DIE REZEPTION VON COMENIUS IN DEN UNGARISCHEN BILDUNGSGESCHICHTLICHEN LEHRBÜCHERN
THE RECEPTION OF COMENIUS IN HUNGARIAN TEXTBOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this study is to examine one aspect of the reception of John Amos Comenius in Hungary. It provides an overview of how his work was represented in textbooks on the history of education used in Hungarian teacher education from the Austro-Hungarian Dualist period until the end of the twentieth century. The paper analyses how changing historical contexts influenced the evaluation of Comenius. As a framework for this reception-historical overview, it discusses the emergence of Hungarian historiography of education and the role of pedagogical classics in the formation of the educational-historical canon. The findings indicate that Comenius maintained a continuous - and, with only a few exceptions, consistently positive - presence in Hungarian textbooks. At the same time, his case illustrates a characteristic phenomenon: the emergence of the educational classic. Initially, Comenius was presented as one among several important seventeenth-century educators, albeit perhaps the most influential. From the 1940s onward, however, he clearly transcended this broader canon and became the defining representative of the period. Whereas earlier textbooks primarily portrayed him as a didactician, later works increasingly emphasized his role as the founder of popular education and, ultimately, as the creator of the first systematic theory of education.

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