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The two young historians both said that the mutual history of the ethnic Germans and the Hungarians was essentially a beneficial one-thousand-year period. No ethnic strife cast a shadow on their relationship. Ethnic identity was subordinate to other factors (Christianity, shared living space and feudal ties). The Hungarus Consciousness formed, and as part of it, the Deutsch-Ungar Understanding, which is to say that even if they did not feel ethnically Hungarian, they did feel as if they belonged to Hungary. Réka Marchut emphasized that before the rise of modern nationalism and the unification of Germany, those Germans settling in Hungary brought their local identities with themselves, which they then incorporated into the Hungarus Consciousness. It was thus that an especially strong patriotic sentiment, as well as a sense of common interest and shared values, developed within an otherwise geographically-, societally- and religiously-heterogeneous German population. These feelings really deepened during the Dualist Period.

Gábor Ujváry, who has German roots on his mother’s side of the family, then asked the two historians about the Germans’ attitude toward official Hungarian politics. From every aspect the tragedy of Trianon resulted in decisive changes for every nationality, including the Germans. The two-million strong German population (1910 census figures) suffered major losses as a result of the narrow-minded and inhumane Entente “reordering”, whose trauma can still be felt to this day. Nearly three-fourths of the Germans ended up outside of the country’s borders, under foreign rule; moreover, the ethnic Germans of Hungary lost that stratum which was stronger in its cultural beliefs and ethnic identity (both civilian and intellectual).  

With Trianon a one-thousand-year-old order was turned on its head. The sense of a common destiny dissipated, the assimilation process sped up (the German population dropped by 13% in decade) and with the generational change, an identity change occurred as well. The minority Germans’ Deutsch-Ungar Understanding had begun to be supplanted by a German commonality emphasis, a  Südostdeutsch (Southern German) Understanding. The pan-German understanding began to gain ground over the Trianon territory as well, and among those who studied in Germany, they returned home espousing more radical views, which were further strengthened by the Völkisch movement. The 551,000 strong Germans in post-Trianon Hungary were in need of a spiritual leader. The Deutsch-Ungar Jakab Bleyer, an outstanding philologist and Germanist, would be the one, who already had issued a program-defining statement titled The Germans of Hungary (Das ungarländische Deutschtum). He founded the Swabian movement’s weekly The Sunday Paper for the German People in Hungary (Sonntagsblatt für das deutsche Volk in Ungarn) in 1921. Similary, he played a noteworthy role in the newly formed Folk Culture Alliance for the Germans of Hungary (Ungarländischer Deutscher Volksbildungverein) in 1924.is.

But the war’s outcome so divided the Germans that the spiritus rector Bleyer found himself in a no-win situation. The former peasant boy from Bacska and now respected professor was a patriot, loyal to Hungary and the state. As a staunch believer in level-headedness, he traveled around Germany in support of national unity. The German populace specified only linguistic and educational demands, while his rival Rudolf Brandsch embraced autonomy efforts. Self-determination, however, was altered in the wake of Trianon: its anti-national edge attacked, with the Hungarians taking out their frustrations caused by the peace treaty on the Germans, while the pre-1918 welcoming and tolerant policy towards minority populations was denounced.

Hungarian public opinion, shocked and reeling from Trianon, could not accept the Bleyer-type of balanced and moderate politics, leading to a strengthening of the radical wing within the German movement, which had long surpassed the midde-of-the-road Bleyer’s ideas as well as the comparatively pro-Hungarian Gusztáv Gratz’s.

Following Bleyer’s death, Gratz slowly diminished, holding on to his position as association president only with the help of pressure exerted by the administration. Real dynamic progress and strength, however, were shown by Ferenc Basch’s radical side, which propagated outside support as a necessity, aligning with the Third Reich and the Führer, for protection for the minority Germans.

Thereafter Gábor Ujváry steered the debate towards the question of education. After the collapse of minority education, the Bethlen administration (via Kuno Klebelsberg’s ministerial edict) introduced measures in 1923. Among the A-B-C types of minority schools, the first two categories were greatly underrepresented. (A: minority-language education together with mandatory Hungarian language education; B: minority-language education and Hungarian language education in a 1:1 ratio.) C-type minority schools were truly overrepresented, comprising 75% of all minority schools. (C: Hungarian language education together with mandatory minority-language education.) But these could hardly be considered true minority schools. The Gömbös administration strove to solve the problem: by designating all schools as B-type, which was a great improvement over the C-type supermajority. (The 1923 system was reintroduced in 1941 so that the German-desired A-type could once again be an option.)  

At the end of the debate the participants took some questions from the audience and touched upon the Volksbund apologetics. Some words were said about the German Empire School in Budapest, as well as about those folk writers who disagreed with the official opinion of the times about the desirability of German assimilation.