Publication of the yearbook series was one of the main activities of the
Izraelita Magyar Irodalmi Társulat (Israelite Hungarian Literary Society, abbreviated as
IMIT). Originally founded in 1894 with the aim of helping the creation and distribution of Jewish literary and scholarly works, IMIT conducted its activities in the Hungarian language and was to a large extent concerned with Hungarian Jewish topics. The first yearbook of the Society was released in 1895 during the last phase of the political-ecclesiastical struggle and the fight of the Jewish reception movement for recognition of Judaism as one of the official religions of Hungary.89 The yearbooks appeared each year until the end of the First World War when the initiative came to a halt: as the Society ceased its activities for over a decade, no yearbooks were printed until 1929. Upon the refoundation of IMIT in the late 1920s, its publishing activities continued for another fifteen years: the new yearbook series appeared regularly in volumes of roughly equal length all the way until 1943, the year just prior to the Hungarian Holocaust.90
89
As discussed in the introduction, the political-ecclesiastical struggle was the passionate, but comparatively speaking rather mild Hungarian version of 19th century religious (Catholic) versus secular conflicts or
Kulturkaempfe.
90
The yearbooks were first edited by Vilmos Bacher and Ferenc Mezey, later on by Vilmos Bacher and József Bánóczi. Samu Szemere served as the editor of the series that began in 1929. A philosopher and aesthetician, he was born in Zirovnica, Macedonia in 1881 and passed away in Budapest in 1978. He received his degree in 1904 and was member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences between 1945 and 1949. His main mentor (and later colleague) was Bernát Alexander. At first he taught in secondary schools. Between 1917 and 1919, he served as the secretary of the Hungarian Philosophy Society. Between 1927 and 1942 he was the director of the
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39 The following chapters offer a detailed, thematically focused analysis of the contents of these fifteen yearbooks released in the second half of the Horthy era which, after the end of the consolidation period under Prime Minister István Bethlen, brought growing right-wing radicalization and anti-Semitic exclusion, and also multiple acts of discriminatory legislation starting in 1938. Before turning to the analysis of the publication itself, however, this introductory section summarises the basic characteristics of the sources.
The average length of the IMIT yearbooks is approximately 360 pages – the fifteen yearbooks cover altogether 5388 pages. The length of the volumes fluctuates very little: the shortest yearbook of 1938 is 313 pages long, while the last and the longest volume from 1943 has 387. Each yearbook contains two main sections, the Literary Works and the
Announcements of the Society. The former occupies the bulk of the publication with 4624
pages (at least 239 and at most 351), while the later takes up 613 pages in total, between 18 and 84 pages per volume.91
The title Literary Works is used in a rather broad sense: the large majority of articles appearing under this heading were scholarly rather than fictional. In the Horthy era there were altogether 235 prose contributions and with the exceptions of less than two dozen pieces they were non-fictional. Discounting the annual reports, altogether 197 scholarly articles can be identified. Most of them averaged around 20 pages, but somewhat shorter and (occasionally much) longer texts were also published. Many of these materials were
Israelite Teacher Training Institute. He became the president of IMIT in 1945. As a pensioner, he taught history of philosophy at the Rabbinical Seminary starting in 1950 and even got a teaching position at ELTE in 1963. He translated several works of Giordano Bruno, Descartes, Dewey, Feuerbach, Hegel, Pestalozzi, Schiller, Spinoza, Vico and Windelband. He wrote his main works on Giordano Bruno, Oswald Spengler, John Dewey, Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Mann.
91
It provides an excellent illustration of how little fluctuation there were between the lengths of the various yearbooks that the first section was shortest exactly when the second grew longest. (4624 and 613 add up to 5237. There are 151 extra pages since the articles usually start at page 9 and the tables of contents were not counted.)
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40 presented in some format at the annual lecture series organized by IMIT too that were attended by large audiences of several hundreds of people.92 This set-up required the authors to consider the demands of popularization for a broadly educated but non-specialist audience. Thematically, the studies can be divided into two main categories, Hungarian Jewish and general Jewish. The former group includes 93, the later 76 articles, and while some yearbooks focus more strongly on Hungarian Jewish topics, others include more pieces on general ones, so that overall the two categories receive roughly the same amount of attention.93 Although most pieces feature some heterogeneous elements, the dividing line between two thematic clusters is nevertheless very clear and already evident in many article titles.94 The remaining articles can be broadly classified into three, much smaller, categories. There are another twelve studies on German Jewish themes, seven on the contemporary
92
The lecture series was held from fall to spring each year and so the years of IMIT ended in the summer. 93
There are altogether five yearbooks where the representation of the two topics was particularly skewed in favour of one or the other: In 1929 the ratio is 9-1, in 1932 8-3, in 1943 11-3 in favor of the Hungarian Jewish thematic. (Remarkably, two of three instances are the first and the last IMIT yearbook in the Horthy era.) General Jewish topics dominated in 1937 and 1938 (7-3 and 7-2), with hardly any Hungarian Jewish studies in these two years.
94
For instance, articles titled “Remembrance of the First Hungarian Jewish Congress”, “Egyenlőség and Hungarian Literature” or “Data on Hungarian Jewish History. The Question of Emancipation at the Parliament in 1861” quite obviously belong to the former while “Tragedy in Aggadah”, “Commentary on Jewish Calendar and Chronology” or “The Value of the Person in Jewish Thought” belong to the latter. The “Hungarian Jewish” category also includes the article on the person of Májer/Meier Kayserling who, although more of a German than a Hungarian rabbi, was nevertheless active in Pest and thus connected to the history of the Jews of Hungary. Similarly, Moses Sofer would not be called a Hungarian in some another contexts, but in this respect the authors of IMIT seem to have employed a broad, inclusive definition (Jews of Hungary), which puts the articles dealing with his person in the same category. The subjects of some studies are not Jewish (János Arany, Imre Madách, Mihály Babits), but the method of their treatment connects them directly to Jewish culture – see especially “Arany János viszonya a legendához és agádához”, “Madách Imre és a Biblia”, “A Szentírás Babits Mihály költeményeiben”, which aim to demonstrate Jewish contributions to Hungarian culture, a theme that will be addressed in a separate subchapter (Chapter IV/2.). Other pieces were, however, more difficult to cagetorise: in the case of writings on Moses Mendelssohn, I ultimately decided in favor of general Jewish (and against German Jewish), since their focus was rather the general significance of Mendelssohn and not his specific German context (see Kecskeméti Ármin, “Mendelssohn kétszáz esztendeje”, and Richtmann Mózes, “Mendelssohn Mózes mint a zsidóság védelmezője”). In one instance (Zsoldos Jenő, “Mendelssohn a magyar szellemi életben”) the Hungarian Jewish label seemed most appropriate as the study dealt primarily with the history of Hungarian reception. On the other hand, the discussion of Leopold Zunz belongs to the German Jewish category, though a good third of this article is also dedicated to his impact on Hungarian Jewish scholars.
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41 situation in the Holy Land (dealing with Zionism or, in one case, with modern Hebrew) and seven more on other foreign themes.95
In the course of these fifteen years, altogether 150 authors contributed to IMIT, among them 42 were poets96 and 108 prose authors.97 The poetry in IMIT consisted overwhelmingly of original compositions, but there were also some translations from German and Hebrew. Of the 108 authors who published mostly their scholarly studies in prose, 63 appeared only once, 17 of them made two and 13 three contributions. The most frequent contributors were Bernát Heller with 13 appearances,98 Fülöp Grünwald with 9, 99
95
Articles belonging to the former two categories feature prominently in two subchapters of Chapter V (“Discourse on Zionism and Palestine” and “Germany and Nazism in IMIT”). Out of the seven “other” ones, four were on French drama history, all of them written by Oszkár Elek. They will be (rather critically) addressed in the subchapter devoted to the discourse on Jewish contributions. All IMIT studies could be assigned to one of these five categories, save two writtend by Turkologist, folklorist and linguist Ignác Kúnos on Turkish and Muslim subjects with relatively few Jewish bearings. Put together, these categories include a total of 197 contributions (93 + 76 + 12 + 7 + 7 + 2), which, let it be repeated, does not include the annual reports, nor the literary compositions (short stories and poetic works).
96
No one published poetry more than four times in IMIT, but Béla Vihar, Endre Barát, Zoltán Zelk, Zoltán Somlyó and László Fenyő all made appearances this many times, while two others, namely Frida Szilas and István Vasvári contributed altogether three times.
97
Next to the overwhelming majority of Hungarian Jewish authors (105 out of 108), there was a translation of the commemorative and highly laudatory text on Ignác Goldziher by the Dutch scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (published after his own death), and two further commemorative texts by leading non-Jewish Hungarian historians, Gyula Szekfű and Zoltán Tóth in 1943, who made significant gestures by allowing their texts to appear in IMIT at that point. In his article on Marczali, Szekfű insisted that Henrik Marczali (who was also actively involved in IMIT, serving as head of the committee preparing the publication of the Hungarian- Jewish Archives, which was one of IMIT’s four committees) “was born Hungarian, and therefore needed no assimilation” and that, moreover, he “did not, could not know viewpoints other than the Hungarian one”. Gyula Szekfű, “Marczali Henrik”, in IMIT évkönyv, 1943, p.131. Moreover, Marczali fulfilled essential national tasks running 20-30 years ahead of his time and belonged among “the best Hungarians”. Ibid., pp.130-2. Zoltán Tóth, from his side, referred to his “undeserved forlornness” which he had to bear late in his life. Zoltán Tóth, “Marczali Henrik” in IMIT évkönyv, 1943, p.137.
98
Bernát Heller was born in Nagybiccse in 1871 (today Bytča, Slovakia) and died in Budapest in 1943. He was an Orientalist, a literary historian and folklorist. His main research interests were in Biblical scholarship, Hebrew and Islamic tales and legends and in comparative literary history. His main Jewish work is A héber
mese (The Hebrew Tale). He was a graduate of the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest and became a doctor of
philosophy in 1894 and a rabbi in 1896. Between 1919 and 1922 he was director of the Jewish Gymnasium and afterwards taught at the Rabbinical Seminary until 1935. Upon his death in 1943, Sándor Scheiber devoted an article to his life and works, emphasizing that Heller was „an exceptionally gifted Jewish scholar who possessed unique knowledge about the literature of the East as well as of Classical and European literature”. His scholarly work was supposed to have inaugurated a new epoch in Hungarian-Jewish scholarship. See Sándor Scheiber, “Dr. Heller Bernát élete és tudományos munkássága” in IMIT évkönyv, 1943, p.125.
99
Fülöp Grünwald (Sopron, 1887 – Budapest, 1964), historian and teacher. In the inter-war years he taught at the Jewish Gymnasium for Boys and served as its director in the postwar period. He was also the director of the
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42 Mihály Guttmann100 and Pál Nádai with eight,101 Aladár Komlós (6 studies and some poems), Sándor Scheiber,102 Jenő Zsoldos, Bertalan Kohlbach103 and Aladár Fürst all with six,104 Bertalan Edelstein105 and Miksa Pollák with five,106 Mór Fényes,107 Oszkár Elek,108 József Turóczi-Trostler109 and Károly Sebestyén all with four.110 This group of fifteen
Hungarian Jewish Museum between 1948 and 1963, and served as the head of History at the Rabbinical Seminary starting in 1959. Together with Scheiber, he edited four volumes of the Monumenta. His main scholarly work from the inter-war period is his A zsidók története Budán (The History of the Jews of Buda) published in 1938.
100
Mihály Guttmann (Kiskunfélegyháza, 1872 – Budapest, 1942). He pursued parallel degrees at university and at the Seminary, graduating from both in 1903. He taught at the Seminary between 1907 and 1921 and then moved to Breslau from where he returned in 1934 to serve as the Director of the Budapest Seminary until his death. His research focused on the Halakha and the Talmudic method. His main publication is the highly ambitious, but unfinished Das Judentum und seine Umwelt that appeared in German 1927.
101
Pál Nádai (Cegléd, 1881 – Budapest, 1945) wrote on art, mostly on applied art and artistic education. He was a prolific author, director of Országos Magyar Izraelita Közművelődési Egyesület (the National Association for Hungarian Israelite Culture) in the 1920s and a lecturer in art history. He also contributed to contemporary progressive journals. It ought to be noted that his contributions to IMIT (at least stylistically) tended to border on fiction.
102
Sándor Scheiber (Budapest, 1913 – Budapest, 1985), linguist, historian of literature, rabbi (1938). In the late 1930s, he spent some years in England on a scholarship (1938 to 1940). Upon his return, he served as rabbi at Dunaföldvár (1941 to 1944) and later became director of the Rabbinical Seminary (1950 to 1985) He is best known for his publications on Jewish cultural historical and ethnological topics.
103
Bertalan Kohlbach (Liptószentmiklós, today Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia 1866 – Budapest, 1944). Doctor of Philosophy (1888), rabbi (1890). Kohlbach was among the first pupils of the Seminary. He served at Temesvár (Timişoara) and Kaposvár. He was a leading authority on Jewish ethnology.
104
Aladár Fürst (Kismarton, 1877 – Tel Aviv, 1950). Fürst was active at the Jewish Museum until his departure to Palestine in the mid-1930s.
105
Bertalan Edelstein (Budapest, 1876 – Budapest, 1934). Doctor of Philosophy (1900), rabbi (1902). Edelstein was a rabbi in Buda for three decades, and became the chief rabbi in 1924. He taught at the Rabbinical Seminary, at lower grades where his subjects were the Bible, the Talmud and the systematic study of religions. He wrote for several Jewish organs.
106
Miksa Pollák (Beled, 1868 – Auschwitz, 1944), rabbi after 1894, chief rabbi of Sopron, studied Eastern languages, Hungarian and German literature and philosophy, graduated in 1892. He worked as a translator and wrote a history of Jews in Sopron. He had three children, among them the famous writer Károly Pap with whom his relationship was strained.
107
Mór Fényes (Erdőbénye, 1866 – Budapest, 1949), earned the title of Doctor of Philosophy in 1891 and was a qualified rabbi after 1893 (worked as an assistant). He worked as a teacher of religious subjects, and was the author of educational materials and supervisor of educational institutions.
108
Oszkár Elek (Szolnok, 1880 – Budapest, 1945), teacher of French and Hungarian. Elek published many reviews and studies in literary history, and also wrote on pedagogy and ethnography.
109
József Turóczi-Trostler (Moskóc, 1888 – Budapest, 1962), Hungarian literary scholar, critic, and translator. Born in Moskóc, currently Slovakia, Turóczi-Trostler became a high school teacher in Temesvár (Timişoara, Romania). Between 1917 and 1943, he was literary critic of the German-language newspaper, Pester Lloyd and won the Baumgarten prize in 1934. During the revolution of October 1918, he became a senior official in the Hungarian Ministry of Education. Under the Council’s Republic he was promoted professor of world literature at Budapest University. Removed from his post, he became a teacher at the Jewish Neolog community's girls' gymnasium in Budapest. From 1945, Turóczi-Trostler was a member of the Hungarian Academy as well as of the Hungarian parliament as a social democrat, and professor of world literature at Budapest University. In 1947, he was made professor of German literature.
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43 authors, all of whom appeared in IMIT more than three times between 1929 and 1943, qualify as regular contributors.111
Edelstein’s and most of Grünwald’s publications were part of a series that provided annual coverage of changes in the fate of Jewry around the globe.112 This global panorama did not appear in the last, 1943 yearbook, which is possibly related to the fact that the 1942 report brought very detailed and explicit news about the situation in Europe.113 Next to this series of reportages, the second longest was the series authored by Miksa Pollák on the theme of Imre Madách and the Bible (five articles on altogether 161 pages).