The Radicalization of the ethnic Germans of Hungary in the 1930’s

At 6 PM on February 7th, 2017, we will host the twenty-third debate of the VERITAS Debate Nights series at the Budapest Business School. The title of the debate is The Radicalization of the Ethnic Germans of Hungary in the 1930’s. VERITAS Senior Research Fellow László Orosz and historian and Research Fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Center for Social Sciences – Institute for Minority Studies Réka Marchut will familiarize the audience with the topic, while Head of the VERITAS Research Teams Gábor Ujváry will lead the discussion.

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In December 1933, the undisputed leader of the ethnic Germans of post-WWI Hungary Jakab Bleyer died. From the moment he stepped into the political limelight in 1917, Bleyer was a believer in the Greater Hungarian state, territorial integrity and living in peaceful symbiosis with the Hungarian majority. At the turn of the decade (1920’s to 1930’s), however, as a result of the changed international situation and his bitter disappointment in failing to develop a “German-Hungarian” identity among his fellow co-ethnics, he faced an insolvable dilemma.

The domestic German movement that Bleyer had led fractured almost immediately after his death. By the mid-1930’s, even the nominal unity of Bleyer’s old national cultural association Ungarnländische Deutsche Volksbildungsverein (UDV) had dissipated, inasmuch as its pro-Hungarian president former Foreign Minister Gusztáv Gratz expelled the more radical members from the association. Soon thereafter these expellees moved to self-organize, under the leadership of Ferenc Basch. With the support of their own media and to the detriment of their rival bloc, the new organization steadily grew, and in 1938 took the name of Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn (VDU). At the same time the Hungarian government – disregarding serious warnings – increasingly shunned its traditions-based national minorities policy in favor of its revised foreign policy goals. That is, at Berlin’s behest, the government allowed piecemeal increases to the powers of the Volksbund in exchange for territorial expansion. An increasingly more powerful Volksbund of course meant the steady decline of the pro-Hungarian wing, until the inevitable dissolution of the UDV in 1940.

As a matter of fact the evening’s debate will be a continuation of an earlier VERITAS Debate Night (which occurred exactly two years ago), wherein the self-organization of the ethnic Germans of Hungary up to the time of Bleyer’s death was the subject. Now we intend to continue from Bleyer’s death to the end of WWII, reconstructing the process of minority radicalization, with the events looked at from the context of revision and national minorities policy.