Minoritatea maghiara s-a confundat cu nobilimea maghiara. Minoritate imperiala cu constiinta imperiala ultragiata. Care si acum emite pe baza unor judecati de valoare hortiste pretentii absolute, de a trai permanent intr-un trecut ce de mult nu mai exista si de a lasa sa-i scape prezentul printre degete invocand neintrerupt mitul eternei reintoarceri la trecut. Pentru multi teoreticieni si reprezentanti ai ei realitatea e batuta in cuie, iar evenimentele trebuie mereu masurate cu masura trecutului cand maghiarii taia si spanzurau cum vroiau. A se tine cont aici si de alte surse cum ar fi cele slovace, cehesti, sarbe, chiar italienesti unde ocupantii maghiari s-au purtat injositor, cu trufie si brutalitate. A se consulta in acest scop urmatoarea adresa:

http://www.slovakia.org/history-magyarization.htm

Sa amintim aici si faptul ca in decursul secolelor romanii desi majoritari (indiferent daca asta place unora sau nu, sunt destule documente ce atesta acest lucru) n-au avut nici un drept sau mai bine zis nu li s-au acordat de catre maghiari. In legile acelor timpuri emise de maghiari, romanilor le era interzis de a locui la oras, nu aveau voie sa-si faca case de piatra ci numai din lemn, iar strazile nu aveau voie sa fie mai late de un metru. Cine vrea sa se documenteze le poate gasi, ele exista in arhive si astazi. Dupa ce romanii au fost deposedati si discrimati de secole, acum se invoca motive pervers-irealiste ca totul a fost construit de unguri ca romanii nu erau decat "niste tarani needucati" uitandu-se baza problemei si anume ca romanii nu aveau nici un drept sa o faca. Pe acest fond hortist fals se construieste acum un edificiu. Se uita ca ungurii au trait in cea mai mare masura numai din maghiarizari fortate a se vedea in acest scop legea scoasa de presedintele societatii de maghiarizare a numelui de familie Simon Telkes. Cartea sa intitulata "Cum sa ne maghiarizam numele de familie" ce contine indicatiile pretioase necesare in acest sens se poate gasi si azi pe internet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization
http://saccsiv.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/document-„cum-sa-maghiarizam-numele-de-familie/
http://www.genealogy.ro/cont/13.htm
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL4499240M/Simon_Telkes_how_to_become_a_Hungarian

Acestea nu sunt povesti ci documente ce nu le poate combate nimeni numai daca nu vrea sa le vada, precum orbul care e inconjurat din toate partile de lumina zilei iar el to nu o vede.
Ceea ce este intr-adevar deranjant e acest subiectivism orb invelit in diferite invelisuri ce sunt mereu schimbate dupa circumstanta si dorinta absurda de a forma prezentul dupa chipul si asemanarea trecutului. De aceea am mentionat ca multora din aceasta etnie le scapa prezentul prin ancorarea in trecut. Se pare ca multi nu pot intelege acest lucru datorita unor praguri ce le au, toate asa numitele argumente aduse sunt numai sofisme. Se porneste de la un punct de plecare gresit pe care se incearca a se explica logic.

Magyarization

Magyarization (also "Magyarisation", "Hungarisation", "Hungarization", "Hungarianization", "Hungarianisation") is a designator applied to a number of ethnic assimilation policies implemented by various Hungarian authorities in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. These policies aimed at imposing or maintaining the dominance of Hungarian language and culture in Hungarian-ruled regions by encouraging or compelling people of other ethnic groups to adopt the Hungarian language and culture, and to develop a Hungarian identity.

After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 Hungarian leaders insisted strongly that the Hungary must be Magyar in spirit, in its institutions, and, as far as possible, in its language. Suggestions to the contrary, or appeals to the Nationalities Law, met with derision or abuse. Despite the law, the use of minority languages was almost completely banned in administration and justice. The Magyar language was highly overrepresented in the primary schools and almost all secondary education was in Hungarian.[1]

By the end of the 19th century, the state apparatus was entirely Hungarian in language, as were business and social life above the lowest levels. The percentage of the population with Hungarian as its mother tongue grew from 46.6 % in 1880 to 54.5 % in 1910. The Magyarization of the towns had proceeded at an amazing rate. Nearly all middle-class Jews and Germans and many middle-class Slovaks and Ruthenes had been Magyarized.[1]

However, most of the Magyarization happened in the centre of Hungary and among the middle classes, who had access to education; and much of it was the direct result of urbanization and industrialization. It had hardly touched the rural populations of the periphery, and linguistic frontiers had not shifted significantly from the line on which they had stabilized a century earlier.[1]

Origin of the term

The term generally applies to the policies that were enforced[2][3] in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary in the 19th century and early 20th century, especially after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867,[1] and in particular after the rise in 1871 of the Count Menyhért Lónyay as head of the Hungarian government.[4] The idea owes its existence to the Enlightenment due to which the 19th century saw the emergence of nation-states in many places in Europe (France, Italy, Germany). In its course large areas were culturally and linguistically homogenized (or at least attempts were made to make them so).^[citation needed^]

When referring to personal and geographic names, Magyarization stands for the replacement of an originally non-Hungarian name with a Hungarian one. For instance, the Romanian name "Ion Negru" would become "János Fekete", or the Slavic name "Novo Selo" would become "Újfalu".

Magyarization in broader sense

As is often the case with policies intended to forge or bolster national identity in a state, Magyarization was perceived by other ethnic groups such as the Romanians, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Serbs, Croats, etc., as aggression or active discrimination, especially where they formed the majority of the population.

Magyarization can also refer to an identity shift, which would compel someone to identify with the Hungarian ethnicity, while having no Hungarian ancestors.^[citation needed^]

[edit]

Historical context

Joseph II (1780–90), a leader influenced by the Enlightenment sought to centralize control of the empire and to rule it as an enlightened despot.[5] He decreed that German replace Latin as the empire's official language.[5]

Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue.[5] As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language and culture.[5] The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of whom less than half were ethnic Magyars, and even those had become French- and German-speaking courtiers.[5]

In July 1849, Hungarian Revolutionary Parliament proclaimed and enacted foremost the ethnic and minority rights in the world, but it was too late: To counter the successes of the Hungarian revolutionary army, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph asked for help from the "Gendarme of Europe," Czar Nicholas I, whose Russian armies invaded Hungary. The huge army of the Russian Empire and the Austrian forces proved too powerful for the Hungarian army, and General Artúr Görgey surrendered in August 1849.

The Magyar national reawakening subsequently triggered national revivals among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian, and Croatian minorities within Hungary and Transylvania, who felt threatened by both German and Magyar cultural hegemony.[5] These national revivals later blossomed into the nationalist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that contributed to the empire's ultimate collapse.

Magyarization in the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary

The term Magyarization is usually used in regards to the national policies implemented by the government of the Kingdom of Hungary, which was part of the Habsburg Empire. The onset of this process dates to the late 18th century [6] and was intensified after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which increased the power of the Hungarian government within the newly formed Austria-Hungary.[4] [7] some of them had little desire to be declared a national minority like in other cultures. However, Jews in Hungary appreciated the emancipation in Hungary at a time when antisemitic laws were still applied in Russia and Romania. Large minorities were concentrated in various regions of the kingdom, where they formed significant majorities. In Transylvania proper (1867 borders), the 1910 census finds 55.08% Romanian-speakers, 34.2% Hungarian-speakers, and 8.71% German-speakers. In the north of the Kingdom, Slovaks and Ruthenians formed an ethnic majority also, in the southern regions the majority were South Slavic Croats, Serbs and Slovenes and in the western regions the majority were Germans^[citation needed^]. The process of Magyarization did not succeed in imposing the Hungarian language as the most used language in all territories in the Kingdom of Hungary. In fact the profoundly multinational character of historic Transylvania was reflected in the fact that during the fifty years of the dual monarchy, the spread of Hungarian as the second language remained limited. In 1880, 5.7 % of the non-Hungarian population, or 109,190 people, claimed to have a knowledge of the Hungarian language; the proportion rose to 11 % (183,508) in 1900, and to 15.2 % (266,863) in 1910. These figures reveal the reality of a bygone era, one in which millions of people could conduct their lives without speaking the state's official language.[8] The policies of Magyarization aimed to make the fluency in Hungarian language a requirement for access to basic government services such as local administration, education, and justice.

Between 1850 and 1910 the ethnic Hungarian population increased by 106.7%, while the increase of other ethnic groups was far slower: Serbians and Croatians 38.2%, Romanians 31.4% and Slovaks 10.7%.[9]

According to census data, the Hungarian population of Transylvania increased from 24.9% in 1869 to 31.6% in 1910. In the same time, the percentage of Romanian population decreased from 59.0% to 53.8% and the percentage of German population decreased from 11.9% to 10.7%. Changes were more significant in cities with predominantly German and Romanian population. For example, the percentage of Hungarian population increased in Braşov from 13.4% in 1850 to 43.43% in 1910, meanwhile the Romanian population decreased from 40% to 28.71% and the German population from 40.8% to 26.41%.

Names

See also: List of Magyarized geographical names

The Magyarization policy under the governing of Dezső Bánffy between 1895 and 1899 also included forced^[citation needed^] Magyarization of personal and geographical names. The law about registry books prescribed that all names in these books should be in Hungarian. The native names of non-Hungarians were, thus, replaced with Hungarian ones, for example Serbian name Stevan was replaced with Istvan or Jelena with Ilona. The policy included not only Magyarization of personal names, but of surnames as well.

Hungarian authorities put constant pressure upon all non-Hungarians to Magyarize their names and the ease with which this could be done gave rise to the nickname of Crown Magyars (the price of the registration being one krone).[27] In 1881 the "Central Society for Name Magyarization" (Központi Névmagyarositó Társaság) was founded in 1881 in Budapest. The aim of this private society was to provide advice and guidelines for those who wanted to Magyarize their surnames. Telkes Simon became the chairman of the society, who professed that “one can achieve being accepted as a true son of the nation by adopting a national name”. The society began an advertising campaign in the newspapers and sent out circular letters. They also made a proposal to lower the fees of the name changing. The proposal was accepted by the Parliament and the fee was lowered from 5 Forints to 50 Krajcárs. After this the name changings peaked in 1881 and 1882 (with 1261 and 1065 registered name changes), and continued in the following years on the average of 750-850 per year.[29] During the Bánffy-administration there was another boost with the highest 6700 application forms in 1897, mostly due to the pressure from authorities and employers of the government sector. Statistics show that only between 1881 and 1905 42,437 surnames were Magyarized.(It is less than 0.5% of the total non-Hungarian population of Hungarian Kingdom)[27] Voluntary Magyarization of German or Slavic-sounding surnames remained a typical phenomenon in Hungary during the course of the whole 20th century.

Together with Magyarization of personal names and surnames, the exclusive use of the Hungarian names of geographical places, instead of multilingual usage, was also common. For the places that were not known under Hungarian names in the past, new Hungarian names were invented and used in administration instead of the former original non-Hungarian names. Examples of places where original non-Hungarian names were replaced with newly invented Hungarian names: Szvidnik - Felsővízköz (in Slovak Svidník, now Slovakia), Najdás - Néranádas (in Romanian Naidǎş, now Romania), Sztarcsova - Tárcsó (in Serbian Starčevo, now Serbia), Lyutta - Havasköz (in Ruthenian Lyuta, now Ukraine), Bruck - Királyhida (now Bruck an der Leitha, Austria).[30]

According to Hungarian statistics[31] and considering the huge number of assimilated persons between 1700-1944 (~3 million) only 340,000-350,000 names were magyarised between 1815–1944; this happened mainly inside the Hungarian-speaking area. (One Jewish name out of 17 was Magyarised, in comparation with other nationalities: one out of 139 (Catholic) -427 (Evangelical) for Germans and 170 (Catholic) -330 (Evangelical) for Slovaks.

Migration

Part of the Magyarization was a result of internal migration of segments of the ethnically non-Hungarian population to the Kingdom of Hungary's central predominantly Hungarian counties and to Budapest where they assimilated. The ratio of ethnically non-Hungarian population in the Kingdom was also dropping due to their overrepresentation among the migrants to foreign countries, mainly to the United States.[32] Hungarians, the largest ethnic group in the Kingdom representing 45.5% of the population in 1900, accounted for only 26.2% of the emigrants, while non-Hungarians (54.5%) accounted for 72% from 1901 to 1913.[33] The areas with the highest emigration were the northern mostly Slovak inhabited counties of Sáros, Szepes, Zemlén, and from Ung county where a substantial Rusyn population lived. In the next tier were some of the southern counties including Bács-Bodrog, Torontál, Temes, and Krassó-Szörény largely inhabited by Serbs, Romanians, and Germans, as well as the northern mostly Slovak counties of Árva and Gömör-Kishont, and the central Hungarian inhabited county of Veszprém. The reasons for emigration were mostly economic.[34] Additionally, some may have wanted to avoid Magyarization or the draft, but direct evidence of other than economic motivation among the emigrants themselves is limited.[35] The Kingdom's administration welcomed the development as yet another instrument of increasing the ratio of ethnic Hungarians at home.[36]

The Hungarian government made a contract with the English-owned Cunard Steamship Company for a direct passenger line from Rijeka to New York. Its purpose was to enable the government to increase the business transacted through their medium.[37] While encouraging emigration, the company did not give passports to ethnic Hungarians.[38]^[original research?^]

By 1914, a total number of 3 million had emigrated,[39] of whom about 25% returned. This process of returning was halted by World War I and the partition of Austria-Hungary. The majority of the emigrants came from the most indigent social groups, especially from the agrarian sector. Almost 530,000 people left the country between 1905 and 1907, which shows a direct connection^[citation needed^] between the U.S. trade fluctuation^[citation needed^] and Hungary's developing stages^[citation needed^] (the living standard of the peasantry, decline of agrarian movements, and even the Phylloxera plague). Magyarization did not cease after the collapse of Austria-Hungary but has continued within the borders of the post-WW-I Hungary throughout most of the 20th century and resulted in drastic decrease of numbers of ethnic Non-Hungarians .[40]

Greek-Catholic Hungarians

According to the 2001-census they are 268,935 Greek-Catholic Christians living in Hungary. Excepting few thousands of Romanians and Rusyns, most of them are today ethnically and linguistically related to Hungarians. Most of the Greek-Catholic Hungarians have Rusyn[41] and Romanian[42][43] ancestors. The Hungarian Greek-Catholic diocese of Hajdudorog was founded in 1912. On that time, the diocese promoted the replacement of the Rusyn and Romanian liturgic language with Hungarian. Today, the seat of the diocese is in Nyíregyháza.

Jews

In the nineteenth century, the Neolog Jews were located mainly in the cities and larger towns. They arose in the environment of the latter period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire generally good period for upwardly mobile Jews, especially those of modernizing inclinations. In the Hungarian portion of the Empire, most Jews (nearly all Neologs and even most of the Orthodox) adopted the Hungarian language as their primary language and viewed themselves as "Magyars of the Jewish persuasion".[44] The Jewish minority which to the extent it is attracted to a secular culture is usually attracted to the secular culture in power, was inclined to gravitate toward the cultural orientation of Budapest.[45] (The same factor prompted Prague Jews to adopt an Austrian cultural orientation, and at least some Vilna Jews to adopt a Russian orientation.[45])

After the emancipation of Jews in 1867, the Jewish population of the Kingdom of Hungary (as well as the ascending German population[46]) actively embraced Magyarization, because they saw it as an opportunity for assimilation without conceding their religion. (We also have to point out that in case of the Jewish people that process had been preceded by a process of Germanization[45] earlier performed by Habsburg rulers). Stephen Roth writes, "Hungarian Jews were opposed to Zionism because they hoped that somehow they could achieve equality with other Hungarian citizens, not just in law but in fact, and that they could be integrated into the country as Hungarian Israelites. The word 'Israelite' (Hungarian: Izraelita) denoted only religious affiliation and was free from the ethnic or national connotations usually attached to the term 'Jew'. Hungarian Jews attained remarkable achievements in business, culture and less frequently even in politics. But even the most successful Jews were not fully accepted by the majority of the Magyars^[citation needed^] as one of their kind — as the events following the Nazi German invasion of the country in World War II so tragically demonstrated." [47] However, in the 1930s and early 1940s Budapest was a safe haven for Slovak, German and Austrian Jewish refugees[48] and a center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life.[48]

In 2006 the Company for Hungarian Jewish Minority could not collect 1000 signatures for a petition to declare Hungarian Jews a minority[49] even though there are at least 100 000 Jews in the country. The official Hungarian Jewish religious organization, Mazsihisz advised not to vote for the new status because they think that Jews identify themselves as a religious group, not as a 'national minority'. There was no real control throughout the process and non-Jewish people could also sign the petition.[49]

Magyarization in Upper Hungary

Although the share of Slovaks within the electorate (10,4%) largely reflected their weight in the total population of Hungary proper (10,7%) Slovaks had extremely marginal representation in the parliament (1 deputy out of 420 MPs). Although at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 there were more than one thousand Slovak elementary schools, their number was gradually reduced to 322 by 1918.