Tiszaeszlár affair
The Tiszaeszlár affair was a ritual murder trial in northeastern Hungary that lasted from 1882 to 1883 and ended with the acquittal of the Jewish defendants , the culmination of early political anti-Semitism in Hungary and the cause of massive agitation.
The missing girl
On April 1, 1882, the fourteen-year-old Christian peasant girl Eszter Solymosi (also Solymosy) disappeared without a trace in the community of Tiszaeszlár (in German at that time mainly Tisza-Eszlár was written). Rumors soon emerged that Eszter had fallen victim to a ritual murder on the occasion of the Jewish Passover festival . These rumors were promoted by the anti-Semitic politicians and members of parliament Géza Ónody and Gyözö Istóczy (who had advocated the forced emigration of Jews to Palestine as early as 1878 ). Her mother filed a complaint with the local court in early May.
Because of these allegations, the authorities failed to extend the investigation beyond the local synagogue. Two months later, a rotting girl's body was rescued from the river by passing raftsmen. She was identified as Eszter Solymosi from her clothing. The body showed no signs of injury and it was evident that the drowning had occurred.
Such an outcome was not in the interests of those who had started the affair. It was claimed that the drowned woman was not the missing maid, but a corpse stolen from the hospital, dressed in Eszter Solymosi's clothes and then thrown into the river.
Although this hypothesis could be refuted by the Viennese forensic doctor Eduard von Hofmann , a detailed indictment was drawn up, the allegations of which were based on the statements of the five-year-old and fourteen-year-old sons of the Jewish Scharf family. Especially the detailed statements of fourteen-year-old Móric seemed to have come about through compulsion.
The case caused a sensation in Hungary, with countless anti-Semitic tracts taking the allegations as a given. On the other hand, the Hungarian national hero Lajos Kossuth , who lives in exile in Turin , spoke out clearly against the ritual murder hysteria. The aristocratic upper class of Hungary was more on the side of the accused because of the dubious basis of the trial. The process dragged on, the agitation spread across the entire country. It was not until August 3, 1883 that all of the accused were acquitted.
The historical context
The Tiszaeszlár affair, like about 30 similar cases in the Danube monarchy , can be seen as a phenomenon of mass hysteria and a battle of retreat of traditional Christian anti-Semitism and its ritual murder legends against a more progressive and rationally acting liberal judiciary. (Only in the case of the Jewish journeyman shoemaker Leopold Hilsner was sentenced at the turn of the century, regardless of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk's commitment .) In Hungary, it was above all the liberal and nationally-minded upper classes who made the emancipating Judaism an offer of integration was also widely accepted. It is no coincidence that MP Károly Eötvös (1842–1916) appeared as one of the defenders of the defendants from Tiszaeszlár. Of course, the affair also demonstrates the enormous extent of anti-minority fear and defenses that were only temporarily concealed by the integration progress of the 19th century, but in some cases even actually triggered. Győző Istóczy, a West Hungarian petty aristocrat who rejected the “fragmentation” of society through liberalism as well as the change of Judaism from a “closed caste” to an economically dominant class, took the Tiszaeszlár affair as an opportunity, in October 1883 his anti-Semitic party to found, which in the Hungarian parliamentary elections of this year (with unequal voting rights) was able to provide 17 seats and was only pushed back in the mid-1890s in favor of the Catholic People's Party ( Katolikus Néppárt , with a similar anti-Semitic-anti-liberal thrust). The Tiszaeszlár affair thus became the link between traditional and modern anti-Semitism in Hungary - the latter a phenomenon that was to break out again after the breakup of the country at the end of the First World War .
Edits
The German writer Arnold Zweig ( Ritual Murder in Hungary , 1915) and the Hungarian writer Gyula Krúdy ( A tiszaeszlári Solymosi Eszter , 1931) made the material the basis of historical novels. In the 1930s, the play The Trial without End was created. The case of Tisza Eszlar by Géza Herczeg and Heinz Herald . After the full extent of the Holocaust became known , US writer Noel Langley wrote an adaptation for the Anglo-American theater based on Herczeg / Herald's template ( The burning bush , 1947). The affair of Tiszaeszlár is the subject of the Austrian feature film The Trial (1948) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst based on the novel Trial of Death and Life by Rudolf Brunngraber , who also wrote the screenplay for the film. In the same year, the American feature film The Vicious Circle by W. Lee Wilder , which was based on Herczeg / Herald's template, was released.
When Herczeg / Heralds Schauspiel Der Prozess ohne Ende was played as The Burning Bush at the New York President Theater in December 1949, following Wilder's film , it was said that the director developed the play into a 'theater as a tribunal' at which the audience participated. The message of the play was unforgettable: A nation condemns itself if it does not speak out for those who are wronged. ”In the following decades the Tiszaeszlár affair was the subject of several Hungarian films: Verzió (1979) based on Gyula Krúdy von Miklós Erdély and Tutajosok (1990) by Judit Elek and Péter Nádas . The Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó staged an adaptation of Krúdy's novel at the Hanover Theater in September 2010 .
literature
- Edith Stern: The Glorious Victory of Truth: The Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial 1882–83. A Historical Legal Medical Research . Jerusalem / Rubin Massachusetts, 1998
- Rolf Fischer: Development stages of anti-Semitism in Hungary 1867-1939. The destruction of the Magyar-Jewish symbiosis. , Oldenbourg, Munich 1988 ISBN 3-486-54731-3
- Albert Lichtblau : The debates about the ritual murder accusations in the Austrian House of Representatives at the end of the 19th century , in: Rainer Erb (Hrsg.): Die Legende vom Ritualmord. On the history of the blood charge against Jews , Berlin 1993, pp. 267–292, here pp. 267–270
- Andrew Handler: An Early Blueprint for Zionism: Gyozo Istoczy ’s Political Anti-semitism . Boulder, Colorado, 1989
- Judit Kubinszky: Politikai antiszemitizmus Magyarországon: 1875–1890 , Kossuth Kiadó, Budapest, 1976
- Brigitte Mihok: Solymosi, Eszter , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/2, 2009, p. 780
- Novels
- Paul Nathan : The Trial of Tisza-Eszlar , Berlin, 1892
- Károly Eötvös: A nagy per, mely ezer éve tart és még sincs vége . Budapest, 1904; Budapest 2010, ISBN 978-963-9889-78-1 . (Novel that comes to terms with the affair 20 years later)
- Arnold Zweig : Ritual Murder in Hungary , 1915
- Gyula Krúdy : A tiszaeszlári Solymosi Eszter , 1931
- Rudolf Brunngraber : Trial of Death and Life . Novel. Paul Zsolnay, Vienna 1948
See also
Web links
- The Vicious Circle (1948/1950) in the Internet Movie Database (English) (en)
- The Trial (1948) in the Internet Movie Database (also: In the Name of Humanity )
- Verzió (1979) in the Internet Movie Database (English) (hu)
- Tutajosok (1990) in the Internet Movie Database (English) (hu; en: Memories of a River )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Miklós Konrád: Jews and politics in Hungary in the Dualist era . 1867-1914. In: East European Jewish Affairs , Vol. 39, No. August 2, 2009, pp. 167-186
- ↑ ldn-knigi.lib.ru
- ↑ ldn-knigi.lib.ru
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald : The Century of Detectives , Vol. II, Report of the Dead, p. 45 ff.
- ↑ Maria Ley-Piscator: The dance in the mirror . Wunderlich, Reinbek 1989. p. 311.