Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MARGINALIZATION- BEFORE AND AFTER WORLD WAR II. - Cultivating the land again - without the regional role
190 THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MARGINALIZATION Gyula Fekete (1922-2010) ’The motherland of my character is Sárospatak. The teachers in Sárospatak were my spiritual fathers. My classmates were my foster brothers for eight years, at, the time when one’s most beautiful hopes are nourished.’ (Our lovers on the banks of the Bodrog River) CULTIVATING THE LAND AGAIN - WITHOUT THE REGIONAL ROLE By this time the College had completely lost its prominent, former function in the region and could no longer claim to be a significant player in financial management. The economic organization of the institution was turning increasingly inwards and it soon became a closed system. In theory, of course, this evolution was closely related to the development of the national educational system in parallel with so-called economic modernization. Education and economy became two, sharply distinctive and separated sub-categories of society with fewer and fewer intersecting points in everyday life. Thus, renown colleges with older structures based on lengthy, time-proven economic and financial management traditions became outmoded from both an educational and financial point of view. Unfortunately, it took several generations to recognize this painful truth and to adapt to the new circumstances. In the Dualist period, it was clearly evident how the denominational school’s leadership endeavoured to separate the educational issues from the financial aspects by entrusting the latter to professionals. Later, in the spirit of narrowing the focus, the various economic activities such as selling, buying and leasing were outsourced. But during World War I the financial backbone of the College collapsed. The devaluation of the currency swept away the foundations of capital management, which strengthened the significance of traditional agricultural interests. The state of emergency and regular shortage of products during the war also pushed the school in this direction. It became clear immediately that taking the properties in their own hands would be a very difficult option. The idea was advanced that the school should manage the lands around Györgytarló once the lease was to expire in 1926, but an investment of at least five billion crowns would have been required to achieve a sufficiently high level of agricultural production. The example of taking into one’s own hands the cultivating of the fields around Bálványos also served as a warning sign. The land there had been under cultivation since the fall of 1923, but, even after working on it for a second year, additional investments were needed (new granary and machines, barn construction, soil improvement, etc.), and, even after another year, the school could only look forward to a minimal income. After a long debate, it was decided that the school would lease the more fertile parcels of land in Györgytarló. By the middle of the 1920s, the severe inflation prompted the school to request that payment for its leased lands in four different locations be made in harvested crops. The financial base needed for operations had to be accumulated ever- increasingly from tuition fees (in the school year of 1924-25:17,443 gold crowns = 296,500,000 crowns), church district cultural tax (2,232 gold crowns = 38,000,000 crowns) and state aid. One half of the cultural tax was given to the College in Patak, the other half was given to two secondary schools in Miskolc. The subsidy provided by the state was sufficient to cover the salaries and eighty-two percent of lodging rental fees for the secondary school teachers, the missing eighteen percent being supplied by the College from its own revenues. The school could have finished the academic year of 1924-25 with a deficit of twenty thousand crowns had they filled the two empty teaching positions at the theological
