Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - On a Roller Coaster-the institution in the 1940s
participation was not purely formal. During the late 1930s, when self-teaching circles were in crisis everywhere, the negative effect was hardly felt in Patak. The above-mentioned Comenius Circle had different sections which were specialized in different domains (literary, historical, educational, research and public landscapes, art, etc.) and thus made it possible for students to reflect in depth according to their interests. The Boy Scout movement also played a prominent role in Sárospatak. The secondary school students belonged to the number 134 Hegyaljai Erő (Foothills Force) squad, while the Teacher Training School students, forming three units, all belonged to the number 234 Ferenc Rákóczi IF squad. The aquatic scouts camped on the banks of the Bodrog, scouts from the training school provided training for the next generation of scouts from the practice school while the old scouts kept in touch with former students who were also scouts at one time. The Foothills Force squad was organized in 1921 after the summer camp in Tahi gave inspiration to certain Patak students. (Újszászy was also most taken by the camp in Tahi.) József Benke, Béla Sándor Nagy, Zoltán Szabó, Károly Vincze and József Zsíros attended this camp and became the initiators of the scouting movement in the Sárospatak region, along the Bodrog. They asked one of their teachers, Sándor Halgató to be their leader. In addition to their activities and work throughout the year, the high points for these scouts were the summer camps and mobile camps in Austria and Bulgaria. In his memoirs, István Harsányi described an instructive contradiction in the life of the student body which shed light onto the spirit and the inner conflicts of these movements. According to him, the student body could not come to a consensus in the 1920s. As Harsányi puts it, the school’s glorious history was not enough to be able to achieve consensus. A noticeable change came when the English Residential School was completed, something which brought the spirit of cosmopolitism and modernism inside the College’s walls. The “urban group” defined itself as being opposed to the “people group” which consisted mostly of theology and Teacher Training School students who were more attached to rural traditions. The increasingly fierce division was reflected in the election in 1934 for the office of president of the study circle. With a seventy-four to twenty-six percent result, the ‘people’ camp’s candidate, István Király became the president. But the balance of power would swing back and forth hectically and the respective parties of the two groups repeatedly collided and tested one another. The battle was eventually settled - mainly due to the intervention of the talented students - handily in favour of the ‘people’ group. But - as István Harsányi warned - from this we cannot deduct the conclusion that the students of the English Residential School remained a ‘foreign element’ in Patak, because, during the rivalry, student life has significantly changed: “... [seeing] the advancement of sports, the special interest in modern languages and the great success in English-language theatrical performances every year, we must be pleased that the College in Sárospatak experienced a period like this, full of confrontation and reconciliation; a period which sought clarification to various social questions.” 215 Professor of theology, Zoltán Szabó (1902-1965) also worked as Kálmán Újszászy’s colleague in youth education and rural surveys
