Eötvös József Gimnázium

1854 to today

After my post yesterday about Opapa’s high school, my mom sent me several photos from 1990, when my grandparents visited Budapest with their two sons and daugher-in-laws. My grandparents visited their old schools, including Eötvös Jószef Gimnázium, and told their sons and daughters-in-law about their upbringing in Budapest.

It was a delight to see these photos, and in particular, I notice how happy Opapa looks in them. I want to share the photos here, along with a little more information about the history of the school itself.

Opapa visits his high school, Eötvös József Gimnázium, in 1990

I find it fascinating to juxtapose pictures of places across time, so here are two more photos of the same building — Eötvös Gimnázium — the first from the 1850/60s, and the second from 2017:

Eötvös József Gimnázium, in the 1850s/60s, and today.

The building is the same, but instead of horses and carriages, we can see cars, a do-not-enter sign, and people in jeans. The Hungarian flag hangs out front today, but in the 1850s, much of the instruction would have been in German. Also, compare the cars in the contemporary photo to the one from 1990, which was just after the fall of the USSR.

The school itself has a fascinating history that sheds light on the history of education and religion in Hungary. When it was founded in 1854, Eötvös Gimnázium was the first secular school in Hungary, meaning that it was not affiliated with a particular religion. They still had religion classes, as I described in my last post, but it had a student body of diverse religious backgrounds.

The school itself was named after József Eötvös, the Minister of Religion and Education in Hungary during 1848, and then again from 1866 until his death in 1871. Eötvös was a 19th century liberal and reformer, and significantly, he was a proponent of what the Hungarians called Zsidók Emancipatiója, or “Jewish emancipation,” which supported full citizenship rights for Jews.¹ He also served as the chairman of the school board beginning in 1861.

In its first years, the major controversy at the school was about language: the school was modeled on a German-language “Realschule,” and there were conflicts about how much the instruction should be in German as opposed to Hungarian. In 1861, Eötvös, as head of the school committee, took a poll of students regarding the instructional language. The majority preferred Hungarian, so soon thereafter, all instructors who could not teach in Hungarian were dismissed. (This process — what’s often called Hungarianization, or “Magyarization,” is something I’ll be returning to in the future, since it’s key to understanding Hungary in the 19th and 20th centuries.)

By the time Opapa attended the school in the 1930s, it excelled in Hungarian literature and history, and notably, it was the first school in Hungary that had film studies. German was taught as a second language, along with French, but it was no longer a primary instructional language.

Opapa’s great love at school was Hungarian folklore and literature. The school yearbook for 1936-7 reports that György Gerbner gave “outstanding performances” for the Literature Youth Club on several occasions. On December 6, 1936, his classmate Gál Endre read “two short stories, written by Gerbner György.” On January 16, Opapa read his own short story to the Literature Club, and on February 6, he read a “folktale…from his own collection,” presumably collected during his stay in northern Hungary with the Palóc. He also performed a “Palóc wedding” on April 16, 1937, and gave a “talk about today’s language reform.” As a member of the Geography-History Club, he also gave a presentation about the “Monuments and Sculptures in the life of Budapest.”

Activities of the Literature Youth Club’s activities, Eötvös Gimnázium, 1936-7

I wonder if Opapa was recalling any of these performances when he visited his old classroom in 1990. Here he is, smiling broadly, inside the Eötvös Gimnázium, along with my father and grandmother:

***

Nuts to crack:

• For those who remember Opapa talking about his high school, what did he say?

• Do we have any of his old school projects?

1. In Hungary, Jewish emancipation was declared in 1849, but repealed by the Habsburgs, after a Hungarian military defeat. Jewish emancipation was reinstated in 1867, when Austria-Hungary was re-organized as a dual monarchy.