OCR
CSABA DUPCSIK authority with some bribery, in the event, the ferrymen transferred Pulszky onto the Hungarian side. Here, in a village inn near Pozsony (Bratislava, now the capital of Slovakia) a group of tót? peasants were chatting: ..Ihe peasants were talking politics, what would be the best: if Jellasich? or Kossuth* won. The younger peasants preferred Jellasich’s victory because he was a töt as well,’ but an older, and, as it turns out, prestigious peasant... sipped his pälinka, and he said: -Idiots! If Jellasich wins, he will bring back the [feudal duties]... We are Hungarians even if we speak Slovak." "This emboldened me", says Pulszky, so he addressed the elder peasant, and hired him to transfer him to Pozsony." Ferenc Pulszky (1814-1897) was born in the northern part of this periods Hungary (today the northern part of Slovakia) in a well-to-do landholder noble family whose members traditionally played a political role. In their county the peasants were Slovaks, the majority of the urban population were Germans, and the noblemen were bilingual or trilingual but in most cases, they had Hungarian (Magyar) identity, even if in some noblemen’s households non-Hungarian language(s) dominated or were used. Pulszky’s story sheds light on some relevant points of my lecture. One century before Pulszky’s era in Hungary the fact that about 40% of the population and the great majority of the nobility was ethnic Hungarian had no political significance in itself. The Hungarian nation at that time was a political, and not a cultural, ethnic community of people, and the modern legally egalitarian citizenship did not exist either. This idea of the natio Hungarica® had embraced all members of the Estates of the realm in the Hungarian Kingdom before 1848, but especially the noblemen,’ independently of their native language. When in the last third of the 18'* century modern 2 In this context tét (which nowadays is not regarded as a correct name) was equal to Slovak. Joseph Jelaci¢, Croatian leader, who was the man of the Croatian nationalists and the Imperials at the same time. Lajos Kossuth, liberal and nationalist politician, the Hungarian leader during the revolution and war of independence in 1848-49. In this context, tót (which nowadays is not regarded as a correct name) was equal to Slav(ic). $ "Marhák! ha Jellasich győz, visszahozzák a robotot, s a kilencedet és tizedet, mi magyarok vagyunk, ha tótul is beszélünk." 7 Ferenc Pulszky: Életem és korom, 1-II., Vol. 1, Budapest, Szépirodalmi, 1958, 439-440. ® Until the 1840s, Latin was the official language in Hungary. The “Estate Nation’, that is, “the nation in the view of the Hungarian estate nationalism” seems to be a clumsy term, but it is 3 hard to translate the Hungarian "rendi nemzet?" or "rendi nacionalizmus". In the particular Hungarian context “the Estates” could be regarded as a synonym for the nobility. The Hungarian “Third Estate” was politically extremely weak; the clergy as Estate was equal with the Catholic hierarchy, meanwhile about a third of the population belonged to other churches. e 124 "