Szegedist
09-18-2013, 11:06 PM
There was only one group which embraced the Educational Act and liberalization enthusiastically: the Jews.
Hungary's Jewish population was partially emancipated in 1848, and many of them had fought and died in the War of Independence on the Magyar side. During census taking they invariably considered themselves fully assimilated Magyars.
According to Prof. Arthur J. May:
No Hungarian bourgeois was more Magyar in his outlook and feeling than the assimilated, Magyarized Jew; and nothing gratified such an individual so much as to be able to pass for an authentic Magyar...
In the main, Hungary's Jews were ardent patriots, advancing the material and intellectual life of the country, sturdy defenders of the rights of Hungary in its dealings with Austria, fervent apostles of Magyarization. In season and out the Jewish-owned press, the largest part of the Hungarian journalistic world, vigorously supported the campaign to denationalize non-Magyars and eloquently proclaimed the convictions of Magyar chauvinism.
The attitude of the Hungarian government toward Jewry was consistently liberal, an encouragement to immigration and assimilation...
But the immigration of the Jews was a mixed blessing for Hungary, as it opened up the inexhaustible reservoir of Galicia and Russia from which hundreds of thousands of orthodox Chassidim Jews poured into the country. These Jews knew nothing of the tradition of the land, and did not speak its language. While in 1720 the number of Jews in Hungary was a mere 12,000, in 1850 they numbered 366,000 and by 1869 there were 542,000. In 1900, their number increased to 830,000 with still more coming at a time when worsening economic conditions compelled the mass emigration of hundreds of thousands of Magyars, Slovaks and other nationalities to America. This emigration was enormous: between 1890 and 1910 approximately 1,500,000 Hungarians emigrated to the United States alone; in a single year - 1907- 338,452 people left Hungary and its Austrian partner for the United States - 203,332 of them Hungarians - in the largest voluntary human migration from one country to another in a single year in modern history.
Since the Jews preferred urban life, they gradually became part of the middle class, acquiring, with their innate resourcefulness, diligence and intellectual drive, enormous influence in industry,. commerce,. in agriculture as landowners and in the cultural life of the country, primarily as journalists. Around the turn of the century 42.2% of all journalist, 45.2% of all lawyers, and 48.9% of all doctors were Jewish. In the field of science and the humanities, they contributed considerably to Hungary's achievement.
The phenomenal advance of the Jews, many of them as yet unassimilated, engendered sporadic anti-Semitic outbursts and even the formation of a short-lived anti-Semitic party in 1884.
The tensions that arose from the arrival of the Jews and their rapid rise to prominence were considered to be a social not a racial phenomenon, a dissatisfaction with the socio-economic conditions. Except for two brief periods in 1919 and 1944-45, Hungary continues to be a tolerant society, a haven for the Jews compared to the suppression and persecution they often had to suffer in neighboring states.
http://hungarianhistory.com/lib/hunspir/hsp36.htm
Hungary's Jewish population was partially emancipated in 1848, and many of them had fought and died in the War of Independence on the Magyar side. During census taking they invariably considered themselves fully assimilated Magyars.
According to Prof. Arthur J. May:
No Hungarian bourgeois was more Magyar in his outlook and feeling than the assimilated, Magyarized Jew; and nothing gratified such an individual so much as to be able to pass for an authentic Magyar...
In the main, Hungary's Jews were ardent patriots, advancing the material and intellectual life of the country, sturdy defenders of the rights of Hungary in its dealings with Austria, fervent apostles of Magyarization. In season and out the Jewish-owned press, the largest part of the Hungarian journalistic world, vigorously supported the campaign to denationalize non-Magyars and eloquently proclaimed the convictions of Magyar chauvinism.
The attitude of the Hungarian government toward Jewry was consistently liberal, an encouragement to immigration and assimilation...
But the immigration of the Jews was a mixed blessing for Hungary, as it opened up the inexhaustible reservoir of Galicia and Russia from which hundreds of thousands of orthodox Chassidim Jews poured into the country. These Jews knew nothing of the tradition of the land, and did not speak its language. While in 1720 the number of Jews in Hungary was a mere 12,000, in 1850 they numbered 366,000 and by 1869 there were 542,000. In 1900, their number increased to 830,000 with still more coming at a time when worsening economic conditions compelled the mass emigration of hundreds of thousands of Magyars, Slovaks and other nationalities to America. This emigration was enormous: between 1890 and 1910 approximately 1,500,000 Hungarians emigrated to the United States alone; in a single year - 1907- 338,452 people left Hungary and its Austrian partner for the United States - 203,332 of them Hungarians - in the largest voluntary human migration from one country to another in a single year in modern history.
Since the Jews preferred urban life, they gradually became part of the middle class, acquiring, with their innate resourcefulness, diligence and intellectual drive, enormous influence in industry,. commerce,. in agriculture as landowners and in the cultural life of the country, primarily as journalists. Around the turn of the century 42.2% of all journalist, 45.2% of all lawyers, and 48.9% of all doctors were Jewish. In the field of science and the humanities, they contributed considerably to Hungary's achievement.
The phenomenal advance of the Jews, many of them as yet unassimilated, engendered sporadic anti-Semitic outbursts and even the formation of a short-lived anti-Semitic party in 1884.
The tensions that arose from the arrival of the Jews and their rapid rise to prominence were considered to be a social not a racial phenomenon, a dissatisfaction with the socio-economic conditions. Except for two brief periods in 1919 and 1944-45, Hungary continues to be a tolerant society, a haven for the Jews compared to the suppression and persecution they often had to suffer in neighboring states.
http://hungarianhistory.com/lib/hunspir/hsp36.htm