István I. Mócsy:The Effects of World War I ...

Educational Reforms in the Successor States

Next to the state administration, the effects of uprooting Hungarians were most severely felt in the field of education. The leaders of the Successor States considered themselves duty bound to destroy the old Hungarian educational system and to provide the Slovaks, South Slavs, and Romanians with an adequate education in their native tongues. To achieve this goal it was necessary to remove most of the Hungarian school administrators, elementary and secondary teachers in the nonHungarian areas, and to transform the universities to serve the new ruling nations.

Teachers in Hungarian state schools were the hardest hit, but the lay teachers of the denominational schools and subsequently even members of the teaching orders found it increasingly difficult to continue their educational functions. With their dismissal the careers of these teachers in the lost territories came to a sudden end. At best, neglected by the new authorities who failed to make any provisions for their employment, they had only one hope left. They could try to pick up pieces of their shattered lives across the Hungarian frontiers. With the closing of many Hungarian secondary schools and especially the Hungarian universities many of the Hungarian students also saw all opportunities for the future closed to them in the Successor States and joined their teachers in Hungary.

The Successor States inherited an educationally backward, often illiterate population. According to the 1910 census figures the lowest literacy rate existed in Ruthenia, where only 27.7 percent of the Ruthenian population was able to read and write. In some of the other minority areas the rate was almost as low. Only 36 percent of the Romanians, 48.5 percent of the Serbians, and 65 percent of the Slovaks were literate. At the same time this figure was 79 percent for the Hungarians and 82.3 percent for the German population of the country. It should be noted, however, that the rate of literacy in the Old Kingdom of Romania was no better than among the Romanians of Hungary (36 percent) and in Serbia it was worse (20.3 percent in 1900)[25]

State-owned and operated Hungarian schools, which comprised about a quarter of the transferred schools and had about a third of the teaching staff, were the first to fall victim to educational reforms in the Successor States.

It was simple enough to take over the physical facilities and to dismiss the Hungarian staff, but to find qualified replacements for the departing Hungarian teachers presented, at times, insoluble problems.

In Slovakia the solution to this problem was found through transfer of a large number of Czech teachers. This solution, however, soon created great tensions between Slovaks and Czechs. By 1926/27 the old situation was virtually reversed. The number of state-run Hungarian schools were reduced to 695 with 1235 teachers, while Slovak schools increased in number to 2652, with a teaching staff of 4354 Slovaks and Czechs.[27] In addition many of smaller, less-efficient communal or denominational schools were closed; in others the language of instruction was changed. The churches themselves were compelled to reduce the number of schools they maintained partly because of loss of revenue from their confiscated estates. In all, the number of Hungarian teachers was cut in about half. Over two-thirds of the dismissed Hungarian teachers left Slovakia; some found employment in the Hungarian schools, replacing those teachers who were purged because of their political views.[28]

The transfer of territories had the greatest impact on institutions of higher learning. The state-run School of Law of Kassa ceased to be Hungarian. Already, in 1918, the faculty and student body of the school was reestablished in Sopron. Similarly, the Protestant School of Law of Eperjes was transplanted to Miskolc. In the spring of 1920 the history and language departments of the Queen Elizabeth University of Pozsony was moved to Budapest, followed by the medical school in the fall and by the law and political science divisions at the end of the 1920-21 academic year. Ultimately, in 1923, the university was relocated to Pécs[29].

In 1914 the number of Hungarian elementary schools in the Voivodina was 645. These schools employed 1832 teachers, nearly all Hungarians.[30] In 1919 the Serbian government with a single blow abolished the old Hungarian school system and dismissed over two-thirds of the Hungarian teachers. Thereafter, the educational facilities available to the Hungarian minority was limited to some 450 parallel or mixed Serbian-Hungarian schools, a number equivalent, in capacity, to about a sixth of what had been used by the Hungarian population before the war. Consequently, nearly half of the Hungarian parents had to send their children to Serbian schools, or as it often happened they kept their children away from school altogether. Those who still insisted on a Hungarian education had only one available option: to send their children to Hungary. This often resulted in the moving of the entire family to Hungary.

The number of Hungarian elementary schools in Transylvania was above 2600. Out of these the Hungarian state maintained about 1600; the rest were community, Catholic, Unitarian, and Calvinist schools.[31] Destroying the Hungarian character of the educational system began in 1919, with the takeover of the state-run schools. In roughly two-thirds of these the language of instruction was changed to Romanian; by 1922 only 562 did remain Hungarian.[32] But even in Hungarian schools part of the teaching staff was replaced with Romanian teachers who were to instruct the pupils in the Romanian language and history. Loss of schools, for Hungarians, sharply increased pressure on the private, denominational educational system. As a result of the rapid increase of pupils between 1919-20 the number of church-operated schools doubled. Most new schools were poorly financed, substandard, makeshift operations, in unsuitable buildings with all-too-few teachers.

In 1921 the Romanian government decided to reduce the number of private schools. By 1925 about 250 denominational schools had had to close their doors, with the dismissal of a corresponding proportion of teachers.[33] The attack upon the private school system was many sided but uncoordinated. Almost from the first month of occupation most church schools found themselves in great financial difficulties. They lost the substantial state support they enjoyed in the past; contributions from the church membership fell off sharply; and the land reform cut deeply into the wealth of the churches and into school endowments.[34] Even more important, most private schools lost accreditation. After 1924 they could no longer issue valid diplomas, only certificates of attendance. Private gymnasiums were not allowed to administer their own baccalaureate examinations and the state examining boards refused to pass most of the Hungarian students. In 1925, for example. 77 percent of the Calvinist, 79 percent of the Unitarian. and 70 percent of the Catholic students failed. Even more severely hit were the Jewish students of Moldavia, where only 4 percent were allowed to pass. This policy served as a de facto numerus clausus, limiting the number of Hungarian students who became eligible to continue their education at the universities.

In 1919 the University of Kolozsvár was closed after its Hungarian faculty refused to take the required oath of loyalty to King Ferdinand. This was a major blow to the entire Hungarian minority. The university was reopened with a new Romanian faculty, but the majority of the Hungarian students, suspected of irredentist sentiments, were not readmitted.[35] As a result almost the entire faculty and a majority of the Hungarian students crossed over to Hungary, where, in the spring of 1920, the university was reestablished at Budapest. Subsequently the university found a permanent home in the city of Szeged. The Law School of Nagyvárad also lost its Hungarian character and that of Máramarossziget was first relocated in Hódmezövásárhely and then merged with the School of Law of Kecskemét.[36]

The attacks on the powers of the churches had a deeper political significance. In the past the churches had formed the basic communities that embraced the various nationalities. Since membership in a church generally coincided with a particular nationality, the attack on Hungarian influence in Transylvania had to be coupled with destruction of the power and influence of Hungarian churches. As the Hungarian political organizations, newspapers, clubs, and cultural institutions were suppressed, and as the Hungarian bureaucracy was destroyed as an organized group, these Hungarian churches, Catholic, Calvinist and Unitarian, assumed a greater role in the lives of the Hungarians; they became the focal point of national loyalties. Only these churches remained purely Hungarian minority institutions, hence they increasingly became politicized, becoming the most vocal defenders of the rights of Hungarians. It was not possible to destroy these institutions completely. But it was within the power of the Romanian government to silence the most ardent and outspoken church leaders through intimidation or expulsion, to reduce their economic power, and through secularization of education to remove at least in part the masses of Hungarian children from the influence of these churches.

Thus through often negative and arbitrary measures the Hungarian minority was largely deprived of their schools without, however, achieving a corresponding improvement for the Romanian population. The Romanian government's most important political objective, however, was achieved, which in the early postwar years seemed far more important than long-range benefits of a carefully thought-out restructuring of the educational system. By reducing the number of Hungarian schools and limiting the number of Hungarians with secondary and university education, a long-range emasculation of the Hungarian middle class was assured. Without proper degrees the children of the middle class could not maintain the status of their parents. The prospect of loss of social status in the extremely hierarchical, and status conscious Hungarian society was looked upon as perhaps even a greater tragedy than the loss of political power. Understandably, Hungarians of Transylvania bitterly opposed these measures and considered the educational and cultural policies of the Romanian government as nothing short of attempted cultural and class genocide. To them, the Romanians, it seemed, were bent on a total eradication of everything that was Hungarian -- culture, education, administration, system of law, theaters, universities, language, and, ultimately, even the Hungarian minority.

Both the educational reforms and the reorganization of the administrative structures in the Successor States displaced thousands of Hungarian officials and educators. A vast majority could not again fit into the economy of the new states, consequently, they were forced to flee to Hungary. In 1924, according to the somewhat incomplete figures of the National Refugee Office, 15,835 state functionaries from the Successor States were living in Hungary. Additionally, there were 5772 municipal and village officials, 19,092 railway employees, and 3554 other state employees. The number of refugee students was 86,323.[37 ] Lászlo Buday provided the most detailed breakdown of the various categories. He accounts for 18,707 refugee state employees, distributed among the various categories as follows:[38]

István I. Mócsy:The Effects of World War I ...