É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.

ORMOS, István: The Correspondence of Ignaz Goldziher and Max Herz

ISTVÁN ORMOS His younger fellow-Semitist Mihály Kmoskó is full of praise of "my unforgettable paternal friend's" kindness and amiability in his obituary, which points to a good personal contact.

4

6 Goldziher's relationship with Max Herz points in the direction of deep human feelings also. This raises once again the question of the real meaning of Goldziher's Tagebuch. The data referred to are likely to support the view that many of the biased views expressed on the pages of the Tagebuch are not to be taken literally but the process of jotting down these views served, as it were, as a therapeutic method for relieving their highly disciplined author of the psychological tensions of everyday 4

6 Mihály Kmoskó: 'Goldziher Ignácz 1850-1921', Egyetemes Philologiai Közlöny 45 (1921), 124-126. Mihály Kmoskó (1876-1931), a noted expert in Syriac studies, became Goldziher's successor in the university in 1923. He was a well-known antisemite. Thus we might even conclude that Goldziher personal kindness even embraced ardent antisemites. However, Kmoskó's antisemitism is attested - to my knowledge - only for the period after the War and for that of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in particular, in which Jews played a prominent role; he may not have had such sentiments in earlier times, to which their relationship may also have belonged. There are three post-cards by Kmoskó in the Goldziher Correspondence, dated 1913, 1914 and 1916. Kmoskó sent the last one from Istanbul informing Goldziher that after many vicissitudes he was at last leaving for Syria on 1 March 1916. Leading church and political circles in Hungary sent Kmoskó, who was a Roman Catholic priest, to Asia Minor and Palestine in 1916 to study the possibilities of replacing missionaries of the Allied Powers, who had been expelled by the Ottoman authorities, with Hungarian churchmen in the Ottoman Empire. The project was not realized. Kmoskó seems to have consulted Goldziher before departure. In this post-card Kmoskó addresses Goldziher as Édes barátom [My Sweet Friend], an address involving close personal relationship: I have not come across a similarly close address among Goldziher's letters. It is, however, also possible that these words, which suggest a considerable degree of intimacy, are rather another proof of Kmoskó's limited familiarity with the various levels of Hungarian: he was of Slovak origin and of course knew Hungarian but seems to have been unable to distinguish among the various levels of the language. He also had difficulties in expressing himself correctly in Hungarian, as it is amply proven by his works. Arnold Pataky, Emlékbeszéd Kmoskó Mihály rendes tag felett [Commemorative Address to the Memory of Ordinary Member Mihály Kmoskó] (A Szent István Akadémia emlékbeszédei, II 6), Budapest 1937, 7. Kmoskó, apparently a very passionate man lacking emotional balance, is reputed to have become an ardent philosemite in his later years: at his burial the students of the Rabbinical Seminary appeared in great numbers and even formed a "guard of honour" around the pit bidding farewell to their beloved professor and great benefactor. (Personal communication by the late Professor Károly Czeglédy. Until after the end of World War II the graduates from the Rabbinical Seminary were obliged by law to take a doctorate from the Philological Faculty of Budapest University too. It was probably in this way that they came in contact with Kmoskó.) 170