Zwickl András szerk.: Árkádia tájain, Szőnyi István és köre 1918–1928. (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2001/3)

TANULMÁNYOK - GYÖRGY SZÜCS: Among the Décor of History - Pessimism and Quests for Intellectual Paths in the 1920's

ourselves, but exclusively by way of productive work.""' Assuming the cultural portfolio in the following year, Klebelsberg, who set himself to the task of *he institutional and intellectual reconstruction of the nation with full support from Bethlen, the embodiment of "the new method and the new style", summarised his programme of cultural development in the slogan of "neo-nationalism": "...the primary task of nec-nationalism is the working out of a new Hungarian ideal, a new Hungarian type of man, of a man who speaks and spouts less, but works and creates all the more.'" The motives of Klebelsberg's culture-political activities can be studied in his prolific and uninterrupted journalism. As a student of history and a practicing politician (he was president of the Hungarian Historical Society and state secretary at the prime-minister's office under István Tisza), he attempted to blend the roles of a detached researcher and a decision-maker in daily politics, because he was convinced that whatever he established would have a historical significance worthy of his predecessors. Though presenting it passionately and embellishing it with convincing force in his writings, he saw history as a record of examples, and measured the actions of the present by the deeds of the great figures of former centuries. "In modern times, we Hungarians have had two great periods of reconstruction: after the Turk when work was done in baroque style, and in the age of palatine Joseph and István Széchenyi when neo-classicism was ascendant. In fact, it is the baroque buildings of the 1 8" century and the neoclassical buildings of the first half of the 1 9" century that determine the character of our country towns in particular." In point of stress, Klebelsberg brought up the buildings of the Eger lyceum and the Budapest National Museum, which are truly emblematic of the ages referred to, the unconditional respect of which, however, enhanced only a mechanical, "historical monument protec tion" type of attitude to architecture: "...cultural portfolio constructions are to resoect the spirit of the towns wherein they are realized; they are to attempt to adapt to the milieu harmoniously. Therefore, we build in rococo style in Eger and we follow neoclassical directions n Esztergom in regard to the basilica..."" Klebelsberg's unflagging creative urge was not only manifest in cultural organisation and ministerial patronage of the arts, but also in the creation of actual buildings. The buildings of the National Archives (Samu Petz, 1913-1920), the Tihany Biological Research Institute (Iván Kotsis, 1926-1927), the Szeged Dome Square (Béla Perrich, 1929-1930), or the Debrecen university begun before the war ( F loris Korb, 1923-1930) were all outstanding examples of the ministerial will to supplement institutions that had been divested of the country by the border changes and provided unparalleled occasion for the fine arts to create truly representative palaces of culture through monumental works. In both his life and death, Klebelsberg was often compared to a renaissance Maecenas prince, though this anachronistic conduct of his was also to become the subject of criticism laid against him;

9 he nonetheless took meticulous care never to infringe upon the autonomy of artistic institutions. "The Academy of Fine Arts," he stated in a speech, "is a free school. Anyone can enrol there if he wants to, because, in Hungary, a person who has not studied there can equally practice the art of painting. Where wou Id it lead, if, for instance, I were to impose an artistic direction that exists nowhere in Europe any longer, or is dying out?"

1 For a fuller image of the era, however, it is indispensable to suggest what the limits of the concept of the arts of the first man of Hungarian culture were, apart from his well-known historicism. In an article occasioned by the opening of the New Hungarian Gallery in 1928, by analogy of the Louvre and Luxembourg gallery of the time, he mused upon whose art would represent the end of "living Hungarian art". In his opinion, it was the œuvre of Károly Ferenczy, the greatest master of the "annexed Hungarian Barbizon", the artist colony of Nagybánya (today: Baia Mare, Romania), that would have been the value to be moved from the imaginary Hungarian Luxembourg to the eternity of the Louvre in a separate room beside Pál Szinyei Merse. The Minister, however, emphasized probably referring to the all but vivid experimental trends: "languid and stunted things cannot be artificially kept alive by state means. A rich country may take the liberty to support attempts bidding only dubious prospects, but, in its present situation, the Hungarian state cannot take risks, but it has got to hold on to what is viable."" In spite of being at home in the developments of modern art and knowing that "Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin are the great patterngivers who have consciously or unconsciously determined modern directions", as a follower of 1 9'

1 century norms of taste and as a cultural politician starting out from the "needs" of a dismembered Hungary, he preferred those aspirations that helped revivify the national idea. Historical analogies were naturally not lacking from his argumentation in this respect either: he referred to the national literature of the age of reform, in which patriotism and a high level cultural ideal coincided. He reasoned that it was art that had the force to strengthen national feeling in the Hungarian nation that was threatened in its very existence after the postWorld War national catastrophe.

1

"' He had Péter Szüle and Géza Kunwald paint the historical tableaux representing the guard writers and Sándor Kisfaludy for the Vienna Collegium