Page 198 [198]
BORBÁLA ZSUZSANNA TÖRÖK
Surprisingly, given the increasingly professional renderings of the structure,
social layering and dynamics of domestic population, stock components of
late eighteenth-century Staatenkunde, are also preserved. The most prominent
are nationality and the rendering of collective identity “markers”. Despite the
fact that Hungary did not have a statistical office of its own before 1868, the
descriptions comprise a contingent of growing numerical data, inserted into
increasingly diversified rubrics. To what extent these data are reliable; is a dif¬
ferent question.
All-in-all, the stability of structure and style of descriptive statistics re¬
mains unchallenged throughout the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century.
It stands for a stability of political vision, rooted in the North German Pro¬
testant academic tradition, whose ideal was the paternalist and caretaking
Polizeystaat. It is after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise that substantial
criticism — and substantial anti-Habsburg bias — is voiced about the dry and
seemingly objective descriptions of Staatenkunde, signalling also its dissolu¬
tion as a discipline. "
15 KONEK, Sandor, Az Ausztriai-Magyar Monarchia statistikai kezikönyve. Az ujabb viszonyok
szerint teljesen átdolgozott, 2nd ed, Pest, Heckenast, MDCCCLXVIII.
16 Tam thinking in the first place of the passionate account by the historian Mihaly Horvath. His
criticism of Austrian “despotism* reflects his thorough training in the methods of Staatenkunde,
while he contests vehemently on the ground of national sovereignty the legal entitlement of the
monarchy to the “despotic governance“ of its Hungarian half. HORVÄTH, Huszonöt ev, Vol. 1,5.
* 196 "