National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements

Lajos Mocsáry: Nationality

LAJOS MOCSÁRY: NATIONALITY Title: Nemzetiség (Nationality). Originally published: Pest, Ráth Mór, 1858 Language: Hungarian The excerpts used are from the reprint (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1987), pp. 126–132. About the author Lajos Mocsáry [1826, Kurtány – 1916, Andornak (northern Hungary)]: politician . His family was from the Protestant middle nobility of Upper Hungary. He studied at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pest. During the revolution of 1848–49 he was taking a cure in the sanatorium at Gräfenberg (Láznĕ Jeseník, present-day Czech Republic), where he became a friend of Miklós Wesselényi. After the end of the revolution and the death of Wesselényi, he married his widow. He was active in the 1850–60s in the left wing of the Hungarian political opposition to Vienna, and became a member of Parliament in 1861. After the Compromise of 1867 he remained in opposition to the political system, and as a prominent figure of the Independence Party (from 1874 on) he was one of the most committed advocates of reconciliation between the nationalities of the country. He criticized the increasing chauvinistic tendencies of the government and eventually of his own party. In the 1888 elections he ran as a candidate of a preponderantly Romanian electoral district in Krassó-Szörény county (Banat). In 1892 he withdrew from parliamentary politics, but remained active in the political press until his death. His mantle was inherited by the civic radicals at the turn of the century, and he became a symbolic, though rather unexplored, figure of the tradition of attempted national reconciliations in the region. Main works: A magyar társasélet [Hungarian social life] (1855); Nemzetiség [Nationality] (1858); Programm a nemzetiség és a nemzetiségek tárgyában [Program on the issues of nationality and the nationalities] (1860); Néhány szó a nemzetiségi kérdésről [Some words on the nationality question] (1886); A régi magyar nemes [The Hungarian nobleman of old times] (1889). LAJOS MOCSÁRY: NATIONALITY 355 Context The 1848–1849 revolutionary fight from the moment it ended supplied a crucial myth of ‘national unity’ in Hungarian politics; yet it was also a traumatic experience. The leadership of the Revolution was unprepared for the complex interplay of social and ethnic differentiation catalyzed by the revolutionary upheaval among the other (especially Serbian, Croatian, Slovak, Romanian and Transylvanian Saxon) nationalities, which altogether made up more than half of the total population of the country. Although these communities were also divided along social, political, and often denominational lines, claims to some sort of national self-government projected onto a territorial framework were articulated within all of them. Thus, in the event the Hungarian revolutionaries had to face not only the Austrian and Russian troops but also the mass movements of Croats, Serbs, Romanians and Slovaks , all seeking their national emancipation in opposition to the Hungarian project which adhered to the idea of one ‘political nation’ incorporating the various ethnicities. Mocsáry’s essay, ‘Nationality,’ was an attempt to reconsider the national program of Hungarian liberalism in the light of this experience. In a fundamental breach with the classical conceptualization of political nationhood, he interpreted ‘nation’ as a community of people who are of the same origins, speak the same language, and consider themselves to be of the same kin: therefore, he conceded that in the territory of Hungary there was more than one nation (and in the text he explicitly mentioned the Slovak, Serb, Croat and Romanian nations). At the same time, arguing for the historical basis of nationhood, he sought to preserve the unity of ‘historical’ Hungary, stressing that there should be something even more generous and more altruistic than national sentiment: namely, patriotism—an allegiance not only to one’s own ethno-cultural community, but also to one’s country (which might thus involve different national groups). In the pages of ‘Nationality,’ Mocsáry argues for the institutional advancement of this kind of patriotism and formulates an agenda of mutual concessions. On the one hand, Hungarians must restrain themselves from any aggression towards the other national communities of the country, thus conciliating them through generous-minded provision regarding matters of common interest. On the other hand, he tries to prove that the ‘centrifugal’ tendencies of the nationalities are not so strong as the clashes of the revolutionary years made them seem to be. Especially, he argues, the principal...