3 July 2013.
László Lőrinc
How the evil Hunsdorfer spread ‘the Finno-Ugric theory’ and why is this but a conspiracy theory
One of the most diabolical plans in history
A critical review of Tényleg!/? and especially of its material on Sumerian-Hungarian ancestry can be found on the website ‘The Hungarian Language as a Guidebook’, entitled ‘Who maimed the Hungarian soul?’. According to the author Zsolt Juhász, we (i.e. academics and teachers) are deliberately lying about the Sumerian-Hungarian kinship, and should instead write about Pál Hunfalvy. According to Juhász, it was he who ‘carried out one of the most diabolical plans in history… His original name was Paul Hunsdorfer. … In 1851 he was already the academy’s number one man. It was then that open absolutist authoritarianism came to power in the Kingdom of Hungary … The plan that was carried out was obviously not the product of moment and chance. After all, the Habsburgs’ aim from the moment they came to the throne was to incorporate Hungary completely into the Empire. Every decision Hunfalvy made as head of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was part of this diabolical plan. The motto behind their decisions was: first we make them slaves, then we make them Germans. We will take away their past, their glorious history if they had any, and, with cunning scientific reasoning, the respect of their language. After all, it is obvious that a people whose ancestors were all despicable barbarians will lose their identity sooner. Their language is a useless, borrowed, botchy, despicable worm-work unfit for educated men. When we have done with all this, they will be glad to become Germans!’
One might ask: what kind of devil is it who devises such a nonsensical plan? Any normal, self-respecting devil would know that no people have ever been enslaved by the idea of linguistic affinity, but rather by arms and money. (It is not clear, however, that once we have been made slaves, why we need bother with our identity.) But we have read so many versions of the view of such diabolical evil of the Habsburgs that it is really worth a little attention.
Why would you give if you wanted to steal?
If the Habsburgs’ aim from the very beginning was to ‘steal the Hungarian past’, it is far from clear why Maria Theresa built up the cult of St Stephen – sparing no expense or energy – and why she introduced the celebration of 20 August? There is also the question of why she introduced the teaching of history in schools with her educational decree (1777), and why almost exclusively Hungarian history? And why was this later (1806) confirmed by Emperor-King Francis? And if the Emperor in Vienna was already convinced about the Finno-Ugric origin of Hungarian as early as 1851, why did he insist in 1864 that Ármin Vámbéry – who was the standard-bearer of the idea of a proposed Hungarian-Turkish linguistic kinship – be given a professorship at the University of Pest against the express wish of the rector?
Hunsdorfer the Evil, or who is spreading lies?
As for Hunfalvy himself, he was never the head of the Academy, let alone from 1851. Nor could he have been. László Fejes wrote of him that ‘in 1849, at the time of the dethronement of the Habsburg dynasty, he was actively involved in the work of the Debrecen parliament’. He went into hiding at the beginning of the authoritarian regime, and after he was granted amnesty in the summer of 1850, he applied in vain for a teaching post at the university: he was rejected precisely because of his ‘political activities.’[2] Later, he did manage to get a job at the Academy with great difficulty, but not as its head, but as a humble librarian. He could only become a member of the Academy in 1859 – at the same time as János Arany – and never got any higher. In other words, he simply did not have the opportunity to play devilish tricks in science policy. We can also read the harsh anti-Habsburg sentences in his Hungarian-language diary.
So much for his Habsburg affinities. Fejes – in response to the name-calling quoted from Juhász above – adds that in the eyes of the patriotic attackers of the Finno-Ugric language, ‘if someone was not Hungarian, or was not of purely Hungarian origin then he could only be anti-Hungarian: if, on the other hand, he was himself anti-Finno-Ugric, then these facts are forgotten. Somehow, the information that Ármin Vámbéry was of Jewish descent never reaches the forums which are otherwise full of anti-Semitic rhetoric’, and they somehow never call him ‘Wamberger’ (while they routinely use the non-Magyarized original surnames of other personages they deem unpatriotic or cosmopolitan).
According to Fejes, ‘Hunfalvy’s main crime was that he invited Budenz to Hungary’, who later proved the Finno-Ugric connection by arguing with Vámbéry. But the vituperators ‘do not know that Budenz was even more in favour of Turkish kinship at that time. Likewise, they have no idea that Hunfalvy gave the first lecture at the Academy on the possible Sumerian-Hungarian relatedness (which was seriously discussed in scientific circles at the time), so he was by no means a supporter of the ‘exclusive Finno-Ugric affinity’, but an open-minded, conscientious researcher’.
The supporters of the Habsburg conspiracy are not even afraid to create a non-existent historical source (“the Trefort quote”) to prove their point. There is nothing strange about this, there are many cases where it is possible to reconstruct exactly by who, when and how a ‘historical fact’ was created out of nothing, for example, because they wanted to prove the Hun-Hungarian or Sumerian-Hungarian linguistic relationship or the Parthian-Hungarian origin of Jesus. These enthusiastic people have no moral problem with tampering with facs and sources if it is done for the greater good.
Why did not they take away the glorious past if that was the goal?
It is well known that most of the debate between linguists claiming Turkish and Finno-Ugric affinities took place and was settled during the dualism era. The real question is: if Vienna wanted to take our past, why did it fail? Why did it bother with linguistic affinity? In a royal decree of 18 April 1904, Franz Joseph stated that ‘of all the outstanding figures in Hungarian history, the ashes of Ferenc Rákóczi II alone rest in foreign soil’, and therefore ordered the Prime Minister to have the ashes of the Habsburg-dethroning prince transported home. Other staunch opponents of the Habsburgs, such as Imre Thököly and Ilona Zrínyi, were also given a solemn reburial. He had no objection to the erection of numerous statues of the greatest anti-Habsburg leader, Lajos Kossuth, to the naming of streets and squares after anti-Habsburg rebels and martyrs of 1849, or to the publication of their works. The lavish millennial exhibition of a thousand years of Hungarian history was opened by the monarch himself in 1896. But it was also the beginning of the state-organised protection of Hungarian historical monuments, the rapid expansion of the National Museum, the creation of a network of new museums, the establishment of the National Archives, the Hungarian Historical Society and the launch of the patriotic journal Századok. In the years after the oppression of the 1848 rebellion, the publication of a large series of Hungarian historic sources was launched, the Monumenta Hungariae Historica, in which – in the words of the present-day historiographer Vilmos Erős – ‘the sources on the 16th and 17th century estates’ assemblies and estate independence movements are clearly represented’[3], i.e. its subject matter is not exactly Habsburg-friendly. Even the sources of the Kuruc era, in 10 volumes (Archivum Rákóczianum), were published in this period. A library of works on the glorious centuries of Hungarian history was produced at this time, including a 10-volume work entitled ‘The History of the Hungarian Nation’. According to the most popular trend in historiography of the time, as Erős writes, ‘the aim of history … is to arouse enthusiasm for the past … a special role in shaping history was attributed to great personalities (heroes) … The favourite theses of this trend included Transylvania, Protestantism, the struggle for national and religious freedom, the 18th century, and the barrage aimed at the Habsburg counter-reformation and colonisation of the 18th century.’[4] This romantic-nationalist spirit was the dominant theme of painting, literature and the whole of Hungarian public life of the period.
Accordingly, the state school history curriculum also focused on the glorious Hungarian Middle Ages and the modern struggles for independence, and as a textbook author of the same era explained in an article, students should learn that Hungary’s territory had been one million square kilometres, its coastline had been washed by three seas, and in the time of Matthias we had fought ten nations (including the Germans, of course) at the same time (!) [5]. Moreover, each pupil went through the Hungarian history presented in this way four times (!).
So what are we talking about? A stolen past? Or was it only the linguists who could have been bought, and there was no money left for historians, when it was our ‘glorious past that they wanted to take away from us’? What result could have been expected from this? That the Hungarians, having learned that their language is related to the Finnish, would lose their appetite for the whole thing, turn belly up and become German? Do those who flood the internet with this, for example the Wikipedia articles, really know nothing about the 19th century?
And when there were no more Habsburgs?
Whoever wants to, can find an explanation for everything, and obviously many will ‘see through the Habsburg hedge’: Vienna only pretended not to mind the revelation of the glorious Hungarian past, and even supported it here and there, while deceitfully trying to smuggle the national subversion through the back gate by the Finno-Ugric Trojan horse. Apart from the fact that this is completely unrealistic and that it is not backed by a single real source, it also raises another problem. It should be noted that school history textbooks published during the dualist era mentioned the Finno-Ugric language affinity (seeing nothing wrong with it), but also claimed that the Uralic ethnic group was related to the Turkic one of the Altai mountains, leaving a loophole open for a distant relationship to the Huns.[6] (This was also the view of historians at the time.) Let us assume that the first was the influence of the Habsburgs, and the latter the evidence of the irrepressible Hungarian Hun-lust.
But what happened in the Horthy era, when Habsburg intrigue could no longer have any effect, but textbooks continued to try to ‘inspire our heroes as an example to our youth’ after the trauma of Trianon?[7] Well, at that time, the Finno-Ugric kinship was advocated even more firmly and with even more detailed justification, now rejecting any distant Altai connectedness.[8] Which is not surprising, because the scientific literature of the time was also of this opinion, for example the chapters of the famous 1928 Hungarian History written by Bálint Hóman.
A modest proposal
Prior to ‘The Hungarian Language as a Guidebook’ comes up with more convoluted ‘diabolic plans’ to resolve the above contradictions, let me propose a simpler solution, consisting of two obvious elements. The first is that the Habsburgs were not at all interested in Hungarian history and origins. (They may even have seen the glorious Scythian past useful: as long as the Hungarians are preoccupied with it, providing a standing army and meeting the quotas would be less painful for them.) The second is that, totally independently of all this, using scientific linguistics, Hunfalvy came to conclude that the Hungarian language belongs to the Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language family. Period. He did not think that this favoured the Habsburgs, whom he disliked. Nor did he think it would not favour them. Furthermore, he did not think that the Finno-Ugric affinity meant that the Hungarian language was a ‘useless … botchy … worm-work’, as no person of sound judgement could think so of any language. He thought that what he had arrived at was a scientifically established and proven fact. One that can be disproved by scientific argument. He believed that there are scientific arguments and there are facts.
Yet we have similar hopes.
László Lőrinc
- 3 July.
[1] Ármin Vámbéry: My struggles. Dunaszerdahely, 2001. pp 228-229.
[2] Péter Domokos -Attila Paládi-Kovács: Hunfalvy Pál. Hunfalván Hunfalva. 1986. p. 31.
[3] Vilmos Erős: Historical writing. History of Hungary in the 20th century. V. Edited by István Kollega Tarsoly. 287. p.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Sándor Márki: A study of the Middle Ages. Hungarian Pedagogy, 1892. p. 494.
[6] Andor József: History of Hungary for the VIII. class of secondary schools. 1904. p. 6., Komárik István S. J.: The investigative history of Hungary. Hungarian History of History of Hungary for the Eighth Grade of Secondary Schools. Kalocsa, n.d. [1900] pp. 12-13.
[7] E.g. István Ember: A magyar nemzet története a középiskolák III. classa. Bp. 1926. p. 3.
[8] See e.g. ibid. p. 11.
Pál Hunfalvy. He never led the Academy
József Budenz, linguist. Initially a supporter of the Turkish language affinity
The Order of St Stephen, founded by Maria Theresa. Did she want to steal the past?
A Millennium Exhibition poster with the name of Franz-Joseph I. on it.
Árpád at the Feszty-rotunda (1894)
An allegorical representation of Hungarian history, with Kossuth, Széchenyi, Deák on the left, Árpád in the background, and Hungaria in the centre, with the whole surrounded be the Habsburg rulers (1896)
