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’ uniformly 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 approach, 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 status. 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 integration 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 traditional, 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 example 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 century. 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 production 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 categories (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 middle 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. He also did his own accounting and, perhaps in re- membrance of the principle of “communitas et fraternitas” of medieval guilds, he “… rigorously observed and had others observe religious practices. He ex- pected his Christian employees to visit their church services just as uncondi- tionally as he demanded his children and Jewish apprentices to keep an accurate prayer schedule… As devout Jews were wont to do at home, family members had to have meals with their heads covered. Therefore, Christian apprentices and assistants were also required to sit around the table that way. After the patriarch of the family had said grace in Hebrew, Christians were to take off their hats for a few moments, to let first a Catholic then a Protestant apprentice to say their preprandial prayers.”2 The diversification and mobility patterns of the middle class assumed a more limited nature in other geographical locations. In the old handicraft-industry centers of Northern Hungary (e.g. Kassa [Košice]), the influential and powerful civic population (descendants of former guild members) jealously protected their privileges and the municipal council also took a role as an economic actor. (The lumber trade was monopolized in the years of the Dual Mon- archy; consumers’ co-operatives were encouraged; the operations of market vendors were strictly controlled.) In addition, the town’s industrial boom began to subside at the end of the century. All these factors made economic and social

2 HEGEDÜS Géza, Előjátékok egy önéletrajzhoz, (Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1982) 79.

— 70 — The Characteristics of the Societal Structure of Hungarian Jewry integration as well as profession-related mobility problematic for Jews who had started to migrate to the region only in the 1850s. The establishment of multi- generation merchant families (like those in Miskolc or Nagyvárad) was further hindered by the fact that, influenced by century-old traditions, the industrial sector retained a higher level of prestige in the decades of the Dual Monarchy. As Simon Letzter, the Jewish treasurer of the Chamber of Commerce and Indus- try of Kassa, wrote in 1905, “…it is unfortunate that the overwhelming majority of our merchants do not prepare and train their children to succeed them in this career, given that the notion of the old trading house is unknown in this part of the country… our trading sector needs representatives who can continue and perfect their fathers’ achievements.”3 Different entrepreneurial opportunities and upward-mobility patterns were provided by market towns which acted as business centers for surround- ing farms and villages. Agrarian entrepreneurs operating in settlements with wide outskirts perimeters in the area bordered by the Danube and Tisza Rivers, respectively, and succeeding their Jewish leather and wool merchant ancestors, leased lands (several hundred acres) and orchards, practiced animal husbandry and typically specialized in trading poultry and fruiton the side. These farmers may be considered part of the wealthy middle class as justifiably as those based in the region of Jászság, who started, in the 1860s, cheaply buying up plots and planting vineyards to end up as model farmers disseminating expertise in cul- tivating sandy soil.In the town of Jászberény, outstanding families included the Mandls, Mollers, Lippes, and Brünauers. At the end of the era of the Dual Mon- archy, more than 10% of the town’s Jewish parish members cultivated vineyards on a total area of some 750 acres valued at about 2 million korona. Jewish economic integration had had a longer history in the market towns of the Tokaj wine producing region. Records of the 1839–1840 census for Sátoraljaújhely show that “major” merchants trading in wine and wool (or felt fabric) and “major” leaseholders of inns, butcher’s shops and lands boasted the highest in- comes. Even in the decades of the Dual Monarchy (until the outbreak of the Great Phylloxera Blight, which caused the wine market to crash), it was these activities that provided certain families with opportunities to be elevated to the narrower entrepreneurial middle class. Jewish entrepreneurs who purchased or leased lands but, due to unfavorable market conditions or insufficient capital assets, could not launch profitable farming or associated industrial/commercial ventures may still be categorized as members of the middle class. The lands they were in control of tended to shrink and they were forced to get involved in projects of dubious outcomes,

3 A Kassai Kereskedelmi és Iparkamara 1905. évi közgyűlésének Jegyzőkönyve, (Kassa: Werfer, 1905)

— 71 — University of Miskolc Faculty of Arts – Research Almanac which often pushed them near the brink of bankruptcy. What follows is a break- down, focusing on the nation’s eastern and north-eastern counties, of the per- centages of Jews once owning more than 140 acres but gradually becoming in- eligible to keep their status of landed gentry: Bereg County 46%, Ung County 52%, Máramaros County 48%(?), Zemplén County 27%, Abaúj-Torna County 20%, Bihar County (a surprising) 13%.In Géza Hegedűs’ autobiography, you can find the name of Izsó Spitzer, whose father was a landowner and lease- holder in Belényes of Bihar County. After completing his high-school finals to prove his qualification for dueling, he got into the business of purchasing and selling forests Europe-wise (from the Carpathians to the Rhein and from the North Sea to the Sea of Marmara). The stratum of Jewish lower middle class, which is hard to identify, differ- entiated along the lines of various interdependent factors (professions, modernizing opportunities thereof, type of settlement, or the location within the settlement they occupied) to form a network of groups with rather loose cohe- sion. The tier of the upper-lower middle class was occupied by tradesmen (mainly in the service and maintenance sectors) and owners of independent stores (specializing in textile, clothing, haberdashery and fashion) who man- aged to retain their stability during the years of the Dual Monarchy, but could not afford to expand their staff (of a meagre one or two apprentices).They did have the option of working as subcontractors, though. (Major Jewish textile or shoe merchants based, among other places, in the capital, Nagyvárad and Mis- kolc employed numerous tailors or shoemakers.)The ranks of this group were joined by tradesmen who became factory workers for shorter or longer whiles. (Founded in Nagyvárad by Farkas Moskovits, Hungária Shoe Factory, well- known throughout Europe, employed 150 mostly Jewish people at the turn of the century. The same number referring to Lipót Heimann’s textile factory was over 80.) They did not lose their middle-class status, however, because for them the path to becoming independent again had not become completely blocked. Retaining stable lower-middle-class livelihoods was also possible by other means. The volume of commodity production typically increased in major farming settlements. This was beneficial to Jewish traders who tended to pass down, from generation to generation, the oftentimes unfavorable “strategies” of small- scale entrepreneurs (selling on credit, barter for farm products, low profit mar- gins, or loaning money). These exchanges, however, solidified their business relations with the local peasantry. Here is a sample of various regions, with rep- resentative towns, of which these practices were typical: Tolna County (Bátaszék, Bonyhád, Dombóvár); Northern Hungary (Szerencs, Sátoraljaúj- hely); Szabolcs County (the former market towns of Kisvárda, Nagykálló and

— 72 — The Characteristics of the Societal Structure of Hungarian Jewry Nyírbátor). The populations of these towns tended to buy from local Jewish shop owners who invested the proceeds in purchasing land and vineyards or small-scale leases. In other words, they set a course for farming with the ulti- mate goal of establishing family estates. The ever expanding ranks of the lower-lower middle class were also fairly diverse. It included craftsmen, based in rapidly urbanizing settlements, whose trades were becoming obsolete. (In Miskolc, for example, the Jewish association of guilds, which had been established in 1836, still had tanners, candle-dippers, button-makers and pipe-makers among its members). They basically shared status with practitioners of “traditional” occupations. (In the decades of the Dual Monarchy, several licensed distillers were registered on the outskirts of Nagyvárad.) Members of this group of the lower middle class, however, typically struggled on a daily basis to make ends meet. Other elements in the same stratum were general or convenience store owners based on the outskirts and vendors usually licensed to do business only on market days. Yet another sub- category was that of rag-and-bone men and peddlers who normally lived on the road only to return home for the Sabbath. (They were called “sub-Jews” in con- temporary Nagyvárad slang.) Owing to this lifestyle, their integration into recipient communities and upward social movement took place very slowly and controversially. A different type of the lower-lower middle class was that of Jews embed- ded in communities of poor peasants, typically in the Great Plain (Alföld), Trans-Tisza and north-eastern regions. The livelihood of these village Jews was determined by small-scale (a couple of acres) operations, subsistence farming with no market access, or paid work for bigger agribusinesses. It is also true, though, that the group included general store owners, publicans as well as tradesmen and the various elements represented slightly different cultures and traditions.(Adolf Ágai, for instance, depicted “Calvinist Jews” or folks from the North-East following Yiddish traditions as proper Hungarian peasants as early as the 1860s.) The careers of dramatist Menyhért Lengyel and poet József Kiss are testament to the fact that any chance of moving upward from this predica- ment may have only happened after long years of precarious existence and took plenty of ambition and talent. (The former came from the land of scattered farms on the Hortobágy puszta. His grandfather farmed a few acres of land and his father was an itinerant farm manager. The father of the latter owned a village store.) The main goal of the paper has been to briefly outline how Jewish populations integrated with local communities in the era of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. It also serves to show how those populations’ stratification, social mobility and chances of upward movement were determined by local and

— 73 — University of Miskolc Faculty of Arts – Research Almanac regional (that is, geographical) factors as well as economic conditions impact- ing the entirety of the era’s Hungarian society.

Translated by András Veréb

My major publications on this topic:

CSÍKI Tamás, Városi zsidóság Északkelet- és Kelet-Magyarországon. (A miskolci, a kassai, a nagyvá- radi, a szatmárnémeti és a sátoraljaújhelyi zsidóság gazdaság- és társadalomtörténetének összehasonlító vizsgálata, 1848–1944), (Budapest: Osiris, 1999)

CSÍKI Tamás, „Hagyományok és változások. A fővárosi zsidóság családfejlődésének néhány jellemzője a II. világháborúig” Néprajzi Látóhatár, 14(2005) 3–4. sz. 331–372.

CSÍKI Tamás, „A megtelepedés útján. A nagytárkányi zsidóság a 18–19. században”, in Nagytárkány. Tanulmányok a község településtörténetéhez és néprajzához, szerk. VIGA Gyula, (Komárom: Fórum Kisebbségkutató Intézet, 2006) 179–197.

CSÍKI Tamás, „Foglalkozási és megélhetési módok”, in Zsidók Kárpátalján. Történelem és örökség a dualizmus korától napjainkig, szerk. BÁNYAI Viktória és FEDINEC Csilla és KOMORÓCZY Szonja Ráhel, (Budapest: Aposztróf, 2013) 27–37.

CSÍKI Tamás, „Önszerveződés és társadalmasodás. Zsidó egyesületek Kárpátalján a dualizmus korá- ban”, in Zsidók és keresztények az évszázadok sodrában. Interpretációk egy témára, (Miskolc: Mis- kolci Egyetemi Kiadó, 2015) 138–150.

— 74 —