mobility via higher studies.71 Without numerus clausus Jews should have logically increased their relative share among students in the rump state, following pre-war trends of educational proclivities. Though Jewish student numbers grew somewhat in the years 1921-1923, then they went down to as low as one third of the pre-war level for several years, exactly till the 1928 upturn (abolition of the explicitly anti-Jewish bias of the numerus clausus). But even after this, their numbers hardly attained the 1920 level in 1930/31. Nothing comparable happened for Christian students of classical universities, whose numbers exceeded the pre-war level throughout the 1920s with a visible tendency to grow.
Obviously enough, the escape route to the provinces was also a straight one for Jews, like that of studies abroad. It mobilized only a part of an utterly decimated potential Jewish student population. Still one can cautiously estimate that in the first years of the anti-Jewish legislation there were as many or even more Jewish student exiles in the provinces than abroad, following the estimations of those forced to expatriate themselves in the early 1920s. In later years, the number of those beginning their studies in foreign countries must have taken the upper hand, as compared to Jewish students in provincial faculties in Hungary proper.
among female students oscillated close to 50 %.73 Now, the disproportion observed in this exceptional year between the representation of the two sexes can – mutatis mutandis – be identified throughout the later years of the numerus clausus. In 1919-1929 Jewish women made up 27,7 % of the female student body in the Budapest medical faculty as against 12,3 % of Jews among males. The comparable proportions were less dramatically diverging, but still significant in two cases out of three : 25 % and 24 % in Szeged, 16,2 % and 13,2 % in Debrecen and – exceptionally enough – 39,5 % and 57,3 % in Pécs.74
On the whole, with the notable exception of Pécs, Jewish women thus appeared to be relatively less severely hit by the numerus clausus than Jewish men. The explanation of this difference is certainly worth a more in-depth investigation. Still, among possible factors, one can refer to the above mentioned higher social extraction of women students in general, shared most probably with a vengeance by Jewish female students (even if as yet we have no precise information in this matter), which could facilitate the circumvention of hindrances at admission, thanks to the ‘social capital’ of those concerned, that is their nexus to academic decision makers. The fact that the best qualified secondary school graduates had official priority for admission could also confer relative facilities to Jewish female candidates, since they belonged to the best performers atMatura as witnessed by their average grades. In 1927/8-1930/31 for example both Jewish boys and girls scored the highest average academic achievement among their mates at graduation from secondary schools, but the boys with 19,1 % of those obtaining grade 1 and the girls with 30,2 %.75 It may well be also that Jewish girls – hit by the numerus clausus - were less liable to be allowed by their families to leave for universities abroad than boys, following moral conventions of the contemporary middle classes, offering much less liberty to girls to move out of the household. Their family could thus put up more resistance to the exclusion from higher studies in the country than the family of the young men concerned.
Returning to the problem of differential educational excellence, the numerus clausus appears to have maintained the relative preeminence of Jews, though our surveys in this matter are not yet sufficiently elaborated for a clear demonstration for those admitted to higher education. For secondary schooling however there are some quite significant research results at our disposal. One can for example compare the ‘survival rate’ of Jewish and Christian male pupils of secondary schools from class 1 to class 5 (between 1927/8 and 1932/3) on the country wide level and find 89,5 % Jewish boys in class 5 as against only 56,8 %
73 In 1896/7-1904/5 it was indeed not less than 48,6 % in the University of Budapest, where some 90 % of female students were enrolled. (cf. Statistical yearbook of the residential capital city Budapest, 1905, 270) and as much as 53 % in the year 190/4/5 (Acta regiae scientiae universitatis Hungariae, Budapest, 1905, 85). In the years 1908/9-1914/15 Jews made up 40,2 % of women in higher education in the whole country. (Data from theHungarian statistical yearbooks of relevant years.)
74 Survey data from the study cited in note 1.
75 Sándor Asztalos, A magyar középiskolák statisztikája, /Statistics of Hungarian secondary schools/, 114.
of Christian boys. For female pupils the similar proportions were as high as 95,9
% for Jewish girls compared to only 80 % for Christian girls.76 In higher education the achievement differences may have proved to be enhanced by the strong intellectual pre-selection of Jews admitted in spite of the numerus clausus.77 Most of these relatively privileged Jews had to display the best grades at secondary school graduation to have a chance to gain admission, hence a degree of academic excellence must have been ‘structurally conditioned’ by their standing as the best alumni of secondary education. This may be the reason why the proportions of Jews graduating from the Budapest Medical Faculty appear to have significantly higher than the 6 % quota of the numerus clausus – 7,9 % in 1924-1930, as much as 10,4 in 1931-1938 and 7 % even in the calamitous years of the anti-Jewish laws 1939-1944.78
Such differences cannot be attested though in drop-out rates between the first and the second semesters of first year students, as some authors suggest. It has been indeed alleged, that raw proportions of Jews exceed often the 6 % official quota even after the mid-1920s because of the differential drop-out rates to the benefit of Jews between the two semesters of the academic year. At that time all Jews having been enrolled before the introduction of thenumerus clausus could already finish their studies, hence they could not contribute to Jewish student numbers. In reality there is no empirical evidence to attest this. Drop-out rates did not much differ among Jews and non Jews, oscillating indifferently around 6 % from the first to the second semesters throughout the years 1920-1934, the Jewish rates exceeding sometimes those of their Christian counterparts.
The risk of dropping out between semesters was manifestly governed by contingencies, alien from the dispositional disparities typical of the two opposing clusters - Jews or non Jews - in academe.
The social profile of Jewish students enrolled in Hungary under the numerus clausus seems to have undergone a rather significant change. One aspect of this had to do with their social background. Though, for the moment, our survey results concern in this respect the medical faculties only, a marked evolution seems to have taken place as compared to the pre-war situation.
In Budapest the socio-professional extraction of students suffered a visible deficit in terms of ‘democratisation’ in the rump state during the inter-war years, compared to 1918 and 1919. In the last years the pool of student recruitment of the Budapest Faculty still more (in 1918) or less (in 1919) extended over the former territory (in 1919 mostly via the arrival of refugee students from the regions lost for the rump state). These were also the only academic years before the numerus clausus for which the parents’ profession can be empirically
76 Calculated from data in Sándor Asztalos,op. cit. 62-64.
77 See the differences of the rates of admission between Jews and Christians in Table 2 presented in Andor Ladányi’s study, above in this book.
78 Survey results on students of the Faculty of Medicine in Budapest.
documented.79 For Jews the proportions of medical students with fathers belonging to the lower classes (peasants, manual workers) and the petty bourgeoisie (traders, craftsmen) decreased from a 50,4 % high in 1918 to 33,4 % in 1920-29 and to 31,4 % in 1930-1944. (No Jewish students were admitted to the Pest Medical Faculty in the Autumn term 1919 during the ravages of the White terror.) As to Christian medical students in Budapest, only 27,5 % of them had lower or petty bourgeois ascendancy in 1918, 31,5 % in 1919 as well as 31,9 % in 1920-29 but only 28,8 % in 1930-1944. The decline is quite important indeed for Jews, though practically inexistent for Christians.
For Jews the rather obvious explanation lies in the impact of the numerus clausus which was if not withstood, at least better avoided or eschewed by those young people from middle class or educated families liable to have ties with the establishment of the Christian Course. 80 But one also has to take into account the fact that the major social brackets of their academic clientele – neologue or secular middle class Jewry – was remaining in the rump state, especially in its Western and Central parts (including Budapest – representing henceforth close to half of Jews in Hungary), so that there was a sudden artificial
‘embourgeoisement’ of sorts of Jewry living in the country. All this was consistent with and also contributed to the growing relative representation of the Jewish educated middle classes among students in Budapest to the detriment of the lower strata with less formal schooling. As to Christians, the main line of interpretation should follow the influx of masses of middle class refugees in the country, whether sons (and daughters) of the former Hungarian administrative staff or students of the University of Kolozsvár/Cluj as well as the law academies and other institutions of higher learning in detached territories (Pozsony University, Academy of Mining and Forestry in Selmecbánya), emanating mostly from the same civil service or professional circles.81 They contributed by their own weight in the new student body to continuously restrict the participation of the lower classes in higher studies.
The message of the above data reasserts the differences between the social recruitment of Jews and Christians in Budapest, the former showing a much
79 Data on the professional standing of parents (father or guardian) of students can be found in semestrial inscription sheets in universities of the Habsburg Empire and some successor states.
The latter perished for the faculties of Budapest for the pre-1918 period in the fire of the National Archives during the Soviet attack of the capital city following the 1956 October Revolution. In the framework of the Project cited in note 1 we are attempting the reconstruction of this prosopographical information via similar data of secondary school pupils in the graduating 8th classes since the existence of the matura as a condition of admission to higher studies (1850-1917).
80 This was already remarked by contemporary observers. See Alajos Kovács, Értelmiségünk nemzeti jellegének biztosítása /Ensuring the national character of our intellectuals/, Budapest, 1926, 12–13.
81 As an indication to this effect one can cite the survey result on the social background of students in the Budapest Medical Faculty in 1920-1929. On the whole 32,3 % of them emanated from the lower classes and the petty bourgeoisie as against only 28,3 % of students born in Transylvania.
The difference is not decisive, but significant. Further survey results must clarify this issue.
‘lower’ social and educational profile. While for most Jewish students of medicine higher studies constituted before the war an avenue of upwards social and educational mobility, and this was apparently maintained for a third of them even under the numerus clausus, while the same applied to a significantly smaller portion of their Christian counterparts. In this respect provincial and gender specific developments as presented on Table 4. help to qualify this interpretation.
Table 4. Proportions of medical students by confessional clusters with fathers in the lower classes or the petty bourgeoisie under the numerus clausus (1920-1929)82
University of
Budapest University of
Szeged University of
Debrecen University of
Jewish men 35,3 % 56,4 % 47,2 % Pécs53,4 %
Christian
men 22,5 % 34,1 % 33,3 % 39,6 %
Jewish
women 26,4 % 33,3 % 41,2 % 43,6 %
Christian
women 17,4 % 30 % 17,1 % 26 %
The table confirms though the systematic differences between the social recruitment of Jews and Christians in medical studies during the inter-war years, but also demonstrates the equally significant disparities between medical faculties of the capital city and the provinces as well as between the two genders. There was a relative over-representation of the upcoming Jewish lower strata in the medical schools even under the numerus clausus, compared to Christians. The lower strata among Jews formed a majority in provincial faculties and (as seen before) over a third of students in Budapest. This fact complies with the analysis above about the more severe application of thenumerus clausus in the capital city, where membership in the Jewish upper strata could be instrumental in neutralizing its effects. The same less educated milieus were much less represented among Christian students, making one fifth only in Budapest and one third approximately of the provincial medical students. The fact that women in both clusters present much higher social profiles with much less students emanating from the lower classes confirms earlier findings. But the differences between Jews and non Jews are strongly marked in both genders at the expense of the Christians - female students being far less ‘democratically’ recruited than males in each social category concerned. It is quite clear that lower class candidates to the medical profession could in general gain much easier access to provincial universities than
82 The social category concerned include manual workers of all sorts, independent craftsmen, shopkeepers and associated clusters (traders, restaurant and café owners, hoteliers) not liable of having much educational capital. Data from the prosopographical survey cited in note 1.
in Budapest. This applied both to Jews and non Jews as well as for men and women, but much more to Jews and for men than for Christians and women. The evidence of Table 4. thus suggests that Jewish medical students (there again men more than women) maintained their rather low social profile in the inter-war years, while Christians in their large majority profited essentially from the trend of self-reproduction of the middle classes (especially Christian women) when entering the Medical Faculties.
A closer look of the regional background of medical students reveals another interesting difference between Jewish and Christian students under the numerus clausus. While a significant proportion of Christian students hailed in the years 1921-1929 from Transylvania, there were very few Jews coming from territories lost for the rump state. In Szeged not less than 33 % of Christian medical students were born in Transylvania, this was the case of 6,9 % of Jewish students only. This can be connected both to the generally lower representation of Jews in the University of Kolozsvár before the war, as compared to their presence in Budapest universities, and the lesser proclivity of Transylvanian Jews to emigrate after 1919. In Budapest the proportions of Transylvanian born students proved to be much lower – 9,3 % for Christians and 1,4 % for Jews – but the absolute numbers concerned much larger.83 (The differences were significant enough between Jews and Christians in this respect but less sharp in the two other provincial faculties.) With finer tuned statistical methods one could most probably find similar results via the comparison of students from other detached territories (like Western Slovakia), but for the moment we do not have the necessary raw evidence to implement such an investigation, since many county level data refer to territories cut across by the Trianon borders, unlike Transylvania.
Lastly it is worth to mention a considerable development of
‘assimilationist’ indices displayed by Jewish students under the numerus clausus.
The basic facts are not easy to illustrate since evidence is rare about ‘strategic apostasy’, mixed marriages, residential mixity, education in Christian schools, etc.
though the further elaboration of our survey data already referred to may shed light on such occurrences. One has already information on surname nationalizations. When comparing, for instance, inscriptions between the end of the Dual Monarchy (1912-18) and the first years of the numerus clausus (1920-24) the proportion of Jewish students with Hungarian surnames increased in the Budapest Medical faculty from 37,4 % to 45,1 %, in the Polytechnical University from 39,9 % to 53,5 % and in provincial medical faculties from 34,8 % to (only) 36,8 %.84 Manifestly the ‘assimilationist pressure’ on would-be Jewish intellectuals was significantly less heavy in the provinces as compared to the capital city. But for the rest, the interpretation of these changes are far from being simple, in spite of appearances. Obviously enough the movement to Magyarize surnames was, in Hungary, a major vehicle of ‘nationalization’ of Hungarian
83 Survey results, as cited in note 1.
84 Survey results as cited in note 1.
Jewry, responding to more or less explicitly compelling government policies exerted upon those in state employment or benefiting from connections with the state since the 1867 Compromise.85 But such pressures affected Christians of non Magyar stock as well. Moreover the pressures in question were not inescapable even in the civil service, especially for families obtaining high level public distinctions, like knighthood. Out of the 281 ennobled Jewish families before 1919 some 122 actually kept their alien sounding surnames, combined as they could be with Magyar titles of nobility referring mostly to the location of their landed or industrial properties.86 The same can be observed for Jewish students under the numerus clausus. A large proportion of them apparently resisted the temptations, pressures and the chance to exploit the symbolic and occasionally even material profits of surname Magyarization. One must also keep in mind that the Magyarization movement was a permanently developing and more and more publicly supported process in the last decades of the Dualist period as well as – though to a more limited degree – the first decade of the Christian Course after 1919. The latter did not support through promotional policies Jewish Magyarizations, but did not restrict it forcibly neither (till 1938). One cannot thus prove that Jewish students admitted to higher studies under the numerus clausus were more often than earlier inclined to seek Magyarization as a strategic action to achieve admission to a university. They could simply belong to those assimilated middle classes where - since much earlier onwards -, surname Magyarizations was a common practice. Probably both factors played a role in the statistical fact that Jewish students under the numerus clausus bore more often than earlier Hungarian family names.
85 See my book with István Kozma,Családnév és nemzet.Névpolitika, névváltoztatási mozgalom és nemzetiségi erôviszonyok Magyarországon a reformkortól a kommunizmusig, /Surname and nation. The policy of naming, the movement of surname modification and relations of ethnic forces in Hungary from the Vormärz till Communism/, Budapest, Osiris, 2002.
86 Cf.Magyar Zsidó Lexikon /Hungarian Jewish Encyclopedia/, Budapest, 1929, 642-647.