In 1999 Hungary will be guest of honor, the Schwerpunkt (focal point) as they say, at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The committee with the task of working out the strategy for Hungary's presentation currently consists of three people: the critic Sándor Radnóti (chairman); the writer György Dalos, director of Hungary House in Berlin; and Tamás Miklós, the head of the Atlantisz Kiadó, a social sciences publishing house. The committee will, however, be enlarged, with the addition of a representative from the world of music and one from the world of fine art.
Question : What is the task entrusted to the committee and how much freedom of maneuvre is implied?
Sándor Radnóti : The ministerial commissioner for preparations for the Frankfurt Book Fair will be the historian Gábor Erdôdy, a former Hungarian ambassador to Bonn. We are in regular contact with him. We have a considerable sum at our disposal: the government has undertaken to provide 2.5 million German marks, and we hope that sponsors will provide additional finance. The task of the committee is basically to create the framework in which we wish to present ourselves. Our business is not to decide the final content, but to indicate focal points, priorities, and preferences.
The principal priority, which has been accepted by the Ministry of Culture in the wake of the steering committee's recommendation, is to present living Hungary culture. This is not a conception which concentrates on, or is orientated towards, old glories or self-justification, parading European identity in the historical past, although it does contain many museum-like, exhibition-like elements. Some pessimistic minds might have thought that the political and economic changes would be accompanied by cultural fatigue, since the last years of the Kádár period were very exciting culturally and a lot of intellectual energy was released. This was not the case. Starting from this fortunate state of affairs, we want to concentrate on the living culture of the last ten years, the first decade since the changes. There may be a place for Hungarian antiquities and Hungarian history, but only if we can say something new or relevant to the present. We should also exploit the fact that 1956, the only event of world significance in Hungary this century, saw the close involvement of a writers' movement, and therefore fits into a book fair: in one room of the Hungarian pavilion we shall attempt to survey the literary treatment of the period from 1956 to 1989.
We must make sure that we display what is worth displaying, and as well as possible. Our starting point will be what is already familiar in the West, primarily in the German-speaking countries. We have found approximately sixty writers whose presentation would be interesting and important, and it would be good if they could attend in person. But the most important thing is that we should be there with new books. To this end we have announced competitions for translations. Our budget would permit the translation of about fifty books, which should be made over the next two years-primarily literature, but there will also be a place for essays and the social sciences.
The Frankfurt Book Fair should be envisaged in terms of concentric circles. At the very center will be the Hungarian Pavilion, and the opening address to be delivered by an important Hungarian writer. The next circle is the Fair itself. The following one is the city of Frankfurt, with its cultural institutions, where we should like to feature during this time. Finally there's Germany as a whole. Frankfurt is an enormous opportunity: in this week, and before and afterwards to some extent, attention focuses on the Schwerpunkt-country. Hungary is the first Central or East European country to be honored in this way; in the year 2000 it will be Poland's turn. It is very important that we utilize this opportunity to present ourselves in Western culture, but it is at least as important that this should set a process in motion-for example, state support for translations into world languages should receive institutional form.
Q. : What have been the results of your discussions with representatives from the various arts?
S. R. : We've received many helpful ideas. In the field of fine arts for example-on the model of the "White Flags" action of two weeks ago when a whole series of artists opened their studios to the public-we invited Frankfurt gallery owners to Budapest to look round and to find artists whom they'd be glad to exhibit. In music, the principal attraction could well be the presentation of György Kurtág's Hölderlin song cycle, a new work by this great Hungarian composer, which takes its inspiration from German culture. As regards literature, the Suhrkamp publishing house, already outstanding as a publisher of Hungarian authors, will time its representative Hungarian series for 1999.
Q. : Can popular culture rely on the pulling power of the "elite" at Frankfurt?
S. R. : Our strategy is to give preference to high culture. In fine arts I can hardly imagine that we could show anything other than the most serious and best. In music, "lighter" genres-jazz, folk music, operetta and rock too-may also be given a role. Similarly, if there were an important Hungarian writer of detective or crime fiction, he could have a place there. I greatly enjoy them myself, but there's no one in Hungary working in the genre at the highest level or in a way that would generate interest worldwide. On the other hand, we are fortunate in that a number of Hungarian writers have come to the forefront of German culture in recent years: Péter Nádas, Péter Esterházy and Imre Kertész, for example, have received a succession of prizes and will publish new works for 1999. The election of György Konrád as President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy is also very felicitous from the Frankfurt viewpoint. László Krasznahorkai enjoys real success on the alternative scene, Endre Kukorelli too. György Petri, Dezsô Tandori, István Eörsi, Ádám Bodor, the essayist László F. Földényi and many others have a presence on the German market with a number of their books. As for the better-known writers who won't be represented, the Frankfurt Book Fair isn't about providing a stage for innumerable Hungarian writers. To some extent, we must make concessions but we should like as many writer- reader symposia and evenings of public readings as possible, where a well-known Hungarian writer can appear along with lesser-known fellows, under his wing so to speak.
This major conference on the medieval Caucasus was a long-nurtured dream conceived in Tbilisi in November 1994, one year after the civil war, when Tbilisi was in ruins. There was no light, the room where we met was only heated by kerosene lamps, and a fine company of Georgian medievalists gathered together for a discussion. We sat around a table and I asked them: what do they think, how could we help them in their difficult situation? The answer was unanimous: Organize a conference on the Caucasus in Budapest, where scholars of the entire region-Sub-Caucasia and North-Caucasus-could meet and discuss their common interests again-something that was since the start of perestroika no longer possible here. Thus, we agreed that we would try to obtain the support of CEU for this cause.
The task was not easy, given the very complexity of the project. On the one hand, the project's core was to bring to Budapest as many Caucasian resident scholars as possible, and cover their traveling and living expenses, a sum that they, who at that time earned an average of 3 or 4 USD per month, could not afford. On the other hand, the project made sense to us and promised to be really fruitful, but only if we could arrange it so that the Caucasian scholars could meet their Western colleagues as well, and if we could find a theme for the conference which would make it unique in its genre. To that end, the original plan of the conference was broadened into a Summer University program in the framework of which thirty-five Caucasian resident scholars could come to Budapest, some as professors and some as participants of the CEU Summer University. On the other hand, our conference -which constituted the second week of the Summer University program-became a section of the 35th International Congress of Asian and North African Studies, which was held here in Budapest from July 7 to 12. In the first week, we had lecturers both from the former Soviet Union (from the Caucasus as well as from St Petersburg) and from the West, and since the participants of the second week's conference (seventy persons altogether) were of a truly international blend, our organization became a real meeting point for people of diverse backgrounds.
We have also found the theme: cultural interactions in the Caucasus from the fourth century AD (the conversion of Armenia and Georgia) until the beginning of the nineteenth century (the Caucasian Wars, when Russia extended her rule to the entire Caucasus region). We also wanted to include the small nations of the region, those who have no historical state of their own but whose cultural identity is all the more valuable and precarious. This is practically never done in these fields. Moreover, in general, Armenian studies constitute a separate discipline, Georgian studies another, and the small nations of the North Caucasus are only the object of ethnographic studies, or receive some attention only as belonging to the general field of Islamic studies.
Our project met with considerable interest in the region. For the thirty CEU grants (participation in the CEU Summer University) we received some eighty applications, from which an international committee chose the thirty who were judged the best. Among them were Armenians, unfortunately only one Azeri, Balkars, a Chechen, Cirkassians, Georgians, Daghestanians, Kurds, Ossetians, and Russians.
For the first week, we invited speakers in three domains: Armenian, Georgian, and North-Caucasian studies. Prof. Dickran Kouymjian from Fresno University gave lectures, with his own slides, on problems concerning Armenian art, Prof. Boghos Levon Zekiyan from Venice spoke on the history of Sub-Caucasian Christianity, Prof. Ödön Schütz from ELTE, Budapest lectured on the great Nomadic migrations and their consequences for the Caucasians, Prof. Jos Weitenberg from Leiden presented aspects of a lesser known Caucasian language, that of the Armenian Gypsies: the Loms or Bushas. Prof. Giusto Traina from Perugia analyzed some textual problems of the most enigmatic Armenian historiographer, Moyses Xorenac'i, Prof. Tamila Mgaloblishvili from Tbilisi spoke about the Syro-Palestianian roots of early Georgian Christianity, Prof. Erzsébet Tompos presented the characteristic features of early Christian architecture in the South Caucasus. Prof. Nikolay Dyakov from St Petersburg discussed the history of Caucasian research in Russia and presented current problematic issues concerning Islam in the North Caucasus, Prof. Giulietta Meskhidze from St Petersburg recounted the history of North Caucasian Sufism (a school of Moslem mysticism), and Zourabi Aloiane from ELTE, Budapest gave a comprehensive picture of Kurdish studies in the Caucasus (the Kurdish participants told me in the break: "he [Aloiane] is our pride").
The lectures were followed by lively discussions and the notion of treating diverse Caucasian disciplines together proved to be perfectly rewarding. Prof. Kouymjian's lecture was brilliantly commented on by his Georgian colleagues, leading him to conclude that Armenian and Georgian art history should not be taught separately at Western universities. Prof. Weitenberg, as mentioned above, discussed the Armenian Gypsy or "Lomavren" language in the conventional way, on the basis of a few written documents, adding that during his last trip to Erevan he was told that the Loms are still present in the Georgian town of Akhalkhalakh. During the discussion a Georgian Kurdish ethnographer stood up and told him that the Loms or Bushas also live in some villages in Georgia and are well known to ethnographers. So Prof. Weitenberg has to take a tape-recorder, go to the places indicated, and check in living contact with the Loms whether the linguistic theories of the last century, which all looked on Lomavren as a dead language, were right or not.
The most pleasant story of the first week, however is connected with a lecture on North-Caucasian Sufism by Prof. Meskhidze. She spoke on Sheikh Mansour, a celebrated religious and political leader of the eighteenth century, who was the soul of the resistance against the Russians in Chechniya and Ingushetia, and who converted the superficially Islamized populations of the region to a deeper religious commitment (he was a member of the Nakshbandi Sufi order). One of the comments that followed the lecture concerned a book recently published by an Englishman, according to which Sheikh Mansour was a disguised Jesuit. A Chechen participant responded that the Englishman's thesis was impossible, given that his, that is, our Chechen friend's, "twenty-seventh great-grandfather" was the brother of Sheikh Mansour's "thirteenth great-grandfather". This argument was received with some scepticism on the part of the audience, but everybody agreed that in a society which, like the eighteenth-century North Caucasus, is based on very close kinship relations, it is out of place to suppose that a European Jesuit could play such an important role and deceive all the people around him.
It is more difficult to give an account of the second week, the conference proper, which at the same time constituted the Caucasus section of the 35th ICANAS. The opening lecture was given by Dr Éva Apor, Budapest, and was entitled "Homage to Bernát Munkácsi." It gave a comprehensive and clear picture of the life and activity of Munkácsi, who was the initiator of Caucasian studies in Hungary. The work of the conference then continued in three sub-sections: History, Cultural History, and Religious History and, briefly, on Linguistics, on the last day. There were some keynote lectures, that of Prof. Robert W. Thomson from Oxford on the Armenian "Legal Code of Mkh'tar Gosh," of Prof. Gadzhi Gamzatovich Gamzatov from Makhachkala, Daghestan, on "National Traditions in Daghestani Religious Literature," and of Prof. Jos Weitenberg, again on some aspects of Lomavren.
One may add that with this conference we attained our initial goal. The papers of the participants were discussed from many novel angles, even nationally connotated themes received new light from other, objectively or even subjectively motivated participants. Every paper was followed by lively discussion (mostly in English and in Russian), many new problems and new solutions arose.
At least one important conclusion could be drawn and I can say without exaggeration that it is shared by all the participants: the medieval history of the Caucasus is an integral part of the history of the oecumene, and its study has a bearing on other disciplines as well, which only too often ignore this fact. Once the linguistic and cultural barriers are crossed, the student of Antiquity, the European medievalist, the historian of philosophy, or of religion, finds invaluable and irreplaceable material for a better understanding of his own field, related either to the Latin West, or the Byzantino-Slavic East. But this recognition also has another aspect: Caucasian studies are fruitful and interesting if they are not kept within a purely national context, but when the problems of local Caucasian history, culture, art, literacy, philosophy, religion, etc., are viewed in a more general, universal framework. Only in this case can the scholars concerned demonstrate that they do not merely deal with an exotic, "Oriental" subject.
It is hoped that this conference was a beginning rather than a one-off occasion. Our guests from St Petersburg plan to organize its continuation in their city, in which "Kavkazovedeniye," has long been established and we hope that their plan will come true. The idea of a mobile Summer University on the Caucasus was also mentioned. This could be held in a different center in the Caucasus every year: Erevan, Tbilisi, Makhachkala, Maikop, Vladikavkaz, etc., where the hosts could introduce the participants to the cultural heritage of their own region, and the guests could read papers on other parts of the Caucasus.
Finally, there arose the idea of organizing another conference on one of the most exciting subjects discussed here in Budapest, the cultural interactions between the two extremities of the early medieval oecumene, Syriac, Arab, Armenian, and Georgian Christianity on the one hand, and the Atlantic coast on the other. In fact, there are some striking similarities connecting these two regions in art, texts, and traditions, but nobody could ever answer the question, what kinds of contact are responsible for the obvious parallels. Such a conference (workshop? summer university?) would be important not only because it would treat, and perhaps partly solve, a major academic riddle, but also because it would direct attention to our truncated and distorting view of European history, which is interested only in what happens in the "center" or "centers" and does not understand that the "center" cannot exist without its interaction with the "peripheries", which can themselves act upon each other without involving the center. The conventional view, moreover, also neglects that sometimes the most interesting things are going on precisely on the "peripheries".
We also intend to publish the majority of the papers presented here, and negotiations are going on with the CEU Press.
Twenty-eight students were selected from close to three times as many applicants, ten of them from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, two from the U.S. They include those involved in ancient monument protection, archeologists, historians, art historians, architects, restorators, librarians, and archivists. Others are postgraduate students hoping for employment in some aspect of heritage protection. The course was organized bearing in mind possible new problems produced by the end of communism. Indeed, participants were able to relate the experience of their own countries of how slowly legislation progressed, and what odd and often dangerous situations privatization had produced.
Not only general questions were discussed but also concrete examples, without paying undue attention to restoration procedures, concentrating instead on heritage protection as such and the management of ancient monuments. Some of the lecturers gave an account of what was established practice in their countries, including what they experienced in the course of the political changes. Those invited included scholars from countries that lead the field, such as Great Britain, Germany and the U.S. as well as specialists working for international orgnisations (Unesco, Ecovast). The course gave special emphasis to the protection of the archeological heritage which is a "source of the European collective memory and an instrument for historical and scientific study." (1992 European Convention on the Protection of the Archeological Heritage).
Objects that have not found their way into various collections and into the art trade are a lesser known part of the archeological heritage. This group includes buildings that no longer stand or cannot be seen and ruins and that part of them which has not been excavated or which, even if excavated, cannot be viewed except while work is going on, for a variety of reasons, often financial.
Few are aware that Hungary has 70,000 known archeological sites (close to 100,000 according to other estimates) some of which are in jeopardy. Fortunately, in Hungary there is no threat of war or of natural catastrophe but mushrooming constructions that the switch to a market economy involves, such as shopping malls and motorways, affect huge areas. There is need for foolproof contracts ensuring time and money and the infrastructure needed for various phases of the work, including staffing. What has been excavated must be stored, restored where needed, and published. The quantity of sources is huge, but, if nothing is done to prevent it, much may be irretrievably lost. The needs of housing and urbanisation and indeed of new methods of cultivation create similar problems.
Another type of problem derives from the changed role of the state. Earlier legislation protecting the cultural environment has remained in force, nevertheless, as a result of the process of deregulation, including legislation on compensation, cooperatives, and Church property, many of the proprietors that have to be dealt with are new. They often ignore what great treasures are in their charge. It would help if more, and more easily accessible, information were available on a country's archeological heritage. Few are aware that of the 506 sites in 150 countries, which Unesco has listed as forming part of the world's cultural or natural heritage, four are in Hungary: the Castle of Buda, the village of Hollókô, the Aggtelek caves, and the most recent addition, the Abbey of Pannonhalma. There are forty sites on that list from countries of participants on the course, and one each is expected to be included this year from Estonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which have missed out so far.
Of all the problems war is naturally the most serious. The civil war in Yugoslavia unfortunately provided many an example of the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a territory or a people. The summer course also included an account of the documentation of such destroyed or damaged monuments. These cover not only buildings but also attempt to reconstruct earlier collections. Documentation and data bases were thus given special emphasis, the more so since the majority of the participants are engaged on some such project. Much time was therefore devoted to computers, not just general computer and internet lore, also lectures on picture and textual digital databases, on standards of documentation and on virtual reality.
Poster displays linked to the course presented Romanian programs for monument quantification, revitalization plans in Macedonia, and new tech niques in the protection of manuscript pages or their digital storage.
A three-day field trip to Visegrád studied Roman and medieval remnants, examining the factors which, starting with the 19th century, influenced the restoration of what was excavated; what were the principles which governed restoration at any one time; and what materials were used; and what has stood the test of time.
The last subject to be dealt with covered icons from Eastern Europe and the threat which the illegal art trade posed to them. Many of these are not in the great museums but in ecclesiastic collections or in churches, and these are difficult to protect both against thieves and against normal deterioration. Similar questions were discussed in connection with manuscripts with special emphasis on the grave state of valuable Church collections.
The summer course also aimed to create an information center which could continuously cover the problems and projects of the region and which would make this information widely available, making use of the network which is at the disposal of the university.
The series evokes the memory of two generations of Hungarian francophile intellectuals. The first still completed their education before World War I at the time of the Dual Monarchy. The war and its disastrous consequences for Hungary created a hiatus in their lives and, often enough, in their careers as well. Though the ambiance of the interbellic period did not favor relations between Hungary and France, a new francophile generation nevertheless grew up. Most of them were born just before-or during-World War I and they completed their education in the 1930s with World War II to follow at the beginning of their careers. Theirs was then the difficult task of maintaining and even renewing the francophile line in Hungarian life in the Iron Curtain years.
It is, of course, impossible to discriminate comprehensively between the two generations. The Eötvös College, modelled on the École Normale Supérieure, had a defining role for both generations. Members of the first generation still had a personal influence on those who started their career in the forties. Two distinguished members of the second generation, Éva H. Balázs and Domokos Kosáry were present at the opening session on June 23rd which was devoted to Sándor Eckhardt (1890-1969). The session, chaired by Gábor Klaniczay, presented all aspects of Eckhardt's work. There were lectures on Eckhardt the teacher, the Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment scholar, the compiler of widely used dictionaries and French grammars, and the haut vulgarisateur of French culture. Éva H. Balázs made Eckhardt's fundamental role as scholar and educator, and in the propagation of French and French literature in Hungary, the theme of the inaugural address. Marie-Élisabeth Ducreux, from the Paris École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, a Fellow of the Collegium Budapest this year, pointed out that francophile intellectuals in Central Europe interpreted their relationship to French culture and to the French model in the intellectual, social and political context of their own country. She explained the differences in the Hungarian (illustrated by Eckhardt's work) and the Czech image of France by differences in the self-image of the two cultures. Domokos Kosáry concentrated on that unique journal, Revue d'Histoire Comparée which was edited by Eckhardt. Rose-Marie Legrave read out a contribution by Jacques Revel, who heads the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Revel, discussing Eckhardt's De Sicambria à Sans Souci, pointed to the Janus in Eckhardt the historian. On the one hand, he exemplified traditional meticulous erudition, diligently collecting curiousities of limited interest to a modern historian, as much as they contributed to the as full as possible presentation of Franco- Hungarian relations. At the same time his point of view when examing national stereotypes was much more akin to modern methodology. He showed considerable interest in essential questions connected with the flow and reception of information and ideas. His work on the Sicambria legend in many ways resembled current lieu de mémoire studies. Finally Éva Ring (ELTE, Budapest) discussed Eckhardt's A francia forradalom eszméi Magyarországon (The Ideas of the French Revolution in Hungary).
Three further Hungarian scholars figure in the 1997 program of the series. On September 15th János Gyôri (1908-1973), a specialist in French, Provencal, and Hungarian medieval literature and historiography, will be discussed by Martin Aurell (University of Poitiers, CESCM), Edina Bozóky (University of Boulogne), Ilona Sz. Jónás (ELTE, Budapest), and Imre Szabics (ELTE, Budapest) under the heading "The Spread of Courtly Literature in Medieval Europe." Kálmán Benda (1913-1994), who specialized in Early Modern history, the Reformation, Hungarian feudalism and the estates and their relation to Habsburg absolutism and the influence of the French Revolution on Hungary, will be discussed by Roger Chartier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), Claude Michaud (Sorbonne, Paris), István György Tóth (Central European University, Budapest) and Sándor Csernus (JATE, Szeged) on October 20th, under the heading "From the Reformation to the Revolution: Cultural Upheavals in France and Hungary." Another historian, László Makkai (1914-1989) figures on the program for November 27th. Makkai specialized in Medieval and Early Modern History, both universal and Hungarian, particularly in the economy, society, religion, technology, and science of those ages. He is considered an authority on the history of Transylvania. He will be discussed by Maurice Aymard (Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris), Guy Bois (Université Paris-VIII), Gyula Benda (ELTE, Budapest), and László Katus (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest) under the heading "Material Culture, Economic Systems and Societies in Modern Europe."
The series will be continued in 1998. Hungarians to be discussed will include Tibor Klaniczay, István Hajnal, Albert Gyergyay, István Lelkes, László Gáldi, and Béla Zolnay, Frenchmen Aurélien Sauvageot, and Georges Duby.