THOMAS SPIRA (Charlottetown, P. E. I., Canada) THE

THOMAS SPIRA (Charlottetown, P. E. I., Canada)

THE VOLKSDEUTSCHE KAMERADSCHAFT AND THE SWABIAN DEMANDS ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR II

This study examines how the Volksdeutsche Kameradschaft (VK), the nationalist-autonomist völkisch wing of Hungary's German (Swabian) minority movement, succeeded in wresting concessions from the reluctant Hungarian government in 1938. The VK's leadership, consisting largely of unassimilated Swabian intellectuals, seceded in 1935 from the ranks of the Ungarlandisch- Deutscher Volksbildungsverein (UDV), a government-sponsored loyalist Swabian cultural organization founded in 1924. Although initially lacking mass support, the highly disciplined and indoctrinated YK attracted devoted followers from among a growing number of Swabians dedicated to National- Socialist-inspired völkisch principles and disenchanted with what they con- sidered to be unjust treatment by the Hungarian authorities. The 1938 issues of the Deutscher Volksbote (DV), the VK's official monthly pub- lication,l reveal that, as a prerequisite for peaceful coexistence with the Magyar majority, the völkisch Swabians demanded fundamental modifica- tions of the German minority's position in Hungarian society. This included mainly reform of Hungary's German minority school system, and recogni- tion of the Swabians as an autonomous corporate body, with the VK to serve as its guide. The völkisch Swabians' support by National Socialist Germany exacerbated and complicated the Magyar-Swabian controversy and injected an irreconcilable irritant into Swabian-Hungarian relations.2 A brief survey of the Swabians' historical position in Hungary suggests why the VK desired fundamental reform.33 The assimilationist trend in

1. Actually, by law, at intervals of at least five weeks. 2. The Third Reich recognized the VK as the sole and legitimate Swabian representa- tive in Hungary. Officially, Germany denied interfering in Swabianaffairs. Unofficially, and quasi-officially,however, Reich funds and agents found their way to the VK through circuitous routes. 3. For a more thorough discussion of the period before 1938, see the following major publications: IngomarSenz,Die nationale Bewegung derungarll'ndischenDeutschen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg.Eine Entwicklung im Spannungsfeldzwischen Alldeutschtum und ungarischer Innenpolitik (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1977); Béla Bell6r, Az ellenforradalom nemzetiségi politikájának kialakulása (Budapest: Akad6miaiKiadó, 1975); Thomas Spira, German-HungarianRelations and the Swabian Problem from 147

Hungary was a relatively recent development, a consequence of the nationalist fever bred by the 1789 French Revolution and by the cultural-nationalistic ideas of Johann Gottfried von Herder. In the early nineteenth century, Hungary was a multinational state, ideologically pluralistic in culture, and tolerant of ethnic and religious diversity in practice. Until shortly after the 1867 Compromise, Hungary's German population of nearly 2 million out of about 18 million inhabitants4 enjoyed unrestricted access to all types of German educational facilities except universities. Gradually, starting in 1879, the government either terminated German minority schools or transformed them into Magyar institutions. The Education Act of 1907 completed the process of Magyarization, and ended German instruction above the sixth grade level.5 By the time World War I ended, the number of Hungary's German population was considerably diminished, due mainly to secessions. On 4 June 1920, the Treaty of Trianon reduced the prewar population of Hungary by about two-thirds, its territory by nearly three-quarters, and also prescribed a number of legal obligations that Hungary resented as infringements on its internal affairs. Chief among these impositions were Articles 54-60 of the peace treaty, which compelled Hungary to protect the cultural and lingual prerogatives of the country's remaining ethnic minorities. One measure vouchsafed non-Magyars the right to optional elementary-level minority education. Post-Trianon Hungary's 1930 population of about 8? million included small enclaves of Romanians, Slovaks, and Serbs, but the Swabians emerged as a relatively numerous and formidable ethnic group. In 1930, out of nearly half a million Swabians, or approximately 5? percent of Hungary's total population, only about 100,000 were scattered in small ethnic fragments

Kkrolyi to Gombos1919-1936 (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs. 1977); Matthias Annabring, VolksgeschichtederDeutschen in Ungarn(Stuttgart: Verlag"Südost- Stimmen," 1954); G. Paikert, The Danube Swabians (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), Franz H. Riedl, Das Szia'ostdeutschtunain den Jahren 1918-1945 (Miinchen: Verlag des Sudostdeutschen Kulturwerks, 1962); C. A. Macartney, October Fifteenth, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1956); idem, Hungary and her Successors (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1937); Michael Hillinger, "The German National Move- ment in Interwar Hungary," unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia Univ., 1973; Anthony Komjathy and Rebecca Stockwell, German Minorities and the Third Reich. Ethnic Germans of East Central Europe between the Wars (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1980).

4. Not counting Croatia. 5. See Fricdrich Gottas, "Die Deutschen in Ungarn," in Adam Wandruszkaand Peter Urbanitsch, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918. Band III: Die Vblker des Reiches, 1. Teilband (Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980), pp. 380-84 ("Das deutsche Schulleben"); and Senz, Die nationale Bewegung, pp. 173- 76. _