CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Köllő, István Zsolt |
|---|---|
| Title | LIBERAL CIVIC PATRIOTISM AND THE NATIONALITY QUESTION IN HUNGARIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT (1849-61) |
| Summary | The clash of the various nationalisms during 1848-49 in the Habsburg Empire inspired both the supporters of centralism and federalism to search for new political solutions. The Kremsier Compromise, in which Austro-Slav ethnic federalism and Austro-German centralism asymmetrically blended, with the preeminence of the latter principle, was one way to follow. But in the Hungarian context both federalism and centralism were went beyond, or at least that was the promise which civic patriotism held out. The remarkable similarity of the post-’48 ideas of Lajos Kossuth and József Eötvös on the nationality question was due to the common approach of civic patriotism and the goal of preserving Hungarian historical statehood. They shared a strong faith in the civilizatory-progressive mission of Hungarian statehood, modeled on the similar German Kulturmission. Major differences between them were that Eötvös’ bid was to preserve not just Hungarian historical statehood, but historical statehood in general, as he deemed the further existence of it necessary for progress and liberty to flourish, whereas Kossuth’s post-‘49 program was the destruction of the ‘reactionary and unredeemable’ Habsburg Empire and its replacement with a progressive Danubian Confederation of the small nations (Romanians, Serbs, Hungarians, Croats), in which all of the member states would be internally organized according to civic patriotic or at least liberal nationalist principles. For Eötvös (and for the majority of the Hungarian political elite) this idea equaled to a blasphemy, a monster, an unholy mix of mostly underdeveloped nations and would-be nations, destroying the given infrastructure of progress and chocking Hungary in the abyss of oriental darkness and potential ethnic fragmentation. |
| Supervisor | Gerő, András; Trencsényi, Balázs |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/kollo_istvan.pdf |
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