Lorman Slavic Review 2020

2. Bilsel International Truva Scientific Researches And Innovation, 16-17 Aralık 2023, Çanakkale/Türkiye: Kongre Kirabı, Editors Dr. İlyas Erpay, Doç. Dr. Necati Sümer. BİLSEL: Yayın Tarihi: 25 Aralık 2023 – ISBN: 978-625-98675-0-2 pp.1130 1144. , 2023

The concept of neo-nationalism and “cultural supremacy” was the ideology of the Horthy regime, which ruled in Hungary between the two World Wars, in the 1920-30-ies. It went back to the Trianon Treaty of 1920, which marked the borders of “little” Hungary because Hungary lost the First World War, and the losers were punished, of course. The revanchist ideology of the Hungarian ruling noble class was the “regain what was lost”, that is, the strive to restore the former “Great Hungary”. Thus, the ideology of “cultural supremacy” was the “tool” for restoring the former territories; via looking down and underestimating the Slavic and Roman ethnicities, proclaiming that those were “of less value” than Hungarians, and their culture was “on less level” than that of Hungarians. -- The prominent representative of this ideology was Minister of Religion and Public Education, Count (“Gróf”) Kunó Klebelsberg. He renovated Hungarian education and benefited by establishing primary schools. Therefore, increasing the level of knowledge of people, and making them more literate people was not done with any purpose of catching up to the Western, European culture. But it was done to educate more and more nationalist people, who think of themselves as of more “higher value” than other people. Thus, the whole education was focused on “restoring” the former “great” Hungarian Kingdom, the whole youth of the country had been educated in the spirit of the revenge for the Trianon Treaty. --Klebersberg played a major role in the passing of the laws against Jews, the introduction of the “numerus clausus” and even its acceptance by international public opinion. The “numerus clausus” was a law that limited the number of Jewish students in Hungarian higher education, the law XXV of 1920, which preceded even Hitler’s anti-Jews laws. The Council of the League of Nations added a detailed debate on the numerus clausus law to its agenda. The representative of the Hungarian government was Kunó Klebelsberg, Minister of Cults and Public Instruction, who argued for justification of that law.

1999

Hungarian Studies, 2010

In the 1930s in Hungary, the periodical Magyar Szemle (Hungarian Review) ranked as the foremost intellectual review of conservative thinking. Edited by the pro-establishment historian Gyula Szekfû, the journal provided important intellectual ammunition to the traditionalists of the right, in other words those who for various reasons sought to hold on to István Bethlen's version of moderate conservatism in ideology and a parliamentary system of limited pluralism and authoritarian checks in practice. The 1930s, however, bore witness to several challenges to the Horthy regime. The rise of the extreme right and the emancipatory (though often also fervently nationalist) program of the so-called népi (populist or narodniki) writers presented coherent political alternatives to the prevailing order for the first time since the marginalization and emaciation of the left in the wake of the 1918-19 revolutions. Simultaneously, the country had to grapple with the emergence of Nazi Germany as an expansionist great power in the region. In this complicated situation, authors of Magyar Szemle confronted what they perceived as a dual threat: the increasing appeal of German imperialism and German political and historical thinking. Many intellectuals of the time, feeling that the German political challenge should be resisted through the adoption and adaptation of innovative German thinking on politics and history, espoused the new ideologies emanating from the unquestioned cultural center of Central Europe in some form. Magyar Szemle, however, emerged as a hub for public intellectuals who sought to hold on to a conservatism both more traditional and more open to some of the ideas of liberalism and who refused to abandon the established view of Hungarian history for a more ethnically conscious vision of the past. In the context of the dual German challenge of the 1930s, Magyar Szemle represented a site of intellectual resistance not so much against direct German political ambitions but against the new wave of German political thought and interpretations of history.

Paper deals with the ideology of the Hungarian extreme right-wing social organizations in the years of the formation of the Horthy era. We focuses our researches on the ‘Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete’ (’Association of Awakening Hungarians’), because it was the most wide-spread organisation. The ‘awakeners’ meant the most militant group including more ten thousand members which wanted to keep the government under pressure. They defined themselves as ‘real’ Christians, ‘intransigent’ Christians, who are ‘more Christian’ than other Hungarian political groups. Paper analyses their aggressive Anti-Semitic ideology, the speeches of their representative assemblies and their press. The ‘Christian’ meant through their view only ‘Non Jewish’, and the ‘Christianity’ was equal with ‘Anti-Semitism’. There was a close connection between some leading prelate and the Anti-Semitic ideology and agitation. These movements were liable for the Anti-Jewish extreme right compulsion on the streets and in the universities. Their extreme ‘Christianity’ played a very important role in the formation of Anti-Semitic public opinion in the 1920’s and founded the Anti-Semitism of the 1930’s.

Journal of Contemporary History, 2018

This special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History on ‘Europe’s interwar Kulturkampf’ explores the religious dimensions of the deep conflicts that characterized the interbellum. The heightened sense of contingency, the partisan violence, and the political polarization have led observers to call this period an ‘age of anxiety’, an ‘age of catastrophe’, ‘a second thirty years war’, even a ‘world civil war of ideologies’. Introducing the term ‘culture war’ into this crowded field of catchphrases is meant as a useful provocation. It inserts religion into the analysis of the clash of modern worldviews, which have hitherto been viewed largely from the perspective of political ideology. Furthermore, it prompts comparisons with other ‘culture wars’, in particular the nineteenth-century clashes over the public role of the Catholic Church, during which the term Kulturkampf was originally coined. The aim of this article is to sketch out the dimensions of such a comparison, drawing on some of the key findings of the contributors to this special issue. Finally, it asks what bearing these investigations of the interwar Kulturkampf could have on our understanding of the course of twentieth-century European history as a whole.

Politics, Religion & Ideology, 2024

After the events of autumn 1938, the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (Hlinkova slovenská ľudová strana; HSĽS) engaged in mythmaking to legitimize its regime in people's eyes. This included making a legend about the ‘capital of the movement’, a city linked to the party’s political struggle leading to ‘ultimate victory’. Ružomberok was naturally chosen, where chairman Andrej Hlinka lived and worked as a priest, and the party’s influential Ružomberok group came from. Using a creative destruction lens, this study follows the transformation of Ružomberok’s image from a provincial, politically insignificant town to the Slovak State’s spiritual metropolis and fascist Neueuropa’s progressive model city. We focus on the dynamics of reshaping: from initial plans, unimplemented reconstruction projects to politically motivated interventions in the public space to remodel Ružomberok corresponding to the new national ideology into a polis politicus highlighting the new aesthetics and values. Finally, we analyse political iconoclasm’s specific manifestations based on examples of political interference in architecture. We also reflect on the collapse of the old, ‘decadent’ to the construction of the new, ‘progressive’ on a societal level as targeted attempts by political elites to prove their system’s vitality through modernisation compared to its predecessors.

Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 2018

This article examines the rise of the nascent intellectual and business bourgeois elites of the Czechs and Slovaks, focusing on the transformation of their cultural program into a political one. The article takes a comparative approach and investigates the relationship of political programs to prepolitical identities, zooming in on the parameters of a broader Czech and Slovak state identity, including the role of the center (Vienna, Pest, Prague, or Pressburg) or language (analyzing both its unifying and divisive roles in bridging the ideas and visions of the emerging local elites). As I argue, in the case of the Czech and Slovak nationalist movements, we can observe a transition from a prepolitical to the political program in the mid-19th century itself.

Austrian History Yearbook, 2012

Chapter Two, "The Hungarian Trauma," is a narrative of Hungary's defeat in World War I, the subsequent democratic and Communist revolutions, as well as the counterrevolution under Admiral Horthy. This period is significant for Frank's argument because it provides the push factors that triggered the emigration of large numbers of Jewish and liberal Hungarian intellectuals and scientists. Most Hungarian emigrés sought academic positions in Germany. Chapter Three, "Berlin Junction," describes their emigration and contributions to German intellectual life. This chapter ties in with the themes Frank developed in Chapter One and shows the importance of prewar German-Hungarian intellectual and cultural ties. The fourth chapter, "Hungary and Selective Immigration to the U.S.," provides a valuable overview of U.S. immigration policies in the postwar era and their impact on Hungarian immigration before and during World War II. The next chapter, "'Incipit Hitler': Double Expulsion, Double Trauma," details the emigrés' individual and collective responses to Hitler's rise to power. The chapter also gives a detailed account of how they surmounted the barriers to their immigration to the United States with the help of a network of earlier Hungarian immigrants and American academic sponsors. Chapter Six, "Problem Solving and the US War Effort," connects the intellectual approaches developed in the Budapest's Mintagimnázium with the scientific efforts of emigré Hungarian scientists during World War II. The chapter also contains an interesting comparison of the political views of Leo Szilard and John von Neumann. In terms of its broader argument and approach, the book relates most closely to the immigration history of twentieth-century Hungarian intellectuals.

Hungarian Studies, 2010

In the 1930s in Hungary, the periodical Magyar Szemle (Hungarian Review) ranked as the foremost intellectual review of conservative thinking. Edited by the pro-establishment historian Gyula Szekfû, the journal provided important intellectual ammunition to the traditionalists of the right, in other words those who for various reasons sought to hold on to István Bethlen's version of moderate conservatism in ideology and a parliamentary system of limited pluralism and authoritarian checks in practice. The 1930s, however, bore witness to several challenges to the Horthy regime. The rise of the extreme right and the emancipatory (though often also fervently nationalist) program of the so-called népi (populist or narodniki) writers presented coherent political alternatives to the prevailing order for the first time since the marginalization and emaciation of the left in the wake of the 1918-19 revolutions. Simultaneously, the country had to grapple with the emergence of Nazi Germany as an expansionist great power in the region. In this complicated situation, authors of Magyar Szemle confronted what they perceived as a dual threat: the increasing appeal of German imperialism and German political and historical thinking. Many intellectuals of the time, feeling that the German political challenge should be resisted through the adoption and adaptation of innovative German thinking on politics and history, espoused the new ideologies emanating from the unquestioned cultural center of Central Europe in some form. Magyar Szemle, however, emerged as a hub for public intellectuals who sought to hold on to a conservatism both more traditional and more open to some of the ideas of liberalism and who refused to abandon the established view of Hungarian history for a more ethnically conscious vision of the past. In the context of the dual German challenge of the 1930s, Magyar Szemle represented a site of intellectual resistance not so much against direct German political ambitions but against the new wave of German political thought and interpretations of history.

Forum Historiae

LENČÉŠOVÁ, Michaela. The Concept of "Nation" and "National Community" in the Thinking of Štefan Polakovič: A Case of the Nazi Idea of Volksgemeinschaft Spread within Slovak Catholic Nationalism. This study explores a range of shifts in the understanding of "nation" by Štefan Polakovič, a Catholic intellectual, in the period of the wartime Slovak Republic, focusing on the root causes of Polakovič's adoption of Volksgemeinschaftthe racial concept of "nation" that drew upon the ideology of German National Socialism. The current paper examines the genesis of the Slovak adaptation in Polakovič's interpretation and his coming to terms with the Catholic critique of racism. Polakovič's conceptualisation of the idea of "nation" is explored within a wider context of its understanding in Slovak political Catholicism. of Volksgemeinschaft (national community) from the ideology of German National Socialists. The term "national community" was employed in Slovak Catholic nationalist discourse with the same connotations. 5 In an encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge (1937), Pope Pius XI condemned the anti-ecclesiastical policies of the German National Socialists, along with racism, chauvinism and statism, though he did not question the existence of races, nations or modern secular states. He argued that the supreme place ought to belong to God and order should not be based on race, nation or state, but on natural law bestowed by God. 6 Notwithstanding the Pope's criticism of racism, some European Catholic intellectuals, including Slovaks, adopted the concept of Volksgemeinschaft. 7 This study examines the rationale behind such incorporation of the German National Socialist concept of "nation" in the thinking of Štefan Polakovič.