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Visual Representations of "Self" and "Others": Images of the Traitor and the Enemy in Slovak
2010: 38). Feuilletons" and political cartoons from this period also reflect the fact
that a large portion of assimilated Jews tried to obtain civic privileges by taking on
Hungarian identity (adopting Magyarized names, using the Hungarian [thus Mag¬
yar] language, declaring Hungarian nationality, and so on), and that in line with
this attitude they supported the ruling liberal party.
In the middle of the 1870s these tendencies intensified. As a result of an eco¬
nomic crisis, after 1873 Hungary witnessed a general rise in anti-Semitism, while
in Slovak contexts this anti-Semitism was increasingly tied to anti-Magyar rhetoric
and images of the Jew mixed in various ways with caricatures of madaréni. Between
1874 and 1875, at the initiative of the Zvolen (the territory of present-day Slovakia)
podzupan (county vice-president) Béla Grünwald," three Slovak secondary schools
and Matica slovenskä were closed. At this point there began to appear political car¬
toons attributing to Jews the role of Magyar flunkies committing the national and
social injustices that came down on the Slovak people.
A high point in anti-Semitic feeling in Hungary came at the start of the 1880s,
when public opinion across the country was inflamed by alleged Jewish ritual mur¬
ders in the town of Tiszaeszlär (in the territory of present-day Hungary).'° On a
political level, anti-Semitic discourse became fully institutionalized with the birth of
the National Anti-Semitic Party. The image of the Jew in the Magyar anti-Semitic
press of the day adopted a racist tone, and cartoons took on bloodthirsty, bestial
dimensions, depicting Jews as a biological enemy of Christians. The motif of the
bloodthirsty Jewish sachter,” as visualized in these cartoons, appeared in the Slovak
Antisemitic Picture Almanac as well as in Cernoknainik.
During this period we also find several other visualizations of anti-Semitic mo¬
tifs in the Slovak and Magyar press. An example is the anti-Semitic stereotype of
14 "This theme was addressed, for example, in the following feuilleton: “A recipe for the proliferation of
Hungarians. Take any old Jew, give him a civil baptism and some name like ‘Tuhutmassy’; send him so
prepared to Russia where he can marry a Jewess speaking the brotherly tongue of Finnish; domesticate
the new couple in Magyarország [i.e. Hungary—translator’s note]; and the result will be beyond all
expectation” (Cernoknazntk\880, vol. 3, p. 24).
5 The core of his ideological conviction was a desire to unite the Hungarian nation and struggle
against Panslavism, which was presumed to be widespread in the institutions in question.
16 In 1882, a local Jewish sachter (see subsequent note) and fourteen other Jews were accused of a ritual
murder. The alleged victim was a 14-year-old Christian girl who disappeared in April 1882, during
Easter. According to rumor, she was murdered by Jews who needed Christian blood for the rituals of
Passover. Her dead body was found two months later in the Tisza River with no signs of violence, and
it became clear that the only witness of the “ritual murder,” a 5-year-old Jewish boy, had been placed
under considerable manipulative pressure. During this time anti-Semitic agitators and political leaders
(Győző Istöczy, Geza Onody, and others) excited public opinion against Jews with blood libel accusa¬
tions, which led to a number of local anti-Semitic acts of violence. In the end, however (August 1883),
the accused Jews were found innocent by the court (Rybatova 2010: 51-53).
17 ‘The Sachter or shochet was a butcher who ritually slaughtered, or oversaw the slaughter of, animals for
Orthodox Jews. In this case, the cartoons likely allude to the sachter accused in Tiszaeszlar.
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