Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MARGINALIZATION- BEFORE AND AFTER WORLD WAR II. - “Patak became my destiny” - Kálmán Újszászy
194 THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MARGINALIZATION The Children’s Study Outline was part of a series of books. Lázár was one of the initiators of publishing a series called Practical Pedagogy Handbooks and he compiled two more volumes for the series. His books Structure of our Public Education and Equipping Public Schools were particularly important as he discussed in great detail the previously neglected area of basic, primary education in an easy to understand format which could easily be implemented anywhere. (Other volumes in the series were edited by Mihály Tóth, who gained nationwide recognition for his work.) Lázár also published a work diary for pedagogical practices and edited a booklet, which provided methodical help for creating syllabuses and time tables. With all his works - but most importantly through his role in the children’s educational movement - he contributed greatly to the fact that, between the two World Wars, Sárospatak became an intellectual centre once again. His idea of better understanding children was a new element and it led to the implementation of his innovative pedagogy in Patak. He shared his views among teachers who planned to return to the poor rural areas from where they came, thus achieving two separate aims: he opened a door for his innovative pedagogy movement to reach lower classes of society and he also assisted the College in Sárospatak to pursue its struggle against poverty and rural underdevelopment in newer ways. “PATAK BECAME MY DESTINY” - KÁLMÁN ÚJSZÁSZY Kálmán Újszászy If one were to seek information pertaining to the cultural life of Sárospatak today, the first name which locals will mention is that of Kálmán Újszászy (1902- 1994). This is nothing surprising as most of these people were contemporaries of Újszászy, who himself was a very unusually intellectual person and one who lived through most of Patak’s major life-changing events in the 20th century. His initiatives contributed to this ‘school town’ on the banks of the Bodrog River - its existence threatened several times - being able to regain national significance once again. Kálmán Újszászy was born in Budapest. His father was a post office clerk as well as having several other jobs at the same time, which led to the successful purchase of a family house on the outskirts of the city and to the saving of funds for his children’s future education. Újszászy was a student at the Catholic - formerly Piaristist - Secondary School in Markó Street where he first heard of Sárospatak at the age of nineteen. That is, he met people from Sárospatak as a conference participant at the Pro Christo Hungarian Evangelical Christian Student Association in Tahi. He was charmed by the intellectual and spiritual ‘aura’ of those from Patak (e.g. future theology teachers Zoltán Szabó and József Zsíros and future Calvin researcher and pastor Béla Sándor Nagy). It was then that he decided not to pursue studies in Budapest as a student of Finn-Ugor studies but to relocate to a remote town called Sárospatak and study theology. He moved to the Zemplén region in 1921, during the most difficult economic period. He was able to immediately fit in and realized that he made the right choice: “ín Pest I was only ‘learning’, but here I am a ‘student’!’’ He furthermore discovered a very animated student life (summer camps, Boy Scout movement,
