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 Jews were regarded as alien partly because of their "strange" religion and partly because of their language: they spoke broken Hungarian, while among themselves they spoke a "strange dialect of German", when - as Farkas puts it - "few people spoke German in Székesfehérvár at all". 10 2 The Jewish religious community was established in 1842. In the same year it opened an elementary school for boys, which Goldziher was later to attend and in which the language of instruction was German. In 1845, in accordance with contemporary tendencies elsewhere in Hungary, but especially in Pest, a society for the promotion of Hungarian among Jews (Society of Magyarization) was founded. 10 3 As a rule, the language of instruction in elementary and secondary schools in those days was the language of the inhabitants. In schools where the language of instruction was not Hungarian, Hungarian was taught as one of the subjects. 10 4 In 1846 the Jewish school employed four male teachers and a woman teacher, one of whom was specially described as a "teacher of Hungarian (magyar tanító) ". 10 5 We may therefore conclude that the others spoke German, the language of instruction. 100 In the 1850s the language of instruction of most subjects was changed to Hungarian, while the language of administration remained German. In 1859 the Jewish council asked the new rabbi, Joseph Guggenheimer, to dismiss the (German-speaking) teachers, claiming that as the mother tongue of the pupils was Hungarian, they did not understand German, and the council wanted Hungarian-speaking teachers to be employed instead. 1" In i860 it was decided that both the language of instruction and administration in the school should be Hungarian: this change was introduced in 1688-1867»]. Ed. Gábor Farkas. (A Fejér megyei Levéltár Közleményei 1989, n° 4), Székesfehérvár 1989, 42. 10 2 Farkas, Zsidók letelepedése..., 44. 10 3 Farkas, Nemzetiségi..., 262. 10 4 Felkai - Zibolen, A magyar nevelés..., vol. II, 18; István Mészáros - András Németh Béla Pukánszky, Bevezetés a pedagógia és az iskoláztatás történetébe [Introduction into the History of Pedagogy and Schooling], Budapest 1999, 340. Cf. also Wolfgang Häusler, 'Assimilation und Emanzipation des ungarischen Judentums um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts', Studio Judaica Austriaca III: Studien zum ungarischen Judentum, Eisenstadt 1976, 76-77. 10 5 The expression "Hungarian teacher" can both mean a teacher of Hungarian origin, and a teacher of the Hungarian language. The context suggests the latter interpretation. 10 0 Jakab Steinherz, A székesfehérvári zsidók története visszaköltözésöktől a jelenig (18401892) [The History of Székesfehérvár Jewry from their Resettlement Until the Present (1840-1892)], Budapest 1895, 17. 111 7 Ibid. , 32. However, it is not unlikely, as Steinherz suggests, that this demand was - at least in part - the result of the antagonism between the Jewish council and the teachers, of the hostile positions both sides took in the struggle between conservatives and reformers, and the council used this demand simply as a pretext for getting rid of their opponents. 224
