Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)

SPIRIT AND MOOD - A Decade-long Struggle for the Academy of Law

SECONDARY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 166 Gyula Szánthó Géza Ballagi then he moved to Csurgó to teach at the secondary school there. He returned to Patak in 1862, originally as a secondary school teacher, but, before he could start teaching, he was moved to the Academy of Law. He did not publish any books but he managed the People’s Bank in Sárospatak. He taught ‘ home affairs policy’, ‘statistics of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Austrian Empire’, ‘law and general political science’. Three other prominent teachers must also be mentioned, these being Lajos Warga (1835-1900), who taught ‘church history’ and ‘Protestant church law’, Imre Bihari, who taught ‘natural law’ and József Orbán (1818-1896), who taught ‘constitutional history’ and ‘history of law’. Within the Academy of Law, the intellectual revolution took place smoothly and in an evolutionary manner during the 1880s and 1890s. Still within the so- called Emődy era did two new teachers - Géza Ballagi and Gyula Szánthó -, who became leaders of the next generation of law students, start their work. Géza Ballagi (1851-1907) was the third most prominent teacher in the field of legal education history after Emődy and Kövy. As a son of a professor at the Law University in Pest, he studied law in the capital city. He reluctantly accepted the invitation reaching him from the remote small town but the captive atmosphere in Patak quickly won him over to the local way of life. He was a natural as a teacher; he gave very colorful lectures and students enjoyed his classes immensely. He was known for the great enthusiasm and love for which he expressed in and for his work. As a well-known researcher of Hungarian political history and as a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, not only was he busy teaching courses (political studies, national economics and finances) but also wrote with great erudition and published his academic work, as well as having led a busy public and social life. He had a collection of nearly four thousand Hungarian political pamphlets published after 1790; he was passionate about political science; his work in various forms is still considered to be indispensable in laying out the basics of Hungarian history and legal history. His work includes Political Literature in Hungary until 1825 (Budapest, 1888), Article 1848: XX. and the World of History (Budapest, 1903), The Era of the Founding of a Nation (Budapest, 1898). The latter was edited by Sándor Szilágyi and published under the Hungarian National History series as volume 9. As part of his community work activity, Ballagi edited the publication called The Protestant Church and School Magazine. As president of the People’s Bank in Sárospatak, he was instrumental in helping it flourish and made it into the most popular institution in Zemplén county. He was a member of the College’s Economic Board and the Executive Board. His true personality was aptly demonstrated when he agreed, even as the renown scholar that he was, to take on the clerical duties of the Management Board. He was also a member of the Board of Representatives of Sárospatak. In this latter role, he was the first to achieve the goal of having the badly-needed iron bridge built which finally spanned the Bodrog River after years of attempts to do so. In 1902, he abruptly decided to no longer teach. Campaigning with a Liberal Party platform, he won the Olaszliszka constituency’s mandate but his new career soon came to an end. Having struggled with a nasty cold during the election campaign of 1905, he retired shortly after and, after an extended illness, he died in the summer of 1907 at the age of fifty-six.

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