Magyar Hírek, 1987 (40. évfolyam, 1-23. szám)
1987-02-07 / 3. szám
It is unfortunate that the productive land is also diminishing. Considerable tracts were taken over for building roads and railways, but the depth of the soil is also diminishing and its quality is deteriorating. Stringent laws were introduced recently in order to protect the soil and it seems that the reduction of its quantity stopped as a result, Extensive soil improvement projects are also continuing.” “ W/uit, in your opinion, is the principal problem of environment protection in Hungary?” “The principal and most dangerous enemy is waste matter whether it be solid, gaseous or liquid. A total of 50 million tonnes of waste are generated in Hungary annually, in other words 5 tonnes per head. Add to this that storing and processing waste is the field where we are most backward. Without doubt delays amount to about thirty or forty years, we have just began to build modern waste storing and burning plants. The first is being constructed at Dorog, that will be followed by the Eger and the Győr plants. The plans call for the building of four or five waste burning plants by the end of the century. And as far as dangerous waste is concerned we must handle it particularly carefully. I am convinced that waste of that kind is a time-bomb.” "You mentioned that the Hungarian environment protection laws are good and comprehensive. What could be done to see thai they are enforced?” “Many people believe that offenders should be taken to task more stringently. Mut I ask you: could the chief executive of a hundred years old abbattoirs be punished with a clear conscience for polluting the waters? Could two-stroke engines be banished from the roads overnight or new Danube bridges be built to ease traffic congestion? I believe that reshaping the attitudes of people is far more important. That is implanting love and respect for the environment in people early in their life, bringing up a generation where calls for the protection of the environment and nature would fall on fertile soil. This aim needs first of all well-trained and dedicated teachers. We must commit all our strength to avoid the further deterioration of the situation in the next 7 — 10 years. If we do all this we may start on improvements after 1995.” ÉVA ÁROKSZÁLLÁSI PHOTO: JANOS EIFERT EUROPEAN CULTUREAMERICAN CIVILISATION Possibly 1 am too much of an optimist when I think that the time seems to be returning when we, Europeans, would easily understand one-another no matter to which social system we belong or, what language we speak. For we were all brought up on European culture the roots of which go back to the Greeks and Romans, we all read Goethe and Schiller at school, even if we were not proficient in German, we have an idea about Shakespeare, probably even quote from poems by Byron or Shelley even if English was not our forte, became familiar with Voltaire and Victor Hugo in French classes, and if we even had the chance to learn some Italian we could translate lines from Dante’s Divina Commedia or Man/.oni’s I promessi sposi. I could go on listing poets, sculptors, painters and scientists at length, who are all Europeans, or also Europeans, to us. Shapers of a culture we feel to be our own, universal and European beyond their national culture. A splendid example of Europeans of the latter kind was Ferenc Liszt, even if he is not claimed as their own by seven cities, like Homer, only by three countries: Austria, where he studied, and the language of which, German, he spoke as his native language, France, where he reaped his first successes, and the language of which he mastered and preferred to use, and Hungary, not only because he was born there and moulded the songs of the country into his rhapsodies, but also because Liszt had always claimed to be a Hungarian even if he did not speak the language. During the approximately one hundred and fifty years long early migration period of the United States the proportion of European immigrants was mostly decisive, but at least large. European culture, the bearers of which were millions of immigrants, therefore contributed a very large, one could say without exaggeration a decisive, measure to the development of American civilisation. I take culture here in the broadest sense of human culture and include the languages, ideas, religions, customs, laws, institutions, technology, skills, works of art etc. These were the factors that shaped American civilisation using this term in the sense that it is the sum of the heritage of a group, a society or the whole of mankind. That it developed into what it is now is due to a considerable extent to a relatively short, yet decisive period, which secured the further development of this heritage. The War of Independence cut the umbilical cord tying the New World to Europe and established the opportunity of exploiting influences received from Europe for the autochtonous development of a nascent society. The Civil War in turn destroyed, or at least relegated into the background, the feudal customs Abbrevited text of a lecture given in Venice on the occasion of the ’’Day of European Peoples and Region»” transplanted from Europe, which hindered the development and general spread of a special American civilisation. Rapid industrial progress and the restless spirit of seeking new frontier's, made it seem that nothing was impossible for the United States, and that the best choice of the hundreds of thousands and millions of people coming to America would be to become dissolved in that melting pot and to be reborn as real Americans. Had the American saga finished there we could discuss the connection of American civilisation and European culture only in the past tense. For this connection to have a present, indeed, hopefully also a future, a substantial change had to take place in American public thinking, and we may add that also in Canadian and Australian public thinking at the same time. * The melting pot could, perhaps, have worked really efficiently had migration stopped, or at least fallen substantially, around the turn of the century. But precisely the first decade of the 20th century brought the peak in immigration with almost nine million immigrants, the great majority of who were of non-British origin. Most of these people remained devoted to their language and traditions, and wherever they settled in larger numbers they — just like those, who came before them — established friendly societies, religious or cultural associations, that proved steady enough in many instances to serve the second and even the third generation. These community organizations seem to be expressions of the opinion that assimilation did not take place as rapidly as earlier works had stated under the influence of the “melting pot” theory. None of the ethnic groups of American immigrants vanished completely. Immigrants from Central and East Europe were not passive subjects of assimilation. The alleged rootlessness and alienation of immigrants was questioned by several authorities recently concerning immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe. The United States does not drew as far-reaching consequences from the new approach as Canada or Australia have done, where immigrationjraised similar problems even if did not take place the same way as in the United States. In the latter countries agencies at ministerial level have handled the affairs of ethnic groups since the seventies. * Setting up a government institution for similar purposes is unimaginable in the United States. Nevertheless the fact that the questionnaires of the 1980 US census included a question about general origin seems to indicate — among other things — a change in public thinking. This was the first time people were asked to state of what descent they considered themselves to be — often going back many generations. Since each person questioned could indicate any number of ethnic descents — and some named as many as three it is impossible to ascertain the exact proportion of people of European descent, but it is still evident that they are in the majority. As many as 1,777,000 people considered themselves to be of Hungarian descent, including 727,000 of pure Hungarian descent. This is a very large figure for a country of ten and a half million people. Hungarian immigrants also banded together to form friendly societies. We were proud to remember the one hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the William Penn Association in Pittsburgh, a creation of Hungarians. Hungarians also belonged to that group of artists about whose influence extending over three of four decades, Christopher Rand wrote appreciatively in 196(1 in The New Yorker. And one could list hosts of Hungarian artists, film men, who made considerable contributions to the establishment of the world fame of the American film industry. Among Hungarian musicians I feel obliged to mention Béla Bartók in the first place, who also found refuge in America. Bartók could not really settle in America as other Hungarian musicians did, conductors like Fritz Reiner, György Széli, Jenő Ormándy and Antal Doráti. * The greatest Hungarian contribution to America was made by scientists who achieved important results in computer technics and nuclear physics, like János Neumann, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd and Edward Teller. Numerous Hungarian scientists still work at American universities. At the international conference of scientists of Hungarian birth held recently in Budapest 52 Hungarian scientists resident in the United States participated. I was just as pleased to hear then, as I am now to quote — in support of what I had to say — the words of Professor Zoltán Bay addressed to the conference: “We scientists living and working abroad can contribute to the survival of Hungarians by endeavouring everywhere in this world to earn respect for Hungarians, and by maintaining our contact with the mother country of Hungary. We have never been made to feel inferior people in the United States just because we are Hungarians, sons of a small nation. On the contrary. They always remind us that we are fulfilling the cultural task we undertook well in excess to our proportion.” Oi her European countries may gain similar experience in other fields, or in the same fields, maintaining similar or even more extensive and profound contacts. It is pleasing to see that the relation of European culture and American civilization no longer excludes, indeed, it increasingly assumes, the tie between the two — and I must emphasise that it does this by the will of both of the parties. Thus European culture and American civilisation no longer oppose but rather complement one-another. JENŐ RANDE 31
