12: From Sarajevo to Trianon
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But first from Mayerling to Sarajevo... Incidentally, the writer of these lines is not
surprised if someone summarizes Hungary's history in a way that, reaching the middle of
the nineteenth century or even beyond that, it still holds in reserve half of its fixed
length. Is this due to the pressure of accelerated time? To the glut of events? That
history, moving on foot or horseback until this point, has now boarded a steam locomotive
or an airplane? That the number of sources is increasing? That the charm of propinquity
enthralls -the participation of our grandfathers, who died only yesterday or are still
living here and there, in the events, and the direct impact of bygone events on our
individual destinies? Still, let us try to hold to our own condensed endeavor and its
differently proportioned course.
Before the turn of the century, the economy of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which for
decades had lived within its given borders, was comparatively stable and dynamic -its
money, for example, was sound; however, its political structure was shaky and its society
full of tensions. Even bourgeois developments had not reached fruition; a whole range of
rights to liberty and rules of democratic procedures was lacking. The labor movement was
already rumbling about establishing its own much more far-reaching objectives. The ideal
of internationalism, proletarian internationalism, loomed seductively like a utopia,
behind the whirl of fulfilled national and minority aspirations.
The relations between the Hungarians and the nationalities in the Carpathian Basin
within the Monarchy were simultaneously characterized by the belief that those relations
were regulated by a sound law of nationalities, that ample opportunities for emancipation
were available to Slavs and other ethnic groups, including Jews (many of the most radical
representatives of the struggle for the nationalities studied in Budapest, they lived or
found self-awareness there; their movements took root there, they published their
newspapers there), and that the tectonic force that always rent the Monarchy asunder ever
more catastrophically could be sought in these very relations.
That characteristic feature of the economic development that, despite the tremendous
dynamism, the Monarchy, the Carpathian Basin, and particularly its border regions were
incapable of providing employment for their growing surplus of workers has to be probed
separately. Though one of the keys to that dynamism was precisely the availability of a
large, cheap, and placid labor supply, the sea of the unemployed was such a burden
alongside the rapid acquisition of property, ostentatious wealth, and wasteful consumption
accompanying prosperity that it was difficult to tolerate. Thus came to pass the
phenomenon about which Attila József later wrote: "a million and a half of our
countrymen tottered out to America". For a long time, official agencies tolerated
this emigration as accomplices or encouraged it illegally. Even today we still do not know
the exact number of emigrants. And the results would vary widely if we were to consider
only the Hungarians, then include the nationalities, or the émigrés from the pre-Trianon
(before 1920), or post-Trianon state, or if we were to deduct those who returned later. In
any case, the loss of population was enormous. (But let us provide some figures: according
to present calculations, the number of individuals leaving what were then Hungarian
territories -some possibly making the journey more than once- with the intention of
emigrating to America by all accounts reached 1.2 to 1.3 million between the 1870s and
World War I. About one-fourth or one-third of them were Hungarians, and the rest other
nationalities; however, at least one-third of the emigrants eventually resettled in
Hungary.)
The assessment of this massive emigration, as a result of which separate Hungarian
settlements and big-city colonies -sometimes ghettos- came into existence in the United
States, Canada, and several South American countries (some emigrants did not master the
official language of their new country for generations) -this assessment is almost
entirely negative to this very day. This is the case even though there was no European
country at the level of economic, technical, and demographic development at which we
ourselves arrived at the turn of the century that did not also undergo the same
experience. Today, one of the causes of the economic dead end in numerous Third World
countries is precisely the fact that the Wild West, the great open spaces, the pampas
where the temporary "human surplus" could emigrate are no longer to be found
anywhere. For Hungary, however, it is a great benefit, both economically and morally, that
no matter where we may find ourselves in the world, we encounter Hungarians, kinfolk who
are to some degree, preserving their Hungarian character and their consciousness of their
origin. And they also visit the old homeland frequently.
Let us now approach the internal strains of the Monarchy from an entirely different
perspective. The only son of Queen Elizabeth's four children, the "ill-fated"
heir Rudolf, was born back in 1858. He was his mother's child. His nervous system was
rather vulnerable; he had an intellectual bent, he was eager to become emancipated, he was
on friendly terms with scholars (among them, the great zoologist, Alfred Brehm, the author
of The World of Animals); he was repelled by the court and also by his father's
coldness, dogmatism, and rigid sense of duty. Naturally, a bad marriage was arranged for
him. He knew about his father's petty love-affairs: about his almost cohabiting
relationship with the actress Katherine Schratt, whom Elizabeth the wife herself
recommended as a "substitute", about the back street of a back street that
posterity learned about only recently: his fifteen-year relationship with the beautiful
Anna Nahowski, who bore several children during this period, during her husband's complete
absence. And Katherine and Anna: they were easygoing silly-minded, domesticated petty
bourgeois, the direct opposites of the refined, indeed decadent Elizabeth. And what kind
of companion did Rudolf require? Several kinds also? After all, in addition to his
flirtations at the court, he kept returning faithfully to a notorious Viennese prostitute,
a popular but not exactly intellectual coquette. Then, half blind, he fell into little
Marie Vetsera's net. At the time of their short and stormy relationship, Rudolf was a
developed personality, to the extent, one can say, knowing his unsettled frame of mind.
There was not the faintest hope that his father, aging but enjoying remarkable health,
ever intended to hand over to his only son any real part of his power. Even if measured by
the standards of an heir to the throne, Rudolf performed his third-rate duties
indifferently enough; he preferred to spend his time hunting, and following and promoting
research in the natural and social sciences. And he conducted publicistic activities. He
wrote articles. Under a pseudonym. In the liberal, in the opposition press. Was it some
kind of Oedipal rebellion against his father? His Majesty's Opposition within the family?
A youthful caper? Something more serious, perhaps. Rudolf truly viewed the future of the
Monarchy differently.
It is true that after several years of disinclination his father too was forced to
acquiesce to Christian Socialist Karl Lueger becoming the mayor of Vienna. The times
mandated it. And besides, Lueger was a confounded left-winger but a bigoted Catholic and a
rabid anti-Semite. At best, Francis Joseph I made involuntary concessions. Rudolf would
have liked to go forward. Toward a republic.
Mayerling, January 1889. Do Baroness Marie Vetsera and Rudolf die a shared death of
their own will? To this day, efforts are being made to explain and unravel the secret of
this tragedy in various ways. There are a thousand versions, ranging from the most simple
romantic love death to the emperor himself ordering the murder of his son, whom he had
cast out of his heart, together with his lover, because he was a political rival. Let us
mention the version maintaining that the political assassin was a German, an agent of
Berlin; after all, Rudolf's anti-Prussianism was widely known. The truth is not exactly
simple but, in the end, quite prosaic. His father, in a peremptory manner, ordered Rudolf,
who had long been nursing thoughts of suicide, to break with his love. There was no outlet
or popular support for Rudolf's political ambitions. His mood grew ever gloomier. The
syphilis that did not spare even him tortured him increasingly. And in the hunting lodge
near Vienna, an incompetent midwife botched an illegal abortion on Marie Vetsera, who had
become pregnant after only a few intimate liaisons. Rudolf -this is what we think- to ease
the demise of the gradually hemorrhaging Marie, shot her in the evening and then himself
in the head at dawn. The Hungarians knew him as a friend and mourned him as a martyr;
romantic legends sprang up about him, about a "good prince" who had been
murdered.
September 1898. Luigi Lucheni, an Italian anarchist born in Paris and a guest worker in
Switzerland -he was that, although the expression itself was not yet known then- was
indecisively rummaging about among crowned heads and similar parasites because he was
convinced they all had to be slaughtered. While running amok, he, almost by chance, thrust
his sharp-pointed and dagger-like file -he did not have the money for a dagger- directly
into Queen Elizabeth's heart in Geneva. He struck down the most blameless of the crowned
"spongers" in Europe, the one who, if she had been asked, would, in all
probability, have agreed with most of the anarchistic principles espoused by her
assailant. Her life, which she lost so senselessly, had indeed been a complete burden to
her for a long time. Death was a deliverance.
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, a cousin from a collateral line, took Rudolf's place. The
new heir to the throne was arrogant; he had ravenous appetite for politics and was not
exactly an indecisive character. Although he also offended the emperor with his morganatic
marriage, and the emperor him by barring his children from succession to the throne, their
views contained many kindred features. But Francis Joseph I did not share power with him
either. He increased Francis Ferdinand's sphere of influence in minute portions only.
With the military occupation of South Slavic Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878), which took
place to impose a burden on Turkey, the sick man of Europe, but worked against Serbia, the
sharp turn toward expansion in the Balkans put the Hungarians in a delicate position. Our
agriculture benefitted. But the growing number of Slavs in the Monarchy caused anxiety,
and military action led to the shedding of blood -mainly that of the fanatics- and the
ranks of the Hungarian forces took station even less willingly in the garrisons of the
hostile and wild southern provinces than in the north, in Polish Galicia. This is the way
we saw it. At the same time, in the Balkans -and not just there- the greedy expansion of
the Monarchy and the recent annexation of the Slavic population produced ever sharper
rebuffs -and so did the Hungarians' active role and expanded participation in these events
which brought them the benefits of usufruct.
At home, the Kossuth ethos of oppositional sentiment faded; the flames of the
spectacular fireworks of the Millenary celebrations blazed up and then died out. Kossuth's
two sons returned from exile, but one of them soon fled to Italy again, to become an
engineer there; the other son, Ferenc Kossuth, could have become a major political
personality, but did not have a personality. A whole series of significant laws were
passed; apparently, the couple of decades following the Compromise were truly a new age of
reform. High-speed mechanical presses poured out newspapers, the country became a secular
state, and public education was made more mundane and practical. Bourgeois equality before
the law evolved; a bourgeoisie has also existed, but only a small fraction of the
population could achieve the status of a citizen. The framework of parliamentarianism was
similar to Western Europe's. But it could have been filled out with real meaning only on
the basis of more modern suffrage. With regard to this issue -and such things have
happened before- Vienna would yield, indeed would have liked to allow more than the
dominant social classes in Hungary were willing to accept, or bear. Sometimes Vienna made
the effort to rule by military governance but then the spirit of the Bach period haunted
the scene on both sides: in the organization of opposition, of passive resistance
-sometimes constitutionalism was again brought forth from the repository of instruments.
The lack of land and the fact that the larger part of the areas newly reclaimed and
protected from floods and made cultivatable wound up in the hands of the old landowners,
and the bulk of the benefits from the periodic agrarian booms were also theirs, produced
agrarian socialist organizations. The greedy new industries also nurtured the labor
movement, whose noted organizer, Leo Frankel, was one of the directors of the Paris
Commune in 1871, returning to Hungary after its collapse.
At the turn of the century, a political personality of a greater stature finally
appeared on the scene: Count István Tisza. However, he emerged from the conservative
wing. His aggressive activities filled with intrigues are explained, in part, by the fact
that after the turn of the century a purblind political jungle war replaced the
reconciliation of ideas, principles, and programs in the Hungarian Parliament. The members
of parliament discovered obstructive tactics and developed them to a superb degree: the
parliamentary "slow-down strike", which crippled the almost unformed bourgeois
state mechanism to the point of paralysis with an endless prayer wheel of speeches,
frequent roll call votes, etc.
And all this occurred at the time when Francis Joseph I, forgetting the humiliations of
the not-so-distant Prussian-Austrian War and ungrateful to the court of the Russian czar
who saved his throne in 1849, entered into a most binding alliance with the voracious
German Empire. The Austrian-Hungarian relationship, which reached its latest nadir in
1905, was of vital importance to the development of the military forces. Amid the violent
internal turns and struggles of the next, brief decade, Vienna and Budapest reached many
compromises in the interest of the survival and functioning of Dualism, but the question
of the army was the area in which Vienna made the fewest concessions.
Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 1910s, a wing of the Austrian high command did
see clearly that the Monarchy was too weak to face the major clash that threatened.
Perhaps it was this that supplied the background for the notorious Redl affair; possibly,
this head of the Austrian spy agency who was "unmasked" in 1913 and forced to
commit suicide was not a traitor to his country but a clear-headed skeptic. Among the
leading Hungarian politicians, the one who, perhaps, best sensed the dangers of an early
entry into the war was the one who, it must be added, had done so much to reforge the
Monarchy: István Tisza, who was then serving as Prime Minister of Hungary for the second
time and whom the greatest Hungarian poet at the turn of the century, Endre Ady, hated so
much because he saw him as a true adversary among the numerous contemporary politicians of
small caliber who, precisely because of the range of his visions and determination, bore
an extraordinary responsibility for the destiny of the nation. But Tisza's resistance was
able to delay the entry into the war for only two weeks.
The military maneuvers in the southern region, which Crown Prince Francis Ferdinand
viewed in June 1914, were extremely provocative. It was purely fortuitous, on the other
hand, that the half-amateurish assassination attempt made against him succeeded on the
second try; even his unfortunate wife died with him. At most, the Serbian student, Gavrilo
Princip, accelerated events with his pistol shots at Sarajevo. The assassination was not
the cause.
It is not our task to trace the events of the next four years in detail. World War I
was what it was. Almost every part of Europe, as well as other regions, participated in
it; consequently, our picture of it is as various as the participants. Despite all
preceding events suggesting something else, the war atmosphere, indeed its hysteria,
seized the majority of Hungarian public opinion; Hungarians believed that they would be
able to hail their victorious forces by the time leaves fell; hundreds of thousands sang,
"Halt, halt there, beastly Serbia!"
Serious blunders by the army command, particularly in the beginning, accompanied the
Monarchy's participation in the destructive war with its prolonged seesawing but
frequently stationary fronts. Francis Joseph I, who, he said, "weighed everything,
considered everything" (his portrait prepared at this time was distributed throughout
the Monarchy, showing him lost in deep thought, his royal face buried in his hands), often
chose key commanders on the basis of order of prestige and subjective attachment; this
colorless emperor-bureaucrat had extremely little feeling for talent -and casualties
remained tremendously heavy to the end. It was a lamentable act of honor how the
Hungarians, as well as soldiers from recently annexed Bosnia, distinguished themselves in
bloody battles with their military skill and personal bravery.
For Hungarians, the most painful memories were the circumstances and defeats in battles
fought on the Russian front, in Galicia, for the fortifications at Przemysl, then in
Brusilov's steam-roller offensive, and finally in the Italian and Slovene Karst region, on
the plains of the River Isonzo. In the memory of entire generations were indelibly
imprinted the scenes and events of brutal and bloody battles, the bayonet charges at
Gorlice in southern Poland, the blockade of Przemysl, and the horrible trench warfare at
Doberdo in the Karst region, then in Italy, now in Yugoslavia, where every incoming round
was made even more dangerous by stone fragments.
From among the manifold consequences of World War I, we shall emphasize four without
heed to order of importance:
1. The Monarchy collapsed. Not only did Hungary, as well as the newly created Poland,
secede, but three "successor states" also came into existence in a semicircle:
Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia, which, in their given form, had no historical
antecedents, or had such only in part.
2. Lenin's revolution in Russia began, after so many utopian plans, to form a living
socialism.
3. The United States' acceptance of responsibilities in Europe made it into a decisive
factor of power in world politics.
4. The inconsistencies and abuses of the series of peace agreements sowed the seeds of
World War II.
Prophecies boding ill were futile. Hungarians realized too late how strong and
deep-seated the activities of the nationalities were. When in 1920 at Versailles, outside
Paris, the new borders of Hungary were laid down after long but one-sided negotiations in
the Trianon Palace, the territory of the Hungarian nation was mutilated into a third its
size, and its inhabitants shrank to two-fifths their former number. Though the Entente
Powers dictating the peace terms did not agree to every one of the most extreme
recommendations and requests, the Rumanians, who gained all of Transylvania, would have
gladly advanced farther west, all the way to the River Tisza; among the Czech and Slovak
politicians there were those who wanted to establish a dividing corridor between Austria
and Hungary cutting through west Transdanubia and Slovenia right down to the Adriatic, and
also a Czechoslovakian port on the Adriatic coast; Yugoslavia, made up of Southern Slav
peoples, would have definitely liked to possess, if not Szeged perhaps, then Pécs and its
environs, and to this end it founded the short-lived Baranya Republic.
What was happening to us? And how could what did happen, happen the way it did?
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