What Does it Mean to be Hungarian?

Because I could never feel inside of myself, what it means to be Hungarian, I have asked hundreds of Hungarians, in the East, West, North, and South, of the Country, “What does it mean to be Hungarian?”

People from every nation have strong feelings about what it means to belong to their land and people. This question can be quite complicated, really.

For the Hungarians, I asked the question so that people would share from within their own heart, mind, soul, and spirit. In my interviews with Hungarians certain answers came up regularly. Often the answers would be common among certain sociological circles- namely young people, the older generation, people from the countryside, those from Budapest, those from other cities, and those who live as minorities in neighboring countries. I would like to focus on the answers that came up the most from these groups.

Do you yourself have a feeling, an opinion, and an idea of what it means to be Hungarian? Would you be able to pause for a minute and reflect on your own answer to this question:

“What does it mean to be Hungarian?”

Even if you don’t write down your answer or discuss it with others, whatever it is, see if it comes out in the answers I received from others that I asked. Like your answer may also not be, most of the answers were not simple and often led to long discussions. The answers were many so it is not as if everyone feels the same way. Maybe this is one aspect of what it means to be Hungarian!

I have heard it said that if you have two Hungarians you will have at least three opinions. Asking this question among groups of Hungarians there were very many opinions. Hungarians have a reputation of having their own mind and will. To confirm this, I did get a large variety of answers. Sometimes they were contradictory, but at the same time, they both could be true. Living in Hungary I am accustomed to contradictions as Hungarians often say, “Nem egyszerű a dolog” (it’s not so simple) or, “nem egyforma” (not one way). The answers I received definitely fit these two themes.

One answer that came up a lot throughout all of the different groups was that to be Hungarian means to always find a creative solution to problems. Either in times of difficult politics, oppression, poverty, bureaucracy, or some kind if trouble many people said that Hungarians always have to work things out in a special way to get what they need. For them it means not necessarily to go the straight path since that may be blocked so one has to go around the problems until it is possible to solve them.

Széchenyi István wanted to straighten out the Tisza River. When he took the Italian engineer Peter Paleocapa on a tour, they had breakfast at a vendeglo (inn) on the riverbank and the owner asked them what they would want for supper. Széchenyi told him that they would be far down river and would not be coming back. The innkeeper told them that the river winds so much by nightfall they would be a stone’s throw from the inn! Paleocapa mentioned that straightening this river would be an enormous task. Count Széchenyi replied that it would surely cost a lot of money, but would still be easier than changing the nature of the Hungarians!

It reminds me of a humorous story. An Englishman, a German, and a Hungarian were working in Saudi Arabia. The Englishman smuggled in whiskey, the German schnapps, and the Hungarian sneaked in his pálinka. They were drinking together and were caught by the police. They were told they would have to be punished. Each one was to receive thirty lashes with a whip. However, the judge said that they could receive mercy since they were foreigners and could put something on the back so the blows would not be so painful.

The Englishman chose to wear a leather jacket and though it was painful, he did not have deep gashes and scars. The judge asked the German what he wanted to wear. The German stood up and proudly proclaimed, “I am German and I drink to the fatherland! I will wear nothing but take this punishment as a proud German with nothing to regret for my actions! My scars will testify to my national pride!” He turned his bare back to the whip and took his punishment with courage and though bloody, did not cry out or scream.

The Hungarian’s turn came next. The judge asked him, “What do you choose to wear?” The Hungarian replied, “I’ll take the German!”

The story may not be true, but could it be?

One person I asked, Peter, a construction engineer, said, “It means to be a mixture.” He said that though Hungarians began as an Asian tribe, because of wars and devastations Hungarians were forced to invite Germans, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Croatians, Jews, and others to come to Hungary and help repopulate the lands occupied by Hungarians. He mentioned that is why you have such a variety of colors among Hungarians from dark brunettes, blondes, to even Celtic redheads with freckles. He said that though Hungarians also have their own customs, they have incorporated many characteristics of other European cultures.

Another person, a thirty – nine year old wife and mother in the small city of Szarvas said, “It means to be lonely. There is not another nation or language close to our own. I wish we were like the Latin or Germanic peoples which have other countries who speak variations of their languages and can understand each other.”

It is true, that linguists claim that Finnish and other Finno-Ugric languages are related to Hungarian, but I have never heard of a Finn and Hungarian understanding one another using their respective languages. One thing that Finns and Hungarians do have in common is that they often trade off in leading the world in a very sad statistic- both countries have very high depression and suicide rates per capita. This theme, depression and suicide, will be the subject of the another chapter.

Often the negative answers to the question, “What does it mean to be Hungarian?” were, “It means to be oppressed.” We have lived hundreds of years under the oppression of other “bosses” from other nationalities. One person said, “It means to be like the Irish. The more they oppressed us, the stronger our national identity became. We learned how to rejoice in the middle of our sadness. Like the Irish, a group of Hungarians know how to sit around a table for an entire evening, eating, drinking, talking, singing, and dancing. And we KNOW we are Hungarian.”

“But also our best and brightest people went to other countries to realize the potential they did not have the chance to realize in Hungary. They made the countries to where they immigrated better while they could do nothing for the Hungarian nation or the countries where they were held captive after Triannon.”

One twenty-one year old gypsy girl was very saddened by this question. She said that she lives in a small village and there no one bothers her family for being gypsies. Her father has always worked hard as an electrician and the people in the village know him well and though they are a gypsy family, accept them. The problem is if her father tries to find independent work outside the village. No one will trust him. He also can’t get work for a firm since he is now also over forty years old and it is hard for people over forty to find work at all. She works at a Panzió and has worked in Austria but loves living in Hungary. She uses her small salary to help her family.

Often, people answered, to be Hungarian means to be poor- never having enough money for a comfortable life. In fact, among young people, a very common answer to, “What does it mean to be Hungarian?” was, “No opportunity.” They would talk about how in other European countries it is possible for people to save money to buy a house and a car with the salary from their jobs- in Hungary, they cannot. Krisztián, a twenty-four year old man from Körmend, near the Austrian border told a sad story.

He was in love with a young girl and wanted to marry her. She also wanted to marry him. Unfortunately, he is from a poor family and his parents could not help him with a house. He is a waiter and earns very little money and could not come close to buy a flat or a car. He said sadly, “She loved me, but she finally married another boy whose parents could give him a house!” When she told him she must go with the other boy she was crying, saying, “You know I love you more than he, but I need to have a life!”

He was very upset because In the panzió where he works young Austrians and Italians frequent and some of them work the same job as he and can afford a flat, car, and can even take vacations across Europe! There is a difference between a waiter in Austria and Krisztián. The waiter in Austria rarely works more than eight hours in a day and forty hours in a week and earns fifteen to twenty times as much money. Kristian works twelve-hour days, from nine to nine (sometimes longer) every other day.

However, many Hungarians according to a Gallup poll, which was written in the January 27, 2000 edition of the “Metro” stated, that eight out of ten are proud to be Hungarian, and 3 out of four are glad that they live in Hungary. When asked what Hungary will be like in 2010, they generally believe that Hungarians are talented and will be the most successful country in Europe. Two out of three believe that in the next decade Hungary will be one of the world’s most successful countries. The majority also believes that the biggest problem Hungary faces today is that there is a lack of unity and helping one another in this country.

This poll is a reminder of the theme of another answer that people frequently gave when asked, “What does it mean to be Hungarian?” So many people said, “It means to be proud!” I still vividly remember a twenty four-year-old Pesti girl named Niki, who as she gave this answer, spoke with her body language as well as with her words. Though she was relaxed, (I don’t remember if she was seated) she immediately stood up straight to her feet (as Petőfi Sandor said, ‘A talpra Magyar!’) and lifted up her head, and straightened her spine as she stood up in a posture of attention. It was as if she was in the army answering the officer’s call to duty. Absolutely no one said that they were ashamed to be Hungarian.

A twenty-year-old young person from a small village who is studying and working in Veszprem said, to be Hungarian means there is a big difference between the people from Budapest, the smaller cities, and the village. She would never want to live in the crowded and in her opinion, impersonal city of Budapest. She said that though in the small city people were more friendly and considerate, they still seem to be chasing after money, and friends and families are not as important as in the village.

She said that in the village though people gossip like crazy, they are concerned about one another and understand each other’s problems. She said that money cannot buy the happiness of close relationships and caring for one another that people in the village have. She also said that life is more peaceful, closer to nature, and there is less pollution, making village life better for the soul and healthier for the body. She and others from the villages (especially those from Szabolcs Megye) made it very clear that to be Hungarian from the village means one is committed to hospitality.

Another person, Gábor, (a rare name indeed!) said, “It means to live in Hungary.” Many answered with this idea. The word “homeland” (haza) came up many times. Mónika from Szabolcs Megye said, “I have worked in Germany, because I needed the money but this is my home and I will settle here. There is nothing like my homeland.” Sixty year old Pali Bacsi said, to be Hungarian means, “If the homeland calls… ha hí a haza” In this time of globalization, it was amazing that many young people also said that they would not want to live anywhere else as their response to this question.

It seems that this feeling echoes the words of Vorosmarty Mihaly, in his Appeal,

“No other spot in all the world
can touch your heart as home-
Let fortune bless or fortune curse:
from hence you shall not roam!”
- Translation by Watson Kirkconnel

However, there is another side to the theme of the homeland. Hungarians from neighboring countries who maintained their ethnic identity, language and customs while living in a land where they must speak another language also, and submit to another government felt left out. One person from Transylvania said that it means to be without a country. In the country where he comes from, he feels like a foreigner and is daily reminded that he is not Romanian but Hungarian. But living in Hungary, he is also called, “The Romanian” by other Hungarians.

I heard a conversation between two workers, in which one of them said that her boss asked her to wash windows. She was very offended by this request, and said, “What is his problem? Does he think I arrived here from Transylvania?”

When asked this question, “What does it mean to be Hungarian?” Hungarians from neighboring countries felt it was not fair to be treated as if they were not full Hungarians as they struggled to keep their Hungarian national identity in the territories that used to be Hungary. They feel like sad victims of twentieth century European history. They did not emigrate- their citizenship was forcibly changed. Before Triannon they WERE citizens of Hungary and it was not their choice to live under the governments of especially Romania, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Croatia, and Czech Republic. Several were part of the underground movement for Hungarian solidarity in Transylvania and were persecuted under Ceausescu and often imprisoned by the Romanian “Securitatae.” One woman said, “If we suffered to be Hungarian, shouldn’t we be considered Hungarian all the more by those who live in Hungary?”

One man, an employee of Malev works in Bosnia because of his ability to speak the language there as well as in Hungarian. He is from Voivodina and when I asked him what it means to be Hungarian, he said, “It means to have a higher sense of national identity” (“Magasabb a nemzeti öntudat”). This answer was common among these Hungarians. Many of them gave the same answer that Hungarians within Hungary also gave. They said, “It means to be Hungarian in your heart.”

It is interesting that no one answered that to BE Hungarian it means to SPEAK Hungarian. The Diet of 1843 – 44 finally established that Hungarian would be the official language of Hungary. However, Deák Ferenc and Széchenyi István both agreed, “If one speaks Hungarian, it does not necessarily mean he is Hungarian in his feelings.”

One sweet and elegant seventy year old lady, Németh Márta from Szombathely, said, “I was raised with Croatian as my first language but in my heart I am Hungarian.” We laughed together because her family name means German, her family language is Croatian, but her heart is Hungarian. Another middle-aged man of Croatian nationality from Pécs, also said that it does not matter that he is of Croatian blood, he lives in Hungary and, “I would rather be Hungarian.” Others who are pure Hungarian, said the same thing, that it means to be Hungarian in the heart.

I discovered that this idea of being Hungarian in the heart is not a new one. The one whom Kossuth Lajos called, “The greatest Hungarian,” Széchenyi Istvan, like the nobility of his time grew up speaking German. Though he was the first to speak Hungarian in Parliament at the time when Latin was the parliamentary language he had to relearn Hungarian as he became older and more committed to, “The regeneration of Hungary.”

I also learned that one of the world’s greatest and Hungary’s greatest musician, Liszt Ferenc, was never fluent in Hungarian but absolutely proud of his Hungarian nationality. His Ungaria Cantata was a patriotic work inspired by the war of independence. Both of these men were regarded by Hungarians in their time and still are by Hungarians today with pride as part of the Hungarian nation and remembered for their great accomplishments.

Maybe to be Hungarian in the heart is like the seven-year-old Hungarian boy I sat next to on an airplane going from New York to Budapest. When he was still a baby his parents moved to New Jersey to work. His mother became sick and died of cancer and His father was sending him to live with an aunt in Budapest. As children do, he spoke without shame and he would mix English, his school and play language, with Hungarian, his family language. I asked him where he was going and he said in a mixture of Anglicized Hungarian, or Hungarianized English, I can’t be sure which of the two, “Megyek vizitolni az Apukam siszterhez (English, “I’m going to visit my father’s sister” and in Hungarian, “Megyek látogatni az apukám nővérét.) I asked him if he was American or Hungarian and he said that he was definitely Hungarian. He then stood up in his airplane seat and yelled out at the top of his voice- “ÚRI EMBER VAGYOK!!!” (meaning, I am a gentleman!).

So after all, “What DOES it mean to be Hungarian?”

Hungarian culture, identity, pride