Going Their Own Way. Protestants’ Specific Models of Joining the Cultural Elite in 19th-century Hungary

Abstract

The figures and data unanimously demonstrate that Reformed protestants were significantly overrepresented in the Hungarian cultural elite by the last third of the 19^th century. Protestants, who had been under a threat of persecution throughout the 18^th century and were negatively discriminated against until the mid-19^th century, had developed different strategies for producing a new generation of the intellectual elite. We can distinguish three markedly different models here. Although the number of Protestants in Hungary was relatively low, they won outstanding social and cultural advancement thanks to several successful strategies and channels aiding promotion, which ran parallel but were also independent of one another. Perhaps it was the segmentation of the denominations and the power of the opportunities offered by competing alternatives that partly account for the successful process of producing a Protestant elite. However, the question remains how, and why, in all three cases isolation and going their own way could produce such significant results, and whether there are any common traits that made autonomous development so organic in all of the three cultural areas? Such a common characteristic may be a phenomenon of the Pfarrhaus, that is, the development of clerical and professorial dynasties in all three cases. The three communities all strove for endogamy, thereby accumulating, passing on and preserving private cultural and social capital through several generations. Another shared element may be participation in peregrinations, and, finally, demanding that professors to be active in publishing (as scholars, textbook writers, publicists and newspaper editors). It was these criteria and the persistent deliberateness with which they met them that allowed them to go their own way, eventually arriving at the highly significant meeting points of cultural discourse.