Magyar Egyház, 2009 (88. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2009-02-01 / 1. szám
16. oldal MAGYAR EGYHÁZ TRIANON President Woodrow Wilson: “The dismemberment of Hungary is absurd.” Father R. P. Gratry: “Every nation's homeland is sacred. If you destroy one, you mutilate the entire human race." Sir Winston Churchill: “Ancient poets and theologians could not imagine such suffering, which Trianon bought to the innocent. In their eyes, that was for the damned in Hell.” Field Marshall Jan Smuts: “A plebiscite refused is a plebiscite taken.” Tacitus: "We Hate Whom We Hurt" The Cancer of Central Europe: Trianon On the 4th of June, is the 89th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Trianon, the peace treaty which mutilated and dismembered an ancient European nation: the kingdom of Hungary. At Trianon Hungary was deprived of 72% of her territory and of 13.4 million out of her 21 million inhabitants. This essay consists of three parts: In the first part, I will discuss the history of Hungary until the end of World War One, culminating in the Treaty of Trianon. Next, I will describe the Treaty, its architects, goals and consequences and in the last part I will discuss “Hungary's guilt” and the events of the last 89 years, to show, that the fragmentation of Central Europe, the unrest in the Balkans and the still contemplated Russian expansion into Europe can all be traced back to Trianon. I will conclude this article with a plan for the construction of a healthy federation from the chaos that Trianon created in Central Europe and will show that this step would reestablish the stability of all of Europea. Pre-Trianon Hungary For a thousand years, Hungary occupied an oval shaped central plane surrounded by the protective bulwark of the Carpathian Mountains in the heart of Europe. Like the crust on a loaf of bread, the mountains encased the lowlands in a majestic arch from which all waterways converged toward the center. This perfect geographic unity was matched by complete self-sufficiency, until this harmonious symbiosis of the great central plain and its surrounding mountains was destroyed at Trianon. For a millennium, Hungary was the eastern bastion of European civilization, a balancing and stabilizing power between Slavic and Germanic nations. Hungary's first king, Saint Stephen, wrote to his son, Saint Emeric, in 1036: “Make the strangers welcome in this land, let them keep their languages and customs, for weak and fragile is the realm which is based on a single language or on a single set of customs” (unius linguae uniusque moris regnum imbecille et fragile est.) Stephen's advice was respected and obeyed during the coming centuries: Hungary gave a home to the Ruthenians and Slovaks in the north, the Wallachians (Romanians) and Saxons in the east, the Swabians, Slavons, Serbs and Croats in the south. Eventually this kingdom of 21 million, had some 14 national minorities, of which the Magyars were only one. In order not to hurt the feelings of any of the minorities, Latin remained the sole official language of the kingdom until 1844. Hungary became a constitutional monarchy in 1222. Her constitution, the Golden Bull is junior to the Magna Carta by only 7 years. This constitutional monarchy protected Europe and her civilization for centuries. In 1456, the Hungarian armies at Nándorfehérvár (today Belgrade) defeated the Turkish forces marching on towards Western Europe. In gratitude, the Pope ordered the ringing of the bells at noon time in all Catholic churches of the world. This custom still survives in many countries, but its origin has long been forgotten. Toward the end of the XVth century, during the reign of the renaissance king Matthias Corvinus, Hungary's population reached that of England, the court in Buda became one of the finest cultural centers of Europe, and the Corvinus Library in Buda was Europe's finest. This period ended when in 1526, Hungary was once again invaded by the Turks, which cut the kingdom in three. During the 150 years of Ottoman occupation, the western part of the kingdom was occupied by Austria, the center by the Ottoman invaders and the Hungarian culture survived only in the east, in Transylvania. Even today, Transylvania is the land where the purest Hungarian is spoken, where Hungarian popular art has found its most exalted, most perfect expression, and where Béla Bartók collected his Hungarian folk tunes. Transylvania is also the place where, in 1557, the Diet at Torda, declared the freedom of all religions (for the first time anywhere in the world). Transylvania was also the birthplace of the Unitarian and Sabbatarian religions. After the Turkish occupation, Austria attempted to take over all of Hungary. This resulted in a series of uprisings. The War of Independence of 1703-1711 was led by Francis II Rákóczy whose insurgent fighters were mostly Slovak and Ruthenian peasants, who proudly declared themselves to be Hungarians (as distinct from the racial term Magyar). The next fight for national independence came in 1848. It was led by Louis Kossuth. Once again, the Ruthenian and Slovak nationalities contributed masses of recruits to the Hungarian revolutionary army, which, while defeated by the combined forces of Austria and Czarist Russia, forced the Hapsburgs to accept the formation of an Austro-Hungarian duality in 1867. The leader of the 1848 war of independence, Kossuth was the second foreigner (second only to Lafayette) who was invited to address the two house of the United States Congress in January, 1852. It was also Kossuth who in 1862 proposed to convert the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s 24 million Slavs, 12 million Germans and 12 million Hungarians - a population which at that time was larger than that of France - into a Danubean Confederation. At the time he wrote: “Unity and fraternity among Hungarians, Slavs and Romanians! This is my dream and my most honest advice! Let the future smile on this land and all of her people! Unite!” From Sarajevo to Trianon At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia sponsored intensive Pan-Slavic agitation in Central Europe. Archduke Francis Ferdinand, - heir apparent of Emperor Francis Joseph-, was the main opponent of both that expansion and of the creation of a Greater Serbia. Because of that, Russia engineered his murder on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist. This act eventually led to the First World War. The only member of the Council of Ministers of the Dual Monarchy who opposed the war of retaliation against Serbia was the Hungarian Premier, Count Stephen Tisza, but he was voted down and Serbia was quickly occupied. At this point, the war would have been over, but was not, because Russia had scores to settle with the Ottoman Empire, similarly France had scores to settle with Germany, Italy with Austria, and so forth. Therefore the First World War broke out and went on for years.
