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From Austria-Hungary to the United States: National Minorities and Emigration 1880-1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Tibor Frank*
Affiliation:
Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest

Extract

At the beginning of his political career, Count Kuno Klebelsberg, the remarkable future Hungarian Minister of Culture and Education of the 1920s, prepared a statement on emigration from Hungary for Prime Minister Kálmán Széll in 1902. “[W]e must correct a great and general mistake, that might unfortunately lead to disappointment,” Klebelsberg warned the PM. “Unwilling to make a distinction among people from the point of view of nationality, we call everybody residing in Hungary a Hungarian. This is how it became fashionable to speak of 'the emigration of Hungarians' when emigration was discussed, giving the general public, unaccustomed to making distinctions, the mistaken belief that we are talking about the emigration of Hungarians who speak the native tongue. This is why the return of the emigrants and corresponding official arrangements are demanded. The case is different, however. The two largest contingents contributing to the [“Hungarian”] emigration are Slovaks and Ruthenes.”

Type
I The Historical Background
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR, Inc. 

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References

Notes

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