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

ORMOS, István: Goldziher's Mother Tongue: A Contribution to the Study of the Language Situation in Hungary in the Nineteenth Century

ISTVÁN ORMOS compulsory whenever the case was equivocal in the smallest degree.

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4 The census of 1857 recorded 17 234 inhabitants of Székesfehérvár, out of which 16 178 (93.87 percent) were Hungarians, 890 (5.16 percent) Germans and 166 (0.95 percent) Greeks."

7 Around i860 the use of German ceased altogether in public administration and education, but the Roman Catholic Church continued to use it until 1885. It will be noted in this context that in the wake of an upsurge of Hungarian national sentiment, Hungarian replaced German as the language of instruction in schools in 1861. This has since come to be regarded as an important step in the formation of the modern Hungarian nation, but not everybody was happy with it at the time. Teachers ignorant of Hungarian lost their jobs and in many cases had to return to the German-speaking provinces of the Empire, whence they had come to Hungary in search of work. Such for instance was the case for the architect Hans Petschnig from Styria, Austria, who taught drawing at the newly established Realschule in Pest but returned to Austria in 1861, "when teachers ignorant of Hungarian had to leave".

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6 And by no means all those who preferred German to Hungarian came from distant provinces themselves. Young Max Nordau, who attended the Roman Catholic Gymnasium in Pest, considered the enforced change nothing short of a catastrophe, and his father, who did not know Hungarian and earned his living by giving private German and Hebrew lessons, lost his means of support. The change seemed wholly incomprehensible to young Nordau because he did not have a Hungarian background his parents came from Poland and Latvia/Lithuania respectively - and "nearly all circles spoke German in Pest" in those days. It was only later that Nordau developed an appreciation for Hungarian language, literature and culture in general.

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7 Two cases may illustrate the process of Magyarization in Székesfehérvár. In the spring of 1881 an application in German was submitted to the Town Embellishment Committee of the Magistracy. The Committee was infuriated by what it regarded as an affront. From the endorsement of this document it appears that applications were still being submitted in German, but were returned with the remark that only 6

4 László Felkai - Endre Zibolen, A magyar nevelés története [History of Hungarian Education] II. Ed. Márton Horváth, Budapest 1993, 37. 6

5 Elek Fényes, A magyar birodalom nemzetiségei és ezek száma vármegyék és járások szerint [The Nationalities of the Hungarian Empire and Their Numbers According to Counties and Districts], (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia. Értekezések a történeti tudomány köréből, vol. I, No. IV), Pest 1867, 37. Serbians and members of various other nationalities from the Balkans were sometimes called Greeks in those days; these various ethnic names were often used interchangeably because of the Orthodox Christianity of their adherents. Cf. note 56 above. Hegedűs, Előjátékok..., 56, 132. 6

6 Dénes Komárik, 'Feszi Frigyes és a bécsi Votivkirche' [Frigyes Feszi and the Votivkirche in Vienna], Miiemlékvédelem 20 (1976), 199. 6

7 Nordau, Erinnerungen..., 15-20. 218