Századok – 2009

TANULMÁNYOK - Miskolczy Ambrus: Berzeviczy Gergely színeváltozásai. (Adalékok az állam, a társadalom, a hadsereg reform terveihez és reformelképzeléseihez) III/515

THE TRANSFIGURATIONS OF GERGELY BERZEVICZY (Remarks on the Ideas Concerning the Reform of the State, of Society and of the Army) by Ambrus Miskolczy (Summary) Gergely Berzeviczy (1763-1822) was the outstanding figure of Hungarian post-josephinism and protoliberalism, and the most active private politician. At first a champion of corporate noble rights, then, already a member of the noble reform movement, author of an anonymous manifesto upon independent Hungary. After the suppression of the Martinovics conspiration, he gave up his position at the Lieutenancy at Buda, retired to his estates below the Tátra mountain, and laboured indefatigably upon his plans aiming at the general reform of the country. Since he felt unhappy in the county administration, and thought that the county nobility was unfit for reforms, he expected the ruler to transform the feudal constitution through the force of arms and thus to introduce a modern institutional structure. He wrote by far the most detailed analysis upon the mysery of the Hungarian peasantry, which could be published in 1806. The bulk of his works remained unpublished, however, although he managed to have some of his smaller articles printed in the German press. He hoped that cardinal changes would be brought about by free trade. Consequently he accepted the close integration of Hungary into the Habsburg Empire, and became a defender of supranational imperial ideology, strictly rejecting all nationalisms based on language. Yet in 1809 he elaborated for Napoleon a plan of constitution, destined for a hopefully independent Hungary, whose propositions of liberating the peasantry resemble those adopted in 1848. At the same time he was in contact with and supported by members of the secret police of Vienna, although he was careful enough not to become a mere tool in the hands of the bureacratic absolutism. The activity of Berzeviczy is a good example of the fate of reforming zeal in an age and region when and where anti-reformism was the order of the day. His ideas only gained wider support from the 1830s on, when the modern Hungarian liberal movement began to dominate. His oeuvre thus became an element of continuity between Hungarian enlightenment and liberalism.