A Brief Account of More than Two Hundred Years of Teaching

Voigt, Vilmos (2004) A Brief Account of More than Two Hundred Years of Teaching. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 49 (3-4). pp. 181-210. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

Higher education, including “universities”, began in Hungary at the beginning of the 14th century. That system was disrupted by the Ottoman invasion in the first half of the 16th century. The present university system was launched by founding of a Jesuit university in Nagyszombat (1635), which later became the royal, then the state university of Hungary, and today is the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. There from about 1784 we can register teaching activity, which we understand today as directed towards folklore, ethnography, and later even towards cultural anthropology. From 1872 the “second” Hungarian state university was opened in Kolozsvár, which fled from there at the end of the First World War (and operated in Szeged from 1921 on), came back for some years during the Second World War, and was divided after the war again. By 1910 other state universities were created in Hungary, which work today in Debrecen and Pécs. Ethnography and folklore are now regularly represented there, in Debrecen from 1949 on, in Pécs from 1989 on. (But, of course, with some anteceding activities.) In Szeged the first professorship in ethnography (practically in folklore) was established in 1929, and after many years of interruption today there is a university institution of ethnography, folklore and cultural anthropology. A university chair for visual anthropology exists at the Miskolc university from 1982 on. At the recent ecclesiastical universities in Hungary there is no regular teaching on those topics. The report gives a brief history of the university institutions, focusing on their major directions, professors and chairmen including also references to university teaching of the other chairs close to folklore, ethnography and ethnology (cultural anthropology), as e.g. (physical) anthropology, geography, archaeology, Finno-Ugric studies, Oriental studies etc. The bibliographic references include the recent publications, with indications of other publications. Because the paper is the very first one of its kind, it could not be exhaustive or complete. The universities outside of Hungary (e.g. Cluj/ Napoca, Novi Sad, Bucureºti), where today we find programs on Hungarian folklore and ethnography, were not specially described in this paper. From the careful studies of research history in Hungary it is clear that at Hungarian universities - in the modern sense of the word - the teaching of folklore has about a 220 years old tradition. (See the facts about Dániel Cornides.) For “ethnology” (i.e. traditional cultures of the peoples around the world) we can refer to lectures from about 1873 (by János Hunfalvy). It was Antal Herrmann, from about 1898 (first in Kolozsvár, then in Szeged), who gave special university lectures on ethnography and folklore. Sándor Solymossy was the first appointed university teacher of “ethnology” (in fact of folklore) in Hungary (special lecturer in Budapest, professor at Szeged university 1929-1934). The full university institution of Hungarian ethnography and folklore was created in 1934 at the Budapest university, under the leadership of professor István Györffy. Today there is regular university teaching of folklore and ethnography in Budapest, Debrecen, Szeged and Pécs (to some extent in Miskolc too). Cultural anthropology (ethnology) has its university programs in Budapest and Miskolc (and to some extent it is represented at other universities too).

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