State Change and Confessional Forming. The Churches and the German Population in Czechoslovakia after 1918
This study analyses how the political change after 1918 influenced the conditions of churches in relation to ethnic affiliations. It shows, with an emphasis on the Germans in Czechoslovakia, how activities of foreign confessional groups altered the terms in the examined churches. The paper contains an overview that should be followed by further detailed analyses of the relation between confessional and ethnic minorities in the interwar period.
„Selbständige Zipser Republik”. The Partial Movement of Germans of the Szepes Region in Autumn 1918
The self-determination of the Germans in the Szepes (today Spiš) region in autumn 1918 was partly built upon the identity of local Germans and Hungarians (assimilated Germans and Jews). Independence had not been formulated as a possible solution for a very long time. The actions against Czechoslovak goals started in Késmárk (today Kežmarok), but the county, the cities with orderly councils, and the municipalities also joined them. The leadership of the county and the city too insisted on belonging to Hungary to the very last moment. In consequence of the defeat in war, the individual self-determinations accentuated contrapositions between the city and the countryside. The German, Hungarian or Slovak intellectuals living in the cities had developed severe hostility toward the rural Slovak population. For this reason, the German intelligentsia of Szepes endeavoured to win or enlighten the rural Slovaks with a serious propaganda. The town of Késmárk insisted on the Hungarian state until it could, but, sensing the change of conditions, the loss of hope, the closeness of the Polish and Czechoslovak troops, they tried to achieve better and more favourable conditions for the city´s population and the Zipsers rather by playing off the occupants against each other, and by negotiating with them. The Károlyi Government with Oszkár Jászi, and the leadership of the city of Késmárk considered the military occupation of some parts of the country by the new states for temporary and lasting only until the peace conference.
The First Vienna Award in the Chronicles of Some Returning Municipalities in the Zemplén Region
The study presents municipal commemorative books established under the Czechoslovak Government Decree No. 169 dated 17 November, 1932, and examines whether these can be used in research of municipalities in the former Czechoslovakia. After a short presentation of twenty-four commemorative books, and by taking a closer look at seven of them—Battyán (Boťany), Bodrogszerdahely (Streda nad Bodrogom), Boly (Boľ), Királyhelmec (Kráľovský Chlmec), Nagytoronya (Veľká Tŕňa), Rad (Rad), Zemplén (Zemplín)—we try to get an insight into the local reception of the 1938 border arbitrations, as the chronicler recorded them. The study mainly presents and provides sources, but it attempts to explain and clarify certain concepts as well.
Ideology, Defencelessness and Power Control in the Transylvanian Literary and Cultural Policy of the Last Decades
Regarding the characteristics of literary discourse and cultural policy of the Post-World War II years, it can be clearly stated that the newly established communist power in Romania, already in the second half of the 1940s, gained control over all manifestations of community life, and it regulated all aspects of culture and arts, banned, abolished or restructured all forums having some independence; it completely revised the literary and artistic canon, and, at the same time, sought to develop a new ideological/political space that would serve its own interests only. This paper aims to present the ideological/political and aesthetic/poetic tendencies determining Transylvanian Hungarian literature and cultural policy from the mid-’40s until the present day.
Steampunks – In the Wake of the Hungarian Steampunk Subculture
At the focus of this study stands the Hungarian steampunk subculture. In the preparatory phase, it explores the term of subculture from several aspects, then, while looking at the tendencies of the research of subcultures in Hungary, it determines the positions of its own investigation. The work is divided into three major parts. The first one focuses on and integrates the findings of the book by Jeff VanderMeer and S. J. Chambers entitled The Steampunk Bible, which, especially in its chapter on the steampunk subculture, details on all manifestations of the steampunk phenomenon. The second phase, based on available information from online fora, opens up a horizon on the activities of the Hungarian Steampunk Community, the local projection of the subculture. Finally, there are three short interviews included in the paper, in which we ask the illustrious figures of the community, above all, about what it means for them to be a steampunk. In the individual subsections we will also cover other interesting curiosities, but strictly moving to the end within inter-artistic space, as the steampunks are equally present in fine arts, fashion, music, cinematography, and literary fiction as well.
