Historical Studies on Central Europe

Introduction

Dániel Bárth — 2023-12-18

The MTA-ELTE Lendület (“Momentum”) Historical Folkloristics Research Group organized a separate panel at the 16th Congress of SIEF (Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore), the world’s largest ethnological and folklore organization, which took place in Brno, Czech Republic, in June 2023.

Vampires, Revenant Souls, and Objects of Healing

Tomáš Malý — 2023-12-18

This study searches for the characteristic features of religious healing in three phenomena of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: veneration of miraculous images, apparitions from Purgatory, and vampire incidences. All the examples originate from the Czech lands, and all were in some way related to the Catholic renewal or strengthening the Catholic faith in this region. Individual cases have been analyzed with regard to the social relevance of religious remedies, their connection to social problems, and the interaction between the actors involved. The authors draw attention to the link between physical and mental healing and show the key role of local spiritual authorities, especially members of religious orders and parish priests, in spreading practices of spiritual healing. The study reveals that, however theologically sensitive they might have been, the practices analyzed were apparently encouraged by the clergy and the social elites in the local communities, therefore they can hardly be associated only with the so-called popular piety of the rural folk.

Religious Services or the Care of Souls in Reports on Clerics at the Moravian and Silesian Estates Belonging to the Prince of Liechtenstein from the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

Pavel Pumpr — 2023-12-18

The reform of the Catholic clergy initiated by the Council of Trent emphasized the importance of the practical exercise of the care of souls (cura animarum). The ideal priest should, following the example of Christ—the Good Shepherd, take responsible care of his ‘sheep’—the parishioners. The paper focuses on how the parish clergy performed pastoral care, based on the analysis of reports written on clerics working in the 1760s in ten Moravian and Silesian estates of the Prince of Liechtenstein. These reports prepared by the Prince’s officials mostly contain an evaluation of the performance of the pastoral care by the given cleric. They thus provide an interesting insight into the religious services offered by the lower clergy from the perspective of the owner of the estate, who was also the patron of the local parishes. They show that the Prince of Liechtenstein as the patron, together with his officials, supervised how the clerics provided for the spiritual needs of his subjects and furthermore through the exercise of the right of patronage he helped to provide his subjects with proper pastoral care.

Content

2023-12-18

Roman Religion in the Danubian Provinces: Space Sacralisation and Religious Communication during the Principate (1st–3rd Century AD). By Csaba Szabó.

Tünde Vágási — 2023-12-18

The Late Medieval Cult of the Saints. Universal Developments within Local Contexts. By Carmen Florea.

Dorottya Uhrin — 2023-12-18

Bishop John Vitez and Early Renaissance Central Europe: The Humanist Kingmaker. By Tomislav Matić.

Kornél Illés — 2023-12-18

“Nekünk nincsenek gyarmataink és hódítási szándékaink.” Magyar részvétel a Monarchia gyarmatosítási törekvéseiben a Balkánon (1867–1914) [“We have Neither Colonies, nor Ambitions to Conquer.” Hungarian Participation in the Colonisation Efforts of the Monarchy (1867–1914)]. By Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics.

Miklós Tömöry — 2023-12-18

Histoire de la nation hongroise: Des premiers Magyars à Viktor Orbán. By Catherine Horel.

Gergely Romsics — 2023-12-18

Understanding Unconventional Medicine. Social Sciences on Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Therapies in Slovakia. By Ivan Souček and Roman Hofreiter.

Gabriella Vámos — 2023-12-18

Die Renaissance der ruralen Architektur. Fünf Beiträge zu traditional vernakularen Hausformen im östlichen Europa. Edited by Michael Prosser-Schell and Maria Erb.

Bence Ament-Kovács — 2023-12-18

Wilson and the Segregation of the Eastern European ‘Races’

Péter Csunderlik — 2023-12-18

Rival Byzantiums: Empire and Identity in Southeastern Europe. By Diana Mishkova.

John R. Lampe — 2023-12-18

State Socialism in Eastern Europe. History, Theory, Anti-Capitalist Alternatives. Edited by Eszter Bartha, Tamás Krausz, and Bálint Mezei.

Róbert Takács — 2023-12-18

Being a Historian of Central Europe

2023-12-18

The main goal of Historical Studies on Central Europe is to provide an interdisciplinary and international platform for disseminating new findings on Central Europe and enhancing the dialog on it. In this spirit, the editors have decided to launch a series asking prominent scholars of the region: their personal motivations for choosing Central Europe as their field; their view on central questions of methodology, trends, and definition, as well as their opinion on the status of the field.

Miroslav Hroch is professor emeritus at Charles University (Prague), where he founded a Seminar in Comparative History in 1994. He wrote pioneering comparative works on the question of nation formation, most notably Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (1985; originally published in German in 1968). With his comparative researches on national movements, Professor Hroch earned international recognition, in 1997 he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, Sweden. His other significant books include In the National Interest. Demands and Goals of European National Movements of the Nineteenth Century: a Comparative Perspective (2000); European Nations. Explaining their Formation (2015, originally published in German in 2005).

The World Tree of the Conquering Hungarians in the Light of Scholarly Illusions

Éva Pócs — 2023-12-18

In my paper I analyze the case of the supposed shamanistic ‘world tree’ of the conquering Hungarians: I show how this erroneous scientific construction came into being through the coming together of the mutually reinforcing mistakes of Hungarian folkloristics, linguistics, and archaeology; how manifestations of the spurious ideas of lay pseudo-science got mixed in with scientific discourse, and how they influenced the course of ‘professional’ scientific inquiry.
My analysis sheds light on the most flagrant methodological mistakes that lead to the mistaken construct: a) the gaining ground of ideological influences from outside ‘pure’ scientific consid-erations (in our case features symbolizing Hungarian identity that set it apart from Europeans: the quest for ancient Hungarian shamanism); b) an inverse research attitude of selectively looking for evidence to prove the researcher’s preconceptions; c) the effects of a deferential research attitude which considers one or another ‘great’ researcher infallible and their results irrefutable, which short circuits further research on a topic.
My paper has three parts: the first one deals with the emergence of the construct, the second with the errors of the construct created by highly respected scholars (Gyula Sebestyén, Géza Róheim, Sándor Solymossy, Vilmos Diószegi) and its Hungarian and international reception, while in the third part, I describe the processes of the construct’s deconstruction and its parallelly occurring revival.
I come to the conclusion that the world tree and the related rites connected to the initiation of shamans most likely did not exist in the worldview and ritual practices of the conquering Hungarians and that in light of the most recent research results they seem to be part of an illusionary research construct which came about through the interplay of the strivings of ethnographers, archaeologists, linguists and amateurs who started out from a certain set of preconceptions.

The Mongol Invasion of Hungary in Its Eurasian Context

József Laszlovszky — 2023-12-18

This report gives an account of the historiography of the Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241–1242, and the ongoing research of the project “The Mongol Invasion of Hungary in its Eurasian Context.” The research has been carried out by an interdisciplinary team comprising representatives of diverse academic institutions and fields. The primary objective of the project was to reassess existing scholarship by comparing it with the findings of the project team members, ultimately generating new scholarly insights. The team members concentrated on various aspects, including archaeology, military history, and the short- and long-term impacts of the Mongol military invasions in the mid-thirteenth century.

The First V4 Summer School in Economic History, Prague, 2023

Antonie Doležalová — 2023-12-18

In the last week of August 2023 (27 Augustus – 2 September), the first V4 Summer School in Economic History was held in Prague. It was organized by the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and the University of Warsaw. The event was financially supported by the Visegrad Fund.
The long-term target of the Ph.D. Summer School in Economic History was to incorporate the V4 historiographies of economic history into international networks. It intended to encourage the young generation of economic historians to enter the international scene and participate in an open academic discussion.

Competing Frameworks of Interpreting Modernity in East Central Europe

Gergely Romsics — 2023-12-18

Nation Building and Religion

Dávid Turbucz — 2023-12-18

The leader cult built up around Miklós Horthy, the Regent of Hungary between 1920 and 1944, was one of the leader cults that appeared after World War I as a response to the critical social and political conditions. According to the main message of Horthy’s selectively constructed image, he was the only one who could achieve the national goals and restore the lost national glory. In my paper, I analyze religion, primarily Christianity, as a domain from which the cult-makers selected, (mis)used, and manipulated symbols, elements, and concepts, such as ‘resurrection’, ‘rebirth’, ‘salvation’, ‘the Passion of the Christ’, ‘selectness’, ‘the promised land’, and references to the will of divine providence for justifying the leadership of Horthy. Religious symbols also shaped and strengthened the national identity. It is shown that the traditional churches, because of the cooperation between them and the state, made a significant contribution to strengthening the leader’s legitimacy in this way. This is the reason why the term ‘politicized religion’, introduced by Juan J. Linz, seems appropriate in this context. Naturally, this was a wider phenomenon in Hungary, but the Horthy cult is its striking example.

Depoliticizing the Modern Nation

Lucija Balikić — 2023-12-18

Taking the case of the interwar Yugoslav Sokol (Sokol Kraljevine Jugoslavije), this article examines the complex relationship between the discourses of organic nationhood and political socialization in what was the largest voluntary association in the country. While Sokol typically projected a vision of itself as an apolitical entity—as it claimed to represent the organic national body—this article will explore the dynamics, as well as contradictions, between such discourses and the socio-political reality they aimed to describe and eventually alter in their pursuit of improving the ‘national body.’
In conversation with scholarship on the conceptual history of modern East Central European nationalisms, including the social history of ideas and movements and political socialization more specifically, this article provides insight into the contextual, conceptual history of nationhood by focusing on selected thinkers engaged in Sokol, against the backdrop of particular mass practices and modes of political socialization in the organization. The tension between the involvement of the masses in the allegedly apolitical formations and the reality of subjecting them to political socialization en masse provides the central axis around which the argument is organized. The article concludes that their concept of nationhood was intimately intertwined with that of democracy and simultaneously posited against (party) politics and statism. Moreover, it demonstrates that Sokol was rooted in notions of civilizational hierarchies and directly linked to producing modern political subjects for the new Yugoslav state by means of the gymnastic and educational practices they promoted and conducted.

The Concept of the Serbian Peasant Cooperative State

Aleksandar Stojanovic — 2023-12-18

The paper introduces and interprets the corporatist plan of organizing and establishing the ‘Serbian Peasant Cooperative State,’ which was developed by the collaborationist authorities in Serbia during World War II. Born out of deep disillusionment with interwar parliamentarism and under the influence of the German occupation system in Serbia, this unrealized concept of state organization was an ultra-conservative response to the political conditions in occupied Serbia, as well as one of the aspects of its planned integration into Hitler’s new imperial order founded on the premise of Nazi hegemony and known as ‘New Europe.’ The present analysis is based on the limited number of surviving primary historical sources that testify to the genesis and character of the draft proposal. To provide context for interpreting the plan and the thinking behind it, the paper extends the chronological framework to the entire interwar period.