Although racial thinking is generally recognized as having played an important role in the history of Western Europe, historians of the Habsburg Monarchy have devoted little attention to the degree to which racial ideas contributed to the development of nationalism and political programs.^[1] Racial thinking was not a phenomenon restricted to Western Europe; intellectuals and politicians from Central Europe also became enamored with racial ideas. Those Central European intellectuals who employed the category of race in their theories did so in terms illustrating their participation in both local national disputes and international scientific debates on race.^[2] It must be accepted therefore that there were nationalists in Central Europe who thought in terms of a hierarchy of nations and, most importantly, assumed that nations were not only the result of cultural and political activity but also communities of biological descent.^[3]
In most cases, historians of nationalism suggest that in the nineteenth century there was no clear terminological distinction between the concept of race and the idea of the nation, and that nationalists used the two concepts interchangeably.^[4] Regrettably, such practice resulted in the failure to analyze the concept of race and how it shaped nationalist thought. To be sure, the concept of race frequently accompanied the idea of the nation in nationalist discourse, but in most cases, and especially after 1900 the terms were used jointly rather than fused.
Race evolved from a notion with which scientists explained the natural world and through which humans developed conceptions of their physical attributes (race as species and subspecies), to a concept that embodied the features of a specific ethnic group (race as nation). In the nineteenth century, these meanings constantly overlapped. Under the influence of modernity, the concept of race was channeled in new directions. Whereas previously emphasis had been placed on the supposed innate differences between Europeans and non-Europeans, now differences between nations and ethnic groups within Europe became the focus of attention. As Nicholas Hudson convincingly argues: “‘Race” now meant more than just a “lineage” or even a variation of the human species induced by climate or custom. It meant an innate and fixed disparity in the physical and intellectual make-up of different peoples. “Nation,” in turn, was more than a group of people living under the same government. It was the very “soul” of personal identity, the very life-blood churning through an individual speaking a particular dialect in one of Europe's innumerable regions.”^[5]
This paper addresses the relationship between theories of race, nationalism and politics in Hungary between 1880 and 1918. During this period, there emerged a new nationalist vocabulary and political praxis that was based on the primacy of race and the affirmation of the Darwinist struggle for existence. In order to appreciate the extent of this relationship, theories of race must be re-integrated within their historical and institutional contexts.
First, I shall discuss some of the moments in the institutionalization of anthropology as a scientific discipline in Hungary. It was after this moment that disparate ethnographic interpretations were channeled by anthropology toward national projects of excavation and preservation of ethnic communities. The growing interest that Hungarian anthropologists began to show in the domestic “Other” indicates how anthropology appropriated the concept of identity in order to propose definitions of national identification. Within this context, I shall examine some of the cultural and historical theories of race developed by various Hungarian authors such as Antal Herrmann, Pál Hunfalvy, Zsolt Beöthy and Mihály Réz. On the one hand, in promoting the idea of race these ethnographers, literary critics and political theorists imitated European theories of culture and civilization; on the other, however, they offered their own personalized interpretation of the relationship between race and nation, an interpretation which reflected the particular ethnic conditions of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and which I term nationalist Darwinism.^[6]
In the particular context of Hungary between 1880 and 1918 nationalist Darwinism promoted the idea that a cultural incompatibility based on national specificity and racial essence existed between Hungarians and non-Hungarians. The Romanian nationalist Aurel C. Popovici, for instance, was one author who persistently expounded a Darwinist theory of the nation that refuted Hungarian liberal anthropology advocated by Herrmann, Hunfalvy and Beöthy. These two opposing principles – liberal anthropology and nationalist Darwinism – generated propitious conditions for ideas of self-determination and independence to emerge, ideas which ultimately led to the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1918.

THE EMERGENCE OF ETHNOGRAPHY IN THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE

Ethnographic research abounded in the nineteenth century. Etymologically, ethnography simply means to narrate/write about collectivities known as ethne/tribes (pre-political communities).^[7] Indeed, as the Hungarian historian of anthropology Támas Hofer has remarked, “In the nineteenth century, in Central Europe “ethnography” referred to scholarly books dealing with the origins and prehistory of individual ethnic groups.”^[8] While Western European ethnographers were enticed to visit and research various colonial settings in Africa, Asia and Australia, their counterparts in Central Europe focused on the heterogeneous representation of peoples offered by the region’s diverse ethnic arrangement.^[9] Such an interest in the history of “individual ethnic groups” paralleled an already existing tradition, originating in the Enlightenment, and which reflected Austrian imperial ambitious to inventory the “land and people” under its administration. One such work was produced between 1855 and 1857 by the Austrian statistician Karl Freiherr von Czoernig-Czernhausen (1804-1855) under the title Ethnographie der Oesterreichischen Monarchie, an eloquent example of how imperial administrators viewed the ethnic heterogeneity of their state.^[10] As Regina Bendix rightly noted, Czoernig-Czernhausen “had as his ultimate goal the creation of a map that would accurately depict the geographic location of ethnicities within the realm.”^[11] It was an ambitious program, and one which became an integral part of certain trends of political thinking within the Austrian Empire centered on the idea of “collective patriotism” and the role of the House of Habsburg in fostering a trans-national loyalty of its subjects.
A more systematic approach was developed after the establishment of professional associations of anthropology. The Viennese Association for Anthropology, Ethnology and Archeology was formed in 1870 by Freiherr Ferdinand von Andrian-Werburg (1835-1914), Josef Szombathy (1853-1943), and three professors of anatomy: Karl Langer (1819-1903), Emil Zuckerkandl (1849-1910), and Carl Toldt (1840-1920). In the opening address, Carl Freiherr von Rokitansky (1804-1878), the head of the Institute of Pathological Anatomy, declared simply: “The task of anthropology is the natural history of man.”^[12] Specifically, anthropology should examine, “the results of the intermixture and the crossing of races, their fate when they come into contact with civilization, the causes of the degeneration and extinction of some races, and to determine their power of resistance.” To achieve this task, anthropology should incorporate the investigation of “the past, by its association with history, archeology, and geology.”^[13]
It was, in other words, a very broad definition of anthropology, but one which in practice resembled clearly Czoernig-Czernhausen’s idea of Imperial Austria as a special place composed of different ethnic groups (Völkerbestand). “Our common fatherland,” declared Rokitansky, “contains abundant anthropological materials; among these I need only mention the many tongue-races inhabiting it. They have constituted hitherto the subject of various craniological and linguistic investigations.” Ultimately, it was the role of anthropology to examine the “Austrian race question” and “the culture of Austrian nationalities.”^[14]
Both Czoernig-Czernhausen and Rokitansky believed that only the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy could accommodate politically the different ethnic groups and historical traditions of Central and Eastern Europe, which shared a common geographical framework and common historical past.^[15] Such an idea was widely popularized by the imperial propaganda until 1918, most spectacularly in the work supervised by Archduke Rudolf (1858-1889) and entitled suggestively The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Writing and Pictures.^[16]
In parallel to these developments, there emerged two different anthropological methodologies. The first was represented most prominently in Austria by Augustin Weisbach (1837-1914) and, in Hungary, by József Lenhossék (1818-1888) and Aurél Török (1842-1912).^[17] These anthropologists followed the craniological school of the French physician and anatomist Paul Broca (1824-1880), and believed that heredity was more important than environment in shaping human communities. They were also inclined to support a polygenist view of human races, namely that there were “inferior” and “superior” races, a view which was reinforced by the scholarly appreciation that both Broca and his main disciple Paul Topinard (1830-1911), secretary-general of the Société d’anthropologie in Paris from 1880 to 1886, enjoyed in Hungary around the 1890s.^[18]
The second methodology, which Bendix referred to as a “model of comprehending emerging nation-states,” followed the model instituted by the German cultural historian Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823-1897). This was an ethnographic model which advocated the direct contact with the people under inspection, and “stood in contract to the bureaucratically launched and executed statistical ethnographic data gathering by many trained hand.”^[19] More importantly, it was a paradigm which influenced significantly the development of Hungarian ethnography.

THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF RACE

Hungarian ethnography evolved within the contentious political context of the post-Ausgleich (1867) period, and it coincided with the intellectual ascendancy of Darwinist evolutionism and Comte positivism.^[20] In 1876, the VIIIth International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistory was held in Budapest; Broca himself honored it with his presence. After this international exposure and much domestic discussion, the Hungarian National Archaeological and Anthropological Society was established in 1878, followed in 1899 by the Ethnographic Society.^[21] Two prominent Hungarian ethnologists and linguists, Antal Herrmann and Pál Hunfalvy, played an important role in this process of institutionalization; they are also important for the present discussion of race and politics in Hungary between 1880 and 1918.
Contrary to Austria, however, where there did not exist a particular interest in the “Austrian” ethnic groups, in Hungary the portrayal of specific physical characteristics specific to the Hungarians played an important role in the materialization of anthropology as a national discipline. The Transylvanian ethnographer Antal Herrmann (1851-1926) perfectly illustrated this trend. Herrmann endeavored to substantiate two arguments in his writings: the first referred to the visual aspect of race; the second related to the permanence of racial traits.^[22] Another aspect of Herrmann’s theory related to the heterogeneous character of the Hungarian nation. “From an ethnological point of view,” he suggested, “[the Hungarian nation] consists of seven elements which perhaps contain each as many ethnographical shades or variation.”^[23] The heterogeneous character of the Hungarian nation did not preclude, according to Herman, the emergence of a certain ethnic homogeneity based on “the common fatherland, the common natural and biological relations, the continual contact with one another, the mixture of blood, and the innumerable reciprocal influences of culture, which make themselves felt not only in places of mixed population and on the frontiers of languages, and peoples, but press in from the circumference on the more solid and apparently unmixed elements in the centre.”^[24] Herrmann accepted the fact that the Hungarian nation was composed of varied ethnic groups, and bestowed a leading role onto the Magyar race.^[25]
Despite these auspicious conditions, the Hungarian nation was more a political ideal than an existing historical reality, Herrmann argued. Not all ethnic groups had reached a certain level of culture and civilization required by the formation of national identity. Herrmann believed, however, that the Magyar race was fully formed and aware of its distinct individuality: “That element which they now call the Magyar race has formed itself in this country; the Hungarian nation in the ethnic sense has not been able to form itself completely. That process which among the great cultured nations has for the most part been fully completed is with us still going on.”^[26] One reason why the Hungarian nation was still an evolving identity project, Herrmann suggested, was detectable in different level of culture among the nationalities. Although a supporter of national integration, Hermann criticized excessive assimilation and Magyarization, as it was through these processes that Magyar racial characteristics were subject to transformation, which Herrmann termed the “sacrifice of its own racial type.”^[27]
For Herrmann, however, these assumptions had a broader significance. On the one hand, science served to explain the normal course of human social development, which in the case of Hungary included Hungarians and non-Hungarians alike. On the other hand, politics provided the means by which to raise the non-Hungarians to the cultural level of the Hungarians. The assimilation of the non-Hungarians was thus considered beneficial. Herrmann’s ethnological research provided Hungarian liberalism with a new vocabulary: it endorsed the necessity of a strong national state within which the non-Hungarians could develop ethnically and culturally.
Considering the cultural difference existing between the Hungarians and the non-Hungarians, Herrmann was, however, confident that the Magyar race was predestined for political and national domination. From this perspective, ethnography in Hungary should represent, first and foremost, an analysis of the Magyar race: “the ethnography of the fatherland in the first instance occupies itself with the Magyar element.” Herrmann therefore advocated the creation of a national ethnography, which in Hungary’s multi-ethnic environment should also include the non-Hungarians. The importance of scientifically understanding the ethnic character of the non-Hungarians was based on the necessity to explain their cultural evolution. Equally important was the assumption that competing explanations might emerge from neighboring countries, and these explanations would not reflect scientific arguments but nationalist commitments:

“If the superiority or exclusiveness of the Magyar element were to leave the ethnography of the other elements, of the population of the country entirely to them, or to their kinsmen outside the frontier, then, at the expense of objectivity and scientific method, a tendentious way of treating the subject, leaving aside what is really characteristic and important and bringing into undue prominence what is merely accidental, would give rise to many erroneous views, and in the end by inducing a false theory of themselves would alter their ethnic character.”^[28]

Herrmann also recognized the fact that ethnography was underrated in Hungary, both as a discipline and as a source of political legitimacy: “Our statesmen in general show little feeling for the political importance of ethnography.”^[29] His scientific efforts were thus also directed towards convincing the Hungarian political elite that ethnography was important for the preservation of the traditions of multi-ethnic Hungary.
In addition to detailing the importance of ethnography for the understanding of the ethnic composition of the Hungarian state, Herrmann also addressed the physical nature of the Magyar race. Arguing for the composite character of Hungary, perceived as “a copy on a small and condensed scale of the ethnographical map of Europe,”^[30] Being surrounded by so many different ethnic groups, the Hungarians were, not surprisingly, a mixed racial group. Assimilation and ethnic diversity notwithstanding, a pure “Magyar type” could still be found, and Herrmann described it thus:

“The stature middle sized; the skull larger than middle sized; the head short and low; the sharp featured face broad and oval, getting narrower more upwards than downwards; the root of the nose narrow and depressed; the nose short, narrow and high; the mouth finely cut, the chin oval; the eye and ear small; the forehead open and prominent; the hair for the most part of some shade of brown; the moustache sufficiently strong (the peasant seldom wears a beard); the eye dark or light; the complexion of the face somewhat brown (the complexion of the ladies is brilliant, the eyes sparkling, the hair dark). The neck and the trunk are of a medium length and breadth; the chest broad in front and arched outwards on the sides. The navel lies high; the hollow of the pelvis is large, high, deep, of moderate width. The hips are wide; the arms are of moderate length, the forearms long and thin; the hands are short and broad, palms short; thumb very short, middle finger of medium length; the feet long, the thigh and the calf of the leg not particularly developed; the metatarsus is broad. He moves in a composed manner, with an elegant position of the body, and his whole appearance shows strength and activity.”^[31]

Herrmann was not exclusively preoccupied with physical characteristics. His description of “Magyar physical types” included psychological features as well, including “a reposeful seriousness, openheartedness, national pride, magnanimity, enthusiasm for liberty, love of country and hospitality.”^[32] Moreover, Herrmann’s description of the “Magyar physical type” rested on the central assertion that the Magyar race possessed a unique ability to eliminate hereditary transformation caused by the miscegenation with other races. Thus in addition to the Hungarians, Herrmann also analyzed anthropologically other ethnic groups, like the Romanians from Transylvania:

“Those who dwell in the mountains, especially in the Transylvanian mining district, the Mócz, who are supposed to be of Székely origin, are of lofty stature with long faces, fair-haired, serious, laborious, skilful, and adapted to get on in life; those who live along the banks of the Transylvanian streams are of a dark complexion with round faces, gay in their disposition and less industrious; those who live in Hungary proper, are for the most part stumpy in their stature, with broad faces and dark hair. The women, on the whole, have weak frames, they are slender with finely cut faces; they are pretty but soon grow old; they are very industrious.”^[33]

As in his portrayal of the Hungarians, Herrmann combined the physical description of the Romanians with their psychological portrait. They were thus described as “tough and obstinate nature” and “very much attached to their own customs, and language.” Even the “primitiveness” of the Romanians was revealed: “The common people progress but slowly in civilization, yet they have fine abilities and good qualities.”^[34]
Herrmann’s ethnographic imagery brought the Hungarians and the Romanians together. Despite being “inferior” in culture and virtues, the Romanians could assist the Hungarians in their civilizational mission in Eastern Europe. Thus, “If the Wallach people were at once to recognize that their existence depends upon their holding with the Hungarian nation they would be of very great assistance in our eastern mission of culture.”^[35] The support the Hungarians required to maintain their superiority would not, however, come from the Romanians, as one would be attempted to assume from the above statement. Herrmann suggested instead that the Jews were regarded as the natural ally of the Magyar race, and their assimilation was viewed as beneficial to the prosperity of Hungarian civilization. It was hoped, moreover, that the assimilation of the Jews would increase the capacity of the Magyar race to merge with other races. A new, more powerful, race would emerge from this racial mixing: “By the mixture of the Magyar and the Jew our country will gain a race which the more it multiplies the more firmly we shall be assured as to the permanence of the country.”^[36]
For Herrmann anthropology meant first and foremost collecting information about various ethnic groups. In a programmatic text from 1889, he assigned the ethnographer to the role of curator of certain artifacts, objects which “are the relics of the domestic life of the people, to be preserved with reverence; they are the petrified witnesses of their past, like geological layers of the evolution of their cultural soil.”^[37] Tamás Hofer has described this attitude as the “stratified model of folk culture,” one which “was used in Hungarian ethnography because its political task was to articulate the peaceful coexistence of ethnic groups in a multi-ethnic state, an image of contemporary Hungary which could be accepted – as they hoped – simultaneously by Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians and the rest.”^[38]
In fact, Herrmann used this “stratified model of folk culture” as a scientific methodology meant to explain the correlation between the liberal idea of the nation, based on assimilation and inclusiveness and the physical manifestations of race. Many of his arguments were adopted by contemporary linguists preoccupied with constructing the typology of Hungarian national character between 1880 and 1918. One such linguist who combined ethnographic research with national liberalism was Pál Hunfalvy.

LANGUAGE AND ETHNOGRAPHY

Herrmann’s anthropological model can be set along Hunfalvy’s linguistic ethnography for two reasons: first, both used similar epistemological principles in their work; second, both connected ethnography to the liberal project of national integration and assimilation. In 1851, Hunfalvy stated to the Academy of Sciences that intellectuals in Hungary were obliged to investigate scientifically the nation’s history and language and the nature of her relationships with other groups.^[39]
Hunfalvy balanced the explanations offered by official historical narratives about the national past with arguments about the role of language in shaping national character provided by linguistic ethnography. In 1876, he published Magyarország Ethnographiája, in which he set forth two significant theories.^[40] The first argued that the Hungarian language was composed of mixed Finno-Ugric and Altaic (Turkish) elements; the second accentuated the crucial importance of language in the creation of the nation: “A nation is created through language, religion and social organization. Of these three the most important is language.”^[41] These ideas were further developed in Die Ungarn oder Magyaren (1881).^[42]
By emphasizing the importance of language in defining the history and character of racial groups, Hunfalvy sided with German diffusionism, especially Waitz’s theories, rather than the anthropological model suggested by Weisbach. In Anthropologie der Naturvölker (1877), the German ethnographer Theodor Waitz (1821-1864), argued in favor of linguistic anthropology, by pointing out that the characteristics of language were more stable than racial or ethno-racial qualities, and thus provided a reliable guide to historical continuity.^[43] In a similar vein, Hunfalvy maintained that comparative philology had reached a more sophisticated degree of exactitude with respect to racial classification than that offered by physical anthropology, particularly craniology.
Once he established his methodological principles, Hunfalvy addressed the pressing topic of national ethnography. Like Herrmann, Hunfalvy believed that ethnography could help the Hungarians understand both their culture and national identity: “The investigation of their origin, formation and fate is the first task of ethnography in Hungary.”^[44] Hunfalvy aimed, however, at more than merely enunciating the importance of ethnography. Hunfalvy considered ethnographic research as a means by which to understand the cultural peculiarity and norms of other ethnic groups as well. For instance, in Die Rumänen und ihre Ansprüche (1883) and Az Oláhok Története (1894) Hunfalvy assumed that the Romanians were also important case studies for anthropological research.^[45] Depicted as “exotic” and “primitive,” the Romanian peasants represented “a more instructive interest [for ethnography] than other people.”^[46]
In demonstrating that the customs and traditions of various ethnic groups in Hungary can be documented through ethnographic research, Hunfalvy arrived at the conclusion that the Hungarians were destined to rule the country, and that their historical leadership was justified by their advanced culture and civilization. Although aware of the implicit racial subtext of his arguments, Hunfalvy managed to avoid the temptation of recycling a racially-motivated anthropological discourse. In contrast to Weisbach, he considered that “neither the forms of the skull, nor the growing of the hair or the color of the skin makes the human being or a people; [it is rather] the language and the social existence.”^[47] Furthermore, Hunfalvy did not emulate Herrmann’s fascination for the permanence of physical types. Others however did; and this was a topic which attracted much attention during the celebrations of 1896.
Closely connected with developments in ethnography and linguistics was the importance conferred on racial origins. In Hungary, the debate about racial origins centered on two interrelated themes: first, the discussion concerning the conquest of the Carpathian basin and the historical rights derived from this conquest marked the representation of Hungarian definition of national identity. Second, this representation was based on the noble and superior features of the nomadic, warrior-like, ancient Hungarians. The explanations offered by scholars preoccupied with racial origins were ultimately transformed into explanations of the Hungarian national character – the immortality of the nation was depicted through the glory of the past.

RACIAL ORIGINS AND LITERATURE

The “Millennium Exhibition” of 1896 provided a clear example of how ideas of racial origins and national character were conceptualized at the level of popular imagery.^[48] According to Hungarian national legend, the Carpathian basin was acquired through conquest. The Hungarians were a “noble nation” (nemes nemzet), a warrior caste that considered warfare the noblest of human activities. Those defeated through conquest (local populations) became slaves. The descendants of these slaves became serfs along with the inhabitants of other occupied lands. Serfs were not regarded as part of the political nation for “Natio Hungarica” consisted only of nobles (nemes) and brave warriors (vitéz).
Organized to celebrate the existence of a thousand-year Hungarian state, and the conquest of the Carpathian basin by Hungarian tribes, the “Millennium Exhibition” reflected the way in which the Hungarians portrayed themselves in relations to the external world (Europe), and the country’s internal ethnic composition (the non-Hungarians). Impressive works of art were commissioned to celebrate the conquest and Hungarian “spirit’, including the Heroes Square Monument, with its towering central sculpture of Árpád and other chieftains that founded the Hungarian state.^[49]
One literary work succeeded in capturing this Hungarian “racial spirit” in an unfathomable manner. In his 1896 A Magyar irodalom kis-tükre the literary historian Zsolt Beöthy (1848-1922) offered a new perspective on the racial roots of Hungarian culture.^[50] While Herrmann and Hunfalvy assumed a biological determinist position on national identity, Beöthy worked more with cultural concepts, notably how the literary spirit was transmitted from generation to generation. Nevertheless, he was equally preoccupied with racial typologies; for him, the Magyar race revealed her “spirit” in the Hungarian literature.
Beöthy believed that the concept of race was constructed on the basis of both physical and spiritual characteristics. Physical traits of a particular race could be understood through the study of anthropology. The study of national character, however, required the tools of a broader range of disciplines, encompassing more than simply ethnology and linguistics. Most anthropologists, Beöthy suggested, failed to realize that reaching an understanding of the spiritual characteristics of race was more important than analyzing its physical traits. It was the national soul that kept “Magyarism” alive: “Among the ideals of our national soul and of our literature that makes that soul vocal, the idea of Magyarism and its common interests always was to be found and served as a guide to fix the direction of the contents of our mind.”^[51]
Moreover, Beöthy claimed that there were notable differences in the spiritual development of various races. “Lower” races were characterized by their physical traits, “higher” races by their spiritual endowments. Furthermore, races also had two distinct “natures’: exogenous nature was influenced by the environment, whilst indigenous nature derived from genetically acquired characteristics. Since the physical traits of a race were most influenced by exogenous factors, the inferior races were shaped directly by their immediate environment. Superior races, on the other hand, were resistant to external influences. Indeed, superior races shaped their surrounding environment according to the internal evolution of their own culture.
Beöthy thus connected national character to its racial essence. Hungarian national supremacy was not justified on the basis of them being the oldest ethnic group in the region, but rather according to who originally conquered the land. The salient aspect of this theory of conquest was the idea of racial supremacy in which the belief in the incompatibility between the nature of the Hungarians (nomadic, warrior-like, brave and free) and the conquered non-Hungarian populations (cowardly, slave-mentality) was rooted.
Elevating the figure of the ancient Hungarian warrior to a national symbol sealed a nationalist interpretation based on racial qualities. The horseman originating from the Volga River was hailed as the iconic ancestor of the Magyar race. The Magyar race was, according to Beöthy, marked by a strong consciousness of collective solidarity, the force of contemplation, tranquility and honesty. The following literary description deserves to be quoted at length:

“From the mist of ancient time, a figure of a horseman emerges before our eyes, standing quietly on the lowlands of the Volga valley, watching. In his peaked fur-cap, clad in panther-skin, his muscular waist seems to stem from his small horse. With eagle eyes, he looks across the seemingly endless plain whose every point is sharply lighted by the bright disk of the sun. He is calm; he has no fear and no illusions; what matters for him is only what he sees, and his eyes, inured by the distant images of the plains and their strong light, can see clearly all that the human eye can see from one point. His quiver is cast on his shoulders; his Persian sword is at his side: he watches out for the enemy. If there are only a handful of them, he will confront them; if they come in groups, he will bring news of their approach to the others. It is for them, the others, that he keeps watching, and he reacts to nothing. He can fix his eye on the far distance that is said to be boundless: in a faraway black spot, he can recognize the eagle, the strong and cruel bird of his God, feasting on a carcass. A good sign; he caresses the neck of his horse Ráró, and rests his steady hand on the hilt of his sword. He waits for the future and he feels, he knows that their common cause shall require his strength. His soul is filled with the sense of this strength and with his devotion to his race.”^[52]

Beöthy argued that racial and cultural particularities were decisive in determining the Hungarian national character: “The image of this solitary horseman explains not only the way of life of the ancient Magyars, but also the essence and development of the Magyar spirit. The entire spiritual life of the Hungarian nation is permeated by the natural and moral influences that prevailed in its ancient living conditions and took root in its soul.”^[53]
Although the Hungarians had continually been assimilating other races due to their strong “Turanic” racial qualities, they managed to maintain their traditional institutions based on the idea of liberty and constitutionalism. This detail is important for it outlined a method by which the spiritual characteristics of the Magyar race were combined with the idea of the modern political nation and its historical achievements, such as the creation of a political culture and civilization.
This political definition of the nation offered an ideal framework for assimilation: once the non-Hungarians had renounced their cultural features, such as language and religion, they would be accepted into the Hungarian political nation. The Hungarian political nation was therefore a unique combination of different races that assimilated with the Magyar “military and spiritual type.” “Magyarism” was, according to Beöthy, forged by both historical and geographical conditions as well as qualities specific to the Magyar race:

“The present Hungarian nation has been shaped throughout the course of history; yet it has been shaped by the Magyar race and shaped in its own resemblance. It was this race that guided and set up the objectives of its history; indeed, the race created it, and strove to assert itself in it. Thus the nature of Hungarian soil, the domination of the Magyar race within its public institutions, the character of Hungarian history, the Hungarian language, whose forms the Hungarian cast of mind has shaped in its own way: all these, despite the permanent and intensive [racial] mixing, have sustained, at least, in its main features, the original Magyar spirit.”^[54]

Although facilitated by racial mixture, political and social assimilation was a psychological and spiritual rather than biological process. According to Beöthy, its most important expression was the superiority of the Magyar spirit. Thus the racial character of assimilated non-Hungarians was not relevant to the natural evolution of the Magyar race. Herrmann and Hunfalvy referred to the non-Hungarians as “original” rather than “historical” races: only through assimilation could the “original” race become “historical” and capable of fostering its own civilization. It is not surprising therefore that Beöthy considered the spiritual process of assimilation subject to limitations, not unlike those affecting the biological process of miscegenation.^[55]
Between 1880 and 1918 many Hungarian scholars concerned with the concept of race remained devoted to a Lamarckian paradigm which envisaged the reproduction of acquired characteristics. Beöthy too insisted on the continuing interaction of heredity and natural environment; hence the perfect symbiosis achieved between the Magyar race and the territory they inhabited, the Carpathian basin. The influence of environmentalism was deemed paramount by Beöthy as well as by Herrmann and Hunfalvy.^[56] At the beginning of the twentieth century this form of Lamarckism was translated into a more authoritarian form of politics, as illustrated by the Darwinist theories of the nation developed by Mihály Réz and Aurel C. Popovici.

“MAGYAR RACIAL POLITICS”

Mihály Réz (1878-1921) presented his racial arguments in a series of books published during the first decade of the twentieth century, including Magyar fajpolitika (1905), Nemzeti Politika (1907) and A Magyar uralma és a kor szelleme (1909). Three main ideas characterized Réz’s nationalist Darwinism: 1) Hungarian national superiority was not to be imposed forcefully; 2) the Hungarians were to defend their right to national existence as much as non-Hungarians; and 3) in the struggle for existence the strongest race always survived.
Contrary to the idea of multi-national co-existence, Réz suggested the introduction of a new racial discourse, one based on the instinct of national self-preservation. According to Réz: “[T]hose, who find the self-preservation instinct natural even among the lowest of living creatures would find it natural as well if this very Hungarian nation defended its own conditions and needs of subsistence. They would find it natural too that the feeling of belonging to the same race is stronger than any sensible reason.”^[57] In this nationalist Darwinist understanding of the nation, races were in an eternal conflict for supremacy and recognition. The ultimate goal of racial struggle, Réz argued, was domination and success, not liberty and equality. The supreme task of racial politics “ought to be strengthening the state and mobilizing the nation for the exercise of Magyar supremacy; anything else would amount to self-delusion, leading to humiliation and ultimate defeat.”^[58] The concept of the survival of the fittest underpinned a violent vision of racial conflict: “We all know that past nations should die in order to leave room for the newcomers; we know it is the perpetual law of progress.”^[59]
Resembling Beöthy’s arguments, Réz proclaimed a racial definition of the nation: “the nation itself is a biological race, a participant in the perpetual struggle for life.”^[60] This racial discourse of race directly endorsed Réz’s criticism of the idea of peaceful ethnic coexistence in the Habsburg Monarchy advocated by Herrmann and Hunfalvy. Réz thus ridiculed attempts by other political ideologies, such as Social Democracy, to satisfy the national claims of the non-Hungarians: “Hungarian Social Democracy only announces the future fusion of nations, but before it could happen, it demands political rights for the nation. By giving these rights, religious and racial antagonism increases, hence making assimilation impossible and causing racial struggle instead. [Social Democracy] represents neither the interest of Hungarian supremacy nor social development.”^[61]
Following Herbert Spencer and Thomas Carlyle, Réz considered that “the “raison d’être” of a nation is given by its energy and self-esteem.”^[62] The Social Darwinist concept of the struggle for existence was thus seen as the mechanism of progress and civilization. The race that was most prepared to fight for its individuality and supremacy would be victorious: “it is precisely on this account that we wish at any price and by all means the Hungarian supremacy, since the real progress, creative work and the development of culture may only be attained on this basis in this country.”^[63] In terms of the preservation of civilization and political culture, the Magyar race was the “greatest” in Central Europe. To support his theories, Réz further developed a social program to support the historical achievements of the Magyar race. The state-founding power of the Hungarians was to be complemented by investing the landed gentry with political power.^[64]
Réz argued that the racial qualities and historical merits of the gentry could rejuvenate Hungary, both socially and nationally. (This was not surprising, given that writers like Réz attributed the historical achievements of the Hungarian nation solely to the landed gentry). First, the Hungarian middle class would be saved from social deprivation through the introduction of the law of primogeniture. Second, the state would be obliged to purchase the mortgaged (mainly peasant) landed estates. In purely Hungarian regions such lands would be given in tenure to the former owner. Furthermore, in order to prevent accumulation of debt and the pauperization of the gentry, the state would subsidize Hungarian banks in the country, followed by the introduction of reforms in public administration and higher education. Diplomas granted by foreign higher educational institutions would only be accepted on the condition that holders had previously attended Hungarian secondary schools. Furthermore, schools with non-Hungarian language instruction would be closed. The state would only build schools on territories inhabited by “well-meaning” nationalities such as ethnic Germans, Ruthenes and Slovaks.
Moreover, Réz strongly recommended that scholars, scientists, researchers and members of parliamentary committees, make trips around Hungary so as to assess the exact ethnic divide between the Hungarians and the non-Hungarians. Without a deep knowledge of Hungarian realities, no improvement of racial politics was possible. Ultimately, Réz openly declared that in order to maintain Hungarian national superiority all political means, including Magyarization, were legitimate.^[65]
Dismissive of ideas of cultural emancipation and social liberties, Réz asserted: “we [the Hungarians] want to see firm Hungarian rule and unrestricted Hungarian supremacy.”^[66] The cultural emancipation of the uneducated and politically immature non-Hungarians was seen as potentially undermining the special status of the Hungarians. It was not possible, Réz continued, to transform Hungary into an “Eastern Switzerland” because the non-Hungarians were not equal to the Hungarians.^[67] Réz’s investigations into the nature of ethic relations in Hungary were thus critical of liberal ethnography, which he deemed accountable for the fact that it cultivated the idea of assimilation of non-Hungarians.^[68]
Before the First World War, such new attitudes grew in importance. The writer Dezső Malonyay (1866-1916), for example, expressed his passionate argument against assimilation thus: “We should remember that our independent national individuality is endangered also by the fact that here several different peoples have been squeezed into one state. And such closeness does not promote the strengthening of the national character. We are exposed to mutual influences, and the purity of the national character suffers from it.”^[69] Not surprisingly, these discussions about the Hungarian national character and the idea of ethnic co-existence echoed widely among the non-Hungarians. One Romanian nationalist, in particular, reacted particularly efficiently: he adopted racial theories to develop his own form of nationalist Darwinism.

A ROMANIAN THEORY OF RACE

To a large extent, the relationship between anthropology, nationalism and politics mirrored the rejection of any rapprochement between the Hungarians and the non-Hungarians as an officially sanctioned policy.^[70] In addition, during this period, the debates between the Hungarians and the Romanians reached new dimensions, creating a significant departure from the political framework the generation of Hungarian and Romanian liberals of 1848 had envisaged for these two ethnic groups.
Aurel C. Popovici (1863-1917) elaborated his theory of racial nationalism in two books: Die Vereinigten Staaten von Groß-Österreich (1906) and Naţionalism sau Democraţie (1910). What differentiates Popovici’s ideas from the Hungarian liberal ethnography is the methodology of race he applied to the study of the nation. For instance, in attempting to offer a definition of race, Popovici turned to the Scottish anatomist Robert Knox (1791-1862) and his influential The Races of Man (1850). Consequently Popovici declared: “Race is everything; there is no other truth. And every race, which carelessly allows its blood to become mixed, must decay.”^[71] Furthermore, Popovici believed that that racial mixing was a source of national degeneration, a notion he adopted from the French racial theorist Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882). In Essai sur l’inégalité des races humains (1853, 1855) Gobineau glorified the significance of race and the fall of civilizations. As Gobineau asserted: “The fall of civilization is the most striking and, at the same time, the darkest of all phenomena of history.”^[72] Such occurrence was, however, due neither to political excesses nor to the weakness of political systems: the sole cause was the “decadence of blood” within the nation.
Popovici implemented Knox’s idea of the superiority of race and Gobineau’s fear of racial miscegenation to counteract theories of assimilation and peaceful coexistence with the Hungarians. Whereas Gobineau’s concept of race was static, something “pure” created by God and contaminated over centuries by interbreeding, Popovici injected the concept of race with dynamism: race could evolve to higher or lower levels, dissipate its qualities and adapt successfully to circumstances. Ultimately, Popovici’s nationalist Darwinism functioned according to a double logic: on the one hand, it reinforced the racial differences between the Hungarians and the Romanians, whilst, on the other hand, it focused on the historical relationship between them.
In explaining both aspects, Popovici borrowed significantly from the Austrian sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838-1909), who proclaimed that the history of mankind testifies to the primordial existence of diversified human groups engaged in the struggle for existence. Hence, the subjection of the weakest by the strongest was viewed as a universal law. All states were engaged in a struggle for power and territory; they were, Gumplowicz declared, constantly in a “Rassenkampf.”^[73] Similarly, Popovici argued, “In sociological terms nations are “social groups” and their struggles – race struggles – constitute the real basis of the entire social evolution.”^[74] As such, the Romanian race was endowed by nature with the inherent right of survival and freedom to develop nationally. If it were to grow, prosper and develop independently, it must have a suitable environment. Race provided both the source and condition for the evolution of the nation. It was thus important that the inner qualities of race remained unaltered because these qualities determined a nation’s unique characteristics.
Popovici used racial and Social Darwinist language to explain the cultivation of the Romanian national identity. Like Herrmann and Hunfalvy, Popovici also believed that each nation was a creation of nature. If the nation was like an organism, it must experience development and pass through stages of growth and decline. Some nations grow; others decline. Contrary to the Hungarian scholars, however, Popovici argued that the Hungarians were a declining race, while the Romanians were experiencing national maturity. He used these arguments to substantiate his critique of Magyarization and assimilation.
Popovici considered Magyarization and assimilation as projects of racial engineering. The Romanian nation, as an organic entity, had to respond to these projects. If Réz and Beöthy argued that less efficient races should submit to those races representing cultural and political superiority, such as the German and Magyar races in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Popovici supported the opposing argument.
For Popovici the historical rights of conquest invoked by Beöthy, for example, were the “laws of the past,” while the national aspirations of the Romanians were favored as the “eternal laws of mankind,” constantly “renewing their youth.” Openly rejecting Herrmann and Hunfalvy’s denunciations of the Romanians as “culturally immature,” Popovici stressed that the Romanians possessed a national identity empowered by their distinct racial characteristics.
By combining the idea of race with the language and symbols of nationalism, Popovici antagonized the relationship between the Romanians and the Magyars: unless the policies of assimilation and Magyarization were discarded, the two nations could not co-exist within the same state. From Popovici’s nationalist Darwinism it is evident that he was concerned with something more than just enunciating the importance of race. In fact, the discussion about racial degeneration provided Popovici’s argumentation with a powerful scientific rationale for his nationalist doctrine.
Popovici viewed Hungarian liberal ethnography as threatening to the idea of the Romanian nation as a racial unit integrated by a distinct culture. Like Réz, Popovivi viewed the nation in biological terms, and the nationalist struggles between the Romanians and the Magyars in Hungary were thus understood as struggles for survival. In this racial struggle, victory belonged to the race that was less “contaminated” by exogenous elements: “The Magyars are a Mongoloid race. They mix especially with the Jews, thus with the Semites. Above all they even want to absorb enormous masses of Indo-Germans! Even if the race differences were not that big, such a mixing, in these conditions, will inevitably lead to the degeneration of these races.”^[75] Not surprisingly, Popovici considered that assimilation was not a linguistic issue, but a racial problem. “In general,” he claimed, “assimilation is not that much about language, as it is about mixing the races.”^[76] The Hungarian idea of liberal assimilation was a national project whose aims were to prevent the Romanians from developing their own national identity. As such, Popovici continued, assimilation sanctioned a complete national conversion, one that eradicated the cultural and linguistic distinctions between the Romanians and the Hungarians.
Surprisingly, Popovici did not advocate racial purity as the prime criterion for national identity. Thus, “The observation made nowadays, and I believe it is founded, is that the systematic mixing of the blood of a people with heterogeneous races is as dangerous as the exaggerated purism. Each race needs, from time to time, refreshment of its blood or an infusion of new blood, in measured proportions. Such a discrete mixture with a relative race is even a condition of health and national prosperity; it is ennoblement.”^[77] Popovici admitted that ethnic assimilation was inevitable in the past and that miscegenation did, in fact, characterize all great civilizations. But that was no longer the case. In modern times, ethnic assimilation should be prevented: “Peoples discuss today the tendencies of assimilation. They oppose and combat them with the power of the passion characterizing racial struggle.”^[78] If the Hungarians were “to create a superior nation,” Popovici asserted, “massive racial crossing, blood mixing and ethnic promiscuity should be avoided.”^[79] Racial degeneracy became a constituent element, therefore, of Popovici’s refutation of Hungarian liberalism. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when nations fought each other in the struggle for existence, Magyarization and assimilation failed, concluded Popovici, and the reason for this failure was that Romanians could not be assimilated: like the Hungarians and the Germans, they, too, were a superior race.

CONCLUSIONS

Throughout this paper, I have argued that it is necessary to assess the relationship between scientific disciplines like ethnography and linguistics and national identity in order to understand to what extent racial arguments permeated political arguments about the nation, state, and empire. By connecting the theories of Darwin, Knox, Gobineau, Gumplowicz, and Jhering to racial ideas advocated by ethnographers, linguists, literary critics and political theorists in Hungary such as Antal Herrmann, Paul Hunfalvy, Zsolt Beöthy, Mihály Réz and Aurel C. Popovici, I hope to have shed some fresh light on both the multifaceted nature of the relationship between racial thinking, nationalism and politics and the general diffusion of these theories in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
Two general conclusions can be noted here. Between 1880 and 1918, debates about national ethnography and literature initiated by Herrmann, Hunfalvy and Beöthy were transformed into a scientific enterprise that, on the one hand, reasserted supposedly ancient Hungarian constitutional rights and, on the other hand, glorified the cultural superiority of the Hungarians over the non-Hungarians. Contrary to their Austrian counterparts, Hungarian ethnographers were preoccupied with establishing a scientific discipline which could be qualified both as scientific and “Hungarian.” It was during this process that nationalism intersected science resulting in a form of liberal ethnography which radical nationalists, like Réz and Popovici, found unattractive.
Secondly, the ethnographic, linguistic, literary and political arguments discussed in this paper were all predicated on the core assumption that it was the natural right of the Magyar race to rule the “Lands of the Crown of St Stephen” over the non-Hungarians. It was this assumption that Popovici hoped to refute by retorting to racial arguments. If Herrmann and Hunfalvy argued for peaceful co-existence, Réz and Popovici expressed their commitment to nationalist Darwinism and viewed, from opposing positions, nationalist conflicts as struggles for racial existence. In addition to cultural and historical arguments, the role of race in defining the nation thus grew in importance.
That much of the anthropological research pursued by ethnographers in Hungary was incongruent with the political and national agenda of the government became clear during the last years of the First World War, when racial and nationalist arguments were increasingly invoked by ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary to support their secession from Vienna and Budapest. As Tibor Frank remarked, “the Hungarian delegation at the peace negotiations at Versailles in 1919-1920, otherwise so well-prepared and erudite from an ethnic, historical, geographic, linguistic, and general scholarly point of view, lacked suitable scientifically valid data concerning the anthropology of Hungary and its political connotations. Hungarian anthropology thus proved to be unprepared for its particularly national tasks at a dramatic moment in history when other peoples or groups of peoples made good use of the results of anthropological research.”^[80] Indeed, other ethnic groups in Hungary were not unprepared. Shortly after the end of the war, in 1918, Aurel C. Popovici published his last book La Question Roumaine en Transylvanie et en Hongrie. His claims to a “Romanian Transylvania” were accompanied by numerous statistics and ethnographic examples, thus offering an alleged scientific validation to nationalist and political statements.^[81]
When we add this assumption to the growing and thriving historiography on the collapse of empires during and after the First World War, we begin to see just how seminal the relationship between race, politics and nationalist Darwinism in Hungary proved to be for the Habsburg Monarchy – an empire which was perhaps the most pre-eminent bulwark against ethnic conflicts and nationalist fragmentation that became the features of much of Central and Eastern Europe after 1918.