Abstract
In contrast with the Magyar attitude which was pretty much unified in favor of assimilating the nationalities, the German one toward the Hungarian State idea and toward Magyar efforts for assimilation was rather complex. As is customary among minorities, different German individuals and groups were seeking different avenues in their endeavor to establish their status and improve their lot. Since to analyze all these approaches would far extend the volume of this study the writer is forced, rather reluctantly, to report in terms somewhat general.
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This situation holds true largely for the era between 1848 and 1867. In 1867 the celebrated Ausgleich (Compromise) was established which recognized Hungary’s equal status in the new dual-Monarchy. The Ausgleich rested on the hegemony of the Germans in Austria and the Magyars in Hungary over their various ethnic minorities, with the Monarch Franz Josef acting completely neutral. Receiving a cold shoulder from the aging Franz Josef, it was Franz Ferdinand, the heir apparent to whom the activist minorities — but again not the Germans — turned for aid behind the back of the emperor.
After the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–1849 the Serbians in southern Hungary were granted a kind of autonomy by Vienna (see Chapter II). Stimulated by this example, a considerable force of Germans in the same area (Banat, Backa) gathered in the German village of Bogarosch (Hung. Bogáros) on October 2, 1849 and petitioned the Crown in Vienna for similar privileges. The Crown, however, had turned down this Schwabenpetition (Swabian petition). This action, known in local historyas der Schwabentag von Bogarosch (the Swabian day of Bogarosch), being the very first manifestation of this kind among the Germans in Hungary, has been hailed by latter day German scholars and popular Germanists as the fountainhead of modern developments in the history of the Germans in Hungary. Cf. Annabring, op. cit., pp. 18, 19.
Comparatively minor incidents, as for instance the legal process against Edmund Steinacker in Szeged in February, 1903, for his alleged incitement of the Germans against the Magyar nation in the press, are discounted on the ground of their relative scarcity and insignificance. According to statistics gathered by German nationalists there were during the period between 1898 and 1908 14 cases tried in Hungarian courts in which Germans were accused for “instigating national hatred”. They resulted in a total of 2 years, 10 months and 10 days in prison sentences and 7,000 Kronen (ca $ 1,400) in fines. Cf. Jászi, op. cit., p. 335.
Chiefly Swabians, not the Transylvanian Saxons and the Zipser.
Annabring (op. cit.) arrives at about the same conclusion.
The Transylvanian Saxons sent some forty deputies to the Hungarian parliament, all of them, as a rule being elected on the ticket of the governmental (majority) party. There was a tacit agreement between the Saxons and Budapest, according to which the former would loyally support the policies of the government, and — more important — do nothing for the other German minoroties, including the Danube Swabians, if only their specific rights regarding (Saxon) ethnic preservation were guaranteed. These were the so-called “black Saxons” in contrast with a small minority of “green Saxons” who championed a close politico-cultural co-operation of all Germans in southeastern Europe. A leader of the latter was Rudolf Brandsch (see above, Chapter V), a member of the pre-1919 Hungarian parliament who preferred to speak, from about 1910 on, in the name of Hungary’s total German population. However, he left most Germans other than the “green Saxons” unmoved and his spokesmanship in his own time was often challenged by many of his non-Saxon kinsmen. His ideas have gained real recognition only long after his death, and at present there exists a revived cult of his personality and concepts in German academic circles.
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© 1967 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Paikert, G.C. (1967). Swabian Views on the Magyar State Idea — Political and Organizational Texture of the Swabians in the Pre-Hitler Period. In: The Danube Swabians. Studies in Social Life, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9717-5_7
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