154 Szilágyi, Sándor (1828–1899) 190 Szontagh, Gusztáv (1793–1858) 154 Tagányi, Károly (1858–1924) 177 Târgu Mureș/Marosvásárhely/Neumarkt 29, 80, 219–221, 235 Tarteln/Kisprázsmár/Toarcla 171 Téglás, Gábor (1848–1916) 206 Teleki, József, Count (1790–1855) 78, 79, 105, 195 Teleki, Sámuel, de Szék, Count (1739–1822)  52, 80 Teutsch, Friedrich (1852–1933) 124, 172, 181–186, 224 Teutsch, Georg Daniel (1817–1893) 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127–129, 132, 135, 139–141, 156, 175–177, 181, 182, 184 Thomas, Karl 181 Thracia 172, 207, 208, 218 Thun, Leo von, Count (1811–1888) 121 Tisza, Kálmán (1830–1902) 21 Toarcla/Tarteln/Kisprázsmár 171 Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805–1859) 115 Toldy, Ferenc (1805–1875) 137, 138, 144

286 Tordos/Turdaș 173, 203, 205–207, 209, 211 Torma, József (1801–1864) 205 Torma, Károly (1829–1897) 152, 201, 202, 203, 205 Torma, Zsófia (1832–1899) 148, 173, 190, 203, 205–213, 223, 225, 242 Trausch, Franz Joseph (1795–1871) 121, 134, 138, 176 Trauschenfels, Eugen von (1833–1903) 134 Treitschke, Heinrich von (1834–1896) 182 Troy 206, 207 Tübingen 29, 38 Turdaș/Tordos 173, 203, 205–207, 209, 211 Ukraine 210 United States of America 232 Utrecht 39 Valea Nandrului/Nándorválya 203 Vámbéry, Ármin (1832–1913) 152 Vărd/Werd/Vérd 171 Vargha, Gyula (1853–1929) 178 Vatican 175 Vérd/Werd/Vărd 171 Vienna 2, 13, 17–20, 28, 29, 38, 52, 57, 62, 63, 65, 66, 71–74, 81, 96, 112, 113, 118, 122, 123, 128, 131, 134, 160, 173, 182, 202, 209, 235 Virchow, Rudolf (1821–1902) 173, 174, 187, 206, 207, 243 Vízakna/Salzburg/Ocna Sibiului 82, 171 Voß, Albert (1837–1906) 173, 206 Vurpăr/Rabeburg (Burgberg)/Vurpód 171

Index Vurpód/Rabeburg (Burgberg)/Vurpăr 171 Wallachia 96–97, 110, 139 Wallenthal/Hațeg/Hátszeg 160 Wass, Ottilia, Countess (1829–1917) 204 Wattenbach, Wilhelm (1819–1897) 123, 182, 243 Weimar 18 Weissenburg/Gyulafehérvár/Alba Iulia 91, 127 Wenrich, Johann Georg (1787–1847) 122 Werd/Vérd/Vărd 171 Werner, Carl 181 Wesselényi, Farkas Jr., Baron (1796–1850) 105 Wittenberg 64 Wittstock, Oskar (1865–1931) 187 Woititz, József 105 Wolff, Carl (1849–1929) 186 Wolff, Johann (1844–1893) 167, 168 Württemberg 66 Zalău/Zilah/Zillenmarkt 219, 220 Zagreb 157, 163 Zeyk, János (1786–1860) 105 Zeyk, József (1806–1852) 82 Zichy, Jenő, Count (1837–1906) 202, 212, 214 Zilah/Zillenmarkt/Zalău 219, 220 Zillenmarkt/Zilah/Zalău 219, 220 Zimmermann, Franz (1850–1935) 165, 175–177, 183–185, 202, 221, 223, 224, 242