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BORBÁLA ZSUZSANNA TÖRÖK
resulted in the “tyrannical control and supervision of every facet of economic
and public life in the petty states of Germany.”
On the domestic terrain, the government thus had to see to it that all its
subjects lived in security and justice, and that they prospered spiritually and
economically. In the external domain these interests were regarded as levers
to boost potentials in competition with the neighbouring states. A perma¬
nent self-comparison with these had the function of identifying the relative
strengths and weakness of the polity. If Achenwall’s Staatenkunde inquired into
both the internal and external affairs of the state, those authors from Hungary
who focused only on their home country, modified their perspective to the
domestic affairs. Thus the Statistik by Martin Schwartner (1759-1823), one of
the first Protestant professors and chief library custodians at the University of
Pest, described the task of the discipline as follows:
“(...) das Bestreben nach Sicherheit und auch positivem und negativem Glück hat
den Menschen bewogen einen guten Theil seyner natürlichen Freyheit aufzugeben
und in den Staat zu treten. Wie und durch welche Anstalten führt ihn nun die Re¬
gierung zu seinem Glücke an? Wie nahe dazu oder wie entfernt davon ist er? Dies
ist die große Frage, welche in den letzten Theile der Statistik eines Staates erörtert
wird. Man frage also: was tut die Regierung zur Sicherheit seiner Bürger im Staat,
in Absicht auf die Erhaltung ihres Lebens und ihrer Gesundheit? In Absicht auf Ihre
Vermeerung? (...) Um sie reich zu machen?””
The statistical textbooks written in Hungary during the feudal era, operate
with similar definitions. They all identify the state with the (civil) society of
the inhabitants, and as a benevolent power meant to care for the security,
material property and proliferation of the population. Endre Daniel Michnay
(1804-1857), professor at the law academy in Pozsony considered in 1844 too
that the goal of Staatenkunde is to demonstrate “how states use their powers to
achieve their goals, and to what extent they achieve their interests”.** Similar
definition is formulated in the work of Gabor Szeremley (1807-1867), professor
22 RAEFF, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in Seventeenth¬
and Eighteenth-Century Europe: An Attempt at a Comparative Approach, The American Histori¬
cal Review, 80 (1975), 1221-1243, here 1226.
SCHWARTNER, Martin, Statistik des Königreichs Ungern. Ein Versuch von Martin Schwartner,
Professor der Diplomatik, und Erstem Bibliotheks-Custos, aus der Königl. ungarischen Universität
zu Pest, Pest, Trattner, 1798. A second, enlarged, and updated edition of the book was published
in two volumes; Vol. 1, 1809 and Vol. 2, 1811. An abbreviated French translation was published
in 1813 in Frankfurt-am-Main. All later references to Statistik refer to the 1798 edition, 7-8.
4 MICHNAY, Endre Daniel, Statistika, Pozsony, Wigand, 1844, 4-5.
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