Dénesi Tamás (szerk.): Collectanea Sancti Martini - A Pannonhalmi Főapátság Gyűjteményeinek Értesítője 5. (Pannonhalma, 2017)

I. Tanulmány

Zsidó diákok a pápai bencés algimnáziumban a dualizmus idején 59

René Schilde Jewish Pupils in the Benedictine Lower Grammar School of Pápa in the period of the Dual Monarchy

In the first years of the period of the Dual Monarchy, the quota of pupils belonging to the Israelite denomination impressively increased in the Lower Grammar School of Pápa, in the school year of 1877/1878 almost as many as one half of the pupils came from this denomination. However, at the end of the historic period (1914) the quota of the Jewish pupils was only 6%. The present paper examines what reasons were at the back of the change of the quota.

The majority of the works discussing the period’s history of education empha-sizes the tolerant attitude towards the pupils of Israelite denomination assumed by the College of the Reformed Church in Pápa as for the whole period of the Dual Mon-archy, and in connection with it this majority states that the Jewish families in Pápa primarily preferred this institution for this very reason in the course of choosing a

school. However, it is not absolutely verified by the statistical data – at least in the first decades of the period – of the lower four classes in the two secondary schools of Pápa. For that very reason these statements were about to be refined and modulated. The examination focused on whether the following issues can locally be proved and matched with the national trends: the changes of the social position and acceptance of the Hungarian Jewish population as a national/religious group in the period of the Dual Monarchy, and within this sphere, the specialities of the participation of the Jew-ish pupils in the Hungarian educational system, in addition to the question whether local processes, events, debates of town- and institution-level perceptibly influenced the practice of Jewish families of Pápa in choosing a school?

In the second half of the 19

th century, a significant number of Jewish inhabitants lived in Pápa. However, not only for its number was the Jewish community in Pápa one of the most significant ones in the Transdanubian region. They formed a con-scious community, which played a ground-breaking role in many respects among the Jews in Hungary. The town’s character was determined by the presence of a good number of denominations, thus it was also decisive in the period of the Dual Monar-chy how tolerant the citizens of different denominations were towards each other. The active presence or the lack of tolerance was an important fundamental ques-tion of the town’s life and operation. In this respect, the present examination also included the town’s contemporary social and denominational conditions, and it can be stated that denominational tolerance – apart from the debated cases discussed in this paper – essentially had an effect in the town.

Having examined the characteristics of the participation of the Jewish pupils in the Hungarian educational system in the period of the Dual Monarchy and having contrasted them with the conditions in Pápa, it can be stated that the national trends can partly be revealed in the educational institutions of Pápa, too, however, they differ from those in some respects.