{2-766.} 5. COMMON CULTURE, NATIONAL CULTURES

The earlier survey of the Transylvanian Enlightenment and the emergence of national cultures took us to around 1790. As before, we will consider shared cultural features before turning to those that characterized the individual national groups.

West European influences touched all aspects of intellectual life in Transylvania. In philosophy, the major new force was Kantianism. As noted, József Pákei was one early disciple. Pál Sipos, a mathematician of international repute and friend of the writer Ferenc Kazinczy, began with Kant, then read Fichte and Schleier-macher, and developed a new philosophical approach, a kind of moral idealism that syncretized the ideas of the Enlightenment and Christianity. Another follower of Kant was Sámuel Köteles, a professor at the Calvinist colleges of Marosvásárhely and Nagyenyed; indeed, he was the most knowledgeable and persistent teacher of Kantian philosophy in all of Transylvania and Hungary.

In Transylvania, the shift from the baroque to classicism began around 1790. Several important secular examples testify to the continuing dominance of baroque over the first few decades of the Enlightenment. The baroque reconstruction of the Teleki castle at Gernyeszeg was begun around 1732, following the plans of Hungary's András Mayerhoffer, who was a outstanding exponent of the so-called Grassalkovich style. Work began in 1772 on the Bánffy palace at Kolozsvár, which would become the most significant Transylvanian example of the secular baroque. Its creator, Johann Eberhard Blaumann, had emigrated from Württemberg to Szeben, where he eventually became the municipal architect. György Bánffy contributed personally to the design. Completed in 1785, shortly before Bánffy's death, the palace was a blend of late {2-767.} baroque, rococo, and Louis XVI styles, and its courtyard displays some classicist elements as well. Blaumann not only supervised the design and construction, but also did the decorative stonework. The stone sculptures are the work of Antal Schuchbauer. The Austrian-born Anton Überlacher, the period's most prolific carpenter in Transylvania, was responsible for the doors, window-frames, and other woodwork. The influence of the Bánffy palace on the design of secular buildings in Transylvania was as great as that of Kolozsvár's Jesuit church on religious architecture. The row of statues and urns on its main facade is evoked in the design of castles at Zsibó, Hadad, Csákigorbó, and Küküllővár; the influence of its inner facade is visible in the Kolozsvár palaces of the Teleki, Mikes, Thoroczkay, Tholdalagi-Korda families; and the griffin design of its balcony inspired the architects of several palaces and public buildings in Kolozsvár. Around 1778, after the elder Miklós Wesselényi had returned to Zsibó, construction began on Transylvania's largest baroque castle. (Back in 1750, a stable modelled on the one at Bonchida had been built at Zsibó.) Major construction projects in the baroque style materialized as late as the 1790s. That was the period when József Jung gave definitive shape to the interior of the great Armenian church at Szamosújvár and erected the twin steeples.

The shift from the baroque to classicism was incremental. Kolozsvár's first classicist palace, that of the Tholdalagi-Korda family, was designed by Carlo Justi; its superimposed lines of columns show the influence of the Bánffy palace, as does the Thoroczkay palace. The Unitarian college at Kolozsvár, designed in 1806 by László Ugrai, is a blend of classicist and Louis XVI styles. Other examples of classicist architecture at Kolozsvár include the Teleki palaces in Belmonostori and Külmonostori streets, the Piarist lyceum, the triple line of arcades of the Calvinist college, and the Jósika palace in the main square. Marosvásárhely's first classicist buildings also date from turn of the century: a wing of the college, Domokos Teleki's house, and the Teleki library.

{2-768.} Noteworthy creations were much scarcer in other branches of the fine arts. The Neuhauser family produced several painters, none of whom — according to the art historian József Bíró — was possessed of great talent. They included the elder Ferenc Neuhauser, who specialized in landscapes and portraits; the younger Ferenc Neuhauser, a painter and lithographer who taught at Szeben's scola normalis (he was the drawing master of the future painter Miklós Barabás) and did a series of genre paintings entitled Maleriche Reise durch Siebenbürgen (A painter'a travels through Transylvania); his younger brother József, a genre painter and portraitist who taught drawing at Szeben's orphanage; and Gottfried Neuhauser, a drawing master at the scola normalis in Kolozsvár. Szeben's Johann Stoch, a student of Meytens, painted classicist portraits of Saxon patricians and clergymen. Zsigmond Kóré, who had studied at Vienna's St. Anna academy, was best known for his engravings but died at an early age. The earliest known Romanian painter from Transylvania was Efrem Micu, a cousin of Samuil Micu-Klein; he studied in Vienna, where he painted the iconostasis in St. Barbara's church. The Csűrös family produced three artists, two of them sculptors. Antal Csűrös, considered by Margit B. Nagy to be the one noteworthy sculptor in Kolozsvár at the turn of the century, crafted several sculptures for Szamosújvár's great Armenian church, as well funeral monuments at Kolozsvár's cemetery. Antal's brother, Mihály, was both painter and sculptor; he carved the altar of the church at Székelykál, while a third Csűrös, József, painted the altarpiece. On the whole, the figurative arts in Transylvania were distinctly provincial in this period.

Developments in the natural sciences were also part of Transylvania's common culture. The aging József Benkő made some of his contributions in this sphere after 1790. Some twenty years of research underpinned his comprehensive work on botany, Enumeratio Stirpium in Magno Transylvaniae Principatu prae-primis indigenarum; the first part was published after his death, by {2-769.} Johann Christian Baumgarten, and the work won him posthumous recognition abroad. Farkas Bolyai, a classmate of Carl Dietrich Gauss, became a professor at Marosvásárhely's Calvinist college in 1804. He was an exceptionally gifted man who applied — and misapplied — his talents in many fields. Bolyai established a physics and chemistry laboratory at the school and developed a natural sciences program of such quality that, in 1811, nine of his students were admitted to the faculty of forestry at Selmec, and, in 1822, four others obtained scholarships to Vienna's Technical University. Among Bolyai's students, his son János would have the most brilliant career; others included Péter Rajka, an inventor and engine-builder, and János Ercsei, who won his professors' praise as soon as he began studies at Marburg.

Some turn-of-the-century medical scientists have already been noted, but Ferenc Nyulas also deserves mention. After studies in Vienna and Pest, he returned to Transylvania, where he published his major work, on Transylvania's medicinal waters, Az erdélyi orvosi gyógyvizeknek bontásáról közönségesen (Kolozsvár, 1800). Of even greater significance were his efforts to introduce smallpox vaccination in Transylvania. The latest developments in this sphere were disseminated with uncommon rapidity in central and east-central Europe. Jenner's pioneering work on vaccination appeared in 1798; the first vaccinations in Europe were given in May 1800, and, within a year, in Transylvania. Transylvanian physicians learned the new procedure at Vienna's 'great hospital', and between August and October 1801, Ferenc Nyulas, József Szotyori, Josef B. Barbenius, Sámuel Pataki Jr. and others began to vaccinate people in Kolozsvár, Brassó, Szeben, and Marosvásárhely. In his capacity as national chief medical officer, Nyulas obtained that regulations be issued stipulating that only vaccinated people could be married, join guilds, or be recruited in the civil service. In 1802, he published a study of cowpox in Kolozsvár (A kolozsvári tehénhimlő).

{2-770.} Nyulas played a part in the investigation of natural gas in the early 1800s. The first Transylvanian to write about the 'burning waters' was a Szeben pharmacist, Georg Vette; István Mátyus also took note of the phenomenon. When György Mészáros, the engineer who was mentioned earlier in connection with his innovation, in 1807, of salt-mining technology, drew the attention of government authorities to the periodic eruptions of gas, he and Nyulas were commissioned to investigate the matter. Their successor, András Gergelyffy, believed the gas to be hydrogen but noted that it could be bottled and used as a combustible. In the event, after Nyulas's death, neither his successor nor higher authority showed much interest in this natural resource. It took more than a hundred years before Transylvania's natural gas would be 'rediscovered' and exploited. The mine physician at Zalatna, Vasile Popp, had a multifaceted career that encompassed creative work in the natural sciences. His study of mineral waters in the Háromszék, Despre apele minerale de la Arpatac, Bodoc şi Covasna (Szeben, 1821), is the first medical work by a Romanian doctor published in his mother tongue. Popp was also a pioneer in ethnography, for his doctoral dissertation dealt with the popular burial customs among Romanians; and he compiled the first scholarly Romanian bibliography.

Some aspects of contemporary culture were more closely associated with a particular nationality. With regard to Transylvania's Hungarian culture, it is best to begin with the relevant institutions and attempts at institutionalization. Founded by György Aranka, the Transylvanian–Hungarian Philological Society (Erdélyi Magyar Nyelvmívelő Társaság) was the first functioning organization that approximated a Hungarian academy. The initiative won the backing of the 1790–91 diet, but it evinced a mixed reaction from the various levels of government. When the central government, {2-771.} invoking rather flimsy pretexts, withheld approval, György Bánffy displayed his talent at compromise by allowing an 'Experimental Society' to be formed in December 1793. Aranka, who, like Hungary's Ferenc Kazinczy, took an entrepreneurial approach to culture, remained the guiding spirit of the Philological Society, serving as secretary until it was wound up in 1806 (apart from the period 1790–1801, when Mihály Teleki held the post). Most of the members were Hungarians; one of them, József Benkő, was twice commissioned to investigate historical sources in the Székelyföld. However, the Society nurtured links with non-Hungarians as well, such as Martin Hochmeister, who published articles by its members in the Siebenbürgische Quartalschrift, and Ioan Piuariu-Molnár, who became a member. Thus the first Hungarian 'academy' was open to cooperation with other nationalities.

During the first phase of its existence, until around 1796, the Philological Society preserved a certain balance between the cultivation of language and historical scholarship. Then, for a time, emphasis shifted to the collection of historical sources. The society's members gave enthusiastic support to the Hungarian theatre at Kolozsvár, and some, including Aranka, translated works for that stage. Many projects failed to be realized. Two major initiatives in the linguistic area, a Hungarian dictionary and a good-language guide (Jó nyelvmester) could not be brought to completion, and only part of the assembled historical material got published. Initiatives in the natural sciences — a comprehensive record of Transylvania's flora and mineral resources, the development of science education, a program to promote exploitation of the country's natural resources — never got beyond the planning stage; nor did the proposal to create a library and a national museum (the Saxons already had one in the shape of the Bruckenthal collection).

The pace of the Society's activities declined sharply in the early 1800s. After a final burst of activity, the first Hungarian 'academy' fell victim to its membership's indifference, a shortage {2-772.} of funds, and an increasingly inimical political climate, and it ceasing operations in 1806. An offshoot, also led by Aranka, and with mostly the same membership, was the Manuscript Publishing Society (Kéziratkiadó Társaság), which managed to publish no more than a few books.

Before considering Gábor Döbrentei's efforts to revive Aranka's initiative in cultural organization, mention must be made of the other cultural activity that enjoyed the estates' backing, Hungarian theatre. Its precursors were the theatrical productions in Calvinist colleges. Education was marked by greater liberalism in Protestant colleges that in schools run by Catholic orders, with greater emphasis on the mother tongue, and that, in turn, facilitated a more vigorous theatrical life. Despite the prohibition of school theatricals during the reign of Joseph II, 'farces teeming with popular characters'[23]23.E. M. Császár, 'A nemzeti színjátszás kezdetei Közép-Kelet-Euró-pában', in IF, p. 497. continued to be performed at Marosvásárhely, and plays by Voltaire were still staged at Nagyenyed. It is not surprising, then, that the earliest major figures in the history of Hungarian theatre — János Patkó Kótsi, Pál Jantsó, and József Benke — were Transylvanian Protestants.

This burgeoning theatrical activity found a permanent home in 1821, when construction was completed on Kolozsvár's Hungarian National Theatre (Magyar Nemzeti Játékszín). Its survival over the intervening period owes much to the efforts of the elder Miklós Wesselényi. Driven out of politics, this restless and energetic spirit found refuge in the sphere of culture. An amateur playwright and translator, he was friend and patron to Kazinczy. By the time of his death, Wesselényi had personally contributed in excess of 20,000 forints to the support of Hungarian theatre in Transylvania; he worked tirelessly to find a construction site and raise funds for the theatre, to help in the organization and management of the players' company, and to iron out squabbles among the actors. The theatre had the backing of Governor Bánffy; both his wife, Jozefa Palm, who issued from the Austro–Czech aristocracy, and his daughters {2-773.} regularly attended the performances in Kolozsvár. Despite many setbacks, theatrical life in Transylvania was growing more vigorous.

Ferenc Kazinczy, who lived in Hungary, made a distinct contribution to the invigoration of Hungarian cultural life in Transylvania. He conducted a busy correspondence with many Transylvanians, and had personal contact with some of them. Kazinczy visited the country on two occasions; the second trip gave rise to his book Erdélyi levelek (Letters from Transylvania). He contributed signally to the intellectual development of several noteworthy Transylvanians, including Miklós Wesselényi Jr. and Sándor Bölöni Farkas.

The small stream that disappeared underground with the demise of the Philological Society in 1806 resurfaced in the following decade thanks to the efforts of Gábor Döbrentei, and some of its branches would connect with Hungarian theatre as well. The son of a Lutheran pastor, Döbrentei had come to Transylvania from Hungary to serve as tutor in an aristocratic family. Encouraged by Kazinczy, he developed plans in 1809 to launch a Transylvanian–Hungarian periodical. Farkas Cserei, one of Kazinczy's correspondents and the brother-in-law of Miklós Wesselényi Sr., published the plan and distributed it to the members of the diet that met in 1810–11, but a shortage of funds prevented early realization of the plan. When the first issue of Erdélyi Múzeum finally appeared, in May 1814, it was so well received that it had to be reprinted. The journal faithfully mirrored the multiplicity of intellectual currents in Transylvania. In its general orientation, it looked back to the Enlightenment; in his taste and practice, the editor, Döbrentei, favoured a return to classicism, while his intellectual training led him to look ahead to romanticism. Even his faint snobbishness proved useful, for it led him to reject works of lesser quality. He published poems by Dániel Berzsenyi, Kazinczy, Ferenc Kölcsey, and Pál Szemere, and he encouraged and launched a number of {2-774.} Transylvanian–Hungarian poets, notably Krisztina Újfalvi and Emil Buczy. His ideal dramatists were Shakespeare and Schiller, and Hungarian literary history has to record that he missed the opportunity to discover József Katona's great play, Bánk bán.

The articles published in Erdélyi Múzeum addressed many themes, including Greek and Roman literature as well as modern European literature. The essays on Hungarian literary history and pieces of literary criticism included Kazinczy's A magyar literatúra történetei (Chronicles of Hungarian Literature) and his review-article on Himfy szerelmei (Himfy's Loves). There were articles on literary theory, and the editor and his colleagues were fully conscious of the need to cultivate the language. Döbrentei's personal interest and public demand both militated in favour of articles on historical topics. Biographical articles featured, among others, Ignác Batthyány, the elder Farkas Cserei, Benjamin Franklin, and Péter Bod, and Döbrentei urged the publication of manuscripts left behind by Bod and József Benkő. The editor himself contributed articles on the art of biography, the evaluation of source-material, and developments in French historiography. There was room in Erdélyi Múzeum for articles on pedagogy as well, including one, written by the editor, on the Swiss reformer Johann Pestalozzi, as well as for works on fine arts and music. Nor were the natural sciences ignored; one article dealt with Miksa Hell, a note invited public support for Baumgarten's effort to collect botanical samples, and Döbrentei urged Transylvania's natural scientists to conduct 'a proper survey' of their land's features.

Döbrentei was intent on nurturing Transylvanian writers, but between 1815 and 1817, three notable figures passed from the scene: the young, classical scholar, Mózes Pataki, the critic Ábel Kerekes, and the philosopher András Szabó. There remained Sándor Farkas Bölöni, and Sándor Székely, from Aranyosrákos. Still, his periodical faced problems greater than the shortage of writers: insufficient funds (Transylvania was struck by famine), {2-775.} competition from Tudományos Gyűjtemény (Scientific Digest), which had been launched in Hungary in 1817 and drew away subscribers in that country, and the pressure of censorship. The Erdélyi Múzeum ceased publication in 1818. Döbrentei's other publishing venture, Külföldi Játékszíni Gyűjtemény (Foreign Theatre Digest) failed as well; the younger Miklós Wesselényi had translated Goethe's Die Geschwister for this journal.

In 1817, Döbrentei proposed to revive the Philological Society. He managed to secure the backing of several senior government officials, and Farkas Bolyai was involved in the planning. Within a year, Döbrentei had produced a detailed plan for a Scientific and Philological Society (Tudományos és Nyelvmívelő Társaság): an academy-type institution that would have separate departments for historiography, literature, linguistics, and the natural sciences. Having failed to obtain official approval, Döbrentei departed in 1820 from Transylvania, the scene of his most lasting accomplishments.

There were others who contributed to Hungarian culture but who were not linked to these institutional initiatives. Sámuel Gyarmathi's career was as turbulent, and foredoomed, as that of a typical 18th century polymath. As a young man at Pozsony, he experimented with hot air balloons. Then, over a ten year period, he worked as a physician, at aristocrats' courts and at the county level. He wrote a book on language, Okoskodva tanító magyar nyelvmester (A Reasoned Guide to the Hungarian Language), before moving on to Göttingen, where he made the acquaintance of August Schlözer. The latter affirmed the Finno–Ugric roots of the Hungarian language; he gave Gyarmathi much encouragement and advice, and lent the latter books from his personal collection. Gyarmathi was probably also influenced by the Czech Slavist Dobrovský and by a professor at Jena, Büttner, both of whom maintained that there was a link between the Hungarian and Finnish languages; and he corresponded with Porthan, known as 'the founder {2-776.} of the Finnish national sciences'. Gyarmathi's major work, Affinitas linguae hungaricae, was completed in 1789 and published the following year in Göttingen. According to Miklós Zsirai, the author's scholarly merit lies in the fact that he explored lexical and morpohological similarities among all Finno–Ugrian languages, and that (like János Sajnovics) in trying to demonstrate linguistic affinity, he did not stop at word-concordances but 'emphasized language's most important, elemental, and characteristic features, its morphological and structural elements'.[24]24. M. Zsirai, Sajnovics és Gyarmathi, p. 51. In József Schmidt's judgment, Sajnovics and Gyarmathi were pioneers of international stature scale in the study of comparative linguistics. It was in the same period that Transylvania's other great linguist, Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, set out for east Asia in quest of the Hungarians' ancestral home. Instead, he found the Tibetan language.

There is less to be said in this period about Saxon culture. Szeben's cultural life suffered a setback when the seat of the Gubernium (and, for a time, of the treasury) was transferred to Kolozsvár. Plans were drawn up by Johann Filtsch — and expanded by none other than Samuel Bruckenthal — for a learned society similar to the Hungarians' 'academy'. It was to have separate departments for the natural sciences, historiography, and literature, and, like the Philological Society, to open its membership to other nationalities. The project failed to be realized. Instead, the Saxons founded a Societas Philohistorum that began by publishing chronicles of Transylvania. The periodical Siebenbürgische Quartalschift appeared until 1801; its successor, the Provinzialblätter, lasted from 1805 to 1824.

More noteworthy was the development Transylvania's Romanian culture, which was nurtured by an expanding and increasingly secular intelligentsia. Although Balázsfalva was a significant educational centre, Catholic and Calvinist schools continued to play a leading role in the shaping of Transylvania's {2-777.} Romanian intelligentsia. At Kolozsvár's Piarist school, 21.7 per cent of the students were Uniates or Orthodox in 1794, and by 1846, the proportion had risen to 49.2 per cent; in the same years, the proportion of Romanians enrolled in senior programs (philosophy, law, medicine) was 12.7 and 20.3 percent, respectively. The Balázsfalva school's main catchment area was Fehér County, which provided 46.3 per cent of its students. Kolozsvár's Piarist school drew 29.3 percent of its Romanian from Kolozs County and 31.8 percent from Doboka and Belső-Szolnok counties; few Romanians from these counties attended the school at the Uniate episcopal seat of Balázsfalva. At Marosvásárhely's Calvinist college, 36.3 percent of Romanian students came from the Marosszék, the same proportion from the eastern half of Torda County, and 16.3 per cent from Kolozs County.

By this time, just over a quarter of Romanian students trained for the priesthood; around 17 percent chose a teaching career, and 43.6 per cent joined the civil service at the local or national level. Romanians who attended Kolozsvár's Piarist school in this period include the future Uniate bishop Ioan Leményi, the future Orthodox bishop Vasile Moga, Ladislau Vajda, who would teach criminal law at the academy between 1817 and 1824 and then become secretary to the Gubernium, and Gheorghe Lazăr, who was destined to reform Wallachia's educational system. The establishment of an Orthodox theological academy at Szeben in 1814 led to a certain shift in attendance, but it did not alter the basic distribution of the students who joined the ranks of the Romanian intelligentsia.

That social stratum would continue to forge a national consciousness based on the theory of Daco–Roman continuity. Petru Maior, who worked as the Romanian censor at the university press of Buda, would follow in the footsteps Samuil Micu-Klein and Gheorghe Şincai with his major opus on the origins of his people in Transylvania, Istoria pentru începutul românilor în Dacia (Buda, 1812). Although his approach is similar to that of his forerunners, {2-778.} his exposition is more skilful; the work is a short, coherent, polemical appraisal of Transylvania's history up to the Hungarian Conquest. Maior's book, which was reprinted twice over the course of the century, had a greater popular impact than the works of Micu-Klein and Şincai.

Radu Tempea, great-grandson of the eponymous Romanian chronicler from Brassó, had a turbulent life; following the death of Eustatievici, he served for a time as director of Orthodox primary schools in Transylvania. He contributed to the raising of national consciousness with a Romanian grammar that showed a Latinist tendency but, with due regard for the average reader, avoided excessive purism.

The first significant literary works by Transylvanian Romanians were not so closely linked to the shaping of national consciousness. By far the most important of these works was Ţiganiada, by Ion Budai-Deleanu. That outstanding figure of the Romanian Enlightenment in Transylvania had participated in the struggles over the Supplex Libellus Valachorum; according to present-day historians of Romanian literature, he was the author of the Widerlegung, a pamphlet that responded to the polemical essays challenging the theory of continuity. He was certainly the author of a new petition forwarded to the monarch in 1804. However, his most lasting contribution to Transylvania's Romanian culture was Ţiganiada. The work is a bitter 'anti-epic' about the Gypsies. Wallachia's ruler, the notoriously ruthless Vlad Ţepes, promised the Gypsies statehood in exchange for help in his battle against the Turks. The Gypsies gave little assistance, but when the Turkish threat slackened, they indulged in much debate over the constitution of their future state, whether it should be democratic, or monarchic, or a blend of the two. The contending groups refused to compromise and share power; in consequence, the Gypsies lost their chance to found a state and reverted to their traditional condition of anarchy. Such were the bitter reflections that the aging Josephinist, {2-779.} who lived in solitude at Lemberg, offered as a lesson to his people and other nations as well. The work that probably comes closest to Ţiganiada in spirit is not some earlier model, but János Arany's Nagyidai cigányok (Gypsies of Nagyida).

Brassó's Ioan Barac, who had been educated at Hungarian schools in Nagyenyed and Kolozsvár, was far less gifted than Budai-Deleanu. A prolific poet, he reworked (in a style bearing the influence of Csokonai) Mihály Fazekas's Lúdas Matyi (Pipelea Gâscariul).

There were also two Romanian attempts in the 1790s to emulate the institutional initiatives taken by Hungarians and Saxons in the sphere of culture. Ioan Piuariu-Molnár was involved in both projects. In 1793–94, he proposed to launch a Romanian periodical, but his applications to the monarch were rejected. In 1795, he tried to establish a learned society similar to the Transylvanian–Hungarian Philological Society and the one proposed by Filtsch. This Societatea Filozoficească a neaumului românesc în Mare Principatul Ardealului was designed to address linguistic and historical problems as well as questions of natural science. There is no record that the plan ever came to fruition.