Magyar News, 1994. szeptember-1995. augusztus (5. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1995-06-01 / 10. szám
TRIANON THE LESSONS OF A 75 YEAR OLD TRAGEDY by Béla Liptäk On the 4th of June, will be the 75th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, the peace treaty which in 1920 mutilated and dismembered an ancient European nation: the kingdom of Hungary. Here, I will first sum up Hungary’s history up to the end of the Fust World War, when at Trianon she was deprived 63.6% of her inhabitants and 71.5% of her territory. Next I will outline the Treaty, its architects, goals and consequences. This will be followed by a discussion of Hungary’s “guilt”, and by a summary of the events of the last 75 years to show, that just as Hitler was not bom in Austria, but in Versailles, so the tragedy of Bosnia and the evolving tragedy of the Balkans (some of it yet to occur) can all be traced back to Trianon. In my conclusions I will outline a concept which would reconstitute the Danubian Basin and could stabilize the whole of Central Europe. PRE-TRIANON HUNGARY For a thousand years, Hungary occupied an oval shaped central plane surrounded by the protective bulwark of the Carpathian mountains. Like the crust cm a loaf of bread, the mountains encased the lowlands in a majestic arch from which all waterways converge toward the center. This perfect geographic unity was matched by complete self-sufficiency, until this harmonious symbiosis of the gjeat central plain and its surrounding mountains was destroyed in Trianon. For a millennia, Hungary was the eastern bastion of European civilization, a balancing and stabilizing power between Slavic and Germanic nations. Hungary’s first king, Saint Stephen wrote to his son, Saint Emeric in 1036: “Make the strangers welcome in this land, let them keep their languages and customs, for weak and fragile is the realm which is based cm a single language or on a single set of customs (unius linguae uniusque mods regnum imbecille et fragile est.)” Stephens advise was respected Mid obeyed during the coming centimes: Hungary gave asylum to the Ruthenians in the noth, the Wallachians (Romanians) and Saxons in the east, the Swabians and Serbs in the south. Eventually the kingdom contained 14 national minorities, of which ffie Magyars were only one, and in order not to hurt the feelings of any, Latin remained the sole official language of the kingdom until 1844. Hungary became a constitutional monarchy in 1222, her “Golden Bull” is junior only by 5 years to the English “Magna Charta”. This constitutional monarchy was almost completely annihilated by tire Mongol invasion of 1240-41, but through that enormous struggle it succeeded in protecting Europe and her civilization. Toward the end of title XVth century, during the realm of the renaissance king Hungary’s armorial bearings displaying the arms of each one of the historic provinces. Center: the Small Coat of arms; three crowned leopard heads: Dalmatia; the 25 checked draughtboard: Croatia; the star and weasel: Slavonia; the eagle between sun and moon with the seven towers: Transylvania; double-headed eagle perched on jug Matthias Corvinus, Hungary’s population reached that of England, the court in Buda became a cultural centers of Europe, while the library of Buda was Europe’s finest In 1526 Hungary was once again annihilated, thi^time by the Ttiridsh invasion, which cut her population in half and the kingdom in three. During the 150 years of Ottoman occupation, the west was taken by Austria, the center by the Ottoman invaders and Hungarian culture survived oily in the east in Transylvania. Even today, Transylvania is the land where the purest Hungarian is spoken, where Hungarian popular art has found its most exalted, most perfect expression, and where Bela Bartók collected his Hungarian folk tunes. Transylvania is also the place where the Hungarian dirt at Torda, in 1557 declared the freedom of religion for the first time anywhere in the world. Transylvania provided an atmosphere erf religious and ethnic tolerance and as such became the birthplace of the Unitarian and Sabbatarian religions. After the Turkish occupation, the Austrians wanted to take over all of Hungary. This resulted in a series erf uprisings. The fight for Hungarian independence of1707 was led by Francis II Rakoczy who’s insurgent fighters were mostly Slovak and Ruthenian peasants. They proudly declared themselves to be “Hungarians”, as distinct from the racial term ‘Magyar.” The next fight for national independence was led by Louis Kossuth in 1848, and the Ruthenian and Slovak nationalities Mice more contributed masses of recruits for the Hungarian revolutionary army, which, while defeated by the combined forces of Austria and Russia, forced the Hapsburgs to accept in 1867 the formation of an Austro- Hungarian duality. It was Kossuth who later proposed to convert the AustroHungarian empire (of 24 million Slavs, 12 million Gentians and 12 million Hungarians at the time) into a Danubian Confederation and Kossuth was also the first foreigner ever invited to address the United States Congress. FROM SARAJEVO TO TRIANON At the beginning of the XXth century, Russia sponsored pan-slavic agitation in the region The Archduke Francis Ferdinand was the main opponent of the creation of a Greater Serbia. His murder on the 28th of June,1914 in Sarajevo had been encouraged by Russia and engineered by Serbia. The only member of the Council of Ministers of the Dual Monarchy, who was opposed to a war of retaliation against Serbia, was the Hungarian Premier, Count Stephen Tisza. When he was voted down, Hungary occupied Serbia and by 1915 would have considered the war over; if Russia did not have scores to settle with the Ottoman empire, France with Germany, Italy with Austria and so forth. Therefore the war went on. EXning the war, the Czech allies of Serbia, Eduard Benes and Thomas Masaryk transformed themselves from consultants of the allies into architects of allied policy for Central Europe. They organized a deceitful continued
