Protestant cultural regions in the first half of the 19th century: Some socio-geographical results of a collective biographical analysis of the elite of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

The study examines the geographical origins of Protestant members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the Hungarian Reform Era with the help of collective biography. The paper first assigns stages in Academy members’ study paths and adult life course to cultural regions. Then it determines the ratio between these cultural regions, the power of their academic representation, as well as the persons’ movement among cultural regions, and the scale and intensity of their mobility.

The investigation is facilitated by mechanisms that the Hungarian Academy of Sciences operated in the Reform Era. These mechanisms aimed at balancing various intersections of belonging, and thus strove for representation in both denominational and geographical terms. Moreover, in the spirit of national development, the Academy’s aims of supporting language and arts and managing adult educations were just as pronounced as its scientific objectives. Hence, it is possible to draw conclusions not only about the academic elite but also about the composition of the entire intellectual elite of 19th century Hungary. The term “cultural region” used in the study may in fact be regarded as an extension to the “denominational-cultural clusters” known from ecclesiastical social history and as a bifurcation suitable for portraying spatial divisions.

In the Reform Era, 28% of members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences belonged to the Calvinist and 12% to the Lutheran Church. This means that both denominations were overrepresented in comparison to their importance in the entire population, but the rate of this overrepresentation shows characteristic differences – in fact, the two leading Protestant denominations differ markedly in several respects. In the case of Calvinists, the study demonstrates the outstanding power – and considerable isolation – of Debrecen as its intellectual centre. The Calvinist cultural region in Transylvania delegated members of the Academy in similar numbers as Debrecen; however, its leading cultural figures were linked not only to Kolozsvár (Cluj) but, in part, to Nagyenyed (Aiud) and Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureș) as well. Decentralization may likewise be detected in other Calvinist cultural regions. However, decentralization is even more pronounced within the Lutheran cultural elite, as exemplified by the visible “ailment” of their strongest traditional centre of education, Pozsony (Bratislava).

Despite the great proportion of Calvinists in the southern part of Transdanubia, half of the Great Hungarian Plain and the northern area of the Transtisza region, these regions did not have a school town, an intellectual centre that could have educated “regional” members of the Academy. This highlights the special role of Debrecen. In contrast, a different strategy may be seen in the case of Lutherans, who had widespread involvement not only in Northern Hungary but were also active in building academic contacts in the south of the Great Hungarian Plain.

Investigating the mobility of members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the Reform Era may provide new arguments for the independence (and isolation) of Debrecen and Transylvania and present convincing numbers that support the growing pull of Pest.