CÍMLAP
The numerus clausus in Hungary
CONTENTS, INTRODUCTION
Contents
Introduction
Part I. Academe and the politics of numerus clausus
Mária M. Kovács: The Hungarian numerus clausus: ideology, apology and history, 1919-1945
Peter Tibor Nagy: The first anti-Jewish law in inter-war Europe
Andor Ladányi: On the 1928 amendment to the Hungarian numerus clausus act
Victor Karady: The restructuring of the academic market place in Hungary
Robert Kerepeszki: "The racial defense in Practice". The activity of the Turul Association at Hungarian universities between the two world wars
Part II. Around the numerus clausus in Central-Europe
Katalin Fenyves: A successful battle for symbolic space: the numerus clausus law in Hungary
Csaba Fazekas: "Numerus clausus represents a strong national ideology." Bishop Ottokár Prohászka and the closed number law in Hungary
Tibor Frank: "All modern people are persecuted". Intellectual exodus and the Hungarian trauma, 1918-1920
Michael L. Miller: Numerus clausus exiles: Hungarian Jewish students in inter-war Berlin
Lucian Nastasä: Anti-semitism at universities in Romania (1919-1939)
János M. Bak: Memories about a segregated "Jewish Class" in a Budapest grammar school - 1939-1947
Vera Pécsi: Chronology of the numerus clausus in Hungary
Authors
Introduction
This volume offers a concerted set of studies on the impact of the Law
1920/XXV often recognised as aiming essentially to curb the high
representation of Jews in Hungarian higher education.
Our book is indirectly the outcome of two motivations. On the one hand a
large scale survey, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) in the
years 2009-2012, has provided ample information on the ethnic-confessional
composition of the student population before and after 1919 in Hungary,
allowing an objectivist evaluation of the academic impact of the numerus
clausus. On the other hand a memorial conference was organised by the
Holocaust Museum in Budapest to remember the 90th anniversary of this
extraordinary act of legislative infamy enacted by the 'Christian Course'
Parliament. Most of the authors of this book participated in the
conference. They were individually invited to contribute on the strength
of their special expertise and original research results in this matter
- in part directly deriving from the ERC project.
The relevance of our book for contemporary history writing, recently
enriched with a number of topical studies, can be illustrated by the
difficulties experienced by the conveners of this conference to publish the
proceedings of the event. The papers presented at the scholarly gathering
organised in November 2010 by and in the premises of the Budapest Holocaust
Museum at Páva street were, after a forceful change of direction in the
Museum, not allowed to be published at all, especially not under the aegis
of this state institution. The publication could be finally realised by the
initial conveners, after much tergiversation, thanks to private means and
the support of the contributors involved. The numerus clausus appears to
be such a controversial issue even nowadays, that its souvenir is still
regarded by many - especially decision makers in contemporary Hungarian
cultural politics - as worth to be covered by a generous forgetfulness
rather than analysed by means of advanced socio-historical scholarship.
The recognition of the results of such analysis would indeed disturb the
idillic clemency with which the epoque - concluded by the Shoah and another
defeat in a desastrous war entailing the loss of close to one tenth of the
country's population - is nowadays considered in official hindsight, as
objectivated in its symbolic policies.
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