Petercsák Tivadar - Berecz Mátyás (szerk.): Tudomány és hagyományőrzés - Studia Agriensia 26. (Eger, 2008)

VÉGVÁR ÉS KULTÚRA A 16. SZÁZADBAN - R. VÁRKONYI ÁGNES: Végvár és kultúra

Agnes R. Várkonyi

BORDER FORTRESS AND CULTURE

The notion culture has changed a great deal over recent decades, becoming much wider and richer in meaning, to the point that it no longer refers exclusively to the intellectual world. During the 1960s and 1970s there was much debate within the historical profession as to whether cultural history was capable of embracing material culture. Today there is no question that the built environment, its forms and embellishments; tools, weapons, printing presses, even toys, are not merely embodiments of a particular culture, but the bearers of complex cultural meaning. The more inclusive definition of culture now includes customs, propaganda, the means used to shape public opinion, and with it the bills and posters put up at post houses. It is no longer sufficient when examining modes of living, merely to list the furnishings and the menu. Culture, in the sense of being the static depiction of a cultural scene, has now lost its legitimacy. It is now our business to discover how the many aspects making up a culture worked.

The border fortress’s ability to create its own culture and its cultural character was to be found for the most part in its existence as a community. It is an open question, however, where exactly to draw the line between the culture of the border fortress and society at large, or indeed whether such a line can be drawn at all. Even the most deliberate of researchers have yet to distinguish the culture of the border fortresses from their more immediate local, or more extensive European, environment.

History tells us that culture forms the basis of every innovation, that its effectiveness is direct, even if this is done primarily by indirect means. Without culture there is no economic development or regeneration. We are familiar with the enormous strains border fortress society was under, the moral crises, the destructive effects of a culture of shortage and subsistence. Nevertheless Central Europe’s longest line of border fortresses could hardly have survived for half a century, if it hadn’t had a complex cultural fabric binding Hungarian and universal culture by many strands.

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