Ethnography Studies at Hungarian Universities up to 1960 (A Festive Retrospective on the Occasion of the 90th Anniversary of the Foundation of the ELTE Institute of Ethnography)
Ethnography Studies at Hungarian Universities up to 1960 (A Festive Retrospective on the Occasion of the 90th Anniversary of the Foundation of the ELTE Institute of Ethnography)

Summary/Abstract: At the University of Pest at the end of the 18th century, it was Dániel Cornides (1732–1787) who explored Hungarian ancient religion, while András Dugonics (1740–1818) studied various aspects of Hungarian folk poetry (tales, idioms, proverbs) and folk customs in his lectures. Descriptive statistics, reports on the state of affairs in various regions and ethnic groups within the country documented the ethnographic character of these areas and groups in the first half of the 19th century. In the second half of the century, professors of Hungarian literature and language investigated and discussed these topics with a comparative European perspective at universities. Ethnographic and folklore-related knowledge was disseminated by excellent professors of classical philology and oriental studies. Professors of geography (János Hunfalvy, Lajos Lóczy) played a crucial role in providing information about faraway peoples and continents at the University of Budapest. The first associate professor (Privatdozent) in ethnography was Antal Herrmann at the University of Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca, now Romania) in 1898. He delivered his lectures in Kolozsvár until 1918, and between 1921 and 1926 in Szeged, where the University of Cluj was relocated. The first university department for ethnography and folklore studies was established at the University of Szeged, where Sándor Solymossy, a scholar of comparative folkloristics, became professor. At the University of Budapest, the first department for ethnography and folklore studies was founded for István Györffy, who primarily studied material culture and the people of the Great Hungarian Plain. His successors were Károly Viski (1942), then folklorist Gyula Ortutay (1946). In 1951, another department at the University of Budapest came into being for István Tálasi, who was a scholar of material culture studies and historical ethnography. The head of the ethnography and folklore department of the Hungarian University of Kolozsvár (Cluj) was Károly Viski in 1940–1941, and Béla Gunda between 1943 and 1948. At the University of Debrecen, established in 1912, a number of associate professors gave ethnography and folklore lectures between 1925 and 1949 (István Ecsedi, Károly N. Bartha, Tibor Mendöl, Gábor Lükő), but an autonomous department was established only in 1949 and led by Béla Gunda until 1979. At the University of Szeged, Sándor Bálint was appointed professor of ethnography and folklore studies in 1949, but only after 1990 did it become possible to provide M.A. degrees in ethnography and folkloristics, which had been provided at the University of Budapest since 1950 and at the University of Debrecen since 1959. The study reviews the disciplinary history of ethnographic and folkloristic studies in Hungarian higher education from the beginning until 1960.

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