Századok – 2012

KÉTSZÁZ ÉVE SZÜLETETT SZEMERE BERTALAN - Fenyő István: Szemere Bertalan és a centralisták a reformkorban III/509

516 FENYŐ ISTVÁN BERTALAN SZEMERE AND THE CENTRALISTS IN THE REFORM ERA by István Fenyő (Abstract) According to the ruling scholarly view, the two members of the Batthyány government, Bertalan Szemere the minister of home affairs, and József Eötvös the minister of religion and public education, belonged to different branches within the liberal reformist opposition. Whereas the former is regarded as the leader of the municipalist group, the latter is held to have been the flagbearer of the centralist wing. The present study aims at modifying this view through comparison. The period best suited for the task is that of the parliament in 1847-48, when Szemere came ever closer to adopting the viewpoint of the centralists. Yet this rapprochement was not without precedents: the respective ideological orientations and careers of Szemere, Eötvös and Szalay in the reform era display much more similarities and convergent features than divergent ones. Thus, the study demonstrates that before March 1848 Szemere was only distinguished from the centralists by his anti-monarchist stance; apart from that, he was as staunch a supporter of Western orientation, of a responsible government, of a parliament based on popular representation and of communal self-government as the centralists.