The Reform era was time of rapid development in the cultural life of Transylvanian Hungarians, and it also ushered a fundamental change in the relationship between their culture and that of Hungary proper. The efforts at creating a liberal nation-state induced a certain centralization of cultural life. Since the early years of the century, Hungarians had shown mounting interest in the smaller of the 'sister countries,' in what was termed the 'discovery of Transylvania.' Looking upon the cultural achievements of Hungary, a Kolozsvár newspaper editorialized in 1830 that 'Transylvania should revolve around Hungary, in other words, she should bask in the light and rays that emanate from there.'[113] Some thirteen years later, the emphasis had shifted: 'It is right and proper for us to regard Budapest as the centre of Hungarian national life and literature; but our vast homeland will reach a perfect state of development only if lesser centres emerge in all of it regions; for that is how this great and diverse national entity can mature and take its place in the sun; that is how the many rays will unite to produce a great brightness.'[114] In the intervening period, 'the capital' and 'the countryside' had done much to enrich each other, and there was promise of further progress.
Culture, like politics, drew the active involvement of an ever larger proportion of Transylvania's Hungarian population. Students grew more numerous and emerged as a new social force. In 1831, students demonstrated their sympathy for the Polish prisoners who {3-115.} were being escorted through Nagyenyed; three years later, students confronted Habsburg troops in the streets of Kolozsvár. The deliberations of the diet filled them with feverish excitement. One of them, Mihály Szentiváni, drafted a 'credo of Youth' for the intention of the diet at Pozsony: 'Let us defend the relics of our ancient freedom and nationhood as if they were our greatest treasure, and let us do more: let us break down the artificial barriers that oppress mankind and smash the shackles of sectarianism.'[115]
Young people in Transylvania pinned their hopes for a better future on the success of the movement for national and civic renewal. The government expected schools to produce obedient subjects, as prescribed in a tedious textbook entitled Az alattvalók kötelességei (The Duties of Subjects). The students were more inspired by Classical and Romantic works, and by up-to-date treatises on natural and constitutional law; their ideal citizen was proud of his rights and duties, and ready to die for his people, one whose sense of initiative would nurture the new state.
Students returned to their villages armed with facts and ideas, and imbued with a programmatic conception of the ideal citizen. They were largely responsible for the creation in many villages of readers' clubs, a development that coincided with the establishment of urban casinos; some of the more enlightened village teachers and priests participated in this movement, and more than one readers' club enjoyed the direct support of the county or of a distinguished landowner. At the national level, news of the readers' club movement and reports on the efforts of teachers to modernize education were featured prominently in a newspaper devoted to public education, Vasárnapi Újság. The paper, founded with the help of the Kolozsvár casino, was edited by a professor at the Unitarian college, Sámuel Brassai. The colleges' literary and debating societies and the village readers' clubs began to collaborate, the former sending books and periodicals, the latter providing information on folk songs and folk customs.
{3-116.} The Gubernium sought to proscribe, or at least constrain the activity of the college societies and readers' clubs. It launched an inquiry, in 1835, into the activities of Károly Szász, and tried to deter students from taking too many initiatives. To set an example, in 1840 the authorities imposed sanctions on the entire membership of Ébredő Társaság (Awakening Society), a student society at Nagyenyed, and one of them was expelled from the college. The head of the military command at Nagyszeben regarded Protestant colleges as hotbeds of a conspiracy aimed at undermining discipline in the border-guard. Shortly after the so-called 'Jacobin inquiry' at Nagyenyed in 1840, several Székely border-guard cadets from Csík County were put in detention for having organized a Hungarian readers' club. The military commission of investigation acknowledged that it was permissible to cultivate the Hungarian language but, citing the activity of two rebellious sergeants, ruled that the sanctions were justified; the two men, members of the readers' club, had been inspired by the opposition's call for recognition of the equality of all Székelys to circulate a letter inviting other border-guard sergeants to support the movement.
After these reprisals, students withdrew to their colleges. The student societies and readers' clubs became veritable literary workshops, and trying one's hand at literary composition, a national duty. In keeping with the literary fashion of the times, their best work was circulated in manuscript form or published in pocketbooks.
Ferenc Toldy, one of the most highly regarded literary critics in Pest, nurtured close contacts with Transylvanians. In 1839, he hailed Remény (Hope), a work published by students at Kolozsvár's Unitarian college, as the harbinger of Transylvania's new Hungarian poetry. Poets at Calvinist colleges tended to adopt the language and ideas of traditional patriotism; their evocation of past greatness was variously critical and militantly optimistic, and some of their later works displayed a rather mawkish style. Unitarian poets preferred {3-117.} to evoke the lives of ordinary people. Two truly talented poets emerged from among the large number of versifiers at the colleges: János Kriza and Mihály Szentiváni.
Previously, poets had tended to present the characters they borrowed from folk songs as colourful puppets, whereas the ballads of Kriza and Szentiváni depicted the daily vicissitudes of serfs and cotters, and of Székely soldiers taken off to war. Their emotional solidarity with ordinary folk and sense of social equality foreshadowed the popular revolutionary poems composed by Sándor Petőfi in the late 1840s. These Transylvanian poets did not adopt the inflammatory style of Miklós Wesselényi, but they would, for instance, hail the Székelys' historic risings as rightful challenges to tyranny. Kriza and Szentiváni favoured liberal reform, and a noted critic praised the former's work for having set a new standard in Hungarian popular poetry: 'Finally someone takes a stand for democracy; Kriza preaches the liberation of ordinary people, and advocates that the child of a poor Hungarian peasant should have homeland.'[116] This was even truer of Szentiváni, one of whose ballads became a virtual national hymn for the Székelys:
| You are a cotter, and I'm a Székely |
| Yet the same sun rises in our sky. |
| The same rain pours down on our lands, |
| Why, then, should I be better than you? |
| [Te zsellér vagy, én meg székel, |
| De egünkön egy nap jő fel. |
| Egy eső hull a földünkre, |
| Mért lennék hát különb, mint Te?] |
It was Szentiváni the reformer who, intent on reconciling interests, lent these sentiments to free Székelys. (The latter had {3-118.} already sought allies among serfs and cotters on some occasions, notably in 1809, when they called upon the others to join forces in the struggle for freedom.) And it was Szentiváni the poet who protested at the feudal arrogance that oppressed rural folk.
Travel accounts were the period's most popular literary-publicistic genre. They served the common good by providing sensitive assessments of society and its divisions. The best example is Székelyhon (Székely homeland), written by László Kőváry in 1841, when he was in his early twenties. With their literary and publicistic efforts, young Transylvanian Hungarians built upon the political initiatives taken by Miklós Wesselényi. And, in the midst of this emerging commitment to social reform, the movement to affirm the national rights of Hungarians in the Székelyföld became inextricably entwined with the Hungarian national movement.
In 1842, Kőváry attempted to launch a literary journal that would publish the work of young authors and promote 'nationhood and constitutionalism.' In his appeal to subscribers, he declared that 'we loathe the commercial literature of the west at least as much as the sword of the north.'[117] The response must have been muted, for the journal never appeared.
The literary light that shone from Pest-Buda obviously tended to overshadow local initiatives, and it may have discouraged some writers from persevering in their work. Kriza, for one, proposed to assemble and publish a comprehensive collection of folk songs, but he had to postpone the project when his appeal for subscribers fell on deaf ears. On the other hand, the literary life of the capital offered new opportunities for budding authors, and recognition in Pest brought recognition in Kolozsvár as well.
Miklós Jósika, for instance, published only two minor political tracts in Kolozsvár, Vázolatok (Sketches) and Irány (Directions). Ignoring those who advised him that literature was not a fitting pursuit for aristocrats, he turned his pen to writing a novel, entitled Abafi, and in 1836 he submitted the manuscript directly to a publisher {3-119.} in Pest. Critics hailed the work as the first Hungarian novel. Written in the style of a diary, it was set in the 17th century, but the titular hero was a contemporary European figure suffering from the mal du siècle,' a mixture of boredom and hedonism; having overcome these ills, he becomes an authentic Romantic hero purified by love. Many an opposition politician followed this path of spiritual cleansing. Jósika became the period's most popular novelist. Emulating Walter Scott, he wrote a series of historical novels, the best of which are set in Transylvania. Biographers concur in observing that Jósika's identification with Transylvania played a large part in his success. People in Hungary regarded the 'smaller motherland' as a land of freedom and Romantic deeds; indeed, Transylvania was an ideal setting for Jósika's Romantic tales, since, in western eyes, it was a bastion of traditional values. István Széchenyi, who took a highly critical view of conditions and traditionalism in Hungary, observed that 'so far, Transylvania has done the most to preserve the spirit of our nation; Lady Transylvania was not ashamed of her Hungarian identity, and the finer social discourse that prevails in Transylvania nurtures our cultural legacy, evoking memories that captivate loyal Hungarians, for the latter cannot renege their origins.'[118]
The innovative contributions of Transylvanians were found not only in their isolated initiatives but also in their exploitation of literature to address some of the burning questions of the age — ethics and power, ends and means, duty and action, which were illuminated in the experience and fate of fictional heroes. It was in the repressive atmosphere of the 1830s that László Teleki (who had earned his spurs in the Transylvanian diet, then shifted his political activities to Hungary) penned the drama Kegyencz (The Favourite). He was seeking to resolve a moral dilemma: whether it was possible — and at what price — to make Truth prevail against the supreme secular power. To avenge his humiliations, the main protagonist, an aristocratic Roman senator, assassinates the emperor, and is himself {3-120.} killed in the act. Teleki was principally concerned with the limits of justifiable revenge. Baron Zsigmond Kemény, who remained closer to Transylvanian politics (he began to contribute articles to papers in Pest-Buda only in the mid-1840s), showed more sensitivity and insight in exploring the absurd and tragic aspects of having to serve the power of the day. In his novel Gyulai Pál, published in 1847, he offers a subtle psychological analysis of the eponymous hero, a learned and decent man who brings about his own downfall by resorting to base means to serve a perverse despot, Zsigmond Báthori. Kemény implied that man could alter his own fate. And in analysing how immature masses were susceptible to demagogy, he voiced a fear and premonition shared by many of his contemporaries.
While it was largely left to later generations to discover the literary merits of the young Kemény, Zsigmond Czakó enjoyed a popularity that was immediate but short-lived. This author of Romantic melodramas earned the admiration of the elite among the young generation of his day by venturing into bold social criticism and displaying a spirit of fierce rebelliousness. When he took his own life, both Petőfi and Arany would honour him with poetic eulogies.
While many Hungarian writers were drawn to the 'capital,' there were others who moved to the 'countryside.' Of the latter, none matched the achievement of Gábor Döbrentei, who had launched the periodical Erdélyi Múzeum back in 1814 and kept it going for five years. One noteworthy figure was Mihály Táncsics, a onetime serf and craftsman who was to become a radical social critic and politician. While working as a tutor with Count Teleki's family at Kolozsvár, Táncsics published a few works that had already been rejected by the censors at Buda but met with greater lenience on the part of local censors. However, even the latter were outraged by his book Pazardi; the frontispiece featured a caricature of 'a bespectacled German relieving himself on the Corpus Juris.'[119] There were a number of other writers from Hungary proper {3-121.} who moved to Transylvania and contributed with their work to reconcile the diverse social and ethnic groups.
The public's growing interest in politics and literature made publishing more profitable, and qualitative improvements helped to nurture reading habits that survive to this day. To be sure, not every venture was successful. Ferenc Pethe, a noted specialist on agriculture who came from Hungary in the late 1820s, founded a newspaper and published a few technical treatises, but financial difficulties drove him to lease a tavern. Yet by the 1830s, the liberal newspapers in Kolozsvár had as many as 500–1,000 subscribers.
The most popular publication remained the almanac. Bölöni's report on his American journey was a unexpected popular success, but the print run was only two thousand, whereas six thousand copies were printed of the almanac Erdélyi Magyar Kalendárium. The Bible became more a symbol than a book to read. János Zeyk, a writer who was born in 1786, confessed in some embarrassment that while his grandfather had read the Bible sixteen times over, and his father four times, he read it only once; however, he assembled a personal library of some 1500 books. The country was swept by a 'reading fever' — the contemporary German expression — that extended to women as well. Emil Récsi, who taught law at Kolozsvár's Catholic, post-secondary lyceum, wrote popular novels in a series entitled Francia Regénycsarnok (Hall of French Novels). At teacher at the Calvinist college, Ferenc Szilágyi, launched the first magazine in Hungarian for children. Judging from the number of people who frequented libraries at Marosvásárhely, up to a third of the working population made a habit of reading books. The Hungarian newspaper launched by János Köpe, the Hungarian-language teacher at the Saxons' Lutheran high school in Brassó, survived for only a few issues, but he had more success with a series of novels called Polgári és pórkönyvtár (Burghers' and Peasants' Library), with print runs of 1500 copies.
{3-122.} Kolozsvár remained the centre of Hungarian book publishing in Transylvania. By 1844, it ranked third in greater Hungary, with 22 works being published, behind Pozsony, with 31, and Pest-Buda, with 260 new books. In no other Transylvanian town did publishers issue more than ten books per year, with the marginal exception of Brassó, where there were years when, in the three languages, as many as a dozen books appeared; over the decade of the 1840s, a hundred German and twenty Hungarian books were published in Brassó. Between 1830 and 1847, the printing shop of the college at Marosvásárhely put out some 180 publications. There were years when as many as ten books and pamphlets were published in Nagyenyed. Thirty prayer-books and school texts were published at Csíksomlyó between 1830 and 1844, more than throughout the whole of the 18th century.
Only in the realm of fashion magazines (fashion, in this case, signifying lifestyle) did the 'capital' seem to enjoy an impregnable monopoly. In 1836, Lázár Petrichevich Horváth published, in Kolozsvár, Az elbújdosott, vagy egy tél a fővárosban (The Fugitive, or a Winter in the Capital), a social novel of some originality but no literary merit. When this effort failed to arouse interest, the author set his sights on the aristocratic salons of Pest, and it was in the capital that he founded, in 1843, the fashion magazine Honderű, with the goal of promoting the Magyarization of the aristocracy. For a time, the magazine enjoyed wide popularity, and then the associate editors chose to turn it into a mouthpiece of literary and political conservatism.
The Bucharest-born Károly Sükei moved directly from the world of Transylvanian student societies to Pest, where he expounded on the 'mission of youth' in the pages of Életképek, a periodical dedicated to the promotion of popular democracy. It was in the same journal that Lajos Medgyes, a Calvinist priest-poet from Dés, published an appeal to Petőfi that he visit Transylvania. One could find 'pure and untainted Hungarians only in the Székelyföld,' {3-123.} wrote Medgyes, and he urged Petőfi to observe people 'at their religious ceremonies, feasting at home, and at dances,' for poets 'have an obligation to explore the inner spirit of ordinary people and give it artistic expression.' Medgyes was not alone in arguing that 'poetry should reach out to the lowest and least educated social strata.'[120]
Kőváry's initiative had failed, but 'Transylvania's young people' could still 'pour out their hearts' in the fashion magazines of Pest. The lifestyle that they scrutinized was strongly marked by traditional national features, and thus earned much positive criticism in Hungary, even from the pen of István Széchenyi. The magazines published reports ridiculing the social prejudice and complacency that prevailed in small towns and rural areas, and aiming to reinforce the national character of social life. The round dance was regarded as emblematic of a new-found national cohesion, and correspondents would report from a succession of carnivals on its spreading popularity. The dynamics of social mores were well reflected in the fact that when the national round dance was finally adopted in Kolozsvár's aristocratic circles, local burghers celebrated the carnival by opting for the 'française,' a dance previously favoured by the aristocrats. In Dés, where the 'French' did not catch on, the arrogant burghers — who tended to look down on the less affluent nobles — dismissed the local orchestra and hired the musicians of a count from Retteg (known for being a jack-of-all-trades) so as to bring the 'two classes' into closer contact in the round dance. The round dance became so popular in Nagyenyed that, according to a contemporary report, people no longer had to turn to 'ancient chronicles or their grandfathers to learn that, once upon a time, Hungarians danced Hungarian dances.'[121] When, in the second half of the 1840s, the political influence of liberals began to wane, so did the spirit of jest, and the young Pál Gyulai adopted a grimmer tone in reminding people that their social life should serve the cause of national renewal.
{3-124.} The greater vigour and integration of the Hungarians' cultural and political life was also reflected in the world of theatre. Pocket guides to theatre were published in Kolozsvár; but it was in the fashion magazines of Pest that reviewers would publish their critiques of local productions of plays by native dramatists, most of whose names are long forgotten. One reviewer reported that when the actress playing Dekebál, the 'tearful heroine' of a drama by the elderly county judge János Zeyk, delivered her lines in the pretentious style of a dandy from Paris or Pest, she was booed off the stage.[122] But people were well aware that Kolozsvár was the home of the first purpose-built Hungarian theatre. Mrs. Déry, a nationally-known actress, worked for a long spell at Kolozsvár; and one of the most famous Hungarian historical dramas, Bánk bán (Governor Bánk) had its second production — the premiere was in Kassa — at Kolozsvár, in 1834, some years before it came to be staged in Pest.
Touring companies stopped over in Transylvania's larger and smaller towns to perform what the public demanded: popular plays by Ede Szigligeti, dramas by Shakespeare, and operas by Bellini and Rossini. There were months when they staged a dozen or more different plays. One Transylvanian theatre company responded to growing interest among Romanians by staging plays in their language, at Brassó and Balázsfalva, and even in Bucharest.
Although no major composer appeared in this period, musical culture flourished. College choirs reached a vast audience with an eclectic repertoire. (One choir greeted Archduke Estei with a rather inappropriate medley of popular songs.) Kolozsvár's conservatory of music, in operation since the 1810s, was entirely reorganized in the 1830s by György Ruzitska, who who had studied music in Vienna. The conservatory's orchestra, which included burghers as well as aristocrats, put on performances of works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Ferenc Liszt's romantic pieces found a knowledgeable and enthusiastic audience in Transylvanian towns large and small.
{3-125.} The romantic cult of the past put its mark on family life as well. The love of tradition led more and more people to put up Christmas trees in their homes. Although the custom was imported from Vienna, probably first in Nagyszeben, it soon came to regarded even in Kolozsvár as 'a sacred legacy from our past.'[123]
The figurative arts, on the other hand, did not draw on the past. Most of the artists taught drawing classes, and many of them were illustrators, notably Ferenc Simó, Miklós Sikó, Lajos Magyari, and János Szabó. The growing interest in politics generated a demand for lithographs of popular public figures. As tourism and travel books gained in popularity, so did painted and lithographed nature scenes. The most talented artists eventually left Transylvania. Károly Szathmári Pap made his mark by illustrating the book Erdély képekben (Transylvania in Pictures), then moved to Bucharest, where he produced many watercolours recording exotic details of that semi-oriental world. After teaching himself the rudiments of painting, Miklós Barabás developed his skills in Franz Neuhauser's studio at Nagyszeben. After a short visit to Bucharest, and a longer stay in Kolozsvár, he moved to Pest, where his Transylvanian portraits and scenes made him the most popular painter of the day.
Scholarly activity in the Age of Reform was marked by rising standards and some outstanding individual achievements. Thanks largely to the newly-founded Hungarian Academy of Sciences, scientists and other scholars emerged from their isolation. Transylvanians accounted for nine of its seventy members in 1832, and 22 out of 170 in 1847. In the 1840s, Sámuel and József Kemény offered their collections of documents and minerals to a projected Transylvanian museum, but this worthy initiative became mired in political disputes, and the foundation of the Transylvanian Museum Association (Erdélyi Múzeum Egylet), an institution destined to make an immense contribution to Hungarian culture in the region, was delayed until the following decade.
{3-126.} In the meantime, institutions at the secondary and post-secondary level continued to serve as the mainstay of education and scholarship. By the mid-1840s, the number of Roman Catholic secondary schools had risen to twelve. Graduates of these schools, along with those of the four Calvinist colleges and of the Unitarian college at Kolozsvár, could pursue studies in law at Kolozsvár's lyceum; those who wanted obtain a lawyer's license then articled at the royal court of appeal in Marosvásárhely. The Roman Catholic Church ran a seminary at Gyulafehérvár (the Pest periodical Religio reported regularly on its impressive cultural activities), while Protestants took courses in theology at their colleges.
Graduates of all these colleges were qualified to attend university abroad. In the 1820s, the Metternich administration tried to limit the opportunity for foreign study to Vienna, but when the restrictions were eased, the majority of Hungarian students showed a preference for Berlin. In 1842, bids were invited for the establishment of a university at Nagyenyed, and the proposal that Károly Szász and others submitted the following year was modelled on the university of Berlin. Nothing came of the initiative. The world of learning in Transylvania consisted largely of teachers, who were impelled by necessity to become versatile polymaths; yet many of these same teachers were of a calibre comparable to that of university professors. They engaged in scholarly research, published primary-school textbooks, and, to eke out a decent living, did other work on the side, such as editing newspapers, censorship, and silkworm breeding; an economical heating stove and a brick-making machine were among the inventions of moonlighting teachers.
To be sure, material circumstances did not favour leisurely scholarly inquiry. Ferenc Nagy, who served as a college teacher, first at Zilah, then in Kolozsvár, raised a self-critical question that addressed philosophy, at that time the principal social science, but also had a bearing on the related disciplines of political science and law: 'Have we developed a distinctive Philosophy, as have the Greeks and Germans, the English and the French? Have we produced {3-127.} anything of merit in this sphere? In the centuries since the Reformation, the best of the Hungarian exponents of philosophy have been Cartesian, then Wolfian, later still, Kantian–Krugian, and finally Hegelian ... a host of servile imitators.'[124]
That was an excessively harsh judgment. The scholars disparaged by Nagy transmitted and championed European intellectual innovations, and, on occasion, responded creatively to domestic demands. Although they were trimmed to satisfy higher authority, the textbooks compiled by István Bánó, a teacher of natural law at Kolozsvár's lyceum, managed to convey elements of modern European thought. And even the handbooks that presented a popularized version of the once-innovative science of bureaucratic absolutism served a positive purpose: their ideological barrenness spurred students to seek more modern solutions. Vienna looked on in some alarm as Catholic students flocked to the Calvinist and Unitarian colleges, where the instructors — though they published a lot of books — preferred to teach from manuscripts and thus escape harassment by censors. When Sámuel Köteles, whose introduction of Kantian philosophy had a lasting impact, proposed to publish a handbook, in Latin, on natural law, Metternich personally noted on the report of the Viennese censor that this Nagyenyed teacher professed 'liberal notions and the ideas of modern universal philosophy, all of which are dangerous to the state.'[125] It is scarcely surprising that despite Köteles's best attempts to redraft the manuscript, he failed to get it published. Still, Hungarian contemporaries had high regard for Köteles' contributions to philosophy, and his treatise on philosophical anthropology was published in 1839, after his death, by the National Academy in Pest. Most teachers in Transylvania hewed to Kantian philosophy. Some, like Mózes Székely, tried to blend Kantianism and Hegelianism. In his treatises, published in the early 1840s, on epistemology (Gondolkodástan) and rationalism (Észtan), this Unitarian college teacher cited Hegel in support of new perspectives for man's self-awareness and freedom.
{3-128.} The fundamental value promoted by political liberalism was the human dignity of the individual, which was to be entrenched in law. However, only works that dealt with the existing legal system (and avoided issues of constitutional law) could get past the censors. The best of these was a multi-volume treatise on civil law, published in 1830 by László Vajda, a Romanian-born teacher at the Kolozsvár lyceum. Two outstanding and comprehensive treatises, by Gergely Sebestyén (a teacher at the Kolozsvár lyceum) and Elek Dósa (a teacher of law at the Marosvásárhely college), dealt in part with constitutional law, and therefore could not be published. The relatedness of law and politics was most clearly expressed in the work of Károly Szász, whose lecture notes on criminal, penal, and civil law testify to a keen awareness of contemporary European trends. Szász insisted that law and politics had to be constructed on the basis of existing legal customs: 'Natural common sense can distinguish between what is just and unjust; and it will find those elements just which, in the form of common laws, help mankind to advance along its predestined path.'[126] In his inaugural address at the Academy in Pest, Szász broke new ground by arguing in favour of an independent judiciary; the censors at Buda would not allow the speech to be published.
Since legal scholars were not allowed to publish works that could facilitate modernization of the political system, it was left to political journalism to fill the gap. It was in this medium that Szász, Bölöni, and Wesselényi, as well as representative members of the next generation, Mihály Szentiváni and Zsigmond Kemény, addressed such issues as the reform of the judiciary, the separation of the judiciary and local administration, and the modernization, in theory and practice, of the penal system. For the guidance of legislators, they tried to identify issues which could be usefully addressed by the Hungarian diet. As will be seen, the shifting balance of political forces in Transylvania worked against the publication of such proposals. Thus there could be no open debate on the {3-129.} merits of István Horváth's Véleménye az erdélyi törvénykezés tárgyában (Views on Transylvanian Jurisprudence). In this massive treatise, written in 1845, Horváth invited conformity with European legal norms: 'We should strive to participate in the process of universal progress and make the best choices that our circumstances allow.'[127]
Historiography was developing into an autonomous discipline, but historians were also intimately concerned with the great issues of the day. Without an extensive knowledge of history, it was impossible to make a sound judgment with regard to constitutionalism, serfdom, or reunification. There was also growing interest in situating the major events in Transylvania's history within the general pattern of historical development. Zsigmond Kemény acknowledged that if the present did not quench people's 'thirst for news,' they would turn to the past, 'to works of history, and, failing that, to tradition and myth.' He considered the recent revival of interest in the Hungarians' origins as being motivated by national pride and vanity, and not in tune with current priorities. As a Transylvanian, Kemény was proud that Sándor Kőrösi Csoma had won international recognition with the publication of 'precious Buddhist documents' and an English–Tibetan dictionary. But he also regretted that Kőrösi, who died in 1842, could not attain his original objective and clear up the mystery of the Hungarians' origin, an undertaking that 'promised to reveal much about the movement of peoples in Asia.'[128]
As for Wesselényi, he had already offered an outline of the history of Hungarian serfdom in his Balítéletekről, and, in the 1840s, he proposed that the Hungarian Academy commission the writing of a comparative history of the peasantry in Europe. Even today, the publicistic writings of political liberals seem remarkably sober and realistic in their analysis of the threads linking past and present. Thus in Szózat a magyar és szláv nemzetiség ügyében (A Manifesto on the Hungarian and Slavic Nationalities), published in 1843, {3-130.} Wesselényi explored the connections between the French Revolution and the national movements in eastern Europe, while Kemény wrote articles tracing the evolution of ideas from the Reformation to the age of liberalism.
The historians' first task was to organize the systematic retrieval of basic documents. József Kemény and István Nagyajtai Kovács published medieval documents and chronicles dating from the 16th and 17th centuries in their pioneering work Erdélyország Történeti Tára (Transylvanian Historical Sources). József Teleki, formerly president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and, from 1842, governor of Transylvania, completed the first draft of his monumental Hunyadiak kora Magyarországon (The Age of the Hunyadis in Hungary) in 1843; when the book was published, in 1850, critics hailed Teleki as one of Europe's great historians.
Numerous other scholarly, if less significant, works dealt with aspects of Transylvanian history. Sándor Aranyrákosi Székely responded to a growing interest at home as well as in England by writing a history of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church, the first major work of church history to be published in the country. Ferenc Szilágyi's articles, published initially in the popular Klio yearbooks, reflected a broad historical perspective, although the later ones came to be marked by a rather bland and petty conservatism.
Transylvania's leading historians all aspired to analyze contemporary developments, but the lack of access to sources kept them from compiling even a statistical handbook. They were all the more miffed when the young László Kőváry yielded to the urgings of a publisher and produced a thoroughly modern and readable piece of work. Whereas many of his fellow-historians made indiscriminate use of dubious data, Kőváry offered plausible estimates of certain key indicators, such as grain consumption and arable land. He was probably already sensitive to the point that he raised two years later, in a report from the battlefront: 'Without the help of the [statistical] office, today's historians will merely perpetuate {3-131.} the traditional pattern of describing battles and ignoring changes on the home front.'[129]
Kőváry's work — including his school texts, Györke Erdélyt utazza (Györke Tours Transylvania) and Kálmánka űrismét tanul (Kálmánka Learns About Astronomy) — reflected the growing interest shown by young people for the natural and physical sciences. In the early 1800s, students tended to be repelled by mathematics. Now, they reacted against a science of politics that seemed out of date but welcomed Károly Szász's lectures on physics, as well as those on botany and mineralogy given by Miklós Zeyk, an aristocrat-turned-scholar who had a remarkable aptitude for teaching. Ferenc Milotai, a onetime estate manager who had published excellent treatises on agriculture, made a promising start at teaching his subject at the college in Nagyenyed, but the petty intrigues of teachers who acted as informants scuttled the plan to establish a 'chair of economics.' That discipline was taught only at the Kolozsvár lyceum, in 1807–22, and from 1842 onward, in conjunction with double-entry book-keeping. Áron Berde, a teacher at the Unitarian college and the author of Légtüneménytan (The Study of the Atmosphere), responded to the growing interest in the natural sciences by launching a periodical, Természetbarát (Friend of Nature), that was aimed at the general public.
The college of surgery at Kolozsvár already had a long and distinguished record. Some thirty students were enrolled in its three-year program; its courses in the natural sciences, given in Hungarian and German, were more thorough than those offered to budding surgeons in Pest, perhaps because there was, as yet, no full-fledged university in Transylvania. Meanwhile, numerous works were published by county medical officers on questions of medicine and public hygiene. Thus it was not inappropriate that the fifth congress of 'Hungarian physicians and natural scientists,' in 1844, should be convened at Kolozsvár.
{3-132.} There were many complaints about the inadequacy of scientific education and practical training. The fact remains that mathematics and physics were taught to a high standard, particularly at the lyceum and other Roman Catholic schools, which benefited from their close links with Church institutions in Hungary; there were very few native Transylvanians among Piarist teachers at Kolozsvár. Protestant teachers become acquainted with the latest advances in science during their studies abroad. In this respect, Sámuel Brassai was an exception. This teacher-scholar was gifted with tremendous scientific insight as well as with a talent for popularizing knowledge, and spoke a dozen languages; yet he was a pure product of Transylvania, for he had never studied abroad.
The genius of János Bolyai was nurtured in the scientific culture of Transylvania as well as by his close contacts with foreign scholars, notably during his studies in Vienna, but he also owed much to the influence of his father, Farkas Bolyai. He was barely twenty-one, and an army officer, when he proudly reported in a letter to his parents that he had 'out of nothing, created a wholly new world:' he had invented non-Euclidian geometry. The discovery opened up a new phase in deductive thought, and, according the Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, raised the level of human knowledge from zero to one. And while scientific knowledge may have grown a hundredfold since that time, Bolyai still deserves great credit for his pioneering work.
János Bolyai's discovery was published in an appendix to Farkas Bolyai's two-volume textbook, which appeared at Marosvásárhely in 1832; that book, written in Latin, also presented the results of original research on the theory of series. The importance of the younger Bolyai's contribution, which eventually came to be known as 'the Appendix,' did not strike his contemporaries. The most eminent mathematician of the day, Göttingen University's Carl Gauss, claimed that he had earlier developed the theories summed up by Bolyai. Gauss did write to his old friend Farkas {3-133.} Bolyai, praising the son's 'razor-sharp mind' and professing pleasure at being outstripped 'in such a miraculous fashion;' yet — perhaps because he felt that the world of science was not ready — he made no effort to publicize young Bolyai's discovery. it. Non-Euclidian geometry gained wider currency only some ten years later, when a mathematician at Kazan, Nikolai Lobachevsky, published findings, similar to those of Bolyai, in German. János Bolyai's only consolation was a sentiment already expressed by his father in introducing another innovative treatise on mathematics: 'How can one tell from which valley sprang a drop of the Ocean's waters? It has no name of its own, yet there it is, subsumed under the grand name of the immensity.'[130]
Transylvania's cultural life was enriched not only by these great individual achievements but also by the introduction, in secondary and post secondary education, of instruction in the mother tongue. Early in the century, Protestant schools attempted to make Hungarian the language of instruction, but the government soon put an end to the experiment. Thus 'once a year, when they came to lecture on the battle of Mohács, history teachers would switch from Latin to Hungarian, but they had trouble finding the words in their mother tongue, for even the walls had ears.'[131] Apparently, government informers were less numerous in the Székelyföld; in 1842, when Dénes Sylvester delivered his inaugural lecture as professor of law at Székelyudvarhely, he incurred no reprisals for affirming the distinction between state and society, nor for declaring that 'when the Romans wished to deprive a conquered people of its identity, they began by stripping the latter of their mother tongue.'[132]
In the 1830s, the Calvinist and Unitarian Churches exploited their relative autonomy to do away with Latin as the language of instruction in their colleges and schools. Roman Catholic schools, however, were closely supervised by the authorities in Vienna; the Church's self-government, which was modelled on that of the {3-134.} Protestants and had no parallel elsewhere in Europe, became a casualty of bureaucratic absolutism. Bishop Miklós Kovács, who spared no effort to expand the school system, championed the cause of mother-tongue instruction, and so did most of the teachers at the lyceum; but only in 1847 did the fierce political campaign finally bring fruit.