Different Approaches to Economic and Social Changes: New Research Issues, Sources and Results

This series was launched in 2021 by the Working Group of Economic and Social History of the Pécs Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to present research conducted within its framework. The foreign language edition is meant to be a contribution to the internationalization of research made in Hungary. The Working Group has made every effort since the publication of the first two volumes to allow its members, and also their Ph.D. students, to publish their findings more easily and in larger volume, providing at the same time an opportunity for other professionals in the region of South Transdanubia to publish their researches. The majority of the studies in this book, similarly to the first volume of the series, are about the history of the region, but some of the papers go beyond this theme. The diversity of the papers created an inspiring environment for the authors, which in turn has greatly stimulated the already existing professional cooperation among them. Both the editors and the authors find it very important to popularise the economic and social history of the region as broadly as possible, in line with the ambitions of the Pécs Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In addition, this book also promotes the cooperation among generations of researchers; it is not only the young that enjoy the support of their senior colleagues but the ideas and momentum of the younger generation also keep the activity of the Working Group at a high level. It is due to the well-functioning generational discussions, among other things, that several young researchers earned their Ph.D. degree in 2021. The framework of the studies in the broader sense is the economic and social history of Hungary and Europe in the 18th – 20th centuries. The papers in this volume also provide information about the development and current phases of the different pieces of research. Several papers are sequels to publications released in 2021 from a chronological or thematic aspect, however the book contains brand new topics as well. Great significance is attributed to the fact that several renowned international members of the research network of the Working Group were also persuaded to publish. The results of some ongoing Ph.D. research are also presented. The high number of young authors is a proof that the professional interest in economic and social history is not decreasing at all. We do hope that this book will contribute to the maintenance of this trend.

Codex Fragments Detached from Incunabula in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

This article presents the results of a study of 32 manuscript fragments detached from incunables in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The incunables themselves were imported into Hungary between the end of the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Distant Reading of the Metadata of the Digitized Hungarian Charm Corpus

Based on Éva Pócs’ manual charm index an online database was created for Hungarian verbal charms within the East–West Research Group at the Institute of Ethnology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest), between 2013 and 2018. The main goal was to create a multidimensional digital database. Digital text preparation would open the gates to new interpretations and analyses, which would bring us closer to understanding the compound and complex phenomena of charms. In the Digital Database of Hungarian Verbal Charms users can search by various metadata, like date and place of collection/recording, name of collector/scribe, informant, type of source, function of the charm, rites/gestures, language of the text, keywords etc. This paper focuses on how different new arrangements and distant reading of the corpora can reshape our knowledge about the Hungarian verbal charms.

The Hungarian Sebeok

It was never a secret that Thomas A. Sebeok was born in Hungary, and he always referred to his Hungarian background. He emigrated from Hungary (1936) to England and later (1937) to the United States, where he Americanized his family name, Sebők. As a scholar, he started Finno-Ugric studies (not only in Hungarian, but also in Cheremis). Sebeok continued as a general linguist, and then as a communication expert. From the 1960s, he became a semiotician, a key figure in building an international semiotic network. Sebeok often visited Hungary in connection with his research activities. He was a foreign member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and became Honorary Professor at Loránd Eötvöspapers University in Budapest. Such was the respect he garnered that an international congress was organized in Budapest in honor of his 70th birthday, and his papers and books were also translated into Hungarian. From his very wide range of interests, I mention here only the Hungarian context of studying animal signs. Prolific writer, excellent organizer, and eloquent speaker, Sebeok is unforgettable as a world-renowned person – with many ties to his home culture, which he referred to as his “Hungarian frame.”

The Collaborative Folktale Project of a Family: The Synoptic Critical Edition of a 19th-Century Hungarian Folktale and Riddle Collection

In 1862, a volume of tales was published under the title Eredeti népmesék (‘Original Folktales’) by László Arany, the then 18-year-old son of János Arany, the national poet of the period. Eredeti népmesék has been classified by folkloristics as the first canonical folktale collection in Hungary. Besides scholarly recognition, it has also become one of the most popular folktale collections of the past one and a half century, as selected tales from this collection have been continuously republished in schoolbooks and anthologies and have become a regular element in children's literature. After the Second World War, in the basement of the main building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, a huge pile of manuscripts had been found in very poor condition, consisting of, among others, various 19th-century folklore collections. In the 1960s, it was discovered that a part of these manuscripts was identical to the texts published in Eredeti népmesék. The vast majority of the manuscript tales had been recorded by the family members of János Arany, namely, his young daughter (Julianna Arany) and his wife (Julianna Ercsey), in the period between 1850 and 1862, presumably for family use. A comparison of the manuscript texts with their published versions revealed that in the editing process, László Arany significantly reworked the texts of the manuscript tales, implementing significant stylistic modifications. This article reports on the research project underlying the synoptic critical edition of the manuscript and published tales of the Arany family (2018). In the first part, the author presents the manuscript and published tales and their place in the history of Hungarian folkloristics, followed by an introduction of the members of the Arany family with an emphasis on their socio-cultural background, and concluding with a discussion of the roles they played in this collaborative folktale project as collectors, editors, copy editors, and theoreticians. The second part is a summary of the textological concept and techniques applied in the course of the development of the synoptic critical edition.

The first ‘Soviet type’ research institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and its Stalin Prize-awarded director, Imre Szörényi

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS, established in 1825), similar to the academies of the old Soviet bloc, ran a research network from 1950 until 2019 when it was detached from the Academy. The first research institute of the HAS was the Institute of Biochemistry, which started its operation in 1950. Its first director was Imre Szörényi (1905–1959) who lived in emigration in Kiev until he was called back to Hungary in 1950 by the Secretariat of the Hungarian Workers Party. Initially, for a few years research in the Institute was partly influenced by Lepeshinskaya's ‘New Cell Theory’ and Szörényi himself became the chair of the ‘Living Protein’ Committee of the HAS. He returned for more than two years to Kiev where he received a shared Stalin Prize in 1952 for the development of the antibiotic, Microcid. After his final return to Hungary in 1953, he was able to shape the characteristic image of the Institute of Biochemistry, making it one of the leading workshops of Hungarian biochemistry. From 1956 onwards, ideological considerations no longer interfered with the choice of research topics. The relationship between the chemical structure and the specific biological function of enzymes became the main profile of the Institute. In spite of his untimely death, Szörényi exerted a long-lasting influence on Hungarian biochemistry through his disciples.

‘Unfettered Freedom’ Revisited: Hungarian Historical Journals between 1989 and 2018

In his 1992 article, ‘Today, Freedom is Unfettered in Hungary,’ Columbia University history professor István Deák argued that after 1989 Hungarian historical research enjoyed ‘unfettered freedom. Deák gleefully listed the growing English literature on Hungarian history and hailed the ‘step-by step dismantling of the Marxist-Leninist edifice in historiography’ that he associated with the Institute of History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) under the leadership of György Ránki (1930–88). In this article he argued that the dismantling of communist historiography had started well before 1989. Besides celebrating the establishment of the popular science-oriented historical journal, History (História) (founded in 1979) and new institutions such as the Európa Intézet – Europa Institute (founded in 1990) or the Central European University (CEU) (founded in 1991) as turning points in Hungarian historical research, Deák listed the emergence of the question of minorities and Transylvania; anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; as well as the 1956 revolution. It is very true that these topics were addressed by prominent members of the Hungarian democratic opposition who were publishing in samizdat publications: among them János M. Rainer, the director of the 1956 Institute after 1989, who wrote about 1956. This list of research topics implies that other topics than these listed before had been free to research and were not at all political. This logic interiorised and duplicated the logic of communist science policy and refused to acknowledge other ideological interventions, including his own, while also insisting on the ‘objectivity’ of science. Lastly, Deák concluded that ‘there exists a small possibility that the past may be rewritten again, in an ultra-conservative and xenophobic vein. This is, however, only a speculation.’ Twenty years later Ignác Romsics, the doyen of Hungarian historiography, re-stated Deák's claim, arguing that there are no more ideological barriers for historical research. However, in his 2011 article Romsics strictly separated professional historical research as such from ‘dilettantish or propaganda-oriented interpretations of the past, which leave aside professional criteria and feed susceptible readers – and there are always many – with fraudulent and self-deceiving myths’. He thereby hinted at a new threat to the historical profession posed by new and ideologically driven forces. The question of where these ‘dilettantish or propaganda-oriented’ historians are coming from has not been asked as it would pose a painful question about personal and institutional continuity. Those historians who have become the poster boys of the illiberal memory politics had not only been members of the communist party, they also received all necessary professional titles and degrees within the professional community of historians.

A jogtalanság mint a büntetendő cselekmény ismérve – az önvezető járművekkel kapcsolatos büntetőjogi problémák Finkey Ferenc akadémiai székfoglaló beszédének tükrében

Ferenc Finkey gave his inauguration speech at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, entitled Injustice as a Criterion of Punishable Acts. This inauguration speech can also be paralleled with problems today such as the issue of criminal liability for self-driving vehicles. In the case of offences caused by self-driving vehicles, the issue of illegality depends on the degree of automation. For vehicles with higher automation, it is already questionable who is responsible for the accident at all (the manufacturer, the programmer, the owner/operator, the user, or the car as a digital person), and the issue of injustice may vary depending on this. According to Finkey, it is not necessary to define the concept of injustice in the Criminal Code. At the same time, it states that lawful action is not punishable, and this should be the guiding principle in determining criminal liability for self-driving vehicles.