The Eighth Tribe, 1976 (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1976-07-01 / 7. szám

July, 1976

THE EIGHTH TRIBE

Page 3

FERENC DEÁK, THE “SAGE OF THE NATION” (1803-1876)

Steven Bela Vardy, Duquesne University

On January 28th a century ago (1876) Ferenc Deák — commonly known as the “Sage of the Nation” — had died after nearly half a century of tumultuous public life. Deák’s life was indeed tumultuous, even though he himself was a typical, if brilliant representative of the easy-going Hungarian country gentry class. Known first of all as the architect of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Deák has been praised and castigated perhaps more often than most other nineteenth-century Hungarian statesmen. And this was so even though he was probably the least showy and most humble of them all. The reasons for this are not to be found in Deák’s personality, but rather in the controversial nature of the greatest of his achievements, the above-mentioned Compromise of 1867. For, as we all know, it is much easier for a leader to be popular if he does deeds that appear to be “great” and “heroic”, even if his actions hear no success, than for someone to attain popularity through seemingly “unheroic” deeds (e.g. gradualism and compromise), even if the latter produce security, selfpreservation and assure the continued existence of a nation. And so it is with Deák, whose greatest achievements are all in the area of “unheroic deeds” as seen by the common man.

Born on October 17, 1803 in the small Transdanubian village of Söjtör in Zala County, Hungary, Ferenc Deák came from the ranks of Magyar county gentry class, who — like benevolent oligarchs — have ruled their counties and Hungary’s domestic political life for centuries. After graduating from law school, he joined the ranks of the local county administrators. Then, at the age of thirty in 1833, he was sent as one of his county’s two representatives to the Hungarian National Diet. Once there, he soon gained fame and followers. But contrary to a number of his prominent colleagues, he did so not for emotional and pathos-filled speeches, hut rather for his progressive reform ideas, presented in a cool and rational manner. His speeches all testify to his policy of realism, for they are among the most thoughtful and detached presentations of contemporary Hungary’s social, political, economic and national problems.

By 1840 Deák became one of the chief spokesmen of the liberal opposition in the Diet, and thus worked hand-in-hand with such other liberals as Count Lajos Batthyány, Baron Joseph Eötvös, and also the extremely popular and fiery Lajos Kossuth. In the bitter controversy between the “liberal reformer” Kossuth and the “conservative reformer” Count István Széchenyi, Deák stood closer to the former. Yet, he also recognized the innate dangers in Kossuth’s more radical political program and fiery presentations, wherein rational demands for reform were mixed with a generous amount of emotionalism and overheated nationalism. It was Kossuth’s accelerated emotionalism, leading to an unavoidable confrontation with the Hahsburgs, and then — as Deák saw it — to inevitable defeat for his nation, that made him break with Kossuth in the fall of 1848. But Deák was not alone in this. He was accompanied by Batthyány, Eötvös and a number of other level-headed statesmen who recognized that under the given circumstances such a confrontation could only lead to a national catastrophe. Thus, as Károly Eötvös subsequently observed, Deák had recognized already in 1848 that “politics... is not a discipline of theoretical truth, philosophical theories and holy morality. Rather, it is the art of satisfying needs and of attaining results.” Eötvös could also have added that the measure of greatness in a statesman is not his momentary popularity, nor his ability to excite the masses with ideas and goals that may be totally irrealistic; rather it is the extent and durability of his de facto achievements for the well-being of his nation. And here Deák can show more than perhaps most of his contemporaries. Given the limited economic and manpower resources of his nation, he may have gained more for the Magyars in 1867 than what they could realistically expect. True, Hungary did not become fully independent. But the Austro-Hungarian Compromise did achieve for her a partnership in an empire that ranked among the five great powers of Europe. To