The numerus clausus was initially meant to be a general measure to regulate the enlarged reproduction of the educated middle class t the expense of women and Jews after the multiple perturbations generated by the war : disappearance of large male clusters of the youngest adult generations as war casualties, the mounting tide of the presence of women in institutions of higher
schooling in Hungary since the early 19th century till the middle of the 20th century, studies in social history/, Budapest, Századvég Kiadó, 2006, 417-506, particularly 426-427.
4 See „A bölcsészkarok oktatói és az egyetemi piac szerkezete a dualista korban (1867-1918)“, /The recruitment of the Arts and Science faculties under the Dual Monarchy/,Educatio, 16/3, (Ősz /Fall/), 393-417, particularly 414.
5 Cf.Magyar statisztikai évkönyv, /Hungarian statistical yearbook/ 1910, 387.
6 Cf.A vallás- és közoktatási miniszter jelentése a kormánynak, 1894/5, /Report of the minister of cults and public instruction to the government/ 1894/5, 343.
7Ibid. 1912, 407.
8 Data calculated from the precedent source for the years concerned.
9 Between 1881-85 and 1891-95 the difference between the Jewish (36,6 % and 35,7 per thousand) and the general (44,6 and 41,7 per thousand) birth rates diminished significantly.
(Hungarian statistical yearbook, 1895, 56.)
education, the return from the trenches of several generations of potential students overcrowding temporarily the benches of some places of advanced learning, immigration of masses of middle class refugees in the rump state after the dismemberment of the historic kingdom. Thus the conception of the numerus clausus law derived from three rather clearly discernable and interconnected motivations, to which antisemitism was added as a fourth and may be the most decisive one – at least for those who voted for the law or were directly concerned.
First and foremost – or most directly - it aimed at the diminution of the
‘overcrowding’ of universities after 1919, especially that of Budapest. Provincial universities remained indeed quite small, student numbers in Kolozsvár/Cluj reaching hardly more than one fourth of those in the capital city and the two new universities in Debrecen and Pozsony, founded in 1912 but opening their doors in 1914 only, started to operate without medical faculties or most of the Science departments. They had a hard time to fill their benches in the war years and during their post-war predicament (entailing the transfer of the Hungarian University of Kolozsvár to Szeged and the University of Pozsony to Budapest first and later to Pécs). In 1914/5 Pozsony gathered merely 184 students in its Faculties of Philosophy and Law. Overcrowding in Budapest arose from the postwar juncture due to a multiplicity of causes besides the flowing back of discharged servicemen and the arrival of young intellectuals and students fleeing the lost territories.
Another factor of overcrowding was the growth of intellectual unemployment due to the economic depression of the first post-war years as well as the conjunctional congestion of the intellectual markets of the rump state. This could, paradoxically enough – as a transitional existential choice –, send many secondary school graduates to universities instead of the occupational markets.
Second, the policy to limit overcrowding was directly linked to the fight against the further expansion of the ‘intellectual proletariat’, a crucial socio-political issue in the postwar years, given the large number of repatriates belonging to the educated middle classes (especially civil servants) and the fact, evoked above, that the rump state hosted already the majority of civil servants, professionals and intellectuals of the dismembered monarchy, earlier in charge of a sizable empire and henceforth deprived in part of their original functions. The growth of this new ‘proletariat’ appeared to continue dangerously enough, given the inflation of academic enrollments since already the Spring term of 1917/18.
Thirdly, in this context, the restriction of the female presence among would-be intellectuals surfaced as a simple solution both on the strength of the indeed visible development during the war years in relative as well as absolute numbers of the female constituency liable to pursue higher studies and take positions in the intellectual professions10 and in compliance with the heavily
10 From 1913/14 to 1917/8 the number of girls graduating from secondary schools jumped from 249 to 645 and their proportions among all the graduates increased from 4,3 % to 10 % (and up to 14,5 % in 1918/19, a school year of serious perturbations). Data from Hungarian statistical yearbooks.
traditionalist conception of womanhood and women’s social roles carried by the conservative ideology of the ‘Christian Course’.
Fourth and perhaps foremost came antisemitism as a central target of the numerus clausus. This antisemitic drive had of course its own political dynamics.
It was supported equally by a mixture of ideological arguments – like scapegoating of Jews for the defeat in the war and the outburst of the revolutions11 – and clear economic calculations objectified in the idea of the ‘change of the guard’ : to pass over to (or to expropriate for) Gentile practitioners part of the market shares of Jews in the main intellectual professions. Nevertheless, it was also a corollary of the three preceding motivations, since the share of Jews in the student body and in the intellectual professions had reached historical heights before and during the war years12, even among women13.
One has to add that these apparently convergent objectives went straight against a major target of the Christian Course – to provide for the ‘cultural superiority’ of the rump state compared to their new neighbors. As regularly formulated by political protagonists of the regime, among them Kuno Klebelsberg, in charge of the ministry of education (1922-1931), the ‘superiority’
had to be expressed by both the internationally recognized quality of Hungarian scholarly accomplishments and the elevation of the level of education of the population, the production of “masses of educated heads”.14 Such reform ideals of conservative ideologues were actually implemented by relatively large scale educational investments. They comprised the extension of the primary15 and secondary school16 networks, the equipment of new university premises both in the capital and in the provinces, as well as the foundation or the modernization of new institutions (economic faculty, academy of sports, college of therapeutical
11 See to this problem – among other publications – the recent book by Attila Pók,The Politics of Hatred in the Middle of Europe, Scapegoating in Twentieth Century Hungary : History and Historiography, Szombathely, Savaria Unversity Press, 2009.
12 In 1917/8 Jews made up 24,9 % of secondary school graduates and as much as 30,5 % in 1918/9. This can be related largely to conjunctural geo-political reasons, since most of the Jewish clientele of secular advanced learning was located in the Western and central regions of the country, while the rest was in the months of graduation mostly occupied by foreign military. Data from Hungarian statistical yearbooks.
13 Girls constituted 8,2 % of Jewish secondary school graduates in 1913/14, a proportion which increased to 15,3 % in 1917/8, 20,1 % in 1918/9 and as much as 25,1 % in 1919/20. Among Christians in the last year girls made up only 14 % of the graduate constituency. Data from Hungarian statistical yearbooks.
14 See János Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok. A magyar nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története, /This is what your Hungarian homeland has become. History of the Hungarian idea of nation and nationalism/, Budapest, Osiris, 2007, 312-315.
15 There were already 8103 primary schools in 1938/9 in the rump state as against 5906 in 1919/20 (an increase of 37 %). CfHungarian statistical yearbook 1939, 177 and ibid. 1919-1922, 155.
16 There were already 263 secondary schools granting thematura in 1938/9 as against 137 only in 1919/20 (an increase equal to almost the doubling of the network), even if this was not exclusively due to state funding proper. On the contrary, the share of the state sector in the secondary school market diminished from 40,9 % to 35,7 % in terms of school numbers between the two dates above. Cf.Hungarian statistical yearbook1919-1922, 181 andibid. 1939, 185.
pedagogy, normal school in Szeged for teachers in upper primary schools – all starting after 1919).
Let us shortly examine the actual outcome of the various aspects of these in part contradictory governmental policies. In concrete terms, how did the numerus clausus fare with the policy of ‘cultural superiority’ ?
The problem of ‘overcrowding’ concerned essentially the two universities in Budapest, because the provincial ones were recently founded and still fighting to secure a sufficiently large clientele to justify their subsistence. Throughout the inter-war years the student body of the three classical provincial universities in Debrecen, Pécs and Szeged remained altogether much inferior to that of Budapest.
In 1923/23 the University of the capital city held 72 % of all university students and in 1929/30 still some 60 %17 (outside the Polytechnic University). In Budapest the ‘overcrowding’ could be a real concern in the immediate aftermath of the war, but it subsided following the graduation (or the dropping out) of those enrolled after the end of the hostilities. This can be seen in the following table.
Table 1.
Enrollment in institutions of elite education in Hungary (selected years, 1913/4-1930/31)
University of Budapest Budapest Polytechnics18 Provincial universities Academies of Law19 Vocational Academies20 All higher Education Graduates of secondary schools All pupils examined in classical secondary schools21
1913/14 7513 2450 2119 1511 2078 17492 5564 84316
1915/16-1917/18 5797 1465 1514 853 ? ? 6577 89435
1918/19 12203 4727 691 411 ? ? 3824 56533
1919/20-1922/23 7254 3886 2439 846 2380 19 023 4445 56559 1923/24-1926/27 5549 3650 3030 903 2062 15783 4738 60344 1927/28-1929/30 6786 2716 3817 873 1801 15877 5342 60207
1930/31 6595 2824 4589 914 1586 16053 6117 64218
17 Calculated from data in theHungarian statistical yearbooksof relevant years.
18 Together with the newly established (1919) Faculty of Economy.
19 Source :Beszélő számok, /Telling figures/, II, Budapest, 1934, 85.
20Ibid., loc. cit.
21 Before 1915/6 gymnasiums andRealschulen, in 1916/7-1924/5 the latter and girls’ highschools, afterwards all the latter plus ’real gymnasiums’. Though vocational highschools (especially the popular ’higher commercial school’) also granted graduation (érettségi, Matura) carrying the essential middle class entitlements (notably the right to shorter military service), only the graduation from classical secondary schools conferred the (before 1920 automatic) right to enter all university faculties, vocational and law academies.
It displays the changing global number of students registered in the second term in various institutions of higher education affected by thenumerus clausus as well as in secondary schools.
Table 2. shows clearly the two apogees of the postwar recruitment in 1918/19, the first peace year (however turbulent it proved to be with the turmoils of the October Revolution and the Soviet Republic), and 1921/22-1922/23, the years when most middle class repatriates and their offspring were already settled in the rump state, so as to get enrolled in a university. It is worth to remark that the ebb of inscription by the mid 1920s was not much below the pre-war level of the last year of peace (exceeding it actually till 1923/4, included). The post-war upsurge of the demand for higher education was, hence, a reality in the longer term, since the level of the demand remained in absolute numbers of the same order in the rump state as erstwhile under the dual monarchy, with a close to three time bigger population. The only institutional network losing weight was that of the academies of Law. This was a ‘normal’ development due to the doubling of Law Faculties and their easier accessibility due to their dispersion, that is location in three very different parts of the territory. The three regional faculties outside Budapest were at much easier reach in the rump state than earlier Kolozsvár/Cluj.
(Still, it is well known that the latter could become the major training agency – some called it a ‘factory’ – of law graduates in the country in the 1900s.22) Thus, the remaining three law academies after 1919 (out of a dozen earlier) tended to attract a rather small clientele only. One can conclude that the overcrowding in the capital city – if this was the problem to be solved - was efficiently controlled under the numerus clausus. But this also involved that the potential Jewish candidates – forcibly squeezed out of universities in the country – were not
‘replaced’ by Christian ones, at least not completely, in the years following the enactment of the ominous legislation.
What about the global results of the still relatively high level of student enrollments in the 1920s and the objectives of the targeted ‘cultural superiority’
dearly paid by heavy investments in schooling and the development of academic institutions ? A good indicator to this effect is the number of secondary school graduates, the pool of selection of future students and members of the intellectual professions. These numbers are much less subject to conjunctional or cyclical variations, since graduation must be preceded by eight years of schooling and secondary education hardly suffered any perturbation during the war, (unlike the number of post-secondary students due to the draft of male alumni for military service). Moreover there were no global anti-Jewish restrictions neither in secondary education in the inter-war years, in spite of various trends of segregation. If the Catholic schools were practically closed to non Catholics in
22 Andor Ladányi, A magyarországi felsőoktatás a dualizmus kora második felében, /Hungarian higher education in the later period of the Dual Monarchy/, Budapest, 1969, 74. In the years 1901-1910 the Budapest Law Faculty granted altogether 3359 degrees while the Kolozsvár faculty 6685, almost the double. Cf.Hungarian statistical yearbook 1910, 392. But for other study branches the faculties of the capital city kept the upper hand.
places where there was an option for other types of schools, the State sector as well as the Protestant and the few private schools remained open to Jews (up to the 1939 extension of the numerus clausus over new entrants into secondary education too). Thus the yearly size of the secondary graduate group is among the best indicators related to the trends of training the upcoming educated middle class. See hereafter the successive yearly figures or multi-annual averages in short periods marked here by similar yearly numbers of graduates. It must be noted that these figures are only slightly but not dramatically affected by the decline of birth rates around 18 years before the dates concerned, since the generations cited belong all to the pre-war years, lacking any abrupt demographic changes.
The upshot is clear. If we compare the first cohorts of secondary school graduates of the rump state with the prewar figure, it represented some 80 %, or a decrease of one fifth. Compared to the war years, the figure is 68 %, a decrease of just one third. This decline is in the same region as observed in the absolute size of the educated middle classes compared between the censuses of 1910 – related to ‘Big Hungary’ - and 1920 – related to the ‘Rump State’, that is around 70 %.23 Thereby we have an additional demonstration that the bulk of the established as well as the would-be educated elites of the country were residing or actually got resettled (via exodus from detached territories) in the rump state. This provided a structural potential of sorts for further educational expansion. Indeed, it is clear from the above figures that the absolute number of Maturanten continued to gradually grow throughout the 1920s, so much so that by the end of the decade it reached and then exceeded the prewar levels, in spite of the demographic depression which had started to rarify the size of the new generations since the late 19th century, especially in the most urbanised Western and central regions of monarchic times becoming Trianon Hungary after 1919.24
Thus, the training effort of the rump state appeared to be effective indeed on the level of secondary schooling. This should have been, logically, expressed in constantly enlarged proportions of the educated strata as well. It is all the more interesting to observe that - globally - instead of an expansion, the proportions of the highly educated continued either to decline – this applied essentially for men -, or stagnate or else only slightly increase - for women - throughout the interwar decades. There was a general expansion to be true, practically in every age group, of the literate population and even of those having completed at least 6 primary school classes. The figures of the latter grew globally for men from 54 % in 1920 to 58,5 % in 1930 and 64 % in 1941 and for women from 47 % to 54 % and 61 %
23 Lumping together lawyers, medical doctors, pharmacists and the teaching staff of secondary and highr education, the figure of 1920 is exactly 69,4 % of that of 1910. Cf. Magyar statisztikai közlemények, /Hungarian statistical reports/, 76, annexe 123.
24 In 1895, approximate date of birth of those liable to graduate in 1913/4, the general birthrate was 41,4 per thousand inhabitants. (Hungarian statistical yearbook, 1895, 56.). In 1912, the approximate date of birth of the generation liable to graduate in 1929/30, the comparable figure was only 36 per thousand. (Hungarian statistical yearbook, 1912, 31. But these rates were much lower in the cities, especially in Budapest, but also in Transdanubia and the central counties making up the bulk of the territories of the later rump state.
respectively.25 There was a clear expansion of the bottom level of the educational pyramid. Moving higher though in the same hierarchy, the decline was all but general for the young ages groups, especially for young men. Among the latter aged 18-19, the proportion of secondary school graduates was 5,9 % in 1920, 5 % in 1930 and only 4,8 in 1941, while among girls the comparable figures were 2,5
%, 2,3 % and 2,8 % respectively.26 We get quite similar results for those with higher educational degrees proper, aged 25-29. The relevant figures were successively 3,6 %, 2,9 % and 2,9 %, while for women 0,4 %, 0,4 % and 0,6 %.27
How could the above demonstrated expansion of elite training produce such mediocre global results, all the more that the further decline of the number of children per family and the simultaneous development of the supply of elite training must have significantly contributed to enhance per capita investments in education ? It is not the place to enter into an in-depth analysis of the data cited.
Let us simply refer to two (and a half) explanatory factors. One has to do with the possibly enormous demographic weight of young middle class refugees in the 1920 figures, which disappeared from among the young age groups of later censuses. The second concerns the real decline or stagnation of even age-group specific enrollments in elite education after the economic crisis of the early 1930s, which had a negative repercussion on the depressed 1941 figures. Finally, for 1941, the re-annexation of already earlier less developed territories of the former monarchy meant that populations of lower levels of education were incorporated into the rump state, generating a more modest average intellectual score for the whole population. However it was, the general educational balance sheet of the Christian Course proved to be altogether negative.