Bálint Hóman

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Hóman in regalia (1930s, photographer not specified)
Memorial plaque in Vác

Bálint Hóman (born December 29, 1885 in Budapest , Austria-Hungary ; died June 2, 1951 in Vác ) was a Hungarian historian and politician.

Life

Bálint Hóman received his doctorate in history from the Péter Pázmány University in 1908 with the dissertation A magyar városok az Árpádok korában . From 1915 he was employed as a librarian at the Budapest University Library . He became director of the Széchényi National Library in 1922 and was director of the Hungarian National Museum from 1923 to 1932 . He became a candidate in 1918, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) in 1929, and its president from 1933 to 1945. From 1925 he was full professor of Hungarian history at the University of Budapest .

Hóman became Minister for Religion and Education in the cabinets of Gyula Gömbös and Kálmán Darányi in 1932 and, after an interruption in 1938, from 1939 to 1942 in the cabinets of Pál Teleki , László Bárdossy and Miklós Kállay . In 1938 he was parliamentary group leader of the ruling National Unity Party. In terms of foreign policy, Hóman advocated the alliance with National Socialist Germany. The occupations and the Second Vienna Arbitration Award in 1939 and 1940 brought about a major revision of the Trianon Treaty . During the time he was part of the government, Hungary went to war against Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union as a member of the Axis in 1941 under the imperial administrator Miklós Horthy . As Minister of Education, Hóman was jointly responsible for the adoption and implementation of anti-Semitic laws in Hungary and in the territories acquired and occupied by Hungary.

In 1942 he left the government. After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, he was present on May 12, 1944 at the inauguration of the new Obergespans in Fejér Árpád Toldi County in Székesfehérvár , at the László Baky , State Secretary of the new Döme Sztójay government , the complete deportation of the Jews from Hungary announced that from March to July 1944 alone, over 437,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz . When the government of Géza Lakatos and the imperial administrator Miklós Horthy began secret armistice negotiations with the Allies in October 1944, Hóman was part of the executive committee of a 138-member parliamentary group that tried to prevent this and supported the coup d'état launched by the German ambassador Edmund Veesenmayer . Hóman was also involved as a government advisor in the prolongation of the war and the anti-Semitic measures when the Jews were to be deported from the capital Budapest for the puppet government that was then set up under the leadership of the Arrow Cross member Ferenc Szálasi .

In 1945 Hóman fled to the German Reich with members of the Arrow Cross government . He was arrested there by the Americans and extradited by them to Hungary because the Three Powers had agreed in the Moscow Declaration of November 1, 1943 that all war criminals , except the main war criminals, should be brought to justice in the countries in which they were committed their crimes .

Hóman was charged with crimes against humanity before the Hungarian People's Tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment , while death sentences were carried out for a large number of the politicians co-accused . Hóman fell ill and died in prison in Vác prison .

The plaque installed in Vác in 2011 describes him as a victim of communism. The Ministry of Justice of the national conservative government Viktor Orbán and the City Council of Székesfehérvár decided in 2015 to erect a monument to Hóman in the city. The decision was revised after protests by the Jewish community.

Academic career

Hóman began his academic career as a student in Budapest, where he worked in the University Library of Budapest, and he also finished his studies in Budapest. In 1922 he was appointed director of the Széchényi National Library and the Hungarian National Museum in 1923, a position he held until 1932. Hóman produced several serious scientific papers. The center of his research was the history of the Hungarian nation during the Middle Ages. First he dealt with economic history, social history and the auxiliary sciences of history. He wrote about Hungarian cities during the Árpád era, about the social classes, the first state taxes and about the Hungarian tribes that settled in the Carpathian Basin. He wrote a massive literary work entitled “The History of the Hungarian Currency 1000-1325”, in which he systematized the Hungarian currency in the Middle Ages according to chronology, measurement technology and history. A second individual publication was the work "Finances, Law and Economic Policy of the Kingdom of Hungary during the Rule of Charles Robert". He published numerous articles and books together with other scholars, among them Gyula Szekfű. Their most prominent work was the originally respected work "Hungarian History". In Hóman's view, it was necessary in this historical analysis to take into account old Hungarian words and the Sumerian and the literary monuments created under Hattian-Hurrian - as he called them. It becomes clear that the content orientation of Hóman's works is at least partially nationalistic and that the works, which are declared as neutral academic analyzes, are based on the emerging spirit of the 1930s. As a result, by today's academic standards, these works should be read critically and with awareness of recent European history.

Political career

Hóman rose against the background of the increasingly German orientation of Hungarian politics in the 1930s and consciously made use of corresponding socio-political tendencies. Hóman became Minister for Religion and Education in the cabinets of Gyula Gömbös and Kálmán Darányi in 1932 and, after an interruption in 1938, from 1939 to 1942 in the cabinets of Pál Teleki , László Bárdossy and Miklós Kállay . In 1938 he became parliamentary group leader of the ruling National Unity Party. As part of the government, Hóman was a vocal advocate of anti-Jewish measures and supported laws that revoked the previous status of the Hungarian Jewish communities. In 1942 he left the government. After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, he was present on May 12, 1944 at the inauguration of the new Obergespans in Fejér Árpád Toldi County in Székesfehérvár , at which László Baky, State Secretary of the new Döme Sztójay government , announced the complete deportation of Jews from Hungary , from March to July 1944 alone, over 437,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz . When the government of Géza Lakatos and the imperial administrator Miklós Horthy began secret armistice negotiations with the Allies in October 1944, Hóman was part of the executive committee of a 138-member parliamentary group that tried to prevent this and supported the coup d'état launched by the German ambassador Edmund Veesenmayer . Hóman was also involved as a government advisor in the prolongation of the war and the anti-Semitic measures when the Jews were to be deported from the capital Budapest for the puppet government that was then set up under the leadership of the Arrow Cross member Ferenc Szálasi. He decided to remain part of the legislative legislation after the German occupation of Hungary (March 1944) and the coup d'état of the Arrow Cross (October 1944) and thus, as an active part of the coup, to strengthen an anti-democratic system that was allied and subject to Nazi Germany. During the brief rule of the Arrow Cross members of Germany and their allies in Hungary, Hóman and other high government officials signed a document instructing the expulsion of the Hungarian Jews. Over half a million Jews were swiftly deported to Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where most perished. When the Red Army crossed the Hungarian border in December 1944, Hóman fled to avoid arrest and to go into hiding with other Arrow Cross members (including party leader Ferenc Szálasi) in Transdanubia, Hungary. He later fled to Germany, where he was captured by American troops and extradited to Hungary, as the Three Powers had agreed in the Moscow Declaration of November 1, 1943 that all war criminals , except the main war criminals, should be brought to justice in the countries in which they had committed their crimes . In 1946 the Hungarian People's Court sentenced Hóman to life imprisonment for the war crimes he had committed, but above all because of his role in favor of the Nazi occupiers of Hungary in the Nazi Germany-led invasion of the Soviet Union . Hóman was imprisoned in Vác, where he fell ill shortly after his imprisonment. He reportedly lost 60 kilograms of body weight over a short period of time.

Death and inheritance

Hóman died in prison on June 2, 1951. The plaque installed in Vác in 2011 describes him as a victim of communism. On March 6, 2015, Hóman was rehabilitated following a ruling by the Metropolitan Court of Budapest that found that the original conviction was based on insufficient evidence. The Ministry of Justice of the national conservative government Viktor Orbán and the City Council of Székesfehérvár decided to erect a life-size bronze statue in Székesfehérvár in 2015 . European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor denounced the project as "a shocking display of insensitivity to the Jewish people", and foreign and US diplomats joined a rally against the statue's installation. The US government also urged Hungarian officials to block the erection of the statue, which it called "anti-Semitic" according to press reports, pointing out that government funds were used to fund a large part of the construction costs. After repeated protests by the Jewish community, the decision was revised.

Fonts (selection)

  • A magyar városok az Árpádok korában . Budapest, 1908. Dissertation
  • Magyar pénztörténet 1000-1325 . Budapest, 1916
  • A magyar királyság pénzügyei és gazdaságpolitikája Károly Róbert korában . Budapest, 1921
  • History in the Nibelungenlied . Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1924
  • A Szent László-kori Gesta Ungarorum és a XII – XIII. századi leszármazói . Budapest, 1925
  • A magyar hun hagyomány és hun monda . Budapest, 1925
  • A forráskutatás és forráskritika története . Budapest, 1925
  • A magyar történetírás új útjai . Budapest: Magyar Szemle Társaság, 1931.
    • History of the Hungarian Middle Ages. 1. From the oldest times to the end of the XII. Century . Translation by Hildegard von Roosz and Lothar Saczek. Checked and accepted. by Conrad Schünemann. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1940
    • History of the Hungarian Middle Ages. 2. From the end of the XII. Century to the beginnings of the Anjou house . Berlin: De Gruyter, 1943
  • Stephan der Heilige , in: Wirtschaft und Kultur: Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Alfons Dopsch , 1938, pp. 279–288
  • with Gyula Szekfű , Károly Kerényi : Egyetemes történet . 5 volumes. Budapest, 1935–1937
  • King Stephen I the Saint, the founding of the Hungarian state . Translated from the Hungarian. by Hildegard von Roosz. Breslau: WG Korn, 1941
  • Thousands of years of fate: Germans a. Hungary in d. Story . Berlin: Union of Hungarians. University student, 1942
  • A történelem útja. Válogatott tanulmányok . Budapest, 2002

literature

  • József Györke (Ed.): Festschrift of the Hungarian Scientific Institute in Tartu. Bálint Hóman. Tartu: Kruger, 1936
  • Randolph L. Braham : The politics of genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary , 2 vols., Columbia University Press, New York 1981
  • David Tréfás: The Squaring of the Circle: The Reinvention of Hungarian History by the Communist Party in 1952 . Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, v6 n2 (September 2006): 27–39

Web links

Commons : Bálint Hóman  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The most right-wing member of Gömbös' original cabinet was Bálint Hóman , Randolph L. Braham: The politics of genocide , New York 1981, p. 47
  2. Randolph L. Braham: The politics of genocide , New York 1981, p. 613
  3. Randolph L. Braham: The politics of genocide , New York 1981, p. 823
  4. ^ Dpa: Monument dispute in Hungary , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 20, 2015, p. 9
  5. Bloomberg Business: Hungarian City Scraps Statue for Pro-Nazi Politician, MTI Says , December 15, 2015
  6. http://www.biolex.ios-regensburg.de/BioLexViewview.php?ID=970 ; sighted January 7, 2016
  7. http://www.worldcat.org/title/homan-balint-munkai/oclc/24962625/editions?referer=di&editionsView=true ; sighted January 7, 2016
  8. http://opac.regesta-imperii.de/lang_de/kurztitelsuche_r.php?kurztitel=homan,_geschichte_des_ungarian_mittelalters ; sighted January 7, 2016
  9. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=28837 ; sighted January 7, 2016
  10. https://ungarischegeschichte.wordpress.com/tag/balint-homan/ ; sighted January 7, 2016
  11. ^ The most right-wing member of Gömbös' original cabinet was Bálint Hóman, Randolph L. Braham: The politics of genocide, New York 1981, p. 47
  12. Randolph L. Braham: The politics of genocide, New York 1981, p. 613
  13. Randolph L. Braham: The politics of genocide, New York 1981, p. 823
  14. Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: hungarytoday; sighted December 30, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / hungarytoday.hu
  15. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/14/us-joins-international-protest-over-statue-in-hungary-to-antisemitic-politician in: Theguardian; viewed on December 30, 2015
  16. http://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/article/view/id/24154 in: Jewish general; viewed on December 30, 2015