Balázs György (szerk.): The abolition of serfdom and its impact on rural culture, Guide to the Exhibition Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Revolution and War if Independence of 1848-49 (Budapest-Szentendre, Museum of Hungarian Agriculture-Hungarian Open-Air Museum, 1998.)

consciousness are the basis of the nation's rise to a higher stage of culture and well-being... If one takes into consideration what great progress this people was capable of achieving during the century when no foreign troops raided its country, as well as the necessary changes in trade and transport with its eastern neighbours after the imminent fall of the Ottoman Empire that the Hungarians are forced to watch passively but not indifferently, one can be sure that this country so rich in natural resources and inhabited by such a strong and talented people is destined to play a more outstanding role in history than it does today." This country was, however, unknown not only to the foreigners visiting it, but also to certain layers of its own people. Both the advocates and the opponents of bourgeois transformation got more and more interested in the life of the tax-payers. The linguistic and national status of the peasants and the middle class, their state of education, and feelings became more and more important to know. Contemporary language reformers, politicians, poets, writers, and scholars wrote about the tensions and problems of the day. Professor of statistics Magda. Pál was among the first to write about this problem in 1818: „I wonder if the Hungarian nation has enough emotional and physical strength and worldly talent to maintain its position with dignity among the free and independent nations of Europe, and be mighty and happy on its own." In those days, statistics was a comprehensive discipline including all forms of the knowledge of one's country, like ethnography, political science, and economics. One of its 22 Model of a Szekler site from Transylvania with a dwelling house and outhouses