Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary

If we look at a relief map of Europe, the outlines of the Carpathian Basin stand out quite distinctly, It is formed by ranges of interlocking mountains in a stately three-quarter ellipse. The great arc of the Carpathians stretches for about a thousand miles, and the territory it embraces covers some 135,000 square miles, encompassing several subregions, including the Great Hungarian Plain, Transdanubia, the Northern Highlands (present-day Slovakia), the Eastern and Southern Carpathians and the Transylvanian Basin. The range is from 50 to 120 miles wide, it has about 40 passes, the most famous being the Vereczke Pass through which the main body of conquering Magyars lead by Árpád entered in 896 A.D. to settle the Carpathian Basin. Before them, neither the Romans nor the Huns, nor the Avars, nor Emperor Charlemagne himself had been able to conquer and hold more than some parts of the Carpathian Basin. The Carpathians are lower than the Rocky Mountains of America or the Alps of Europe, their highest peaks reaching only about 8000 feet.

The map shows the Danube River flowing through the Basin, entering from the west at Dévény,

dubbed Porta Hungarika (Hungarian Gate) and leaving at the Iron Gate in the southeast. The Basin is a perfect hydrographic unit, its drainage system centering on the Danube into which flow all but two insignificant rivers of the Basin, including the largest and "most Magyar" of Hungarian rivers, the Tisza.

The Basin can be considered the geographical heartland of Europe because it is at the meeting point of Europe's three great regions: its mountains on the northwest tie into Western Europe; the Great Russian Plain (Steppe) ends at the eastern foothills of the Carpathians and the southern opening of the Basin forms the gateway to Southern Europe, including the Balkans. In the geographical sense, then, any reference to Hungary as part of Eastern Europe is incorrect; Budapest is as far from Portugal as it is from the Ural, Europe's easternmost frontier.

A Cultural Borderline

Certain characteristics of the Basin, however cannot be perceived by looking at the map alone, While the Basin connects these geographic regions, it also stands as a dividing line between two cultural world determined by religion: Western Christianity and Eastern Byzantine Orthodoxy. The mountain walls to the east and southeast of the Carpathians mark the easternmost limit of Western culture where the Gothic, the Renaissance, the Reformation and other spiritual trends have found acceptance. Beyond Transylvania a different, Byzantine world begins in Rumania proper.

Transylvania's natural gates open toward the Hungarian Plains, whereas only narrow. forbidding passes connect it with Byzantine Rumania (Wallachia) to the south and southeast. Moreover, all Transylvanian waters empty into the Tisza and the Danube.

The Carpathian Basin is also the meeting ground of three different Indo-European linguistic families plus the Magyar tongue, making it a racial buffer-zone.

The Basin is a land of transition between the steppes of Eastern Europe, toward which it is closed, and Alpine Europe, toward which it is relatively open. This westward geographical lay of the land made it logical for the peoples of the region - the Magyars, Slovaks, Croatians and Germans - to develop a Western political and cultural orientation. As a direct result, the Basin has played the role of the Bastion of Western Europe for a thousand years.

The Carpathian Basin under Hungarian rule embraced many nationalities in addition to the Magyars: Slovaks, Croats, Germans, Serbians, Ruthenians and Wallachians (Rumanians). In this context,. the coronation of Saint István with the Crown sent by Pope Sylvester II in the year 1000 A.D. was an epochal event which the British historian Christopher Dawson called "the birthyear of Christian Europe."

The Carpathian Mystique

Whatever historical meaning the Carpathians may have, Hungarians have always regarded these mountains in a sentimental, almost mystical fashion. Witness how the most famous Hungarian novelist, Mór Jókai, describes them:

The Carpathians are different from other mountains. The Alps, the Appenines, the Caucasians have their peaks capped by eternal ice and snow which slide into deep precipices, filling them up to make them passable. The Carpathians have no ranges and peaks covered by eternal snow and ice. Warm summer winds blowing from the Great Hungarian Plains melt the crown of snow from the rocky ridges of the Tátra in Upper Hungary. Avalanches seldom occur to fill the deep fissures in the mountainsides, leaving them impassable at all times.

This wilderness of massive rocks, tumbled about in an immense upheaval eons ago, puts every human creation to shame. If we succeed in climbing to the top of a rocky peak to look down into the infinite, uninhabited world, our nerves may cause us tremble: this phenomenon is called "rock-fever."

Jókai also wrote:

German and English scientists have proven with meteorological data that the magnetic effect of the Carpathians lends a magic power to the land and people within their protective walls, contributing to the aroma of its fiery wines, its superb fruits and steely grain, and to the special endurance of its sons and daughters in peaceful work and during the hardships of war. The "sympathy" of the Carpathians is ours! The magic of is mountains has been transferred into our veins!

Romantic nonsense? Perhaps, but still an expression of the Hungarians' love affair with the Carpathians. The lines above describe the scenery of the northern Tátra, the most barren part of the Carpathian range. Elsewhere, the Carpathian scenery is friendlier and more inviting.

As for the mystique of the Carpathians, Prof. Andrew Medriczky, a historian and scientist of Slovakian origin, advanced an interesting, though far-fetched, hypothesis just thirty-five years ago, explaining why people from Carpathian Europe have made so many outstanding achievements in culture, science and sports.

Prof. Medriczky theorized that this "plus" quality might be attributed to the peculiar geo-biological composition of the Carpathian soil which is unusually rich in minerals and especially quartz.

Experiments conducted by the Bell System and the Rand Corporation in California have shown that the rays of the sun create ultrasonic waves (vibrations) within quartz crystals that are beneficial to growing plants and lend a special aroma, taste and quality to garden produce.

The agricultural products of the Carpathian Basin, such as grain, grapes, other fruits, vegetables, herbs and paprika, are known world-wide to have a particularly delicious flavor and aroma, qualities which extend to the animals that feed on these products as well. Could the rich quartz content of the soil, blessed by the intense sunshine prevalent in the Great Plains of Hungary, have a favorable influence?

If such products are benefited by the particular soil conditions so the theory goes it is reasonable to assume that the humans in the area are also endowed with this mysterious "plus" quality. According to this hypothesis the people within the Carpathian Basin are beneficiaries of this "common great secret" and if their sons and daughters live in distant countries they long not only for their birthplace, but also for Carpathian Europe, the region of their "common destiny."

Detached from political nostalgia, a non-Magyar political scientist appraises the significance of the Carpathian Basin thus:

"The heart of the country - the Great Hungarian Lowland - shows a remarkable similarity to the home-lands previously inhabited by the Magyars before 895, the year of the Conquest. The flat expanse of the country - this delicate and soft part of the body of historic Hungary is, however, protected by a granite shield - the Carpathians, a frontier as eternal as the Alps, the dividing line separating the southern Latin and the northern Germanic culture.

"There is one difference, however; there is no sea approach to the Carpathian. This is an armored wall of defense behind which the Magyars have been living for more than a thousand years. This definite frontier has been at all times the factor guiding that people's actions: for they have never willingly crossed beyond this frontier, have never shown any enthusiasm for imperialistic aspirations and yet at the same time have never acquiesced to any breach being made in that armored wall. It is a characteristic fact, for instance, that when most seriously reduced in numbers, their conception of a homeland has not shrunk in proportion to the decrease in population: homeland for them has always and unchangeably meant the country encircled by 'the Carpathians."

These lines were written many decades ago, decades that have brought about profound changes in the Carpathian Basin.

The dismemberment of historic Hungary has weakened the Magyars in more ways than one. Most important is the serious demographic shift caused by their neighbors' faster population growth and by the forced assimilation of the Magyars in the successor states.

With the Magyar stock thus being weakened, a sober reassessment of Hungarian national goals is taking place among responsible Hungarian writers and thinkers at home as well as abroad. Realizing that the clock cannot be turned back, they would like to see - after a hoped-for ebbing of the Red tide - the unity of the Carpathian Basin restored in the form of a federation or confederation based on equal rights of all participating nations. (More about this in chapter 49).

Due to typographical oversight, precise references to certain quotes in chapters 29-36 have been omitted from the previous printing. The footnote-like listing below should rectify the omissions. The author requests the reader's indulgence.

Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary