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This chapter aims to explore a bundle of Hungarian Jewish collective identity discourses articulated during the years of the Horthy regime on the pages of the IMIT

yearbooks. Throughout this subchapter I focus on the questions of Hungarian and Jewish

identities and various conceptions of their interrelation (or lack thereof). I will argue that the authors of IMIT could choose from a number of Hungarian Jewish identity options and will discuss and compare seven of them that emerge most strongly from the analysis of their writings. Five of these seven are versions of dual identity. The analysis of their colorful spectrum begins with the conventional version from the times of emancipation that favors the position that religion provides Jewish group cohesion and that therefore Jewry constitutes one of the denominations that make up the multiconfessional Hungarian nation.178

This 19th century formulation of dual identity is quite common in IMIT

yearbooks, not least because many of the authors experienced their primary socialization

prior to 1914. Another reason is the selection of themes: many writings commemorated

178

For instance, Lajos Blau wrote in the course of his text on Ferenc Mezey (1860-1927) that Jews (zsidóság) lived for their religion in their millennial history. Blau, “Mezey”, p.12. József Katona remarked on Simon Hevesi that his desire was the happiness of Jews, the cause of his “religious community”. József Katona, “Hevesi Simon” in IMIT évkönyv, 1943, p.68. The uses of categories such as religion or denomination were not nearly self-evident: the correct way of categorizing Jewry is a controversial issue, complicated by the abovementioned ambiguity of the Hungarian term zsidóság. Some have reflected on this specific complexity: Edelstein observed, for example, that “new theories are emerging and continuously replacing each other”. He mentioned the ideas of separate nationality, a (secondary) part of the nation, race and denomination – always depending on what national elite groups and the majority wanted to claim. Bertalan Edelstein, “A külföldi zsidóság története a háború utáni évtizedben” in IMIT évkönyv, 1929, p.312. Bertalan Hatvany believed that in the case of Indian and Chinese Jews, the subjects of his contribution to IMIT, it was simply impossible to decide whether they constituted a denomination or a race. Bertalan Hatvany, “Kínai és indiai zsidók” in IMIT évkönyv, 1933, p.54.

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65 leading Jewish personalities from the age of the Dual Monarchy. Lajos Blau, for instance, who was born in 1861, wrote on the ideas of Vilmos Bacher (1850-1913) and József Bánóczi (1849-1926) that were originally articulated in the late 19th century. In their view, the literature of the Jewish denomination is just one of the branches of national literature, for which the literature of other Hungarian denominations can provide models as well as parallels.179 The dual task of Israelite Hungarian authors would thus be to “offer Hungarian literature to our coreligionists and provide Israelite literature to the Hungarian nation”.180 In turn, in 1936 Lőwinger wrote about Blau himself (who passed away shortly before) that his goal was to gain appreciation for his “confession” and to propagate Hungarian culture worldwide.181 Bernát Heller argued that Ignác Goldziher’s (1850-1921) religiosity was purely Jewish.182 This was a polemical assertion to some extent since there were rumors about Goldziher cherishing syncretic religious beliefs. Heller maintained that his best friends, highly accomplished (non-Jewish) scholars, respected the religious Jew in him. At the same time, this exceptionally important Orientalist scholar was also an ideal Hungarian and could not even imagine being other than Hungarian.183 In the same way, Samu Szemere wrote of

179

Blau, “Mezey”, p.15. Blau also denied the existence of a historical conflict between Jews and non-Jews, and explicitly contested the legitimacy of the view that there ever was one: according to him, the ideas of “host and guest peoples are new inventions”. Lajos Blau, “A zsidók gazdaság helyzete az ó- és középkorban” in IMIT évkönyv, 1933, p.15. In Wertheimer’s eyes, the greatest merit of Bacher was to have given “Hungarian Jewish scholarly work its national character” that suffused it ever after. (Bacher also helped Hungarian Jewish scholarship to achieve international recognition through his publications in various important tongues.) “Wertheimer Adolf elnöki megnyitója” in IMIT évkönyv, 1939, p.332. As his energies were also directed towards the central object of IMIT, the Bible, Wertheimer quoted his activities as a highly relevant tradition. Ibid, p.333.

180

Blau, “Mezey”, p.22. On the conceptual level, the distinction between Israelite coreligionists (hitsorsosaink) and the wider group of Hungarian people was also used. Ibid, p.20.

181

Lőwinger, “Blau”, p.10. Lőwinger added that the research interests of Blau were much broader: he was interested in the unity of the Jewish spirit and its manifestation in culture but refrained from treating Jewish phenomena in isolation. Ibid., p.20.

182

Peter Haber wrote his German language dissertation on the identity of Goldziher. See Peter Haber, Zwischen

jüdischer Tradition und Wissenschaft. Der ungarische Orientalist Ignác Goldziher (1850-1921) (Wien: Böhlau,

2006). 183

Bernát Heller, “Goldziher Ignác emlékezete” in IMIT évkönyv, 1932, pp. 20-23. In Sebestyén’s text, Goldziher represented another duality. He was the “palatial wise intellect of the Orient” while “his love of his

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66 Lajos Palágyi (1866-1933) that he was “an inspired poet of his nation and a self-conscious son of his denomination”.184 In his analysis of the platform of Egyenlőség (originally started in 1882, at the time of the blood libel trial of Tiszaeszlár) Simon Hevesi quoted the conviction of Ferenc Székely that the journal was founded in order to simultaneously articulate two sentiments: “dedication to the ancient religion” and “unshakable loyalty to the Hungarian homeland” (haza).185 In 1931, Lajos Szabolcsi also wrote of a “sacred duality” which meant that homeland and religion ought to be loved equally.186

This version of dual identity was again evoked in more general discussion of the age of the Dual Monarchy. According to Groszmann, for instance, the spirit of liberalism and national democracy made the country flourish and fostered the renewal of Hungarian Jewry, and in this successful era “the greatest sons of the nation” and “the leaders of the denomination” fought together on the same side.187 (Probably unintendedly, this was a somewhat ambivalent formulation: it presupposed that the great persons of the Hungarian

country was unmatched by anyone”. Károly Sebestyén, “Goldziher, az ember” in IMIT évkönyv, 1932, pp. 47- 9.

184

Samu Szemere, “Palágyi Lajos” in IMIT évkönyv, 1936, p.254. László Fenyő evoked the “memory and example” of Palágyi as of “one of the few Hungarian-Jewish poets”. László Fenyő, “Palágyi Lajos emlékezete”, in IMIT évkönyv, 1934, p.153. In his treatment of Palágyi a year earlier, Hugó Csergő pointed to a grave contradiction: in his eyes, Palágyi was a Jewish poet who created works of lasting value in Hungarian literature (Csergő called him a worthy successor of Petőfi) and in Hungarian Jewish cultural life, but who did not manage to occupy the position he deserved and had to face humiliations. Hugó Csergő, “Palágyi Lajos” in IMIT évkönyv, 1933, pp. 40-44.

185

Simon Hevesi, “Az <<Egyenlőség>> ötven éves jubileumára” in IMIT évkönyv, 1929, p.199. 186

Lajos Szabolcsi, “Emlékbeszéd Lucien Wolfról” in IMIT évkönyv, 1931, pp. 33-4. The text of Lajos Szabolcsi provides an excellent example of the (difficult) balancing of national and denominational consciousness: he wrote that “no matter how painful and shameful the numerus clausus was […] it hurt us equally that foreign diplomats and statesmen took up this inner pain of ours and negotiated over it”. Ibid., p.29. The key issue for Lucien Wolf, a historian, journalist and a fighter for Jewish rights and the prime subject of Szabolcsi, was the recognition of the minority status of Jews. Ibid., p.26. Later on, Grünwald would write that “the recognition of Jews as a national minority did not bring with it the expected solution of the Jewish question”. Fülöp Grünwald, “Az 5694. és 5695. év” in IMIT évkönyv, 1935, p.302.

187

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67 nation and the Israelite leadership were two separate groups without overlaps.188) Last but not least, Mór Mezei believed that at that time the attempt to reconcile two centrally important goals (the “religious and cultural” and the “patriotic”, which implied economic and political) was successfully completed. To him, an obvious sign of this success was the fact that Hungarian Jewry managed to strengthen Jewish religious and cultural institutions and win respect for Jews while greatly contributing to the greatness of its Hungarian homeland.189

There were other ways of expressing Hungarian Jewish dual identity. These alternative options did not categorize Jewry (zsidóság) as a denomination and thus a part of the larger nation parallelly with other confessional groups. In one of these alternative formulations the two qualities (i.e. Hungarianness and Jewishness) were of a much more similar kind. They exerted their influence on the same level and were partly mixed: Hungarian Jews represented a combination of Hungarian and Jewish elements. In his discussion of Egyenlőség, Csetényi sought to emphasize dual attachments and referred to Jewry as a tradition. He maintained that Egyenlőség was conceived as a journal “in the Hungarian spirit and language but rooted in the Jewish tradition and written for a Jewish- Hungarian readership”.190 Thus, in his eyes, Egyenlőség offered a great opportunity to develop Hungarian-Jewish literature and served the Hungarian nation.191 Wertheimer wrote of joining Hungarianness and Jewishness, which would create a new type with some markedly Jewish sentiments and colors: “With the, so to say, <<racial purity>> and masterful use of his Hungarian language, he [the poet József Kiss] articulated the captivating and noble

188

Heller had very similar things to say on the age of the Dual Monarchy (i.e. drawing a clear distinction line between the Hungarian nation and Jews in order to link them): “the nation gave lavishly [pazarul – FL], Jews reciprocated gratefully”. Bernát Heller, “Goldziher Ignác emlékezete” in IMIT évkönyv, 1932, p.7.

189

Groszmann, “Mezei”, p.205. Note the frequent use of homeland (haza) instead of nation (nemzet). 190

Imre Csetényi, “Az Egyenlőség és a magyar irodalom” in IMIT évkönyv, 1930, p.109. 191

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68 sentiments that arose from his Jewishness. What he created truthfully reflected the spiritual world of his parental house and his Jewish environment.”192 He added three years later that “Hungarian Jewish life has a special color, but it is Hungarian life nevertheless and constitutes an integral part of the life of the Hungarian nation”.193

Having looked at two forms of dual identity, the combined, the nationally Hungarian and religiously Jewish, and the mixed type (Hungarian Jewish, where Jewishness was not only a denominational category and thus was on the same level of identification as the Hungarian nation) let us turn to an alternative discourse on assimilation which put a greater emphasis on Jewish identity. This we might call the option of assimilating, but self-

preserving Jews. As already quoted above, Ármin Kecskeméti, for instance, maintained that

“the frame of European Jewish life can only be assimilation, the creation of unity between European and national culture”.194 Assimilation and Jewish consciousness were not opposed

192

“Wertheimer Adolf elnöki jelentése” in IMIT évkönyv, 1930, p.316. 193

“Wertheimer Adolf elnöki jelentése” in IMIT évkönyv, 1933, p.255. In the course of his presidential speeches, Wertheimer recurrently referred to concepts such as equal rank, amalgamation, inseparability. Similarly to Munkácsi, Wertheimer often switched between analytically distinguishable options. For example, he spoke of “decisive proofs of Hungarian Jewish merits that were manifest in our homeland” and “perfect amalgamation with the Hungarian nation”. “Wertheimer Adolf elnöki megnyitója” in IMIT évkönyv, 1941, p.330. Moreover, he declared that “our dedication to our Hungarian home and Hungarian nation is unshakable and our love never ending”, in spite of which he asserted that very difficult times were to be expected. “Wertheimer Adolf elnöki megnyitója” in IMIT évkönyv, 1938, p.273. In 1943, he went as far as to refer to Jewish loyalty and the Jewish “attempt” to “earn dignity”. Thus, at least verbally, he clearly accepted that the burdern of proof was on Jewry: “our Hungarian homeland has shown us good will for over a thousand years” and “we have tried to reciprocate this with all our intellectual might and with every beat of our hearts, with unshakable loyalty to our homeland, and will continue to try to earn it” (i.e. this good will), he added in the middle of 1943. “Wertheimer Adolf elnöki megnyitója az IMIT 1943. június 29-én tartott közgyűlésén” in IMIT

évkönyv, 1943, p.363. The idea that Jews were merely parts of larger entities, but still assumed special roles

within these entities through their outstanding individuals resurfaces also in the writings of Turóczi-Trostler: he evaluated the work of Wassermann as the first conscious Jewish creation since the times of Heine of “a separate symbolic reality within more elementary Germanness”. József Turóczi-Trostler, “A zsidó-német irodalmi kapcsolatok kérdéséhez” in IMIT évkönyv, 1929, p.286.

194

When at least nominally discussing Mendelssohn, Ármin Kecskeméti made a complaint, but through using the voice of commitment: Jewish self-esteem made one sense that “there has never been a historical ungratefulness” comparable to that shown towards Jews, but in spite of it “we confess and declare it loudly that we shall not be diverted from our path and will not turn back”. Ármin Kecskeméti, “Mendelssohn kétszát esztendeje” in IMIT évkönyv, 1929, p.158. This also illustrates that the discourse employed here was not disposed critically towards certain forms of Jewish integration (which Kecskeméti called assimilation, a term that was often used but with diverse meanings).

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69 here: “Assimilation cannot mean heroic death, cannot require our dispersal into European culture without leaving any signs.”195 Instead, Kecskeméti propagated a version of coupling Jewish Europeanness with Jewish consciousness. To achieve the desired duality he recommended the pursuit of Jewish scholarly works that were to be conducted in the interest of Jewish self-preservation.

There also existed the identity option of “clearly Hungarian, but primarily Jewish”, or in other words the identity option of assimilated, but emphatically Jewish Jews. This option is similar to the previous one with the difference that it aims not at assimilation and self-preservation, but starts from assuming the completion and naturalness of assimilation (in current, more precise terms this might be called acculturation) and goes on to state that the pursuit of Jewish activities are in perfect harmony with the fact of being assimilated – as if it was talking about the subsequent stage of history that logically followed from Kecskeméti’s position. The option of assimilated, but emphatically Jewish Jews thus becomes a subcategory of the third option, a more confident, more assertive discourse which affirms the continued salience of Jewishness and aims to prove that reconciliation of the two elements of the existing duality is real. An example of this stance in discursive practice is Arnold Kiss’ writing on Bánóczi where he stated that “the bouquet of his personality is a specifically and unmistakably Hungarian one, from Szentgál”, adding that Bánóczi received his patriotism “from a long line of ancestors who were already immersed in it, for whom such patriotism went without saying and in its obviousness required no special

195

Ármin Kecskeméti, “Mendelssohn kétszát esztendeje” in IMIT évkönyv, 1929, p.160. Aladár Fürst, on the other hand, declared as early as 1930 that he preferred not to use the expression assimilation because in his eyes it was “an overused term and the phenomenon it referred to has often been accused”. He revealingly added that he did not mean to use it also because he did not want to declare that it was illegitimate as it could only lead to self-destruction and to making Jewishness redundant, though he believed that a stronger form of Jewishness needed to be asserted. Aladár Fürst, “Németország zsidó középiskolái” in IMIT évkönyv, 1930, p.226.

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70 demonstration”. His Hungarianness was so self-evident that there was “nothing in him of the Jewish sense of being humiliated or lacking self-esteem”.196 On the other hand, Kiss went on to say that “the humaneness of the Jewish prophetic ideal” pulsated in Bánóczi.197 The subjects of his work and his hopes made him emphatically Jewish in his Hungarianness: “His symbolic hope of collecting his people from the four corners of the Earth led him to collect the scattered treasures of Jewish scholarship and help the creation of many volumes in Hungarian to enrich Hungarian-Jewish literature”.198 In sum, Bánóczi searched for “the path of the Jewish soul in the Hungarian” and managed to stay resolutely Jewish even while being positioned firmly within Hungarianness.199 This was, however, not only a description of a canonical personality, but, as far as Kiss was concerned, a prescribed identity option: “We are translating the Holy Bible with his Hungarianness, confessing our Jewishness with his self-esteem, and promulgating our Hungarianness with his natural self-consciousness and thus without unnecessary ostentatiousness”, Kiss wrote.200

The fourth identity option is a somewhat peculiar combination: here the attempt was made to combine and reconcile theories of Jewish peoplehood with dualist conceptions. This option went beyond the previous formulations in stressing the Jewish part of identity.201 This might be called the option of belonging to the Jewish people, while also

being Hungarian. For instance, discussing Péter Újvári, Andor Peterdi evoked the ideas of

196

Arnold Kiss, “Bánóczi József egyénisége” in IMIT évkönyv, 1932, pp. 183-4. 197

Ibid., p.159. 198

Ibid., p. 159. 199

Ibid., p.184. It is intriguing (as observed by Kiss himself) that being positioned “within Hungariandom” (i.e. being naturally assimilated) in the case of Bánóczi also led to intolerance towards the so called nationalities of the country.

200

Ibid., p.186. 201

The attentive reader would perhaps notice that when Kiss was discussing the “evident Hungarianness” of Bánóczi, he mentioned his “symbolic hope” of recollecting Jewish people scattered around many countries. Therefore, my previous example is also weakly connected to this category – though Kiss clearly wrote of a symbolic kind of scholarly recollection and not any kind of actual commitment to gather the Jewish people.

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71 the Jewish people as well as the Jewish kind (fajta). He wrote that Újvári “knew his people best, even managed to delve into their spirit in the most profound way” and “dedicated his life to his kind”.202 At the same time, he painted the portrait of Újvári as a person in whom a “miraculous unification” took place: he was at once “the golden storyteller of his kind, his people” and “a true artist in the Hungarian language”.203 In the articulation of this identity option, the primacy of Jewishness was coupled with the yearning to have duality generally recognized: “When I say that Péter Újvári was primarily Jewish [mégis csak zsidó volt – FL],