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 the twentieth century spoke only broken Hungarian, but would inform the officer at the national census in German that his mother tongue was of course Hungarian. In areas with a mixed population, people traditionally grew up multilingual. A member of the Goldziher family writes in his memoirs that his grandfather, who lived in Nagybecskerek in southern Hungary, spoke three languages as a mother tongue: at home and with friends he would speak Hungarian, he would conduct business in German and swear in Serbian. 7 7 Jews traditionally had a reputation for being multilingual: in the latter part of the nineteenth century, members of the Jewish middle and upper bourgeoisie in Pest and later on Budapest, were bilingual from early childhood, speaking both Hungarian and German with the facility of a mother tongue: in the last quarter of the nineteenth century "the mother tongue of Budapest Jewry was practically Hungarian-German bilingualism". However, this bilingualism was represented quite often by the "macaroni language" consisting of Hungarian and German phrases alternatively, so vividly characterized below. 7 6 The complexity of the language situation in Hungary in this period is aptly illustrated by the fact that, with the aim of promoting Magyarization, certain Jewish circles launched a German-language journal with the title Der ungarische Israelit. 1 1 Two parallel cases may illustrate the complexity of the language-situation in those days, cases that may stand for countless others where the complex interweaving of ethnic background, mother tongue and national loyalties did not necessarily follow patterns we are familiar with in our modern world, in an age when most of us are born Hungarian, feel Hungarian and speak Hungarian all our lives, and cannot imagine that even a hundred years ago things were not quite like that. 7 8 Colonel Anton Lehár (Lehár Antal; 1867-1962), elder brother of the noted operetta composer, Franz Lehár (Lehár Ferenc; 1870-1948), came from a family of Moravian origin. The father, a military musician, himself a representative of the culture of the Dual Monarchy, served in twenty-two garrisons all over the Habsburg Empire and died in Budapest as the military band-leader of the Third Regiment of Bosnia7: 1 Hegedűs, Előjátékok..., 131-132. Nagybecskerek has belonged to Serbia/Yugoslavia since 1920. Its Serbian name was Veliki Beckerek until 1930. Between 1930 and 1947 it was called Petrov Grad, and was renamed Zrenjanin in 1947. 7 6 Hegedűs, Előjátékok.... 238; Id., Egy jól nevelt fiatalember..., 176. A teacher of young Géza Hegedűs would not believe he was a Jew because he did not speak German. Ibid., 177. 7 7 Kálmán, Kohn Sámuel..., 285. 7 X The complex ethno-religious and linguistic conditions in 19th century Hungary conceal many pitfalls for the innocent scholar. See, for instance, the totally unfounded statements concerning the life and career of the obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis in a recently published monograph: Richard Horton, 'The Fool of Pest', The New York Review of Books, vol. 51, n° 3, February 26, 2004, 9-11; Sherwin B. Nuland, 'The Fool of Pest': An Exchange', Richard Horton's Reply, The New York Review of Books, vol. 51, n° 5, March 25, 2004, 48-50. 220
