Agárdi Izabella – Miszlivetz Ferenc:

The Empire of A Golden Age Messages from a Creative Era

Its beginning and end have been subject to many debates, its historical significance is beyond doubt. Understanding its legacy still poses a challenge. As with any great culturally complex period it is overladen with contradictions and ambivalences. It is characterized by an ever- widening social-economic space, material affluence, technological innovation, infrastructural development as much as a kind of optimistic liberalism, a vibrant cultural-intellectual atmosphere and relative peace. At the same time, however, sharpening ethnic conflicts, social tensions and a level of complexity that was culturally exciting albeit politically difficult to contain. This essay attempts to highlight some of the horizons and spaces that widened unexpectedly in this particular historical context. These spaces manifest in the unprecedented, rapid growth of Budapest, the exciting changes in the relationship between the two capitals and the Empire’s aspirations to become a modern, constitutional state reformulating its civilizing mission. The period deserves rethinking for many reasons. Most importantly, the widening intellectual and creative spaces was feeding into creativity much the same way as breeding the possibility of becoming the melting pot of diverse cultures, linguistic and religious communities and social classes.

I. The Memory of Dualism

For historians grasping the complex and many-faceted relations of the Dual Monarchy poses a constant challenge. Trying to understand the complex movement of people enabled by a wide imperial space, the increased social mobility that was often covered over by the realm of polity, and interpreting the rich albeit controversial cultural legacy that the Empire has left behind have yielded us many one-sided or ideologically distorted analyses. All of those illusions, all the splendour and contradictory ambitions, which in Musil’s words have melted into ”one vibrant meaning” create the necessity to examine the period through looking at the larger context of empire-building in a Dual Monarchy and the localized process of Budapest becoming a new metropolis in relation to one another. Just as the contemporary intellectual elite -political thinkers, writers, publicists, artists – thought about the prospects of the Monarchy in divergent ways, so has its memory taken contradictory forms. Long before the collapse there have been much criticism about its semi- feudal social structure, the asymmetry between infrastructural development and political, ideological backwardness, and its structural inequalities. The imperial legacy have been grasped along the lines of political history and economic history, based on which its most important corner stones have been the process of modernisation, rapid industrialisation, political liberalism, conservatism and ideologically-informed governance, changes in the institutional system and transformations in the meaning of nation. Imperial legacy can, however, be examined through the lens of social and cultural history where changes in social structure and patterns of mobility have been of lasting significance. Turn-of-the-century dualism can very well be seen as the brief co-extistence of two eras, a short transition period, where premodern traits uniquely merge and blend with new forms of social existence and cultural (and intellectual) trends. The formation of the middle-classes and modernisation have yielded new conceptions of citizenship and legitimation as well, having profoundly impacted citizens’ identities. At the turn of the century nationalist sentiments and imperial subjectivity were not exclusive of each other. The ideology of –different forms of –nationalism were thriving and in fact appropriated and made use of in the imperial project. In Hungary, the 1867 Compromise with Vienna and the Habsburg ruling house spurred an economic boom as well as political development aimed at forging a national identity. Liberalism became the dominant discourse of the period that stripped away many obstacles for individual (artistic) ambition. In every field of art new trends and schools replaced older ones and they became intertwined in novel ways. Surprising forms and concepts were born that were admired by later generations. The new artistic trends and forms were inspired by new political and philosophical thought and the rapid evolving demands of urban community in the new metropolis. The very specific Hungarian Zeitgeist aspired to be European but at the same time distinctly Hungarian. The vast array of form and the richness of content emerged on the one hand, from the changing demands and expectations towards the creative arts and, on the other hand from changing living conditions and lifestyles. Similar to other large European cities, in Budapest the urban civil population witnessed sudden growth that brought with it a plethora of modern bourgeois lifestyles. This increased variety and urban growth was largely due to the Jewish population arriving continuously in large numbers from Galicia and other provinces of the Empire. The population of big cities was by no means homogeneous. Conflicts stemming from such variety and aspirations were, however, still dormant. At the peak of the Golden Age, around 1900, the values inherent in diversity were more pronounced. These values, however, weakened and partly disappeared in the consequent period of decline. Hungary that was larger in size than any other province, was unable to take advantage of its favourable features and alone was unable to tackle recurrent ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural tensions. The dominant ideology of the time is often defined as rational reformism or ‘centralist liberalism’ (Wallerstein 2011). After the second half of the nineteenth century the promise of the liberal state –moving with careful reform politics towards maximising human happiness— proved to be a productive strategy and a popular alternative against the competing discourses of conservativism and radial socialism. It was the French Revolution that jumpstarted the rivalry of these three ideologies. Following its initial success in Britain and France, liberalism gained predominance in the 1830s throughout Europe. After 1875 centralist liberalism became the dominant model in Europe as well as worldwide.

Although having correctly transposed the messages of its time, Budapest rushed to become a cosmopolitan European metropolis, at least on the surface and mostly in terms of techné and appearance. In reality it struggled to resolve the underlying contradictions and social tensions. The increasing political power of the Monarchy was not proportionate to its cultural and financial growth. It lagged behind the greater powers of Western Europe. Also, in its less developed Hungarian half, the economic crisis caused considerably more damage than in the economically more developed core countries of Europe. Uncertainty and the unevenness of progress had a social and cultural dimension as well.

Some of the causes of uneven development and those of deepening political tensions are the lack of economic independence and a stable middle class, and the fact that ethnic Hungarians were in the minority which stood in sharp contrast to the claim of political supremacy. After the peak of the Golden Age, during the first decade of the twentieth century, although only sporadically but there were already signs of exclusionary thinking, especially that of political antisemitism and a uniquely Hungarian closed self-referential logic. A stark symbol of the latter was that its ruling elite, apart from some learned aristocrats, artists and intellectuals, was unable to look beyond Vienna and assess the success of their country beyond the constraints of the Empire. And even within the imperial context, their view was limited. Beyond the dazzling array of prospects, however, fear and uncertainty surfaced in places with regard to the future of the Monarchy and concerning the demands of its ethnic groups - at least in the minds’ of those who pondered these issues. Regrettably, they were few and they had no significant political influence.

One of the main causes of uneven development and deepening political tensions was the lack of an economically independent and strong middle class. Also, there was unevenness in the demographic minority position of the Hungarian ethnicity and its supremacist ideology. After the 1873 economic crash the life form of rural petit bourgeoisie was no longer sustainable. Offices received a large number of semi-learned, not very professional, narrow.-minded ’gentri’, who, however exhibited a strong class consciousness, national fervor, and had strong aspirations to be regarded as ruling elite. Initially it cultivated good relations with the Jewish population, however, just as it grew in numbers and its economic and cultural capital increased, existential jealousy and the aspiration to marginalise them also increased. The French revolution legitimised constant political change. As the sovereign of the ancien regime were replaced by the masses, the space of political action suddenly included the wider society. A part of this process was the institutionalisation of citizenship, which served the purpose of extending the membership of a political community equally to its members. Immanuel Wallerstein used the example of nineteenth-century Europe to show how the concept of citizenship, originally an inclusive, all-encompassing entity, became more and more narrow and exclusive as poorer and poorer communities grew in numbers.1 It was because of the success of centralized liberalism and a slowly solidifying European geo-culture, that the illusion of the liberal state opening up privileges for all, were long-lasting. Despite the occasionally palpable fault lines, the Budapest of 1900 so brilliantly described by John Lukacs, was still a haven, the world of expanding perspectives, even if political unrest and dissent started to surface that produced an irreversible demise.

Narratives of Collapse on the Decline

Despite its internal incongruity and apparent weaknesses, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was a major stakeholder in both European and international politics at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, due to its geopolitical position, its large population, its powerful army and owing to its relentlessly carried out political, economic and institutional reforms. Historical narratives predicting the downfall of the empire tend to disregard a series of reforms introduced by Maria Theresa – and systematically carried out and extended by II. Joseph – that had contributed to a thriving cultural, scientific, political and social life prevalent at the turn of the 20th century. Without these reforms, there could not have been such wide perspectives and broadening horizons the impacts of which spread like wildfire in architecture, music, literature and science, both in small and large communities of the empire.

A basic tenet of the narratives of collapse, building on post-WWI propaganda, is that the Great War fulfilled its mission by putting an end to the already obsolete Habsburg Empire. The narratives of downfall and collapse dominated 20th century historiography for a long time strongly influencing mainstream political thinking. Only during the past few decades did a new approach develop among historians dealing with Central Europe who attempted to interpret social processes and institutional developments by studying the monarchy’s internal institutional changes and its leaders’ long-term reform efforts. These reforms seem to have earned the loyalty of imperial subjects and helped them identify with the empire’s endeavours.

According to this new generation of historians, the narrative of downfall and collapse does not provide a good basis for a thorough understanding of the history of the Habsburg Empire or that of Central Europe, and neither does the methodology of parallel histories applied in the 20th century with a focus on nation states. Historiographies resting on ideological bases and often serving political interests tend to take little notice of the social interdependencies and complexities that made up an intricate system of relationships between peoples, languages and religions of the empire, its social classes undergoing transformations and bringing about

1 Wallerstein, i. m. marked cultural changes. From that viewpoint, one cannot discern the broadening perspectives that in the golden age of the Monarchy – also coinciding with the heydays of Budapest– had such inspiring effects on the most creative, most courageous, most original reformists, thinkers, politicians, entrepreneurs, architects, urban designers, poets, writer, journalists, composers, scientists and artists.

The advocates of the inevitable “narrative of downfall and collapse” are keen to supplement their views with the “modernity and progression” narrative, which claims that the empire had no chances of survival because of the dynamically emerging nation-state aspirations. These newly created and often arbitrarily devised units in Central Europe were seen as the only alternative by the advocates of this wholly individualistic perspective. The supporters of this view claim that the Monarchy had failed to integrate these nation states and sought to impose the imperial principle on its subjects. Those belonging to the new generation of historians define the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as an emerging complex constitutional imperial state with a large number of minorities, which was not necessarily doomed to collapse.

Paranoia and parabellum: the atavism of the Imperial and Royal Army. Civilian-military conflict in the Monarchy

It is true that the Monarchy went through periods of severe crisis in the decades prior to WWI, but the gloom and pessimism about its future was typical only of the commanders of its army and its diplomatic corps. The majority of the civilians, politicians and public servants were not all doomsday, and neither were those in top administrative positions as they were preoccupied with the arduous task of implementing comprehensive imperial institutional and social reforms.2

Latest research findings shed some light on the ideas that the military leadership had about politics, the society, and public administration, which seem to be in stark contrast with the empire’s infrastructural development schemes hoping to mobilize and encourage the civil society and the entrepreneurs. It seems that this difference in attitude may have been the major source of conflict between the civil society and the military. The majority of the people living in the territory of the Monarchy evolved in this short period into a modern mass society as a result of a more extensive political involvement, the sharply rising number of eligible voters, the growing number of ethnic and nationalist parties and their power to mobilise people, as well as the rapid development in communication, infrastructure and technology. In light of this rapid social development, the atavism of the imperial army became even more

2 For more details see Solomon Wank: Varieties of Cultural Despair, in: Stanley B. Winters and Joseph Held (eds.) Intellectual and Social Developments in the Habsburg Empire from Maria Theresia to WWI. New York, 1975; and also W.D. Godsey: Aristocratic Redoubt: The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office on the Eve of the First World War, In: Central European Studies, West Lafayette, 1999. salient. By the end of the first decade of the new century, the imperial army – burdened with a rigid value system and drifting further away from social and cultural mainstream – found itself surrounded by a dynamic world full of unidentifiable values and aspirations. The tensions and conflict zones in military-civil relations determined the Monarchy’s foreign policy and its confused, contradictory pro-war predisposition, which played a decisive role in the deterioration of the harmonious relationship between state and society in the decades prior to WWI.

As John Deák succinctly puts it „the relationship between the state and the society broke down during the war in Austria.”3 The Empire, that had seemed so compact from the outside before, now suddenly split into two irreconcilable camps: those calling for tough military solutions vs. those demanding future prospects for the civilians; those for military expansion as the recipe for the empire’s triumph and sustainability vs. those calling for a constitutional state with guarantees for civilian involvement. Eventually, the military logic won over the civil perspectives, and Austria’s war economy – having to satisfy the army’s immediate needs – quickly crushed the emerging institutional system hoping to build on a civilian and constitutional basis.

One can only agree with John Deák when he says that only by fully understanding World War I can one go on to comprehend the period after WWI. And if we start to closely analyse the period prior to the Great War, often referred to as the Golden Age, only then do we start to realise just how much had been lost and how much of the broadening perspectives were destroyed in the devastating war.

Change of Mission: Imperial Unity in Diversity?

On 1 May 1873, Emperor Franz Joseph opened the Monarchy’s World Exposition in Vienna’s Prater, an ambitious exhibition that had been planned most meticulously (on an area five times larger than the Paris Expo in 1867). The show was a symbolic step to show the world how seriously Austria took her new mission for the sake of the whole civilization. The Prussian victory at Königgrätz in 1866 put an end to a long-standing Habsburg dream. In the Treaty of Prague Austria acknowledged the supremacy of Prussia and allowed Bismarck to forge the unification of Germany. In a war that proved fatal for Austria’s military, the new war technology triumphed, and it became salient that Austria had fallen behind Germany in the 19th century industrial revolution. The empire’s communication machinery took an abrupt turn and instead of the West, it was facing the East. Once it had lost its hegemony over Germany, Austria discovered new potentials in her own provinces and started to complete the bridges between

3 John Deak: The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War, In: The Journal of Modern History, 86:2 (June 2014) 364. civilisations at home that he could not complete in Europe. In the 1870s, everything was available for the Empire’s giant bureaucratic machinery to bring this grandiose plan to fruition. To help achieve this, a complete toolbox borrowed from modern history and social sciences was at hand (statistics, ethnography, linguistics, geography, etc.) that could prove helpful in reaping the benefits of the Monarchy’s cultural diversity. First, the Empire’s attention and civilisation zeal turned towards Bukovina and Silesia; and the Vienna Exposition in 1873 seemed like a wonderful opportunity to justify the need for this mission and demonstrate its success. The message came wrapped – in line with the grandiosity of the exposition – in pompous packaging. The East needs assistance with civilisation, and since their peoples are largely different from those of the West, this can only be achieved by mediators. The spatial arrangement of the stalls at the exposition also served the justification of this ideology. On one side, there were the pavilions of China, Persia, Russia and Japan, while the opposite side was taken by Great Britain, France, Italy, the USA and Brazil.

This publicity stunt, however, did not end too well. The event planned for 20 million visitors attracted only 7 million and the closing of the expo coincided with the beginning of the century’s great depressions that was also a major crisis of liberalism. The Empire’s experimentation, however, did not end with the world expo. Scientific research activities to demonstrate the Monarchy’s rich diversity were carried out for a long time and with considerable success.4

1873 was an important year on account of another event, or rather turn of events, although its significance at the time was hard to predict. Pest and Buda were united, and the city was now called Budapest which paved the way for a new cultural melting pot developing at a cracking pace and becoming the second capital of a complex Empire. The key to its success was also down to the fact that the Empire did indeed need a second capital city; Vienna alone could not have fulfilled the role of a big melting pot.

1867–1911: The Evolution of a Constitutional Empire

1867 was a turning point in the history of the Habsburg Empire not only because of the Great Compromise signed between Hungary and Austria. 1867 was also the year when Europe’s most liberal constitution was penned, the introduction of which compelled the dual monarchy to commit itself to Europe’s reigning ideology. The new constitution defined the framework of participatory governance. This was the final step of the process starting in 1848 and during which institutions of representation was set up at local and regional levels, the civil society started flourishing and the constitutional and legal norms for the rule of law were laid down.

4 For more details, look up Pieter Judson: The Habsburg Empire. A New History, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2016, 317-321. This considerably increased the political role of the empire’s administration and served as a counterbalance against the growing influence of different political parties. This was – quoting John Deák – the evolving constitutional empire’s long-term state-building project which continued uninterruptedly – although not unfailingly – until the breakout of World War I.5 The well-planned and thought-over process of building a constitutional state penetrated way below the institutional texture of the society, it affected the public bodies of communities, the county-level committees, determined the outcome of municipality elections and also influenced the imperial parliament but even the work of school boards. Processes indicating the extension of the modern state, the state’s role as a generator for development went hand in hand with the increasing involvement of citizens in politics. The democratisation of the electoral system kept the political passion aroused by political parties at bay, but it also broadened the political horizon and opened up new opportunities for people going into politics. The imperial state turned towards the civil society and, contrary to its role, it started to play the role of a mediator. The empire’s society was put on a new orbit. Owing to the democratic reshaping of the relations between state and society, there were new state services created and new responsibilities adopted, and the state became the engine of economic development and the guarantor of public good. The techniques of governance were fine- tuned, and were gradually introduced in the hinterland of the empire.6

Who saw the Great War Coming and who Wanted it?

Meanwhile, Austria’s imperial administration was too preoccupied to focus on their long-term chores to do from Trieste to Styria, and from Bohemia to Silesia than to notice the danger of the impending war. In the letters addressed to the relevant ministries and requesting extra resources, there was no mention of the imminent war. The public servants working in the centres of imperial provinces were driven by a yearning for modernisation, progress and building rather than destruction. Aware as they were in the necessity of changes, they saw themselves as the agents of these changes bringing benefit to the state.7 Emperor Franz Joseph set up a commission in 1911, chaired by Count Schwarzenau, to implement fundamental administrative reform. The commission’s involvement accelerated institutional reforms in the hinterland and established new relations between the local communities and the imperial parliament: its MPs needed to redefine their role of being the executers of the emperor’s wish and were now requested to mediate between the imperial parliament and the crown. As a result, the central administration established a direct relationship with the local communities.

5 Deak, ibid. 366. 6 see Judson, i. m. 7 For more details see Judson, ibid. 337-342.

The exponential increase of people’s involvement in local governance paved the way for the process of functional democratisation.

The reforms undertaken by Franz Joseph and Schwarzenau offered Central Europe a viable future with career development opportunities. However, the outbreak of the Great War, resulting in the introduction of war economy with an immediate effect and the high degree of centralisation brought these reform efforts – as well as the earlier ones – to an abrupt halt.

As rapidly the empire managed to reach social consensus in how to develop the state and its mechanisms, so quickly and systematically they depleted their economic resources.

By the end of 1914, Austria-Hungary had become one of Europe’s most oppressive regimes. The war put an end to the improving relations between the state and its citizens once and for all, as much to economic prosperity and as to general welfare. Central Europe had lost a great opportunity for a large-scale macro-regional institutional development and could not lay the foundations for the harmonic cooperation of the ethnicities living in the region. In consequence, the empire’s legitimacy in a multinational and multicultural space has come to a deadlock and inescapably collapsed.

It is, perhaps time that we – who have not given up the hope of recreating these opportunities – took John Deak’s warning seriously. When weighing up our chances for the future, it does matter how we evaluate the Great War: as an episode that helped escape people from the captivity of the Monarchy and an event kick-starting the development of our modern nation state or, alternatively, we try to understand the underlying social, economic, institutional and cultural processes, as well as their power and dynamism, that had already been on the way only to be interrupted by the Great War. This issue is not only topical but the European Union’s incapacity and concealed perplexity makes it ever more topical.

II. The Great Compromise and the Liberal State: the Rise of Budapest

After the Great Compromise Pest and Buda were unified into the city of Budapest in 1873 and the next few decades that follow are often referred to as the heydays of the new capital. There are new opportunities, broad perspectives ahead of its residents. And, in the course of a few decades, a new European metropolis evolved as a result of a transformation that was little short of miraculous. The progress was faster than in many large cities of the globe including Chicago and New York. This was the period when Budapest worked as a magnet: it attracted aristocrats, affluent Jewish bankers and foreign diplomats were travelling on the continent’s first underground railway, while above them compulsive poets and painters were hurrying by on Europe’s most elegant avenues flanked by a high number of large edifices built in a most sophisticated style. Those who came by train arrived at the largest transport hubs at Keleti and Nyugati stations, and Budapest served as the largest port along the 3,000-kilometre long River Danube. Property frenzy was at an all-time high exhilarating a whole army of talented architects and civil engineers owing to whom – as John Lukacs put it – the city as a macroform becomes a work of art and the building complexes are coherent even if eclectic.8

Nevertheless, beyond the delusion of the dizzying perspectives, under the surfaces, one could perceive a sense of uncertainty about the future of the country, the fate of the Monarchy, and the destiny of its ethnic minorities. There were only a handful of those who could afford to brood over such things, though, and their political power was significantly less considerable then their intellectual capabilities. From the moment of its conception, the Great Compromise was fiercely criticised. The opponents said that there was no real political agreement concluded in 1867, some even deemed the accord as catastrophic. According to István Bibó the political elite of the 1860s concluded the agreement out of fear. In his famous Cassandra Letter and in his message sent home from his emigration, Lajos Kossuth banged on about the country’s fault in “tying our cart to the wrong horse” and that the path the country had chosen to follow would take her not to salvation, but to devastation.

Even though public opinion was divided about politics, there were lots of positive factors that planted optimism in the period of relative peace before WW1, devoid of bigger wars, such as the opening social-economic space, the spill-over effects of the industrial revolutions reaching the Monarchy and the positive ideology of the contemporary liberalism. People were getting better-to-do, they were enjoying a cultural and intellectual vibrancy and undoubtedly experienced a feeling of progress: the splendour of the golden age was a blinding image on the horizon and the illusion was maintained in the minds and in the hearts of most citizens of Budapest and of the Monarchy.

The Attraction of Creativity and the Concentration of Knowledge

Following the suggestion of Loránd Eötvös, in 1895 the Baron József Eötvös Collegium was founded after the model of École normale supérieure in Paris. The new Collegium was a special boarding school focused on teacher training, and it provided room and board for 70-80 students at a time who could enjoy elite schooling. The University of Kolozsvár (Cluj), founded at the turn of the century in 1872, had four faculties: law and governance, medicine, arts and natural science. In 1883 it was named after the emperor Franz Josef. Following Budapest, they also established a teacher training college and a training secondary school. The University of Debrecen, founded in 1912, opened its doors in the fall of 1914 with faculties of law, arts and

8 John Lukacs: Budapest, 1900. Budapest, Európa, 2014. protestant theology. It was in that year that the faculty of medicine was established that was completed only after WW I.9

Despite efforts to enhance development in higher education Hungarian universities were still much behind the best European universities. Improvement was most visible in fields that catered to industry, construction and health: the Budapest Technical University, its programs in engineering and architecture, and medical training rapidly improved and soon attracted those who earlier would have gone to Vienna or Germany to pursue their studies. Similar results in the social sciences and arts were, however, lacking. Paradoxically, the drastic social and cultural transformations and economic growth would have made it crucial to train an open-minded intelligentsia and middle class that was able to understand a world full of contradictions and interconnections. Hungarian students could choose between a number of universities across Europe, but most of them preferred to study in Vienna. Between 1900 and 1919 there were more than 3,500 Hungarian students at the University of Vienna – most of whom came from affluent Jewish middle-class families for whom higher education meant cultural capital and upward social mobility. A large percentage of Hungarian students, however, settled and found work in Vienna or Berlin after the completion of their studies before the development of Technical University and the faculty of medicine in Budapest. So those who wanted to study earlier could do so as the imperial space was wide and prospects were promising, but after the strengthening of university education in Budapest, the situation changed: the intellectual capital accumulation and investment in human resources started in large on national base.

Urban Demographic Boom

Budapest’s progress between the Great Compromise of 1867 and World War I was truly remarkable. The number of inhabitants in the city, back in 1720, used to be 11,000. This number had risen threefold to 730,000 by 1900, and a mere 13 years later it had bounced up to 933,000. This metropolis, boasting nearly 1 million inhabitants, was hailed as the eighth largest city in Europe.10 There was only one other city in Europe that produced the same rapid development: Berlin. In the liberal political atmosphere, social changes were reinforcing social and cultural diversity: the number of urban labour expanded, aristocracy was mingling with bourgeois industrialist, and the segregation of urban masses seemed to somewhat dwindle. Feminists campaigned for women’s suffrage and demanded their entitlement to higher education, available at that time already at high standards for their male counterparts. These

9 Fehér Katalin, Tudomány 2. Társadalomtudományok. Oktatásügy a századforduló körüli évektől a trianoni békeszerződésig, Magyarország a XX. Században, V. kötet, http://mek.oszk.hu/02100/02185/html/1354.htm 10 Lukacs, i. m. 98. social developments seem to suggest that the high aristocracy and the nobility of commerce, industry and banking coexisted peacefully. Gentries consider themselves “middle class” (at that time the term “Christian middle class”, later implying the exclusion of Jews, was not yet in use).

Researchers of the era have different approaches to investigate the situation of the Jews living in the empire. They tend to offer different definitions and examine their roles in the growing industrialisation and urbanism during the late 19th century from different aspects.11 The key role of the Jewish petty bourgeoisie in the great development of the period is not a contentious issue any longer. Although census figures can never be taken for granted, especially not in this subject (due to the frequent conversions and mixed marriages), data of the period between 1867 and 1910 show an overall 7% increase which means that in 1910 nearly 25% of the inhabitants of Budapest were of Jewish origin. Consequently, this religious (or, as many would claim, ethnic) group was a decisive factor in both the economic and the cultural development of the city. According to W. O. McCagg’s data the population of Budapest in 1872 was 16%, the same proportion was 21.5% in 1900 (This was when Vienna’s mayor Karl Lueger referred to the Hungarian capital as “Judapest”). The city’s Jewish petty bourgeois endorsed Hungarian national sentiments already in the 19th century as the German patricians did everything in their capacity to push them into the background. In 1900, almost every career was open for people with Jewish origin (at least in theory) and even though anti-Semitism already existed, it was not a prevalent political phenomenon. In the last two decades of the 1800s as many as 47% of the medical students of the Vienna University claimed to be of Jewish religion; the ratio for Budapest was 49% and for Cluj 15%.12

And while the exponential growth of the population can only partly be attributed to migration, according to Károly Vörös: “in the Hungarian reform era the country was increasingly bourgeois country and Budapest even more so, which attracted a large number of […] Jews, here they can find very favourable opportunities to assimilate into the Hungarian society, on the one hand, and to enforce their civil values and cultures in the city and in the whole country.”13 As for the range of professions typically practised by the Jewry, the palette is rather broad: they worked in industry,14 commerce and trading (60%),15 as intellectuals and functionary officials (lawyers 62%, physicians and vets 58%, journalists 48%, private engineers 44%, actors and actresses 32%), and factory workers.16 Accordingly, citizens with an Israelite religion

11 Statistics usually refer to those with Israelite religion when talking of the Jewry. 12 Patyi, Gábor: Magyarországi diákok bécsi egyetemeken és főiskolákon 1890–1918 [Hungarian students at Vienna’s colleges and universities 1890-1918]. (Magyarországi Diákok Egyetemjárása az Újkorban 10.). Budapest, ELTE, Egyetemi Levéltár, 2004. 13 Vörös, Károly: A budapesti zsidóság a két forradalom között 1848–1918 [Budapest’s Jewry between the two revolutions 1848-1918]. In: Vörös Károly: Hétköznapok a polgári Magyarországon, Budapest, MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 1997, 187. 14 gyáriparosok, kiskereskedők 15 kis- és nagykereskedők 16 Budapest, A világváros két századfordulón, Budapest, Napvilág, 2010, 276. constituted a highly varied social group while they were strongly being assimilated. From this aspect, it is interesting to observe how the Budapest Jewry was split over the city in the various districts: middle class and upper middle-class Jews resided in Lipótváros (District 5), the lower classes lived in Terézváros (District 6) and Erzsébetváros (District 7), and many were orthodox Jews. 17 There were Jewish quarters already at the turn of the century. The territorial concentration, however, also brought about segregation, which can be explained partly by the Jewry’s social, ethnic and cultural heritage but also by what was in the conventional vernacular referred to as “the unique character of Jewish identity”. 18 Hungarian historiography has traditionally put a strong emphasis on Jewish identity and the issue of assimilation vs. dissimilation. Political anti-Semitism, prevalent in the early 20th century and analysed retrospectively, in the light of the Holocaust, showed a tendency of stressing various aspects, e.g. “assimilation had different stages” (Hanák), or “assimilation was only an illusion” (Gyurgyák). When focusing on the issue of identity, the typical stance was that “in terms of generations there were significant differences between the various metamorphoses of Jewish identities” (Fenyves).19

The rise of the middle classes in Austria was more extensive and developed faster than in Hungary and the middle classes and upper middle classes in Vienna provided a solid basis for the dissemination of liberalism and for capitalist development. The middle classes in the Austrian provinces did not have to fight for their independence, and in its combat against enlightened absolutism it did not need to rely on social players pouring into the country in large numbers. 20 The role and significance of the Austrian Jewry was therefore markedly different from that of Hungary. Austrian Jews settling down in the mid-1700s and becoming wealthy by the turn of the 18th and 19th century got into top positions in the financial and business sector. Many had been granted a title of nobility; had assimilated into the local

17 Ibid. 283. 17 Ibid. 283. (Italics by the author, it is meant to highlight the cliché character of the phrase, not the opinion of the authors.) 18 According to Gábor Gyáni, historiography tends to offer two approaches to the history of the Jewry. He writes the following: „Historiography (1) looks at the Jewry as an essential historical category, as the active heroes of integration; (2) relies almost solely on the power of their reality-creating image, which it regards as the point of reference for their identity.” The problem with these approaches is that it looks at the Jewry as an entity entailing some specified essential substance that is not subject to changes; an entity that, despite its assimilation, remains to be essentially Jewish. Historiography refers to any citizens of Jewish origin as the Jewry or the Jewish society, the only difference is made between Neolog and Orthodox communities and between the different layers of the social classes.” See more in Gábor Gyáni’s book entitled Nép, nemzet, zsidó. [People, nation, Jew]. Kalligram, Pozsony, 2013, 241. 19 See: Miszlivetz, Ferenc: Az aranykor káprázata és a 20. század árnyai, In: Az első aranykor, [The Splendour of the Golden Age and the Shadows of the Twentieth CenturyThe First Golden Age.] Műcsarnok, Budapest, 2016.

aristocracy and had become staunch supporters of enlightened absolutism with centralising efforts.

Josef von Sonnenfels (1732–1817) received his appointment to teach economics at the Vienna University in the late 1700s, and he is hailed as one of the greatest modernists of the Austro- Hungarian Empire. He fought against disenfranchisement, against the values, traditions and privileges of the feudal system. He is a keen supporter of centralising the empire. In 1792, he drew up a draft for modern tertiary education. Between 1803 and 1811, he supervised the process of preparing Austria's Penal Code. His journal, Mann ohne Vorurteil [The Man without Prejudice] was the bible of progressive intellectuals of the time.21 Baron Rothschild invested into coal and iron mining in Silesia in 1833 and starts building railways. By 1839 The Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway (the Nordbahn) was up and running between Vienna and Silesia.22 The majority of Jewish financial aristocracy had acquired noble ranks and assimilated into political aristocracy. Fülöp Shey and his brother Frigyes Shey (native of Kőszeg) obtained a noble rank in 1860 and soon became barons. Using their company name 'Philip Shey of Guns in Ungarn' they continued to support the town of Kőszeg with donations and had a synagogue and an ecumenical nursery school thereby adding to the sound economic functioning of the town. Friedrich Shey was one of the Monarchy’s railway entrepreneurs and stock exchange speculators of his time and simultaneously one of the greatest cultural patrons of Vienna.23

In fact, William O. McCagg is right when he talks of “Jewish illusions” in Vienna and Austria lasting up until the mid-1800s.24 He sees it strangely paradoxical that becoming a bourgeois in the Habsburg Empire it meant getting rid of your problems stemming from your being a Jew. In the subsequent period, however, and especially after 1873, the problems of the Jewry coincided with those of the declining Habsburg aristocracy and the upper middle class.25 From then on, the Jewry was almost always assigned the role of the scapegoat.

One response to the global recession in the early 1870s of Europe was the rise of anti- Semitism, which was nowhere as strong as in Vienna. The lower middle classes had lost their faith in liberalism, the man of the street had the feeling it was deceived by the top bourgeoisie layer. Free capitalism had lost its credit in the eye of millions. Only in the course of a single decade liberalism had not only lost its appeal but in terms of political power it was in ruins.

Although there are a few private documents and assessments of the time proving that some people did support the empire’s economic and cultural policies – and after the emancipation of women the state did try its utmost t achieve this end – there are also several counterexamples. In the early 1900s, the rising number of Israelite members in Zionist

20 William O. McCagg, A History of Habsburg Jews, 24.

23 uo. 152. 24 uo. 90. 25 uo. 101. organisations, bodies of the labour movement and in the Democratic Party reflects a heavy criticism of the society.

Broadened Social Perspectives, Opening Horizons

The radical transition at the end of the 19th century was taking place simultaneously in the economy, in cultural and political life, mass communication, people’s behaviour as well as their social needs and habits. Technological inventions such as the telegraph, the telephone, the railway networks and the publication of daily papers meant the news got around very quickly in the Monarchy and even the most tucked away corners of the empire were attached to the circuit of the electricity of changes. Space has opened up in every sense of the word, and that brought about the broadening of perspectives as well.

The belated industrial revolution was catching up quickly and opened new dimensions of the development; it put an end to the bucolic idyll of rural areas and brought the dormant social, political, religious and ideological oppositions and controversies to the surface. Urban development, the role and attraction of urban areas and the intensive metropolitan lifestyle created a new need for culture; and some novel forms and interpretations of literature, theatre, and fine arts. There was a new style, a new language being born. “New times with new songs”as Hungarian poet Endre Ady put it in his volume entitled New Poems (1906). According to fellow writer Antal Szerb, he was the one “whose words made the time complete, who uttered the words that had to be uttered.” The conflicts generated by his front-page articles and his poems largely influenced the intellectual milieu of the early 20th century, and his appearance created a new framework of interpretation for unidentified meanings of the era. And new interpretations were very much sought after by many.

The triumphant march of liberalism may have been brought to a halt by the financial crush of 1873, but the first major signs of a deeper political and social crisis did not show until the first years of the new century. The void of the broadening social spaces was filled by the Jewry making every effort to assimilate, but a new social layer appeared made up of masses of peasants pouring into large cities such as Vienna or Budapest referred to as the proletariat. The swiftness and unexpectedness of changes their robustness and extensiveness led these poor people to believe that “everything was possible” whether that created euphoria or apprehension. The various political, ideological religious and artistic movements were swirling and got eventually tangled up, creating new behavioural patterns.

Vienna versus Budapest: what lies beneath the surface?

The apparent similarity between Vienna and Budapest conceals several sharp differences from the eye of the casual observer. According to a valid paradigm of cultural history, the two imperial capitals with their cultural and artistic achievements can be regarded as two synopses succinctly summing up the similarities and discrepancies in the modern urban development of the two cities. This paradigm of modern urban development is usually associated with Carl Schorske’s landmark study on culture and politics in pre-war fin-de-siècle Vienna 26 that still determines our understanding of the Austrian capital’s culture. Critics of Schorske’s work highlight that the modernism of the bourgeois elite of Vienna was an achievement made only by a narrow layer of the high society.27 These critics accused Schorske and his account of history of being ’elitist’ and disregarding the immigrants, the urban poor and the workers living in somewhat more modern circumstances. And although these social groups were living in specific suburban districts, they did constitute an organic part of Vienna’s metropolitan topography. Both Vienna and Budapest, being fast developing industrial centres, were targeted by many immigrants from rural, agricultural areas and the masses of industrial workers were made up of agricultural workers and craftsmen. It follows that metropolitan mass culture was a mixture of various rural cultures while suburban areas were the spheres of swift transformation and bore witness to the urbanisation of the countryside. The Ringstrasse in Vienna and the Great Boulevard (Nagykörút) in Budapest denoted the borderline of segregation separating wholly different social existences from one another. In Vienna, hierarchic separation from the centre and from the outer suburbs was stricter than in other cities of Western Europe, but this segregation of Budapest districts was very similar to that of Vienna. Urban development and planning was not promoted in response to humanitarian needs of the poor masses but were rather focusing on the management of industrial masses and the demographic boom where the objective of local decision-makers was to map up and remedy impoverishment and social diseases. One such social pest was “prostitution” that, to the urban elite, symbolised everything related to the suburban districts populated by masses of workers: rootlessness, alienation, ambivalent female sexuality, and the bridging of the distance between the centre and the dangerous outer zones.

Maderthaner and Musner see the spread of mass culture – in this interpretative framework – as a kind of disciplinary tool fostering a new consciousness of a social class. They claim that “mass culture was a response to the traumatism of modernisation. The splendour of material and technological advancements provided a temporary refuge and diverted people’s attention from the bad working environment and from the high work tempo demanded by

26 Carl E. Schorske: Bécsi századvég. [Fin-de-Sidcle Vienna: Politics and Culture (1980)] Budapest, Helikon, 1998. 27 Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lutz Musner, Unruly Masses: The Other Side of Fin-de-Siécle Vienna. (Oxford, New York, Berghahn, 2008). Also see: Peter Payer, The Age of Noise. Early Reactions in Vienna, 1870-1914 In: Journal of Urban History, 33:5, 2007, 773-793. industrialists.”28 This rather simplified explanation of urbanised society and culture (oppressing middle class vs. oppressed masses of workers) does not reflect the reality with which we could describe either Vienna or Budapest with the required degree of sophistication. We cannot say that the metropolis would be nothing else but a ground for exploitation and all the achievements of modernisation the tools of abuse. In fact, a metropolis often mixed high and mass culture successfully. And although social segregation was manifested on city maps, they did not work according to social or economic status as the urban medium did not only reflect the apparent differences between the social classes but also rearranged them. Budapest differed from Vienna in this respect, too: it showed a more enlightened, more bohemian and vivid image. Budapest’s economic and cultural elite was way younger and made up of new emerging members of the middle and upper middle class opposed to Vienna, where the upper middle class had deeper roots (i.e. Bildungsbürgertum and Besitzbürgertum – Hanák). Budapest, where the anomalies of modern urban life such as poverty, prostitution, moral and sexual promiscuity and deviance were more conspicuous, was subject to a great deal of criticism although there were just as many were keen supporters. The modern city is the engine of civilisation, but it is filled with moral filth: it is the hotbed of crime and the “breading ground of liberal illusions” (Szekfű).

The Serious Vienna and the Dazed Budapest

To understand the cultural, artistic and political activities and endeavours of citizens it is worth comparing Budapest and Vienna as they were at the turn of the century. At first glance, one might easily notice the evident similarities such as the townscape, the architecture or the local vernacular. But if we dig a little bit deeper, we can discover some more essential distinctive features particularly in terms of political power, centralised bureaucracy, and imperial spirit, or the strength and traditions of the middle classes. Vienna, from this aspect, has stringent standards, as its institutional structures are more hierarchical, more elaborate and more conservative. As a major centre of political power, intellectual and artistic life, Vienna had played an essential role from the early 1700s. At that time, it was undoubtedly the most dominant political force in Central and South-East Europe with Vienna being the proud and confident capital. Vienna was also the heart of arts (especially music) as well as knowledge and intellect up until the early 1800s, also at an overall European level. No wonder, that the cultural elite of fin-de-siècle Vienna were more refined and sophisticated than their counterparts in Budapest.

Budapest, as a unified city, started its career in 1873 – its breath-taking development is therefore all the more astonishing. Perhaps those living in the city had been waited for too long and had accumulated a lot of energy, so the abruptly opening perspective offered room for fast development in all walks of life. Poets and artists of all kinds let their imagination soar.

28 Maderthaner and Musner 2008. Creative energies of different social classes, entrepreneurs, and artists had been generated simultaneously, reinforcing each other. Budapest, in this splendid golden age, boasted a unique, inimitable charm. The fact that the scope for this artistic, social, scientific and economic creativity could expand so dramatically was due to an increased political freedom, new opportunities to emerge and a lot of fresh air filling the city through her open windows. Vienna was emanating masculine power, security, bureaucratic expertise and dignified conservativism, while Budapest was gentler, more lenient, displaying a more welcoming attitude. Her feminine features can be captured via her approach to passionate, highly emotional, melancholic but also vigorous poetry and literature, her attraction to operettas and ghastly boulevard theatres, her unprecedented disclosure, and the revolutionary demonstrations of her controversial desires and instincts.

In his monograph, John Lukacs captures this dual nature of Budapest brilliantly: “Foreigners, when visiting this tucked away corner of Europe, to the east of Vienna, watch the modern metropolitan in amazement, its first-class hotels, great tramlines, elegant men and women and the world’s largest parliament which is near completion. Yet, the city was not cosmopolitan.”29

Indeed, below the surface there lurks the Hungarian countryside and it is still dominant. It affects artistic style, political mentality, people’s attitude and worldview although to the casual observer it remains at the level of folklore. Budapest suddenly and quite unexpectedly attracts the attention of artistic circles, and will be a popular destination for urban tourism. In terms of attractiveness and dynamism, it surpasses Vienna – even if this advantage is short-lived and transitory. In 1896, the new capital receives 6 million visitors.30 In its 11th edition, (1910–11) Encyclopaedia Britannica refers to Budapest as one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

Ferenc Békássy, the highly talented and rather sensitive Hungarian poet who studied in Cambridge and died young in the first year of the Great War writes about mystified duality of pre-war Budapest in 1913:

“It might just be an illusion. If there was an openhearted stranger coming to visit us and would take a look at our mushrooming civilisation evolving in 40-50 years’ time, if he looked at our whole culture, industry, towns; our science, books, finances and government – he may say that all this have been built on rather shaky foundations. He might say that our palaces have been built on thin air, and our deeds on empty words.”

But it is also possible that a healthy body may recover quickly, and its bloating is a minor problem that will be easily cured? Who could say today? But the solution to the issue will

29 Lukacs, i. m. 24. 30 Lukacs, i. m. 97. encapsulate the fate this people and its culture…. and we can be certain that whatever its value, it is different from that of any other race...”31

The Budapest of 1900, described so vividly by John Lukacs, is still an island of relative peace although a political restlessness and disparity is about to rear its ugly head, which will soon start going to simulating irreversible processes of decay. This, however, was something only very few people could predict. What the local society could sense for a good while, however, was a growing sense of freedom, and the broadening of perspectives: “What happened in Budapest, and in fact, in the whole of Hungary, was outstanding… In Budapest, the political crisis of liberalism was deepening along with the realisation that new ideas, new creative skills and new artistic forms shall come along.”32

To put it somewhat frivolously, Vienna was neurotic and masculine, for this was the centre of political and military power and the imperial governance and institutions. In contrast, Budapest was more feminine, more attractive, with a touch of eroticism. As for the realm of arts, most of Europe’s capitals had been greatly affected by the new changes, each to a different degree depending on its cultural and social setting. The issue of the individuals’ destiny finds new contexts and manifestations. Arts and literature will more typically focus on psychological problems such as solitude, anxiety, yearning for the unattainable, or the incongruity of love and bodily desire and its source – according to general perceptions – Women. This is when we can hear – interestingly first in Budapest within the confines of the Monarchy – the firm voice of female writers. From Renée Erdős’s lyricism of unvarnished emotions even the era’s celebrated poet and her patron Endre Ady could draw inspiration. What a giant leap it was in comparison to the hypocrisy of drooping sentimentalism! The openness of individual eroticism fitted in neatly with the spaciousness of the early 20th century, even though first it was not coming from the masculine world. In this European metropolitan milieu reflection and self-reflection of arts got radically transformed.

One can sense an intention of ‘exodus’ among artists, many want to leave the past behind. This bold and often radical opposition with values and expectations of the past is often referred by mutinous fine artists – predominantly in Vienna – as secession.

The rebellion against old ways and obsolete ideologies tends to show both similarities and discrepancies. The most radical supporters of departing from the past were the fine artists of Vienna: in 1897 as many as 49 of them marched out of the city’s arts centre to create something new. Their leader, Gustav Klimt, established what they called the House of Secession, a refuge of modern man designed to serve as an alternative to outdated museums.33 Klimt is followed and supported by one of the most renowned and influential

31 Békássy, Ferenc: Magyar költészet 1906 óta. In: Egy angol-magyar műveltségközvetítő [Hungarian poetry since 1906. An English- Hungarian cultural mediator.], Nemzetközi Hungarológiai Központ, 1989, 46-47. 32 Lukacs, i. m. 176 33 Schorske, i. m. 184-186. architects of his time, Otto Wagner, who not only joined the movement, but applied the principles of secessionism in his architecture.

When compared to the Monarchy and to Europe, we can say that new ideologies and philosophies arrived in Hungary with considerable delay. This might account for the fact that instead of full opposition or secession the importance of continuity and the key role of past values received more emphasis. Hungarians at the turn of the century were thriving on reminiscing on their triumphant past and other historical memories. Painters often opted for depicting nature, the Hungarian countryside, bucolic Pannonian landscape or the vast Great Plains to counter the chaos, poverty, corruption and solitude typical of city life. Folk motives, interpreted as pure expressive elements, were used extensively not only in fine arts but also in architecture, poetry, literature and music. Interestingly, the representatives of the first modern literary generation appeared all at once, as if by magic, at the turn of the century. A fair number of writers, born roughly at the same time in the countryside seem to go to Budapest at the same time some never to leave the capital including Endre Ady (1877), Ferenc Molnár and Gyula Krúdy (1878), Zsigmond Móricz and Dezső Szabó (1879), Gyula Juhász and Mihály Babits (1883), Dezső Kosztolányi (1885), Árpád Tóth (1886), Frigyes Karinthy (1887), Renée Erdős (1879) and many others. Many of them also work as journalists or editors of journals and daily papers, so they form public opinion. They issue weeklies, journals, they write theatre reviews, they spend considerable time at cafés, influence public taste and define the flows of public discussion. Budapest becomes a fine literary topic to write about. “The sound of literature was powerful” remarked John Lukacs34 – but unfortunately not many could hear this beyond Hungary’s cultural confines. Owing to the wonderful features and difficulties of the Hungarian language, emerging literary forms - especially poetry - was kept at bay. A mysterious code that has not been broken ever since.

Hungarian Hybrid – A Peculiar Perspective

Linguistic and cultural separation – or, to some extent, isolation – is emphasised even by the most sensitive and gifted artists and via their usage of folkloristic elements: they write of the national countryside, the folks, or the peasantry, and sometimes they go even further East. This duality is manifested in the works poet Endre Ady and composer Béla Bartók, the latter being the most universal artist of his time.

Budapest, cosmopolitan and rural at the same time, can be best captured by the character and writings of Gyula Krúdy, writes John Lukacs. The “Hungarian Proust” is also characterised by dualities: “he is a both a revolutionary and a conservative; erotic and Christian. He indulges in

34 Lukacs, i. m. 25. a bohemian lifestyle, but respects conventional Biedermeier Hungary, that is what he is longing for.”35

Obviously, not only writers were crazy about Budapest. The millennial series of events, imbued with liberal and national ethos, was designed to glorify and glamourize the city. Hungary’s thousand-year national history demonstrating a continuation as well as Budapest’s achievement of modernity, and its growth into a metropolis were sources of pride or, sometimes, headache. An exhibition set up in the City Park (Városliget) a designated pavilion presented the amazing development the city has seen since the 1850s. Renowned statistician Gusztáv Thirring dedicated a special volume to prove the extraordinary attainment with figures, and photographer György Klösz was commissioned by the city council to take a myriad of photos of Budapest. Early 20th century civil radicals first adopted then “elaborated on” liberal optimism. From 1906, during the term of Budapest’s liberal mayor István Bárczy, the capital was undertaking sweeping municipal reforms. Decision-makers were beginning to be convinced that the metropolitan anomalies caused by free market economy could be curbed or even eliminated – provided the authorities intervene effectively. The manifold answers by contemporaries to the dramatic challenges and opportunities of metropolisation were not only given because of their attachment to the community, if at all. But it is definitely true that the mesmerising charm Budapest had over practically anyone who set foot in it could, at least back then at the turn of the century, turn the various convictions and conflicting interests into positive energies.

Identity crisis?

The turn of the century, and especially its urban centres are often described and interpreted within the framework of an identity crisis. Many argue that modernism in Vienna and in Budapest evolved in the wake of an identity crisis of the modern individual, and the breakup of the “classic civil individuum”.36 In this framework of interpretation, typical features of the period include the alienation of individuals, detachment from the whole society and an overall feeling of solitude. Identify crisis entails the problems of being a man or a woman, a social, an ethic or an aesthetic being, and the crisis of Jewish identity.

The question may then arise: does or can a city – with an ever-changing urban environment – assume an identity? Identity as such presumes some static self-identification with a basic prerequisite of a community psyche and its graphically demonstrable form(s). Was there any

35 Lukács János: Történetírás és regényírás: avagy a múlt étvágya és íze. [Historiography and Fiction: or the taste and appetite of the past.] Történelmi Szemle, XXVIII. 2 (1995) 287. 36 Erős Ferenc: Kultuszok a pszichoanalízis történetében. Egy Ferenczi-monográfia vázlata. [Cults in the history of psychoanalysis. Sketches of a Ferenczi-monograph.] Budapest, Jószöveg Műhely, 2004. 30. sort of self-identity in the diverse communities of either Budapest or Vienna? Or can we talk about identity only when referring to an urban middle class fossilized in a specific social- cultural milieu, caught up between noble aristocracy and urban masses of workers, struggling with identification issues and finding solace in studying their soul? Or, in fact, can we talk about a homogeneous middle class at all? Hardly.

The question is often raised by conflicting artistic and intellectual movements: is the identity crisis a plausible explanation for the unprecedented creativity of modernism, or is it just a distinctive feature of popular culture? Cultural modernism, viewed as a civilizational by- product of modernity, reflected the social, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity of the empire. And even though historicism, a leading movement prevalent at the end of the 19th century, did play a key role in culturally unifying the urban middle class, its stylistic apparatus seemed to have lost most of its appeal and relevance by the turn of the century. The new modernist movement searching for new identities was referred to as modernism, and it was capable of offering new ways of expression, and project new version of reality, thereby offering new opportunities for alternative living spaces. It was a transnational, European school of thought that in Central Europe – somewhat paradoxically - led to the revaluation of national sentiment and generated a new kind of nationalist movement. The intellectual diversity a metropolis tends to include an element of political liberalism, which triggers relative social openness and increases mobility, and adds the pursuit for of rational knowledge. (This latter is a heritage of French enlightenment and the basis for the consolidation of scientific disciplines.) Another trend emerging from this intellectual melting pot in Budapest was the blending of radical social criticism (socialism) and Nietzschean scepticism. As the century advanced, the growing dissatisfaction with the doctrines of liberalism received fresh impetus from Budapest’s ethnic, religious and cultural pluralism as well as the city’s cosmopolitanism, which fuelled increasing resentment among the intellectuals and the overall public.

Anti-Semitism was an organic part of the emerging nationalism, and it was taking foothold as a manifestation of the criticism directed against modernity and urbanisation. Gábor Gyáni stresses that Budapest was often accused of being a “sinful city”, and those using this label tended to play the Jew card, as a kind of readily available stunt to put all the blame on “the Jewry” for the anomalies of urbanism. In the first years of the First World War, anti-Semitism gained further momentum, and the view that the Jewry as a distinctive race was getting massive support. Many argue that this newly conceived militant nationalism was not only adopted by the small and middle classes, but also enjoyed popularity among other layers of the society.37

Polemics about this contentious issue flared up in the contemporary press when the most important social scientific periodical of the time Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century) conducted a survey entitled “Is there a Jewish Question in Hungary?” among a large number

37 Gyáni, Gábor: Modernitás, modernizmus és identitásválság: a fin de siècle Budapest. [Modernity, modernism and identity crisis in fin-de- siècle Budapest]. In: Aetas, 20:1, pp. 131-143. (2004), 136. of intellectuals, which demonstrates what a great significance the problem had taken on by the time of the Great War.

In their analysis of the document, the compilers attached a great historic significance to their research, reminding that “no further research on this issue can disregard the results of the survey.38 The responses are highly educational from the aspect of the era’s assimilation discourses. The “Jewish question”, being one of the manifestations of anti-Semitism, is interpreted in different ways and is one form of negative discrimination against the Israelite minority, similarly to the “Women question” in the official political discourse of the subsequent periods. As Dr. Lajos Blau, the director of the Franz Joseph Institute of Rabbinical Training, in a somewhat simplistic statement, put it: “If the non-Jews want it, there is a Jewish question, and if they don’t, there isn’t. It is up to them; the Jews cannot do a thing. There is no basis for this, the Jews have been fully assimilated.” (p.6.)

As for the relevance of the Jewish question, there are markedly different opinions. Ármin Beregi (an engineer and the president of Hungary’s Zionist Organisation) claimed that the assimilation had only been partly successful, hence the need to discuss the Jewish question. He distinguishes between individual and collective identification he said that while individuals could integrate into the majority bur due to the large degree of heterogeneity collective assimilation was inconceivable. He wrote the following: “Some say that assimilation is the ultimate solution for the Jewish question. What they don’t seem to understand is that assimilation can only be possible at the level of individuals, while the Nachwuchs (young ones) of the masses, the survivors of immigration and orthodoxy, will quickly fill the abyss left behind by the departing Jews. The plethora of intellectual movements have indeed brought about some futile attempts to assimilate but – apart from a few successes here and there – it did not leave a permanent imprint on the Jewish psyche, it only destabilised it and produced a heterogenous Hungarian Jewry that cannot maintain a balance, because its Judaism is not substantial enough. It cannot get assimilated in Hungary’s giant converting (!) furnace, but it is too weighty and valuable to be absorbed in a heterogeneous crowd with smaller density. Hungary’s Jewish question is not different from that of Germany or Austria, and therefore its solution cannot be different either (p.50).

Arguments for the irrelevance of the Jewish question include the one according to which the state and its legislative system guarantees equal rights to the Israelites. Many respondents of the survey claimed that equality within the legislative framework was granted and therefore there is no ground for a Jewish question. This approach interprets citizenship purely from the point of view of civil law and completely disregards the cultural dimensions. Dr. Lajos Blue summarises this as follows: “the Jewry by no means can be labelled as corpus separatum; they

38 A zsidókérdés Magyarországon. A Huszadik Század körkérdése. [Jewish Question in Hungary. A survey in the Twentieth Century. Budapest, 1917, 155. are part of peoples. One can start fighting against the Jewish religion or Jewish citizens, but it is not a Jewish question; it is about the freedom of thought and equal rights. The Middle Ages, or modern times.” (p.4.) His words reflect the notion of a political nations standing on a legal basis, established through religious and ethnic inclusivity and manifested as a key principle of modernity.

The next statement, made by Ármin Beregi, reveals the cultural dimensions of citizenship, indispensable for the investigation of identity and assimilation: „The Jewish people, which, at the moment, only has a middle class, occupies some of the place of farming folks. As they have no cultural centres of their own, they have no choice but to fill in the cultural spaces of the host community, and inevitably put a pressure on various layers of the given community. As Ferenc Deák once said, the Jewry is like salt, we need a pinch for every dish, but too much of it spoils the broth. If it possible that a very strong Jewish presence may influence culture in certain societies, as would be desirable from the point of view of that race, and that natural instinct for self-preservation elicits a reaction we refer to as the “Jewish question”, but if that is the case, then the Jewish question can be solved. (51.o.)

In those times, when looking for a collective identity was manifested in relentless quests to assume a specific “racial type”, or a “national character”, culture and cultural identity was the element that helped define who was one of us, and who wasn’t. The Jewish question, the discursive attribute to denote anti-Semitism, was one of such pursuits to determine an effective distinctive feature for the notion of “cultural nation” (as opposed to “political nation”). It is true that when the survey was conducted by Huszadik Század among the intellectual elite of the time (1917) we are long past behind the Golden Age, but the responses offer a neat reflection of the restricted discursive space where the Jewish middle class was trying to find its place within the Hungarian-Christian majority society.

III. Parallel Lives in Vienna and Pest

Battles in the Garden: Otto Wagner and Gustav Klimt

The reign of the liberal bourgeoisie could be placed between 1860-1890. The social basis of Viennese liberals, i.e., middle-class families of Jewish and German descent, could only maintain their dominance through antidemocratic measures such as limited voting rights (Schorske, p17). The Viennese bourgeoisie, in its struggle against Enlightened absolutism and remnants of feudalism, came to a standstill. It was not able to push the aristocracy out of positions of power, nor could it assimilate into it. They did manage however to reform state institutions according to constitutional law, and in agreement with middle-class cultural values. They did manage to start restructuring the city of Vienna as well. The leading figure was Otto Wagner. The city’s renewal became the metaphor of the new intellectual current represented by the rising liberal civil elite.

“…the monumental buildings of the Ringstrasse were clear expressions of the dominant liberal culture and its core values. On the remnants of Fields of Mars its believers erected the political institutions of a constitutional state, schools for the elite of free people, as well as museums, theatres, in order to convey culture to everyone…” (Schorkse, p50). Schorske is right when seeing the synthesis of the turn of the century reflected in the buildings of Ringstrasse. The new residential neighbourhood was indeed a place where incredible success, prestige and profit mingled, attracting all social strata up until the collapse of the Monarchy. (Schorshke, p58.).

Otto Wagner won the bid to prepare the new urban design of Vienna. His program was clear: to push back historicism in favour of a new urban civilization whose main principles were efficiency and utilitarianism. The basis of architecture can only be modern life, he writes in his textbook Modern Architecture published in 1895.

Strongholds of liberalism were, however, slowly weakening in Austria. From 1895 on, Vienna was also taken over by Christian socialism. Their openly anti-Semitic leader, Karl Lueger (who coined the infamous phrase Judapest) was elected mayor in 1897. At first, Franz Josef rejected his appointment, but in 1897, not being able to resist political pressure, the emperor ratified Lueger’s appointment.

The centre of the great programmatic turn away from the past was undoubtedly Vienna. It was the place where the movement of Secession was born and spread globally. Its founding figure, and leader, Gustav Klimt soon found a passionate supporter in Otto Wagner, the renowned Viennese architect. Before becoming a ‘secessionist’, Wagner had been a representative of historic eclecticism. But for his new program, he found a great ally in the Secessionist movement.

As the pillars of liberalism weakened, political tensions increased and a radicalisation of ideologies can be observed. Liberalism was effective in subverting the old social order, but it proved much less effective in the democratic integration of demands coming from the wider public. The Monarchy and the Viennese elite were weakened by outer forces as well. Czech nationalism, Pan-Germanism, Zionism, social democracy and Christian socialism were all on the rise and becoming stronger and stronger. The demands of the ethnic and religious minorities were not met by the liberal ruling elite, which resulted in their gradual loss of political influence.

The new artists’ movement came about amidst such chaotic circumstances. It was escapist and demanded a complete renewal. The conviction was that artists had to reinvent the world. For Otto Wagner, Secession in architecture meant the dismissal of all historic forms and traditions. Gustav Klimt and Otto Wagner were both highly determined in setting a new program for art in general. Both entirely broke with classic, historical genres. Klimt started a periodical entitled Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). His motto was: New spring in art, “The Age needs its own art, the art needs its own freedom!” Secession gave Wagner and his followers a new language of form as well, which they applied in both residential and public buildings – programmatically designed for the modern man.

Gustav Klimt and Ödön Lechner: Labelled ’Ugly’ and the Aesthetics of Power

Klimt quickly became popular in Vienna through his work of decorating the buildings of the Ringstrasse. In 1894, following the recommendation of the rectorate of the newly renovated university, Klimt with one of his colleagues were commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Education to paint the main hall entrance. The commission ordered him to paint three allegories – Philosophy, Medicine and Law. After unveiling the first allegory, 87 professors from the university handed in a petition asking to have the painting removed. The original idea of the university management was to see a fresco depicting the legacy of Enlightenment, i.e., the victory of science over darkness. Klimt – by then influenced by the works of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer— presented a work depicting the circle of death, suffering and rebirth. The image showed entangled bodies floating in a cosmic haze. At the bottom of the dark image only an icy stare represented knowledge and will.

Protest led to scandal, and scandal grew into a political case (Schorske, pp205-206). The professors accused Klimt of depicting “blurred thoughts with blurred figures”. They believed his conceptual incoherence made Klimt’s work an artistic failure. Interestingly, Klimt’s main opponent did not belong to the conservative camp. Friedrich Jodl (1849-1914) was a professor of philosophy who was a firm believer of rational liberalism, and he publicly fought for equality and women’s emancipation. In the name of rationalism, however, he could not allow philosophy to be represented by a “dark” image of unclear symbolic meanings on the walls of the university. Thus, a strange alliance was formed: liberal rationalism allied itself with conservative clericalism in the rejection of artistic freedom. Jodl tried to correct this ideological trap by labelling Klimt’s work “ugly”.

The government, that officially was supportive of the Secessionist movement, did not pay attention to the professors’ petition. Attacks however continued and became stronger in the conservative and right-wing press. The overtly anti-Semitic, new right-wing led by Lueger identified Klimt and his followers with the Jews.

Klimt ignored the critics and continued his work. In 1901 he revealed the second allegory, Medicine. The painting was met by an even greater revolt than its predecessor. Due to the increasing pressure and parliament interpellations, the Ministry that originally supported Klimt now withdrew its support. Although he was appointed a professor at the Academy of Art, his appointment was not signed by the minister. Jodl thus won the fight institutionally. In his inaugural speech he argued that the past – i.e. historicism— could be the only acceptable school for both criticism and art. With this he announced the defeat of Secessionism.

*

Regarding the impact of Ödön Lechner (1845-1914), it is on a par with Otto Wagner. Lechner came from a German family and started his studies at the Berlin Academy of Architecture, but his interest soon turned to the renewal of architecture. His firm intention and artistic program was to integrate decorative motifs of Eastern folklore into modern architecture. He travelled to London with Vilmos Zsolnay to study Eastern ceramic art and Indian motifs. He was highly consistent in putting his artistic vision into practice. In 1891 his proposal entitled „Go East Hungarian!” was the winner to design the Museum of Industrial Art. Lechner used motifs from Indian, Persian, Moorish and Hungarian folk art on the building. The unique, and somewhat provocative building created quite a stir. It drew many young, open minded architects – overwhelmingly from assimilated Jewish families— to his school, but many were shocked and some were offended. Otto Wagner, for whom Secession was more about the search for clean and abstract forms, called the building the “Gypsy Kaiser palace”. According to Alajos Hauszman, the most renowned mainstream architect of the time, national character is rooted in the ground, one cannot look for it in far-away lands. In 1900 Lechner was awarded the title of royal counsellor from Kaiser Franz Josef, but he did get his fair share of critiques and attacks. In 1902 Baron Gyula Wlassics, vice-president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Minister of Religion and Public Education, issued a decree that would put a ban on erecting state financed buildings in the style of Hungarian Secession. He claimed that such a style was “without taste and ugly”. (Rudolf Klein. Szecesszió – un gout juif?, pp16-17). It was the moment when the ’völkisch-urban’ dichotomy combined with anti-Semitism appeared in architecture. Lechner’s own nephew and fellow architect, József Lechner, labelled the new trend of Hungarian Secession “Jewish-like”. Nevertheless, Lechner’s new style became very popular and spread quickly. Although Alajos Hauszman managed to prevent Lechner from getting a university professor appointment at the Technical University of Budapest, its building ‘K’ – planned by Hauszman - did receive ,decorative motifs of Hungarian Secession. Lechner, continued to remain marginalised in officialdom and academia, but he did achieve his goal of integrating Hungarian and Eastern folk motifs into architecture and thereby created an entirely new language of form. Undoubtedly, he was a pioneering figure of architectural Secessionism in Budapest as well as in other cities of the Monarchy. He paved the way for such great architects as the Löffle brothers or the Vágó brothers. Although he was never officially acclaimed in Hungary, he did rise to fame abroad. At the 1911 international exhibition of architecture in Rome, both he and Otto Wagner were awarded the gold medal of merit.

Klimt and Lechner represent two different figures of the diverse movement of Secession. Neither of them became canonized in their lifetime as they remained outside of official institutional structures. Both were targets of right-wing movements and parties. Neither got a university Chair. Both Klimt and Lechner, however, had successful careers as artists and architects. They created new schools, a new style and their work is still being celebrated and assessed. What is known is that the superior aesthetic qualities of their work rewrote the dominant aesthetics of power of their time.

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Western European modernism unfolded steadily by deconstructing the old. This unfolding was linear but its outcome was uncertain. The Age of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, symbolized by the emblematic figure of Franz Josef who represented the constancy of state power in Central Europe, on the one hand, was disrupted on the other hand by a general atmosphere of “everything is broken” in politics, art, social and economic relations. The new generation of modernists sensed this disruption and set out to change it through a ruthless rebellion against earlier generations. The great innovators of Vienna, their radical break with the past and all schools of historicism was highly conscious in art and architecture, as well as in philosophies of the subject. This new attention towards the individual psyche, both in arts and science, was largely due to the modern phenomenon of mass culture, urban alienation and the conscious choice of values.

Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi

From the perspective of Vienna and Budapest, the two capitals of the Empire, it is also interesting to consider the life and career of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, the two founders of psychoanalysis. Neither of them was allowed to enter the strictly protected bastions of medicine. Despite this, Freud had a splendid career, and started a movement that revolutionized psychology as it was known and rose to fame. Ferenczi’s career, on the other hand, was deeply impacted by the conservative Hungarian academic elite and professional circles that shaped medical training. Although the popularity of psychoanalysis was growing, it was not accepted institutionally as new knowledge. Both Freud and Ferenczi came from Jewish middle-class families and chose medicine like many other at the time. At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, the medical profession, like law, engineering or architecture, offered young Jewish people an opportunity for assimilation and carried the promise of upward social mobility. Scientific disciplines such as biology, medicine, and engineering saw a rapid institutionalisation and professionalization. Within medicine, specialised fields such as neurology, gynaecology and internal medicine developed quickly and proved especially lucrative for physicians.

The development of medicine and psychiatry, the foregrounding of individual (newly born bourgeois) psyche and the intellectual and creative currents of modernism, are all factors that circumscribed these two parallel lives. In the early phase of Ferenczi’s career he was already faced with severe problems of the expanding metropolis. First he treated patients with sexually-transmitted diseases, then he served as a poorly paid resident doctor in the psychiatric ward at the Elisabeth Shelter (Erős 2011, pp18-19). All of these were fundamental experiences that were absent from the life of his Austrian master. Later like Freud, Ferenczi started a private practice, where he was better paid, but this led his professional path away from the mainstream.

The Hungarian psychologist Ferenc Erős relies on letters Ferenczi wrote to Freud in order to reconstruct the unfolding of his career from the early years of the twentieth century until the 1920 numerus clausus. Erős’ work is also a wonderful attempt to rehabilitate Ferenczi as the founding figure of Hungarian psychoanalysis. In his narrative, though, he writes Ferenczi’s character as a “product” of the social and intellectual elite of the Monarchy. Even as a strong, professionally excellent, ambitious, committed man, and as a great organiser, he was not able to achieve a lasting career. Many elements of the ‘Ferenczi formula’, i.e. his character and life story may have been relevant to other learned, ambitious youth who were budding talents of the new intelligentsia open to fresh ideas.

Similar to Freud, Ferenczi’s professional path was greatly determined by his Jewish origin and the so-called ‘glass ceiling’ that even in the liberal atmosphere of the Monarchy drew limits for marginalised social groups and their upward mobility. In 1910, Ferenczi was still a member of Israelite Budapest physicians who comprised 60% of all physicians. But then he was drafted in 1914, like many of his colleagues (which later motivated him to do a systematic study on post-traumatic stress disorder). He was appointed as a university professor during the short lived 1919 Communist revolution and after the collapse, he and members of the psychoanalytic movement were marginalised for good (Erős 2011). Ferenczi and Freud remained in contact after their first personal encounter in 1908. While Freud enjoyed the freedom and the privileges of private practice in Vienna, Ferenczi spent a lot of energy in getting the new school officially recognized and acknowledged by academia. He met with repeated obstacles and never saw the impact of his efforts. While Freud is regarded as the absolutely emblematic figure of fin de siècle Vienna and the father of the global psychoanalytic movement, it is not possible to make such a statement regarding Sándor Ferenczi and Budapest.

From historiographers of psychoanalysis we can learn that obstacles to the formation and institutionalisation of the new discipline (started as a movement) was inseparable from the anti-Semitism of the time. This is true to the perjudices regarding the “nature” of the discipline and its scientific value as well. The contemporary public discourse did its best to talk of psychoanalysis as a religious movement –whose father and main priest was Sigmund Freud, whose disciples were spreading its unscientific “Semitic” preachings. Zoologist István Apáthy, at the kick-off meeting of the Eugenics Chapter of Association for the Hungarian Social Sciences formulated this discourse by saying that “…a radically messy and unscientific Viennese school, headed by Sigmund Freud is recruiting followers, and under the scientific disguise of psychoanalysis are spreading a rotten worldview, which is obviously tinted with the most characteristic feature of the Semitic race, the ever-growing need to ejaculate.” ”39 The

39Pesti Hírlap, 1914. jan. 25.11-12, idézve Erős 2011. 46 association of psychoanalysis with Jewishness was not only the case for the enemies of psychonalysis: many have been trying to investigate the multilayered relationship of the two.40 The tight connections of psyvhoanalysis and Freud to being Jewish cannot be debated as it inherently may carry the cultural traditions, the collective memory and social situatedness of the knowledge it produces; much the same way, although Freud himself had a problematic relationship to his own Jewish identity, scholars do agree that in order for him to become a cultural icon the fact that he was the representative figure of the Jewish intelligentsia bearing some attributes of his social group was essential.

Culture and Art: A Fundamental Break

The new era, pregnant with contradictions and tensions, produced outstanding artists and works while bringing to light ambivalences inherent in art and amplifying the urge to radically break away from the mainstream, the traditional, in order to create a new paradigm. Secession started in Vienna and spread globally. In Germany they called it Jugendstil, in France Art nouveau, in Spain and Latin America it is Modernismo, in the United States the terms Modern style or Tiffany-style. Although in each culture the movement had its culture-specific variations, none aspired to have a national self-identification. There was only one exception: Ödön Lechner created Hungarian Secession in Budapest. If there was an Austrian Secession, then the Hungarians needed one as well.

Parallel to the victory of Secession, we see the rise of industrial art deeply impacted by the Arts and Crafts movement. Besides the new atmosphere and new trends, an increasingly important element was the practical use and applicability of art.

The Hungarian art world produced a unique set of tones and trends in every genre and field – even if not with the same degree of impact. It did not imitate Berlin or Vienna, Paris or London, although modernist Hungarian painting was mainly born in Paris, as in the case of Mihály Munkácsy or his more talented student József Rippl-Rónai, or to a lesser degree in Munich, as in the case of the more conservative master Gyula Benczúr and his followers. The truly innovative Lajos Gulácsy and Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka were without predecessors or successors. They followed their own path, having come from nowhere and disappearing without followers, only to be discovered much later. Gulácsy mainly found inspiration in century-old layers of Italian art, and the small-town feel of rural Italy. He did not belong to any circle of his contemporaries, and his dream- and vision-like paintings are difficult to categorise. Many of his works got lost or damaged and were only discovered in the 1960s by professional and lay audiences alike. Yet, he is the par excellence Hungarian Secessionist painter. In the

40 Erős Ferenc: Pszichoanalízis és kulturális emlékezet. Budapest, Jószöveg Műhely, 2010. 51. words of art historian Judit Szabadi, “Gulácsy meant the apex of the individualisation process of modernist art… he paints entirety with his own existence.” (Szabadi Judit, A magyar szecesszió művészete, Corvina, Budapest, p117.)

The need for a sharp break from the aesthetics and standards of historicism appeared in Hungary as well but instead of following Western models, Hungarian artists –painters, architects, writers, but most universally composers— turned partly to Hungarian folk art, partly to Eastern cultural heritage. The most outstanding ones – Endre Ady, Béla Bartók, Lajos Gulácsy, Ödön Lechner etc.— openly declared their separate paths and the fact that they did not wish to follow Western models.

They took a stand against the ‘new’ dominated by machines, and were actively looking for new paths to modernity. They

• searched for a new symbolic language for their world (in poetry and fiction: Endre Ady, Mihály Babits, Dezső Kosztolányi, Gyula Krúdy); • rejected academia and the official historic eclecticism because of its pretentiousness (in architecture and painting: Ödön Lechner, Béla Lajta, József Rippl-Rónai, Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka); • created the cult of individual desire and the liberation of repressed sensuality (in poetry, fiction, and painting: Reneé Erdős, Endre Ady, Gyula Krúdy, János Vaszary, István Csók); • emphasised the new demands of the new era such as usefulness, new functions, utilitarianism (in architecture and industrial art: Ödön Lechner, Lajta Béla, Sándor Nagy, József Rippl-Rónai); • consciously used and synthetized motifs of Hungarian, Central European and Oriental (folk) art (music, architecture, and painting: Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, Ödön Lechner, Anna Lesznai).

Budapest until WWI was the melting pot of intellectual waves, and social and political movements. Similar to other urban centres, it saw the formation of academic societies, art clubs, and theatre companies – often out of the blue. It became fashionable to go to the theatre and the opera. Concurrently with the rise of high culture, mass cultural products also became popular, such as Western literary and theatre culture, contemporary musicals, and operettas. The audience at the opera was often blended or identical with the consumers of more popular performing art genres.

For citizens of Budapest and other large cities, unprecedented possibilities opened up to obtain art and to meet artists. There were close connections among artists and their groups. They impacted each other’s work by interpretation, at times through criticism, at other times through encouragement. The degree to which art became available for a wide and diverse range of consumers would not have been so high without a radical change brought about by a relative material prosperity and the change of social norms and patterns of consumer behaviour caused by such prosperity. Artists do not survive long without the support of their audience whose aesthetic sensibilities they shape equally as they serve their rapidly changing demands in the face of more universal shifts.

III. Narrowed Spaces, Temporal Ruptures: Towards New Perspectives?

Bubbles Around Our Heads

The boom, the material prosperity, technical innovation and infrastructural development, intellectual and cultural opening thus far unprecedented in Hungarian history, quickly started to erode. One reason for this was that underneath the surface, within institutions as well as in the larger social arena, short-sightedness, narrow-mindedness, lack of proper education and self-reflection continued. These traits were lasting continuities in the transformation of the political elites as well. Instead of remaining rural, the new gentry flocked to the capital and occupied political and administrative offices in increasing numbers. Their horizon, however, in most of the cases didn’t surpass Vienna. They could not find their place in the larger world around them, yet they were still intent on their entitlements and privileges.

From the turn of the century on, intensifying conflicts worked to destabilise the Empire. Ethnic tensions became more forceful and wide-spread. John Lukacs writes, “out of the 11 nationalities, 6 live in a magnetic field”. The Czechs and the Croats repeatedly expressed their discontent with the imperial Austrian or the Magyarising political elite. The Hungarian upper- and middle-class elite took it for granted that Hungary was the ruling nation in the Carpathian basin, and this shaped the Hungarian public discourse at the time. Although there was some degree of critical reflection in literature and art, the impact on public opinion and especially on political decision-making and culture-politics remained rather weak.

The biggest taxpayers pushed the previously influential traditional decision makers, the patricians, out of city politics. During the short era of liberalism, capitalism was apparently victorious over semi-feudal institutional structures. On the surface, the strengthening Jewish middle-class seemed to be assimilating and adopting itself to the gentry way of life.

In the years of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, spending a period of time in the public administration was indispensable for careers in politics. At the same time, local and county level politics were strongholds for the political mentality of the traditionally rural nobility.41

41 Gyáni Gábor: A napló mint társadalomtörténeti forrás (A közhivatalnok identitása), http://www.szabarchiv.hu/drupal/sites/default/files/27-35.pdf ] The continuities of feudalism in terms of social stratification were still rather pronounced at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Parallel to these characteristics, the urban proletariat existed as a social group with occasional outbursts of dissent and demonstrations. These were not yet well-organised, however.

Instead of a maturation of the middle-classes, i.e., material and intellectual development in mentality as well as a wider space of action, a more close-minded and restricted sense of nationalism and a misguided, distorted patriotism emerged. Neither the crumbling institutions of the Empire, nor the Hungarian public administration (aptly, albeit incorrectly called ’semi- feudal’), nor the inadequately educated political elite (obsessed with the hallucination of independence) were able to solve mounting problems and resolve growing tensions.

Those most sensitive could already predict the inevitable demise. Kossuth, in the debate around the Compromise, already predicted the collapse of the Monarchy. Oszkár Jászi, similarly to Kossuth, pointed to the solution in the confederation of peoples of the Danube region. These ideas, however, never received enough support, thus never became discourses dominant enough to shape the political will. The lack of learned, critical mass and a strong middle-class became evident in the attitudes of indifference and misunderstanding towards alternative ways of thinking. Hungarian society was drifting with the ever growing currents of history. In Ady’s revolutionary essays and poems, he criticised his nation harshly and with pathos, and his writings show deep insight. Many people still recite his strong, symbolic lines: “We are always late for everything”, “The Lost Horseman”, “The Nation of Drawbacks”, or the “Ferryboat country”, which likes to head from East to West, “but better backwards”.

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The great social, artistic, technological and psychological boom, in art and politics, that surpassed traditional forms, and the new tones and the critical attitudes (rejection of the old order and traditional schools) can all be attributed to the widening scope and perspectives. However, politics fell far behind the radical accomplishments and the pace of literature, music and creative arts in general. The divide appeared already in the years of the Golden Age, and the gap continued to widen steadily until the collapse of the Empire.

Due to tensions such a gap engendered, the previously dynamic interaction among political power, society and arts lost its potential. The often biased, tight-fisted and value-driven official (state) support system proved suffocated and marginalised those looking for new ways – perhaps not intentionally. This was less apparent in the case of the arts –particularly music, painting and architecture— and was far more noticeable in public life wrought with social and political conflicts.

Literature, with more talents than in any other fields, could have played an important mediating role, had language barriers not proved so impossible to bridge, and had there been a sufficiently educated social stratum that would have been able to transmit culture and ways of thinking into the international scene because they were equally sensitive to the outside world and its processes. The role of new public narrative initiated by men of letters and artists could have been far more effective, if Hungary had a middle-class that would have been stronger, more autonomous and more powerful.

Cultural Mediation: A Belated Attempt to Find a Way Out

In 1913, Ferenc Békássy, wrote an essay in English that was later translated into Hungarian, where he refers to himself as a ’cultural intermediator’. The essay entitled Hungarian Poetry Since 1906 attempts the impossible. Through English translations of their work, he sets out to promote Endre Ady, Mihály Babits and Dezső Kosztolányi – giants of poetry at home and mostly unknown in the West. Békássy was a member of the famous Apostles’ Society. Among his friends were John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russel. His mother, Emma Bezerédy, an educated noble woman and supporter of science, sent all of her seven children to the co-educational school of Bedales in the South of England. Békássy’s devotion to his homeland and Hungarian culture remained unchanged even during his lengthy studies in England. As one of the most popular member of the Apostles, he read his long essay about Hungarian poetry in English at King’s College. He nurtured a Platonic love for Noël Olivier, the niece of Lawrence Olivier, with whom he kept a lifelong correspondence and to whom he wrote his poems. When the war broke out, he decided to leave Cambridge and voluntarily enlisted in the army. Keynes, one of his closest friends, could not talk him out of his decision, instead sponsored Békássy’s trip back home. A few days before joining the army, Békássy had an appointment with Babits who read his essay and knew about his cultural mission. Babits, a poeta doctus and an unquestionable authority of Hungarian literature, didn’t show up at the meeting and Békássy died on the Ukrainian front in the first days of the war. His poems written in English were published by Virginia Woolf, and Keynes arranged that his name was listed on the war memorial at the chapel of King’s College. Békássy, who was a passionate patriot and at the same time an ardent European up until his death, loved not only modernist poets but the whole ouvre of Hungarian literature. It was thanks to him, and to Virginia Woolf’s help, that The Tragedy of Man (by Imre Madách) was published in English. Békássy, who paradoxically hated war, died a senseless death at the age of 22, leaving both Keynes and Babits with guilty consciences. His attempt to introduce and mediate Hungarian literature largely failed but it shows that efforts and awareness of the importance of building bridges between different cultures separated by languages and borders already existed at the beginning of the 20th century.

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There is an exceptional allegorical visionary piece by Endre Ady written in 1917, close to the collapse of the Monarchy, entitled Korrobori. It was written at the time when horizons had already narrowed, and illusions had been lost. By 1917 the rapidly growing shadow had taken away the glow of the Golden Age, there was no more open-mindedness and long-term perspective in the contemporary society to decode the message. Yet, in the allegory, Ady makes a desperate attempt to find a way to avoid the collapse.

The Korrobori is a sensual dance orgy done by an Australian aboriginal tribe where women play the music and men do the dancing.

„These Australians created a symbolic institution for the great human mystery, that which French dilettantes named the deadly hatred of the sexes. The Korrobori can also be lethal, one may die in erotic love-hate right before the feet of the musician. Music is playing, and women laugh and wait until we dance to our last drop of love and life.

How cowardly is it to hide that we have been dancing the Korrobori for a few decades now in the land of Duna and Tisza? Here two un-bred breeds, equally foreign to each other make love according to the rules of the Korrobori. With instruments of ready- made cultures, the Jews sat down to play. And we, who call ourselves Hungarian, do the love dance with hateful desire. Suffocating each other with love, we either produce a new race or we are doomed…

They, the Jews, just like the women of Australia, play the instruments. We, like a destroyed man-medium, dance … to our demise. Pity that we are so few who dance: there are no Hungarians in Hungary… burnt out elites, miserable peasantry liberated too late, wilting… bourgeoisie. Soon we may dance this Korrobori… no longer.

Yet, this Korrobori is the only light that could produce a photograph of ourselves free of shame… whatever Hungarianness remained, could only bud and thrive with a controlled but still free reformation…

I see something: whatever kind there is left, does not resemble the Hungarian of the textbooks. The bishop, the magnate, the noble and the descendants of all heroic ancestors can only prosper if they are Jewish. I foresee the prototypes of a new race, that of the Korrobori, and I hope I could see clearly. This would be the answer to the dilemma, the outstanding work of history, if it were true. Culture is, after all, made by those who are restless and the whole world is not enough for them. The last such Hungarians were truncated by Kaiser Otto on the meadows of Lech. Therefore, for both culture and progress… [we need] the imperfect but useful Jewry.”

*

Neither the attempts to find a way out, nor attempts to mediate culture were successful. Freud, in the moment of the Monarchy’s collapse saw the Hungarians as follows. He writes to Ferenczi on 18 November 1918: “I would like to sympathise with the Hungarians but I keep failing. I cannot understand the wildness and lack of comprehension of this uneducated folk. I have never been the advocate of the ancien regime, but it is questionable to me whether it is a sign of political wisdom that out of the many counts they kill the smartest [István Tisza] and the dumbest [Mihály Károlyi] they elect to be Prime minister.” (772 F, quoted in Erős 2004, p133.)

It is easy to criticise Freud and reject his words retrospectively. But many have seen, (and still see) Hungary like he did. The question is whether or not enough has been done to change this image.

The Austro-hungarian Emprie collapsed. Today mnumerous historias want to know what lies under the ruins and what it is that is still there like unanswered questions in our everyday struggles, or breaks to the surface in ever new forms. The thought of unity in diversity did not become valorized in the political and social praxis of the times, however, it was voiced again several decades later. Although it has been the most ambitious slogan of the European Union, we currently experience quite the opposite. We need to loook into our crystak bowls again to detect possible solutions to our predicament. íPerhaps the complexity of scientificand artistic interpretations, their language and the radiant legacy of the Golden Age may be of some help.

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