Egy-ház).213 At present, all four of the Hungarians’ denominations should be assessed to the same measure, the regional historical-political or numerical differences notwithstanding, since, after Transylvania’s split from Hungary, there was a cooperation, on behalf of the Hungarians, between the Catholic church, the Reformed church and the Unitarian church, above all.
The Hungarians’ identity constructions further make apparent a game of deception between east and west, which is engaged both in the self-perception and in the outside perception: Similar to the exclusivity of language, mentioned above, the symbolic value of the Asiatic origin was and is used, like for instance during the Hungarians’ two revolutions of 1848/49 and 1956, when, next to the red-white-green Hungarian national flag, the red-white-striped Árpád flags were often used. The latter is named after the banner of Árpád, who was the leader of the tribal federation in 895, and has four red and four white stripes.214 Another symbol from the era of the Hungarian land seizure is the so-called Turul, a plumed fabulous creature, part falcon, part eagle. In the mythology, it was the Turul that al-legedly led the Hungarian tribes from the Asian steppe into the Carpathian Basin.
Next to the abovementioned examples, which express the Hungarians’ otherness in compari-son to their neighbors in particular and vis-à-vis Europe and the West in general, the “magyar szent korona” (= the Hungarian holy crown), thus named since 1256, reflects Hungary’s and the Hungari-ans’ Europeanization best. As a sacred symbol, it marks King Stephen’s adoption of Christianity, and as a political symbol, it marks the adoption of European culture and values. It truly is a symbol, be-cause it was in fact not this crown that was used during Stephen’s crowning ceremony, and experts have concluded that in its present form it only reaches back to the reign of Béla III. (1172-1196).215 Five hundred years after Stephen’s crowning, the so-called “Magyar korona tan” (= doctrine of the Hungarian crown) was penned in order to ensure that this crown was Stephen’s original.216 It first ap-peared in 1514-1515 in the context of István Werbőczy’s Tripartitum, a summary of Hungarian legis-lation.217 Afterwards, it was extended by various legends, especially the one that says that Stephen himself during the crowning offered the crown to the Virgin Mary (= Nagyboldogassony), as a symbol of her position as queen of heaven. Therefore, Mary was also declared Hungary’s and the Hungarians’
patron saint. At present, this crown mainly symbolizes the unity between Hungaran culture and
213 See
http://www.lutheran.hu/z/honlapok/protestans/erdely/kolozsvar/0kolozsvarikeresztenykozossegek/egyhazromaniaevangelikus egyhazfolap (09 July 2009).
214 This flag is today mostly used in the national-political spectrum. For example, during the deployment of the right-wing populist Jobbik party on the occasion of Hungarian national festivities, one can see as many red-white-striped Árpád flags as red-white-green flags in the national colors; or the members of the paramilitary “neue ungarische Garde” (= Új Magyar Gár-da) wear a red-white-striped kerchief. See the pictures on the homepage of the Új Magyar Gárda: http://ujmagyargarda.com/
(17 September 2011).
215 See: http://esbalogh.typepad.com/hungarianspectrum/2008/08/holy-crown-of-hungary.html (29 March 2010).
216 On the ‘Magyar korona tan’ see: István Kocsis. A Szent Korona tana. Múltja, jelene, jövője. Budapest: Püski, 1996. An English version: István Kocsis. “The Mystery and Doctrine of the Holy Crown.” László Botos (ed.). Selected Studies in Hungarian History. Budapest: Hun-idea, 2008. 495-546.
217 Cf. Tóth, Geschichte Ungarns, 194.
118
tianity. Since 01 January 2000, it has been kept in the Hungarian parliament, which indeed evokes a contrast between the modern parliamentary system and a feudal value system.218These examples demonstrate how thoroughly the Asiatic origin has been blended with the Christian Europe in Hungarian culture. Yet, these symbols exist side by side with one another and can be ideologically charged at any time by the Hungarian identity management and ethnomanagement.
For the Hungarian minorities, however, we note a much more diverse picture, extended through the phenomena of acculturation. András Ágoston, the chairman of the Vajdasági Magyar Demokrata Párt (= Ungarische Demokratische Partei in der Vojvodina), for instance, is mostly pessimistic, when he speaks about the unity of the Hungarians in Vojvodina and their future because he thinks that the Hungarian culture in Vojvodina (= Vajdasági Magyarság)219 broke apart in the last 20 years: “40,000 have left […] whoever is smart leaves. My son, too, has left and he will never return [he says wistful-ly; <A/N> Hermanik; Trans. Hermanik/Szlezák].”220 There is a big difference, Ágoston remarks, be-tween the Hungarians in Hungary and the diaspora Hungarians. This difference already becomes ap-parent in the language since in Vojvodina the vernacular is a mixed language; “not even in Becskerek or Busdás, only those who are a bit educated”221 are able to speak Hungarian.
In Slovenian Prekmurje, in turn, there is a growing number of adolescents and adults who de-velop a ‘dual identity,’ which is mostly due to the large rate of intermarriage among Slovenes and Hungarians, which has become a tradition in this area since Yugoslavian times. Lili Kepe, director of the MNMI, however, observes that about 70% of the children of mixed marriages tend towards the Slovenian majority population in the censuses.222 If the Slovenian authorities permitted a category that expressed both, the number of Hungarians who declared themselves as such, in Kepe’s estimation, would double, if not even triple. Kepe, more concretely, assumes that there are altogether about 10-12,000 people in the region who feel connected with Hungarian culture (= magyarsághoz), although during the census of 2002 ‘only’ 7,500 registered officially as Hungarians.223 Yet, the reason why the Slovenian state does not permit such a category for recognizing this affiliation is that this would also make possible the choice of a dual identity in the context of the immigration of southern Slavs in the era of the former Yugoslavia. Kepe further notes that in Prekmurje some cases are cases of multiple identities—namely Hungarian, Slovenian, Croatian—anyhow and adds:
218 The attribute Szent Korona is also attached to individual media in Hungary, such as the radio station Szent Korona Rádió, which is advertised with the slogan “a tiszta magyar hang” (= the pure Hungarian sound) and broadcasts its features and its music for a national-conservative and religious audience. In its blogs and in its shows, the station is directed against left-wing parties, against Roma and against Jews. See: http://szentkoronaradio.com/szentkoronaradio (29 March 2010).
219 On the Hungarian language and in the Hungarian culture in Vojvodina, see ep.: Lajos Göncz. A magyar nyelv Ju-goszláviában (Vajdaságban). A magyar nyelv a Kárpát-medencében a 20. század végén sorozat II.
Budapest: Osiris Kiadó-Forum Könyvkiadó-MTA Kisebbségkutató Műhely, 1999.
220 Interview transcript, András Ágoston, 19 May 2010.
221 Ibid.
222 Cf. interview transcript, Lili Kepe, 19 January 2010.
223 Cf. ibid. By naming this number in the interview, the director of the MNMI in her positive self-perception deviates so-mewhat from the statistics of the 2002 census I mentioned above, which records 5,445 Hungarians for the region.
119
Austria’s proximity only renders this more colorful. It can be said that, in Prekmurje, one can or should speak of multiple identities with regard to the language, the culture and the religion.224 Béla Kiss, the chairman of the Erdélyi Magyarok Szövetsége (= alliance of the Transylvanian Hungar-ians), the Hungarians of Transylvania (= Erdélyi magyarok) who now live in Hungary, states the fol-lowing in the interview on their construction of a Transylvanian-Hungarian identity: “We are the ones who speak Hungarian, whose culture overlaps 90% with the culture of the Hungarians in Hungary.”225 Therefore, Hungarian politics and the Hungarian government regard the Transylvanian Hungarians as that Volksgruppe that can be assimilated easiest. Those Transylvanian Hungarians who live in Tran-sylvania receive support even though this is “actually also only a symbolic matter.”226 These state-ments are in essence very honest, as the chairman does not hide the fact that the Hungarian nation-state rests upon a monoethnic basis. Otherwise the Transylvanian Hungarians are not affected assimi-lation only because they differ gradually in the marker descent or origin. And still, for them, the identi-fication with Transylvania und the local Hungarian minority is of central importance for the formation of a collective identity.Host State, Kin State, Loyalty Theoretical and Conceptual Basis
The legal, economic and socio-cultural effects of the pragmatic goals within a nation-state affect the ethnic groups who live there—which in this relation makes it the so-called host state —in various ways, and not only in the sense of a differentiation into a national majority and a minority or Volks-gruppen. Since the era of socialism and the ensuing transformation, the structures of the nation-states in Southeast Europe227 have changed on their interior as well as on the international level, especially due to the most recent obligations vis-à-vis the European Union.228 With regard to the host states in the research regions, it can be assumed that the respective nation and state power, which all follow a mo-noethnic conception, demands loyality toward the national unity.229 The scientific approach to the con-cept of patronage ranges from the simple patron – client relation230 to wide-ranging patronage net-works in political and economic structures. In a complex, socio-cultural environment, such patronage relations represent an important aspect:
224 Ibid. (Trans. Hermanik/Szlezák)
225 Interview transcript, Béla Kiss, 23 April 2010.
226 Cf. ibid.
227 Cf. Frank Hadler. “Drachen und Drachentöter. Das Problem der nationalgeschichtlichen Fixierung in den Histori-ographien Ostmitteleuropas nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.” Ch. Conrad and S. Conrad, Die Nation schreiben. Geschichtswis-senschaft im internationalen Vergleich, 137-164.
228 Cf. Sonja Puntscher Riekmann (ed.). The State of Europe: Transformations of Statehood from a European Perspective.
Frankfurt/M: Campus, 2004.
229 Under the civic duties, one can subsume for example tax payments, compulsory schooling, military service, law-abidance, etc.
230 From this also derives the concept of clientelism, mentioned above herleitet.