IGNÁC ROMSICS the Hungarian Aristocracy and Its Politics

IGNÁC ROMSICS The Hungarian Aristocracy and its Politics in KARINA URBACH (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 187–200 ISBN: 978 0 199 23173 7 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 11 The Hungarian Aristocracy and its Politics IGNAC ROMSICS The Hungarian aristocracy of the interwar period comprised about 300 to 350 families or clans. A more precise estimate of their number cannot be given because of intermarriages, both domestic and international, and various colligations of family names. Of these families, approximately half held the title of baron; the other half were counts. Only ten clans were titled herceg (prince), and a single family, related to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, bore the title of archduke. Some of the clans were relatively large, at times comprising thirty to forty house- holds, each headed by a title-holder, while there were also exam- ples of the opposite extreme, when a clan comprised only three or four--and sometimes even fewer--adult males. The aristocracy, therefore, hardly exceeded a few thousand in number, meaning that it made up less than 0.1 per cent of the country's population of almost nine million. Most clans had received their respective titles after 1541: only two families held titles dating back to medieval times. 1 Centuries of dividing lands up between heirs and the massive loss of estates entailed by the Trianon Treaty meant that the aristocracy was far from homogenous in terms of wealth. While some continued to rank among the richest in the land, an ever- increasing number were forced to work for their living. In the 1940 census, seventy-nine people reported an income exceeding 200,000 Pengos. Of these, eighteen individuals or 22 per cent were aristocrats. The next statistical group, comprising 290 individuals with incomes between 100,000 and 200,000 Pengos 1 Erno Lakatos, A magyar politikai vezetiJreteg z848-z9z8 (Budapest, 1942), 18-21;Janos Gudenus and Laszlo Szentirmay, Osszetort cimerek (Budapest, 1989), 7z---3; Gabor Gyani and Gytirgy Kover, Magyarorszag tarsadalomtortenete (Budapest, 1998), 19:,+ 188 IGNAC ROMSICS counted only twenty-four aristocrats (8 per cent), while among the 1,orn taxpayers earning between 50,000 and rno,ooo Pengos, the aristocracy made up only a small minority of thirty-three individuals or 3 per cent. 2 The affluence of the aristocracy had traditionally been ensured by the ownership oflarge latifundia. In 1935, the 1,171 estates exceeding 1,000 yokes in size accounted for 30 per cent of all the land in agricultural use. 3 Of the owners of these large estates, 687 (62 per cent) were members of the aristocracy. As with incomes, the aristocracy was most preponderant in the topmost categories, with a progressively diminishing share. 4 In terms of its social network, the aristocracy retained its caste- like character as late as the interwar years. Its castles were, in a sense, microcosms inserted into the world, with servants, precep- tors and governesses, duennas, ceremonial dinners, hunts, horse- races, tennis courts, and balls. The large cream-coloured manor house ofF6t, built in the Napoleonic era, with its Doric columns, its library of 80,000 volumes collected by my great-grandfather Joseph and his son Stephen, its mahagony shelves, its galleries and winding stairs, its stucco-moulded ceilings and open fireplaces, its 300 acres of park and its lake-one of them remem- bered this exclusive isolation-was a gilded cage that held us in splen- did isolation from the outside word ... Already as a small boy, I was made to realize that I was a privileged being, a special pet of the Almighty, who had made me heir to such great wealth. I was supposed to expect and obtain respect and exercise authority over the less privileged, who had to be directed, governed and assisted by us. Our atti- tude could best be compared with that of the English in their colonies, with the slight difference that the 'natives' were our own people.5 Its self-contained social networks, however, did not mean that the aristocracy was a relatively homogeneous and unitary stratum of society. Quite the contrary: the few hundred families with their 4,000 to 5,000 members were differentiated by a number of criteria, and multiple hierarchies existed. As a contemporary sociologist noted: 'the old magnate looks down on recently titled barons, the most ancient families even distinguish themselves 2 Dezsll Zentay, &s?.eliJ S?.timok, 13 vols. (Budapest, 1941-5), ix. 73-103. 3 One yoke equals 1.4 acres or 0.57 hectares. 4 Zentay, Bes?.eliJ S?.amok, xiii. 72-108. 5 Mihaly Karolyi, Memoirs ef Michael Karo!,i.· Faith without Illusion (London, 1956), 20. The Hungarian Aristocracy 189 from the other indigenous houses, the titled baron or industrialist looks down on similarly titled civil servants, yet may also despise-being more educated or productive-the ancient count.' 6 Duke Pal Esterhazy, the largest private landowner in the country with more than 200,000 yokes to his name, was remem- bered as having a nervous fit upon having to pay a visit to the prime minister of the time, who, although one of the most successful politicians of pre-war Hungary, was not a member of the nobility. 7 Using the criteria of when the title was granted, the size of the family fortune, ancestry, and confession, three loose groups may be identified among the aristocracy as a whole. The Transdanub- ians-so-called because of the geographical location of their estates-were in close contact with the imperial court in Vienna, linked to the supranational aristocracy of the empire, often by marriage, belonged to the Catholic Church, and had accumulated very considerable wealth over the centuries. A second distinct group consisted of the predominantly Calvinist Transylvanian aristocrats, whose material means were more modest (very modest, at times), and who usually married within their own group. The 'barons' made up the third group, this term referring to those who had received their titles for military or civic services, or for their economic achievements, largely in the nineteenth and early twenti- eth centuries. They were usually called soldier barons, industrial magnates, and so forth, all denominations reflecting their distinct status. The 'historical' baronial titles, whose holders usually social- ized with the similarly ancient counts, are therefore not included here, but they were a small minority. In the period between 1849 and 1918 alone, emperors FrancisJoseph and Charles I granted 204 titles to Hungarian nationals, all but a few of them baronial. A considerable number of generals and civil servants raised to the status of baron were of German origin and of relatively modest means, while extremely wealthy Jewish entrepreneurs made up the bulk of the industrial magnates. Even in the interwar years, these Jews failed to gain admittance to the exclusive circles of the historical aristocracy. 8 6 Istvan Weis, A mai magyar tarsadalom (Budapest, 1930), 145. 7 Mihaly Karolyi, 'Emlekezes az uri Magyarorszagra', Valtisag, 1(1946), 8. 8 Lakatos, A magyar politikai veze/6 reteg, 19-23; Gyani and Kover, Magyarorszag tarsadalomtiirtenete, 194-8. 190 IGNAC ROMSICS The influence of the aristocracy, like its finances, remained considerable between the two world wars, although it decreased by comparison with what it had been in the previous century. A statistical investigation of the legislature and executive provides clear evidence of this. The upper house of parliament, for instance, was always made up predominantly of aristocrats- before 1918 their share never sank below 70 per cent. When the upper house was reorganized in 1926, however, it was by and large conceived on corporatist grounds, and consequently only 28 per cent of the seats were held by aristocrats, with their share remaining relatively constant in the following years. Of the 240 to 250 representatives, 42 sat as delegates of the aristocracy, while a further 20 to 25 aristocrats held seats as a result of their public functions or in recognition of their services. 9 The aristocracy had never had a comparable influence in the lower house, which was elected by 61 per cent of the population before 1918, and by 30 per cent after 1920. Its share lay between 8 and 16 per cent before the First World War, but the high watermark of 15 per cent in 1910 had fallen to 5 per cent by 1920, before stabilizing at around JO per cent for a decade and a half in 1922, and finally decreasing to 8 per cent in 1939. In a sense, then, there was no significant decline in the representation of the aristocracy in the lower house, yet the number of seats held by aristocrats was also less significant in the first place. 10 A much more significant loss of ground can be registered in terms of offices in the executive. During the half-century before 1918, ten out of sixteen prime ministers had been aristocrats, while of the fifteen heads of government between 1919 and 1944, only three held an aristocratic title.

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