A szellemtörténet Debrecenben: ifjabb Révész Imre
Intellectual History in Debrecen: Imre Révész Jr.

Summary/Abstract: The first section of this study summarizes the relationship between Imre Révész Jr. and intellectual history. Then it examines Revész’s major works related to intellectual history, especially his summaries of Protestant church history, and among others his ambitious study titled The Spiritual Crisis of Debrecen, which he wrote after becoming a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. After that, the author discusses the titular topic focusing on three central issues, utilizing a large, so far unpublished collection of archival sources. One of these is the correspondence between Gyula Szekfű and Imre Révész Jr., made especially relevant by the fact that Szekfű and intellectual history had been under heavy criticism in Debrecen in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The second issue is the relationship between Elemér Mályusz and Imre Révész Jr., whose conflict reached its climax with the aforementioned presentation at the Academy of Sciences. The third correspondence analized in the study had been between Révész and Jenő Zoványi from the 1910s until the 1950s. While it is not evident in their correspondence, they had heated arguments about certain issues concerning the history of the Reformed Church. In the conclusion the author states that he considers Imre Révész Jr. a church historian of European significance, whose modernity was given by his intellectual historian viewpoint (which he champions in Debrecen, where its opponents had been in the majority).

• Details
• Contents