A magyar nemzetiségi statisztika a „zsidó térfoglalásig” és az „őrségváltásig”

Abstract

Abstract This is an overview of the development of the statistical literature concerning the situation of the Jewish population in the country. Serious scholarly attention was focused on the problem area since the early 19th century (starting with Elek Fényes, the founding father of modern statistics in Hungary), just like in the whole multi-ethnic Habsburg Monarchy, due also to the fact that Hungary was the unique would-be nation state without ethnic and/or denominational majority proper in Europe. The intensity of immigration till 1848, later the high natural growth, the accelerated modernization and Magyarization of the Jewish population continued to maintain this interest, conducive to statistics on population movements, education, religion, social stratification, etc. of quite exceptional quality and practically without anti-Semitic comments till the end of the Dual Monarchy. This was not the case of privately published statistical references, following the exacerbation of anti-Jewish public discourse, especially during the First World War. 1919 represents an epochal change in this respect, too. The last volume of the data presentation of the 1910 census, edited in 1920 by Alajos Kovács, various tables opposing globally Jews and non Jews, resorted already to the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the ‘Christian Course regime’. The author, a notorious ‘protector of the Hungarian race’ published in private edition the first general overview of ‘the conquest of social space’ of Jewry in Hungary (1922), not much before becoming the head of the Central Statistical Bureau (1924–1936). Henceforth topics of the mounting right extremism, like the ‘Jewish conquest of space’, the ‘Jewish overweight and its dangers’, ‘the changing of the guard’ entered into the intellectual arsenal of state statistics. Still this did not turn into a dominant trend, at least not before the first anti-Jewish law (1938), especially not in publications of the Budapest Bureau of Statistics, thanks probably to its director Lajos Illyefalvy. Finally the balance sheet of the Nazification process is a dual one. On the one hand, there was a multiplication of anti-Jewish data collections and interpretations. On the other hand, several experts maintained their scholarly objectivity and credibility till the end. Keywords: statistics, anti-Semitism, scholarly neutrality, prejudiced scholarship