Hungarian Heritage Review, 1989 (18. évfolyam, 1-9. szám)
1989-04-01 / 4. szám
Special FeatureS'Of-Tfie-Montfi HUNGARIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORLD CIVILIZATION-by-Dr. Francis S. Wagner (I) ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY University professor Lajos Bartucz exerted great influence on the inter-war anthropological research in Hungary and neighboring countries. His investigations into the anthropometry of ninth century and pre-Conquest Magyarswere considered substantial. See his "Adatok a honfoglaló magyarok anthropológiájához" (Archaeológiai Értesítő, 1931). In bis F ajkérdé s,f aj kutatás (Race question, race research. Budapest, 1941. 322 p.) he discussed in a very objective manner the highly explosive questions of race research and cautiously refuted the then so popular Nazi race myth. At the First Congress of Finno-Ugrists held in Budapest in 1960 Bartucz deliveredapaperentitled "DieFinnisch-Ugrischen Beziehungen der ungarischen Anthropologic" which described anthropological ties between the Magyars and other members of Finno-Ugrians. János Nemeskéri is one of the most talented of presentday anthropologists. Nemeskéri has conducted research on modern topics as well, a case in point being his Demographic and physical-developmental study of those who applied f or admission to universities, higher schools in 1966 (Budapest, Central Statistical Off ice Demographic Research Institute, 1970). Nemeskéri with György Acsády as joint author wrote a comparative study entitled History of human life span and mortality (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1970. 346 p.). Pál Lipták (b. 1914) has been a co-worker of János Nemeskéri for decades. Having published a great many papers in Hungarian, as well as Slavic and numerous Western languages, professor Lipták prepared an exemplary handbook of physical anthropology, human evolution, and prehistoric man (Embertan és származástan (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1969, 283 p.) István Györffy (1884-1939) did valuable spadework in ethnography, especially in the study of peasant settlements and traditional farming methods. Sándor Soly mossy (1864-1945) was for years professor of ethnology at Szeged University between the wars and achieved substantial results in collecting and interpreting folk tales and ancient beliefs. Gyula Ortutay (b. 1910) was the student of Sándor Solymossy at Szeged University in the first half of the thirties. Since his university years Ortutay has been especially prolific author. Scores of his works have been translated into foreign languages. His more important publications include the Kis magyar néprajz (Short Hungarian ethnography. 3d rev. and enl. ed., Budapest, 1958, for a German ed. see Kleine ungarische Volkskunde. Weimar: Böhlau, 1963, 229 p.) Hungarian f oik tales (Selected and with an introduction and annotations by the editor, Gyula Ortutay), and Uj magyar népköltési gyűjtemény (New anthology of folk poetry. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1953-). Up to 1963 eleven volumes, mostly folk tales classified by regions were published under the editorship of Gyula Ortutay. He has been concerned primarily with universal comparative folk lore and folk ballad and folk tale research. In recognition of his scholarly activities. Gyula Ortutay was elected member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, the Sicilian Academy of Sciences, the presidium of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and the presidium of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore. Zsigmond Bátky (1874-1939) dealt with objective Hungarian ethnography, while Béla Gunda (b. 1910) conducted ethnological research on various ethnic entities of the Danube Valley. Sándor Bálint (B. 1904, Szeged) graduated from University of Szeged where he lectured on the ethnography of the people of the Alföld from 1934 up to his retirement. Bálint is an internationally well-known scholar of the religious life and customs of the peoples living in the Middle Danube Valley. His major works include A szegedi tanyák népe (1936), A parasztélet rendje (1943), A szegedi népélet szakrális gyökerei (1943), A magyar népbal - lada (1947), Szegedi szótár (2 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 1957). (II) LINGUISTICS - ORIENTAL STUDIES Hungarian linguists were creatively present at the dawn of modern linguistics. Precisely as early as around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, three Hungarian linguists advocated comparative as well as historical methods in the analysis (continued next page) 14 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW APRIL 1989
