É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.

ORMOS, István: Goldziher's Mother Tongue: A Contribution to the Study of the Language Situation in Hungary in the Nineteenth Century

ISTVÁN ORMOS appeared to be the only one worthy of that name: "the Hungarian language was regarded as the expression of inferior, even barbaric conditions". Both of Nordau's parents came from abroad. His father taught him to respect the language of Goethe and Schiller, simultaneously prejudicing him against Hungarian, which in those days was spoken by the lower classes of society. Nordau himself was born and raised at No. 4 Drei Trommelgasse (present-day Dob utca) in Pest.

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2 Even at the turn of the twentieth century, German was the mother tongue of at least one quarter of Hungarian Jewry - a total of 216 698 souls (Transylvania included).

4' As far as the capital, Pest is concerned, the first sermon in Hungarian was held in 1866 by Sámuel Kohn, in the central synagogue in Dohány utca but it is significant that in 1870 Mayer Kayserling was invited to the same synagogue from Switzerland to fill the post of rabbi who would deliver sermons in German only, and in 1872 Lajos Pollák was invited from the Posen region in Germany to the newly opened synagogue in Rumbach utca.

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4 Kohn himself, a staunch supporter of Magyarization, at first delivered his sermons partly in Hungarian and partly in German, switching to Hungarian only gradually because in the earlier part of his career, with the mother tongue of most members of the community being German, it was simply out of the question to change to Hungarian at once, no matter how much Kohn himself would have liked to do so.

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5 (Kohn was appointed preacher in 1866, and his excellent command of Hungarian was essential to his appointment - the 4

2 Max Nordau, Erinnerungen. Erzählt von ihm selbst und der Gefährtin seines Lebens. Autorisierte Übersetzung aus dem Französischen von S. O. Fangor, Leipzig-Berlin, 1928, 15-20. It is interesting to note that Ármin Vámbéry, when he arrived in Pest as a young man in 1853, lived at No. 7 Drei Trommelgasse (today No. 10 Dob utca). See Kinga Frojimovics, Géza Komoróczy, Viktória Pusztai, Andrea Strbik, Jewish Budapest. Monuments, Rites, History, Budapest 1999, 87. 4

2 This is the number of Jews who described themselves as being of German nationality in the census of 1900: this is a quarter of all Jews in Hungary. E. V. Windisch, 'Die Entstehung der Voraussetzungen für die deutsche Nationalitätenbewegung in Ungarn in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts', Acta Historica (Hung.) 11 (1965), 9, note 12. It is to be assumed that they all spoke German, though it is quite likely that many Jews who declared themselves Hungarians spoke German too. The number of Jews with German as their mother tongue in 1910 was 203 230 (including Transylvania), which was approximately one-fifth of the whole Jewish population of Hungary. Ibid., 27, 49. Cf. Barany, Magyar Jew..., 14,31. 4

4 Lajos (Lázár) Pollák (1822-1905) was born in Nyitra in northern Hungary (Germ. Neutra, present-day Nitra in Slovakia). The population of his birthplace consisted of Hungarians, Germans and Slovaks in those times, so he may have known Hungarian. However, he was a very conservative minded rabbi so it is unlikely that he would have used Hungarian in sermons in the synagogue. 4

5 Groszmann, Kohn Sámuel..., 34-36. On the assimilation of Jews in Budapest, see János Kósa, Pest és Buda elmagyarosodása 1848-ig [The Magyarization of Pest and Buda until 1848], Budapest 1937, 93-131. 212