Jakob Bleyer

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Jakob Bleyer

Jakob Bleyer (born January 25, 1874 in Tscheb / Dunacséb, Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary (today Čelarevo , Serbia ); † December 5, 1933 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian German studies scholar, literary scholar and member of parliament of Hungarian German origin and in the years 1919 to 1920 Hungarian Minister for National Minorities.

Origin and education

Jakob Bleyer was born into a German-speaking farming family on January 25, 1874 in Tscheb in the Batschka . After attending a German elementary school, he went to the Hungarian grammar school in Neusatz and the Jesuit grammar school in Kalocsa . He studied German and Hungarian philology at the University of Budapest . In 1897 he received his doctorate with the thesis "Hungarian Relations of German Historical Folk Songs until 1551" and in the same year he became a high school teacher in Budapest and Ödenburg / Sopron .

Literary scholar

In 1903 and 1904 Bleyer studied in Munich and Leipzig . He completed his habilitation in 1905 and then became a private lecturer at the University of Budapest. In 1908 he was appointed professor of German language and literature at the University of Cluj- Napoca. From 1911 to 1919 and again from 1921 he held the chair for German studies at the University of Budapest.

Between 1902 and 1913 he published fundamental literary-historical works on German-Hungarian references (see list of works). He was a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 1910 . In 1926 he became a senator of the German Academy in Munich as well as an honorary senator and honorary doctorate from the University of Tübingen .

Streets were named after him in several German cities, including Gerlingen , Haßmersheim , Pocking and Schwäbisch Gmünd .

Political activities

In the years from 1920 to 1926, Bleyer belonged to a newly founded German-speaking People's Council, which was founded by Charles I's appeals as an attempt to save the Habsburg monarchy . From 1926 until his death he was a member of the Hungarian Parliament . Between August 15, 1919 and December 16, 1920, Bleyer was Minister for National Minorities (Nationality Minister) of the Christian-nationalist governments. On August 21, 1919, he issued the ordinance on equal rights for national minorities, which was intended to guarantee linguistic and cultural autonomy for these minorities. He put a special focus on the rural population and German-speaking illiteracy.

Bleyer feared that the increasing Magyarization would lead to a "neglect of the German-speaking minorities in the country", since, in his opinion, they could not assimilate linguistically because of their low level of education. Above all, he advocated elementary schools for the minorities; for the German-speaking elites, he considered gradual linguistic assimilation to be inevitable, but rejected state-ordered compulsory assimilation, as well as interference by the German Reich in Hungarian minority policy. Bleyer was politically in favor of an independent Magyar-run kingdom. In speeches and essays, he emphasized that he was in favor of Hungarian supremacy and did not, in contrast to other German people's councils in Hungary such as Rudolf Brandsch , call for “Eastern Switzerland” with several official languages.

In January 1921 he founded the “Sunday paper for the German people in Hungary”, on July 15, 1923 the “Hungarian German National Education Association” and in 1929 the “German-Hungarian Homeland Papers”. Bleyer was co-editor of the Philological Universal-Anzeiger . As a permanent delegate , he represented the Hungarian-German minority in the European Nationalities Congress from 1925 until his death in 1933 , in which he maintained a good relationship with German and Jewish representatives.

Fonts

Bleyer's grave in Budapest on the Új köztemető  : 22 / 1-1-203
  • Research into German cultural influence in south-eastern Europe. in Zs. Deutsche Rundschau , Volume 53, Nov. 1926, pp. 123-133
  • Beheim Mihály élete és müvei (= life and works of Michael Beheim ), Budapest 1902
  • The Germanic elements of the Hungarian Hunnensage (habilitation thesis)
  • Gottsched hazánkban (= Gottsched in Hungary), Budapest 1909
  • Friedrich Schlegel at the Bundestag in Frankfurt , Munich 1913
  • Deutschtum in Rumfungarn , Budapest 1928

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Norbert Spannenberger : The People's League of Germans in Hungary 1938-1944 under Horthy and Hitler. P. 16
  2. ^ Karl Bosl (ed.), Egbert Jahn : The first Czechoslovak Republic as a multinational party state. Munich. 1977. p. 206
  3. ↑ Dan Diner : Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture: Volume 2: Co-Ha. Springer-Verlag, 2016, p. 286.
personal data
SURNAME Bleyer, Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-German literary scholar and politician, member of parliament
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Tscheb , Dunacseb (today Celarevo , Serbia )
DATE OF DEATH December 5, 1933
Place of death Budapest