Liszka József (szerk.): Az Etnológiai Központ Évkönyve 2000-2001 - Acta Ethnologica Danubiana 2-3. (Dunaszerdahely-Komárom, 2001)
1. Tanulmányok - Danglová, Ol'ga: Az etnicitás mint a lokális és regionális identitás összetevője
However, cases of unsuccessful innovation also occurred as when a new experiment seemed to be too radical, original, and so unacceptable in an environment still bound by traditional decorative customs. An essential role in shaping characteristic local or regional features often fell to individuals, who proved able to strongly influence the character of the decorative style in some artistic branches. This sometimes happened to the extent of reaching a wider territorial area and crossing ethnic boundaries. Now I will use an example from the neighbouring County of Novohrad. One of its notable specialities was chair and bench backs richly decorated with cut out, coloured carving depicting people and animals, for example, riders on horseback or hunting scenes. They were especially popular in the Hungarian villages, and also in the Slovak villages of the former County of Novohrad. They originated from the work of Ján Bertok, who worked as a carver and joiner at Piliny in the 1880s. His carved figurai works also influenced the work of other joiners and wood-carvers. The products of craftsmen, whose works usually went beyond regional and ethnic frontiers, also had a greater territorial reach. For example, these included filigree jewellery from the goldsmiths of Banská Štiavnica, Banská Belá, Pukanec, Levice, popular among the richer inhabitants of some Slovak and Hungarian communities in Hont. (Hont: 1988, 150) The gravestones and stone roadside statues which we still find in the Catholic communities of Hont, both Slovak and Hungarian were mostly the work of Hont craftsmen, stone masons. The initial phases of development of the stone mason’s craft in Hont were clearly influenced by the activity of the sculpture workshop at Banská Štiavnica (Hont: 1988, p. 190). As a result of insufficient analytical research on the social phenomenon of identity in the borderland of Hont in the temporally defined section of the past - the first half of the 20th century - we can only formulate a narrow, incomplete answer, based on local, regional, ethnic and religious symbolism in material or artistic culture, in relation to local, ethnic and religious consciousness. We cannot unambiguously declare which group identity was primary for the inhabitants of Hont - the feeling of belonging to a town, to an ethnic group, to a religion, to a profession - I am a farmer, craftsman, miner - or estate - I am a yeoman. In the end, although participation in a group was more obvious and more binding for country people in the first half of the 20th century than it is today, it was still only a matter for the individual. Therefore, if the observer or researcher should wish to sort out the tangle of social identities, he would have to penetrate more deeply into everyday life and consciousness. The passage of time already makes this difficult. In spite of this, I think, starting both from direct observation and from the way in which group identity was reflected by means of dress variants and decorative styles, that the basic cement of identity in the frontier territory of Hont in the first half of the 20th century was affiliation with the locality or region. The cultural elements perceived as ethno-differentiating or religion-differentiating were expressed as part of local and regional specifics. This is shown by the map of decorative elements of folk costume in Hont, presenting a kaleidoscopic system of islands of local styles, the shaping of which was also conditioned by varied ethnic and religious allegiances. At the same time, people of the same ethnic origin and religion (Hungarian Catholics, Slovak Catholics, Slovak Lutherans) were also distinguished by differentiated local forms and different decorative styles. The Hungarian Calvinists formed 88
