Századok – 2017
2017 / 3. szám - KONFERENCIA GRÓF DESSEWFFY EMIL HALÁLÁNAK 150. ÉVFORDULÓJA ALKALMÁBÓL - Vaderna Gábor: Dessewffyek. A konzervativizmus három útja
DESSEWFFYEK. A KONZERVATIVIZMUS HÁROM ÚTJA 498 THE DESSEWFFY FAMILY The Three Directions of Hungarian Conservatism by Gábor Vaderna SUMMARY Count József Dessewffy (1771–1843) and his two sons, Aurél (1808–1842) and Emil (1814–1866), were well-known Hungarian conservative politicians. The father attended five diets as a deputy of the Lower Chamber between 1802 and 1827; Aurél, who had already entered the national political scene as a member of the Upper Chamber, was the leader of the young conservative party in the early 1840s; after Aurél’s death the political torch was symbolically passed to his younger brother who vigorously started to support the Habsburg Court’s policy. In this essay I compare three ways of conservatism by analysing the different political and anthropological views of the three Dessewffys. The history of the Age of Reforms is commonly considered as a history of how the new liberal elite assumed political power. But this story, with its dilemma of continuity or discontinuity, can be understood as the history of the totally self-renewing Hungarian conservatism.
