Csatlós Judit (szerk.): Vízizrí. Munkáskultúra a Duna partján - Életmód és társadalmi mozgalmak a modernitásban 2. (Budapest, 2016)
Önszerveződés / Self-organisation - Tilos területek/Forbidden Fields
Forbidden Fields The idea of taking possession of nature and making use of it opened up new vistas of opportunity and meaning. Different sections of society favoured different, if occasionally intersecting, places and routes in the countryside, and infrastructure grew up to meet their demands. The Magyarországi Kárpát Egyesület (Hungarian Carpathians Association, MTE, 1873) was formed to open up the Tatra Mountains, and the Magyar Turista Egyesület (Hungarian Ramblers’ Association, 1891) aimed to widen the opportunities for modern walks in the countryside. The MTE extended walks in the countryside throughout the country, setting up ramblers’ huts, outlook towers, springs and walking routes. Outdoor activities also became popular among poorer people, initially in places close to the city and lacking infrastructure. Regulations were increasingly forcing various groups out of the city, so that tourism and swimming facilities increasingly appeared along the banks of the Danube after the First World War. In 1900, the MTE took up the struggle to open up areas closed to walkers. This was a question of vital concern for working-class walkers. The national organisation representing ramblers, the TTE, took the view from its inception that access to nature was a basic human right and joined with civic organisations in demanding state intervention. It saw the obstacles to walking in the countryside as being analogous to inequitable access to culture, and propagated exploration of the countryside as a triumph of the scientific worldview and modern life. In the 1920s, as scope for political action narrowed, the hope of a legislative solution gradually dimmed. For working-class ramblers, the closed areas of private estates and government lands represented capitalist oppression. The freedom of movement they longed for was equivalent to equality of social and political rights. Women’s participation was ofspecial concern, as manifested by the statistics ofwalkers by sex. advertisements aimed at women, and newspaper articles targeting prejudice and "false modesty”. At the political level, the struggle involved keeping up pressure on the authorities and deliberately breaching the prohibitions through actions which symbolically rewrote the prevailing social order. Protests against prohibited areas became a way of expressing wider demands for workers’ emancipation. 15
