The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  26 Wekerle in fact resigned twice. The first time was on 1 June 1894, when the Upper House rejected the Bill on civil marriage. Francis Joseph reappointed him, but he resigned again on 24 December, because he felt that he did not enjoy the Monarch’s confidence.

  27 Kálnoky (see above, p. 660, n. 2).

  28 The threat was to lower the financial qualification for a magnate to sit in the House from 6,000 to 2,000 fl., which would have let in over thirty Calvinist magnates from Transylvania. In the event, four new members of the House were created.

  29 I.e., the celebrations (which were held on an extremely grandiose scale) of the thousandth anniversary of the Magyars’ occupation of Hungary.

  30 As with the Reichsrat, no two sets of figures on Party membership in Parliament ever agree exactly. Those given by Graz, from which others differ slightly, are: 1892, Liberals, 243, National Party (the former ‘moderate’ Opposition), 60, Party of Independence, 97 (of whom 15 formed a semi-independent ‘Ugron Group’), others, 15; 1896, Liberals, 287, National Party, 32, Party of Independence, 60 (Ugron Group, 8), People’s Party, 19, others, 15; 1901, Liberals, 276, Party of Independence, 94 (Ugron Group, 24), People’s Party, 24, others, 19. The ‘others’ in each case were composed mainly of representatives of the Nationalities.

  31 This was known as the ‘Ischl clause’ under the impression (in fact, an incorrect one) that it had been signed at Bad Ischl, where Francis Joseph was residing at the time.

  32 These figures include Croatia-Slavonia.

  33 On this, see International Migrations, vol. 14, pp. 710–728, and vol. 18 (the interpretations’, by Dr Thirring), pp. 411–39. No figures were kept before 1885, but overseas emigration on a large scale had begun only shortly before that date. The registered overseas migration was about 25,000 annually between 1886–95, the figure then rising to 43,000 (1889), 55,000 (1900), 51,000 (1901), 92,000 (1902), 120,000 (1903). As in Austria, about 20–25% of the emigrants returned after a few years. In addition to the overseas migration, nearly 300,000 Hungarians emigrated to Austria between 1880–1910 (most of these Hungarian Germans from West Hungary, moving to Vienna or Graz), 42,000 to Germany and 102,000 to Roumania. About two-thirds of these last were Hungarian Roumanians, but there was also a considerable emigration of Szekels to Bucharest, which was said to have the third largest Hungarian population of any European city. Finally, there was a substantial Jewish emigration to the West; this was, indeed, balanced by continued immigration of Jews from Galicia.

  34 This applies to the other occupational figures given hereafter. The 1900 figure was almost exactly double that for 1890.

  35 Exclusive of the armed forces.

  36 Excluding the 606,157 (3·6%) ‘day labourers in various occupations’, most of whom were probably employed in agriculture (see above, p. 618 and n.).

  37 Of the larger towns, Szeged itself (second on the list), Szabadka (third), Debrecen (fourth), Hódmezövásárhely (sixth) and Kecskemét (seventh) belonged to this category. They had, of course, genuinely urban nuclei.

  38 In this connection it is fair to record the remarkable work accomplished by the Ministry of Agriculture, especially during the eight years (1895–1903) when it was headed by the exceptionally enlightened and efficient Ignácz Darányi. Important technical work was accomplished also by the landowners’ vocational organizations, especially the O.M.G.E. (Országos Magyar Gazdasági Egylet – Hungarian National Agricultural Association).

  39 Unfortunately, as it transpired later, the flooding which this operation had been designed to eliminate had been necessary to keep the land sweet, and expensive irrigation works had to be undertaken to counteract the effects of the regulation.

  40 The length of line had been 222 km. in 1850, 947 in 1851, 2,285 in 1967, 7,058 in 1879, 10,870 in 1889, 17,817 in 1904.

  41 This was not completed until after the period covered by this chapter. The foundation stone was laid by Francis Joseph at the millenary celebrations.

  42 According to Mód, op. cit., p. 120, an average of 14,000 hold of State lands had been sold every year, at an average price of 170 fl.

  43 Founded in 1872.

  44 There was also, as mentioned below, a University in Zagreb.

  45 The Swabians, like the Germans of the Alpine Lands, by custom retained the tradition of the undivided Bauernhof, the sons, other than the heir (who was usually the youngest), being given portions and then going into the towns to seek their living outside agriculture. The Magyars divided a holding among all the children.

  46 There had also been a small immigration, chiefly on to the Esterházy estates, from Bohemia and Moravia.

  47 About 110,000 Jews left Hungary between 1870 and 1910 alone. This movement was not usually overseas: the first stage of it was generally Vienna.

  48 The 1900 census does not give the corresponding figures.

  49 They were, however, numerous among the reserve officers – the University graduates who were allowed to do only a single year with the colours, after which they received commissions as officers of the reserve. The Army reserve of doctors was largely composed of Jewish reservists.

  50 L. Hatvany’s novel, Bondy and Son, gives an interesting psychological picture of a young Jewish boy possessed by this longing.

  51 The extreme north-east of Hungary also harboured a few adherents of the peculiar sect of Chassidim, or Gute Yidden, and there were a few Karaite Jews in Transylvania.

  52 Only 5,000 conversions took place between 1895 and 1907. The number before that was minimal; it was confined to a few families who had been exceptionally successful in business.

  53 Twenty-six Jewish families were promoted during the period to Baronial rank, and 280 given patents of lower nobility.

  54 The proportion of privately owned estates was slightly lower than in Austria, since besides the Roman Catholic Church, many municipalities, especially some of the village towns, were very large landowners.

  55 The total area of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown was then about 325,000 sq. km., or 56·5 million hold (1 sq. km.= 173·7796 hold).

  56 This distinction partly overlapped with that of religion, the Catholics tending to be more aulic and the Protestants, more nationalist. One result of this was that the Transylvanian magnates, many of whom were Protestants, were usually nationalist in sympathies, while in Catholic West Hungary aulic sympathies extended to the middle nobility.

  57 The Országos Kaszino, as opposed to Széchenyi’s Nemzeti Kaszino. Unfortunately, the most obvious English translation for either is ‘national’.

  58 It was presumably this fact that led many ambitious young sprigs of the higher nobility to seek their political fortunes in the Lower House. It had not been uncommon before 1848 for a magnate to represent a County on the Lower Bench, and a Law of 1885 made it legal for one to sit in the Lower House without forfeiting his birth-right to the other body.

  59 According to Mailáth, La Hongrie Rurale, Sociale et Politique (Paris, 1909), p. 22, it was now that share-cropping became a common institution.

  60 118,000 peasant proprietors were sold up in the last three decades of the century (Mód, op. cit., p. 154).

  61 Eight hold was usually taken as the minimum on which a family could exist.

  62 Mailáth, l.c.

  63 See J. Bunzel, Studien zur Sozial und Wirtschaftspolitik Ungarns (Leipzig, 1902), pp. 11 ff. A very interesting picture of the lives of this class may be found in G. Illes’s autobiographical work, Puszták Népe.

  64 A survey made in Budapest in 1875, covering 10,020 workers, showed that 24·9% of them had been born outside Hungary.

  65 See the calculations made shortly before the war by the Hungarian economist, Fellner, cit. F. Herz, The Economic Problem of the Danubian States (London, 1947), pp. 20 ff.

  66 Some calculations on this point will be found in W. Offergeld, Grundlagen und Ursachen der Industriellen Entwicklung Ungarns (Jena, 1914), pp. 249 ff. They are complicated and cautious, but seem to justify the conclusion that at the begin
ning of the twentieth century about 35% of the profits from Hungarian industry were going out of the country. According to an article by W. Federn in the Oe. Rundschau, 1908, cit. Hantsch, Gesch., II. 594, 80% of the mortgages then held by the Austro-Hungarian Bank were on Hungarian properties and 65% of its bills of exchange were drawn on Hungary.

  67 This was an institution under which the labourer was obliged to undertake a certain number of days, up to forty in a year, of unpaid labour in addition to that for which he contracted. Only if he agreed to this could he be certain of being hired. The term ‘new robot’ was used also in another sense, when the lessee of a small plot took out his rent, wholly or partly, in service (sometimes including domestic service performed by his women-folk in the big house). This arrangement was sometimes convenient to both parties.

  68 The law was extended subsequently to workers in forestry, tobacco plantations, market gardens, etc.

  69 Here again, Darányi deserves a credit mention, as does Count Sándor Károlyi, the leader of the more progressive landlords and spiritus rector of the co-operative movement, which developed rapidly during these years.

  70 This section is concerned only with the Kingdom of Hungary, i.e., Hungary proper, excluding Croatia-Slavonia, and all remarks, statistics, etc., refer only to that area.

  71 It is true that the Hungarian Law went further than Paragraph XIX in defining these requirements, e.g. in laying down that the language of Parliament was Magyar.

  72 See above, p. 692.

  73 The change was, incidentally, made by the poet himself, out of sheer, unprompted enthusiasm for Magyarism.

  74 Jászi, Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, p. 280. All the following figures are from this source, except those relating to the joint-stock companies, which come from a Hungarian memorandum submitted to the 1920 Peace Conference.

  75 Defined as the language which the person speaks habitually and most easily.

  76 D. Balogh, A Népfajok Magyarországon, Budapest, 1902,

  77 Partly also to Roumanization when the Roumanians got their own Orthodox Church, and to emigration to Serbia.

  78 According to the USA statistics for 1898/9–1912/13, the number of emigrants from Inner Hungary (we reach this figure, roughly, by omitting the Croats and a small proportion of the Serbs, and note that the American statistics ignore the Ruthenes) was, in thousands: Slovaks, 432; Magyars, 402; Germans, 219; Roumanians, 47; Serbs, 30. The Hungarian estimates for 1905–13 give: Magyars, 287; Slovaks, 193; Germans, 150; Roumanians, 95; Serbs, 50; Ruthenes, 36; others, 8. We must also take into account the emigration into Austria, which, as said elsewhere, was mainly German, and into ‘other European countries’, mainly Roumanian, with Germans second and Magyars third.

  79 The German areas were not heavily congested, but the persons emigrating were, here too, landless, owing to the Germans’ system of inheritance (see above, p. 708, n. 3).

  80 When the Dualist era opened, memories of their attitude in 1848–9, and also of their attendance at the Schmerling Theatre, had made the Saxons deeply unpopular among all Magyars, especially, of course, those of Transylvania, and among themselves, while a small party, calling themselves the Young Saxons, wanted full recognition of the new era and even themselves advocated the abolition of their old separate status, the big majority was stubbornly determined to safeguard every jot of the ancient privileges. The Government’s dismissal of the Sachsengraf and the failure to reconstitute the Sachsenboden (see above, p. 698) disillusioned even the Young Saxons, and a mass meeting at Mediasch in 1872 adopted a programme of full defence, by all legal means, of the communities’ rights. In 1876 the Government replied, as mentioned above (ibid.), by further gross violations of those rights, and of its own pledged word, and for some years put extreme pressure on the Saxons, who defended themselves by rolling themselves into an even more compact hedgehog than before. Their great strength lay in the autonomy, which even the Liberal Governments respected, of their Lutheran Church. Under its protection they built up a network of schools and cultural institutions, founded banks and co-operatives, and after all, endured the storm. Before long it became apparent to both sides that the only gainer from the quarrel between them was the cause of the Roumanians, and both put out feelers: the Government replaced the more aggressive Föispáns, and the Saxons as early as 1881 stopped asking for the restoration of their old status. Then in June 1890 they drew up a new programme in which they finally accepted the Union and the Laws of 1876, demanding only honest administration and genuine application of the existing Law. The Saxon Deputies, who hitherto had called themselves independent and had confined themselves in Parliament to voicing their own grievances, were authorized to ally themselves with any party which accepted the Compromise. The Government made further concessions which in practice restored to the Saxons much of their old self-Government and they thus became a ‘staaterhaltendes Element’, regularly allying themselves with the Government in Parliament and locally, with the Magyars against the Roumanians; although how little they counted the interests of the Hungarian State compared with those of their own community was shown by their action in 1918, when they voted for the attachment of Transylvania to Roumania (having ascertained in Paris that the transference had been decided there).

  81 It may, of course, be suspected that this was due to administrative pressure, but pressure did not prevent the Saxons from welcoming the Schulverein.

  82 On this occasion the Hungarian Government achieved a master stroke. Its statutes declared the assets of the Matica, which had come to it chiefly through donations (including one from Francis Joseph), to be ‘the property of the Slovak nation’. The Hungarian Government confiscated the lot on the grounds that no such personality in law as the ‘Slovak nation’ existed.

  83 Exact data on this are not available, but it is known that when inter-continental emigration began on the large scale (after 1880) it was much the highest from the Slovak and Ruthene Counties, and although other nationalities caught up a little later, these two continued to provide the highest rates. Between 1899 and 1914, 300,000 out of the 1,400,000 registered emigrants were Slovaks, against 401,000 Magyars.

  84 The 1910 statistics for certain mixed areas, which the writer had to study in 1942, showed exactly the same figure (30,784) for persons of Serbian mother-tongue and for members of the Orthodox Church.

  85 See below, p. 737.

  86 A further curious factor in the situation was that the practice of voluntary limitation of families, which afterwards became so widespread in Hungary, began among the Serbs, whose birthrate was the lowest of any nationality in Hungary.

  87 Roum. junimea: youth.

  88 Erdelyi Magyarság Kulturális Egyesülete.

  89 See above, pp. 726–7.

  90 Factors in this were the low birthrate of the Saxons, and the decadence of the Szekels. The birthrate of the latter people remained high, but they were now emigrating in large numbers both to Inner Hungary and to Roumania.

  91 Liga Pentru Unitatea Culturala Tutoror Românilor.

  92 In any case, its funds had not been large, and its chief interest had been the Balkan Vlachs. Of its budget of 483,000 kr., 300,000 had been earmarked for the Balkans, 100,000 for Transylvania and 21,000 for the Bukovina.

  93 The other mandate went to Starčević.

  94 Kvaternik was an exalté, a super-fanatical Catholic who believed that he had a Divine mission to liberate Croatia and to punish godless Austria. His ‘rising’, as has been said elsewhere (p. 557), was put down in three days. An attempt had also been made with the help of forged documents to discredit Strossmayer and others as Pan-Slav agents and revolutionaries (see R. W. Seton-Watson, Southern Slav Question, pp. 88 ff.). This was so transparent as to damage only its authors.

  95 The three points granted were: the powers of the Ban were slightly restricted; Croatia’s contribution to the joint treasury was fixed at fifty-five per cent of her total revenues; and it was made obligatory to convoke the Sabor within three months o
f its dissolution.

  96 According to Südland (op. cit., p. 153) the appointment was made on Francis Joseph’s personal insistence, against the wishes of the Hungarian Ministry.

  97 He actually introduced a Croat Catechism and prayers into the Orthodox schools.

  98 See above, p. 730.

  99 Most Croats of the day, including Mažuranić, maintained that the local Orthodox population were ‘Orthodox Croats’. The Serbs called the local Croats ‘Catholicized Serbs’.

  100 There is reason to believe that David was acting under direct instructions from Szapáry.

  101 An Independent Radical Party, founded in 1877, was oppositional, but it was very small.

  102 One of its great resources, the enormous oak-forests which once covered much of Slavonia was, indeed, ruthlessly torn from it in these years by foreign capitalists. Croat historians complain that Croatia received less than its fair share of Hungarian Governmental subsidies, etc. In default of exact information, the present writer refrains from expressing an opinion on this point.

  103 The worst year for this in Croatia was 1897.

  104 It is extraordinarily difficult to be certain of the exact figures. There is an article on the subject by G. J. Prpic (Kroatische Auswanderung nach Amerika vor 1914) in Der Donauraum, 9 Jhr., Heft (1964), pp. 167 ff., but his sources often do not distinguish Croats from Slovenes, Croatia from Bosnia and Dalmatia, etc. The official figures, which take account only of persons with passports, show 166,579 persons as leaving Croatia for the USA between 1899–1913, while private calculations, which include persons without passports, give almost exactly double that figure. Südland (op. cit., pp. 464–5) goes higher still; he says that 527,355 persons emigrated between 1900 and 1913. The Croats being partly a maritime people, the proportion emigrating for short periods, and returning, was probably exceptionally high.

  105 A translation of this programme is given by R. W. Seton-Watson, The Southern Slav Question, p. 392.