The Characteristics of the Societal and Spatial Structure of Hungarian Jewry in the Era of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy
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The Characteristics of the Societal and Spatial Structure of Hungarian Jewry in the Era of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy Tamás Csíki Institute of Historical Sciences [email protected] Keywords: Jewry, Regionality, Social structure, Enterprises, Mobility It has been a long held view of our historical writing that the social structure of the Jewish population of any capitalist society is more bourgeois-oriented than that of the system it is incorporated into. Therefore, its modernizing role has also been considered more pronounced. This approach, based on Jews’ uni- formly ostracized status from traditional feudalistic structures, tends to inves- tigate Jewish populations taken out of their regional financial and societal con- text. This, in turn, justifies the notion of the existence of certain group-specific characteristics that uniformly apply to close-knit Jewish communities. This ap- proach, however, does not take into consideration the inner differentiation of Jewish society, the nature of social stratification varying from region to region (or settlement to settlement) and the various opportunities for mobility. Nor does it recognize the fact that the profession-related categories of statistics are hardly an accurate measure of a community’s achievement of middle-class sta- tus. This deficiency must be remedied by taking local and regional surveys and applying a comparative methodology. This may be followed up by the investi- gation of individual life stories. This is the only viable research method that can either lead to a more nuanced picture of the Hungarian Jewish community or a refutation of previously held views of the features of Jews’migration, business ventures and their role in the development of a bourgeois society.1 The economic and social roles of the Jewish population as well as their in- tegration patterns showed a wide range of variety. The same can be said of the composition, entrepreneurial strategies and mobility options of the various 1 My research has primarily focused on the economic and social history of Jewish communities inhabiting towns in North-Eastern and Eastern Hungary (Kassa [Košice], Miskolc, Nagyvárad [Oradea], Szatmárnémeti [Satu Mare] and Sátoraljaújhely) so the paper’s data and findings are mainly concerned with those towns. Furthermore, the terms “civic person”, “member of the middle class”, or “member of the bourgeoisie” (cf. polgár in Hungarian) are used in a narrow sense to denote townsfolk of the entrepreneurial social strata. — 67 — University of Miskolc Faculty of Arts – Research Almanac Jewish social strata (the elite, the middle class and the petty bourgeoisie). This diversity, in the long term, was determined by several factors. On the one hand, it was influenced by when and how Jewish communities started to integrate with local society and where they originated from (closely associated with their patterns of folk movements and educational indicators as well as the respective roles of orthodoxy and neology). On the other hand, it was also impacted by the modernizing trends and economic conditions (e.g. trade relations and/or phys- ical resources) in particular geographical regions as well as the social status of recipient communities. The differentiation of the Jewish economic elite took place along the lines of various strategies of enterprise and amassing capital. The first, most tradi- tional, group was that of leading merchants operating nationwide or in major towns that, having broken their links with farming, started to develop into thriving regional trading centers. During the decades of the Dual Monarchy, these actors had access to foreign markets. Their large-scale leases served the purpose of sale. Their amassed capital assets typically flowed into the banking sector and – partly via this same channel – into industrial ventures able to sat- isfy stable domestic market demand. Besides the capital, another typical exam- ple is Miskolc, where by the end of the era, over 40% of the top tax-paying po- sitions (virilis) had become occupied by merchants, all but two of them of Jew- ish descent. Located at the intersection of several geographical regions, this town started to develop into a major commercial hub as of the early 19th cen- tury. Thanks to the strengthening economic ties with the Treasury Estate of Diósgyőr, the settlement of Jews had started even earlier. Both of these factors contributed to the fact that the assets of several major enterprises were passed down from father to son ensuring multi-generational continuity and the possi- bility of pursuing relatively flexible business plans. The second tier of the Jewish economic elite was constituted by wealthy owners of major agribusinesses. This group started to materialize in the 1850s in the food-industry centers (mainly of the milling and distillery sectors) of farming regions. Typical examples are the towns of Temesvár (Timişoara), Arad, Békéscsaba and Nagyvárad (Oradea). This type of enterprise continued to be their major means of amassing capital, which determined the nature of their business ventures. In Nagyvárad, a major hub of milling and other food- related businesses as early as Reform Era, the biggest mills were typically founded by Jewish owners of distilleries. They also tended to launch various spin-offs (e.g. pig, cattle and dairy farms) and started to gain a foothold in more modern sectors by establishing industry-scale bakery businesses and flavored- spirit distilleries. Instead of forcing mergers or establishing subsidiaries – as it was typical in Miskolc – they focused on deepening the vertical dimension of — 68 — The Characteristics of the Societal Structure of Hungarian Jewry the farming industry. The same purpose was served by their farming leases which made the production cycle as efficient as possible. At the same time, they ensured stability in case of any temporary shortfall in the output of certain pro- duction units. A slightly different group was that of those agrarian entrepreneurs who raised their finances from trading in grain. These capital assets, in turn, were invested into land purchases or more typically long-term leases. They did not aim at deepening the vertical nature of their enterprises but at modernizing their production processes. This approach was passed down from father to son and often spread along more distant family lineages. The best locations to put this approach in practice were geographical areas with several large estates. To mention actual names from the Southern Transdanubia region, the Strasser and Schlesinger families or the Leopolds are good examples. (A scion of one of these families, the legendary Lajos Schlesinger left Nagykanizsa to become a coffee plantation owner in Guatemalaat the end of the 19th century.) Sándor Leopold, “the first colonist,” on the other hand, leased the Ózsák-Puszta Estate on the outskirts of Szekszárd. The area had been marshy scrubland in the 1870s, but was developed into an intensive model farm within a few decades. The example later became family tradition. Sándor Leopold’s older brother, Lajos Leopold, Sr., who finished law school, leased Szilfa Manor. His older son farmed the lands on the outskirts of Sárszentágota. The younger boy, Lajos Leopold, Jr. (also a law school graduate), had taken a study tour in Italy before he came back in 1902 to take over his father’s model farm. (All three estates belonged to the assets of Theresianum). Lajos Jr. continued his father’s modernization efforts. In addition to grain farming, he launched tobacco farming and viticulture. He imported cutting-edge farm machinery, tractors and harvesters from the U.S. (He also pursued academic interests as a sociologist. Even so, no smaller a lit- erary figure than Endre Ady still considered him a “farmer” because it was not until 1920 that he moved to the capital city).Representatives of this category attached a lot of prestige to owning or the act of purchasing land. In this respect, there was no difference between top-tier or mid-level landowners regardless of their being of Jewish or Christian descent. Evidence of this might be found in the fact that in the decades of the economic crisis, Jewish entrepreneurs tended to liquidate their newest assets or discontinue their leases to be able to mod- ernize farming practices on their own family estates. Defining the Jewish middle class of the era of the Dual Monarchy is also problematic for several reasons. The various factors accounting for distinct cat- egories (income, number of apprentices, education and lifestyle) may have manifested themselves differently in specific locations. They were also con- nected to the dynamics of mobility which, in turn, was influenced by other — 69 — University of Miskolc Faculty of Arts – Research Almanac factors, such as the time of settlement or segregation patterns in a given habi- tation. In Nagyvárad (where the Jewish parish was established as early as 1722), certain tradesmen and small traders who kept pace with urbanization and the demands of modernization (specifically the owners of a shoemaker’s shop and a stationery business)may have been considered members of the mid- dle class. However, merchants enjoyed a status with higher prestige even if they employed fewer apprentices. As soon as skilled tradesmen had launched a store, or vice versa, merchants had started some kind of manufacturing shop, and accordingly increased their income, they were promptly promoted to the upper middle class. As a concrete example, let me cite the career of Géza Hegedűs’ grandfather as discussed in the author’s autobiographical writings. Hegedűs Sr. started a shoemakers’ workshop in the Újváros District in the 1860s. Having toiled for two decades, he established his reputation as a re- nowned master craftsman and was ready to open a footwear store in the late ‘70s. At that point, he was employing five to six apprentices and assistants in his shops and received regular orders from the highest-ranked noble families of the county. In spite of this – but in perfect alignment with the peculiar unity of entrepreneurial work ethic andJewish mentality – the owner kept working from dawn to closing time.