A Contribution to the Question of Marcin Siennik’s Nationality

Author(s): Zbigniew Bela / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

The aim of the article is to supplement the knowledge of the German origin of Marcin Siennik by, among many other things, the information concerning his Protestant denomination, which influenced the way in which some fragments of the originally Italian The Secrets of the Reverend Maister Alexis of Piemont (Venice, 1555) were translated into Polish, and at the same time to present the views and doings of Sebastian Śleszkowski, the publisher of the second edition of the Polish translation of The Secrets (Kraków, 1620).

A Database Model for Social History: Historical Data Grinder and the Transylvanian Society of 19th and 20th Centuries

Author(s): Angela Lumezeanu / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

A Database Model for Social History: Historical Data Grinder and the Transylvanian Society of 19th and 20th Centuries – The study presents a new model for building a historical database, namely, the Historical Data Grinder (HDG). It is based on the EAV design model developed in bio-medicine and it offers some advantages for the historian especially when dealing with a large variety of heterogeneous sources. The database is very flexible and has a simple architecture, with fewer tables and relations when compared to a relational database. The HDG database has the possibility to store any kind of historical information with no limitations regarding the time period, geographic area or thematic range to which reference is made, and is also suitable as a teaching and experimental tool.

A fénykép történeti forrásként való alkalmazhatóságáról

Author(s): Orsolya Elek / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 73/2018

Photography is a unique medium that can convey information about events and actors of the past for the present. This is where its primary value lies as a historical source; and this is what can be used in historical research in versatile ways. At the same time, a photographic image can go beyond its primary documentary character by also attesting to its past and present audience as well as cultural, ideological, and power relations. The essay explores the statement that a photograph – as any narrative or visual representation – is both interpretation and selection at once. Further, Elek examines the ways in which a photograph can interpret and select, that is, the layers of meaning that the very characteristics of the medium has to offer for historical research. Following a brief overview of the theory of photography, the essay moves on to tackle questions of the visual turn, and the attributes of the technical image. The author then turns to the issue of memory in photography from the angle of memory studies, which have been the subject of increasing attention in historical research in general. The study aims to demonstrate that using photography as a historical source necessitates uncovering a number of various meaningful layers. Raging from the motifs found in the image, the subject of the image, and the technological fac- tors, through the institutional background conceiving and adopting it, to the paradigms of the history of science, many factors are involved in the ways we integrate visual sources into the study of past and present society.

A Ferencz József-féle konfirmációi káté fordításai

Author(s): Elek Rezi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2016

József Ferencz’s Confi rmation Catechism (also called the Confi rmation Catechism of the Hungarian Unitarian Church) has been translated from Hungarian into: German, English, Romanian, Finnish, Norwegian, Italian, and French. This paper covers the life and activity of translators, as well as the historical background, and the importance of translations.

A Fine Piece of Arse. Solving Jan Kochanowski’s Gadka

Author(s): Radosław Grześkowiak / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

The paper focuses on the literary riddle written in the sixteenth century by Jan Kochanowski (Fraszki III 78), concerning an animal with one eye that is shot at with arrows without arrowheads. The answer to the riddle is still debated by exegetic researchers. The author discusses the answers proposed so far (firearm, a homosexual’s anus, a female anus, an outhouse), starting with detailed lexical analysis of the epigram. Having discussed the poetics of the Old Polish ambiguous ribald riddle (suggesting indecent associations, but leading to an innocent answer) and the differences in the perception of the female body in the sixteenth century and today, the author shows that the audience of the riddle in the times of Kochanowski reached the conclusion that the answer was a female vagina. This trivial solution still seems to be the most probable answer.

A Foreign Lady: The Polish Episode in the Influenza Pandemic of 1918

Author(s): Łukasz Mieszkowski / Language(s): English / Issue: 113/2016

The essay describes the Polish episode in the 1918–20 influenza pandemic, situating the occurrence in the European and international context, and covering some relevant research issues. The topic is introduced by a brief discussion of the most recent hypotheses regarding the genesis of the pandemic and how it related to the World War in its declining phase. The core section, discussing the situation in Poland, begins with a description of the civilisation crisis caused by the frontline recurring across the country and the policies pursued by the occupational powers and the tough sanitary conditions implied by these developments. A survey of accessible sources is preceded by an outlined reconstruction of the course of the epidemic in various areas of the country, delineation of its timeframe, description of the symptoms and of the responses to the disease, attempts made to prevent its dissemination, and treatment methods in use at the time. The author seeks to determine the basic figures such as the morbidity and mortality rates, as compared against the data available for the other countries. In conclusion, considered are the presumed reasons behind the disappearance of the ‘Spanish flu’ epidemic experience from Polish collective memory.

A gyulafehérvári székesegyház déli tornya

Author(s): Balázs Halmos,Katalin Marótzy,Gergely Domonkos Nagy / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: VI-VII/2012

In 2008–2009 the Department for History of Architecture and of Monuments of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics had made a true-to-form architectural survey on the southern tower of the Cathedral of Saint Michael in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia, RO). The true-to-form architectural survey is based on the method used in “Bauforschung”, the building archaeology practice developed and widely used in Germany. In this context, survey is not only a tool of documentation but is considered as a research method in itself. We had the possibility to piece together the on-the-spot analysis with the research of archives, too. In the following study we try to add new opinions and to modulate the formerly known building-history of the southern tower. The building of this part of the Cathedral begun in the second part of the 13th century, the last bigger work was taken in 1856. Our research makes an attempt to divide the different periods of the design, and the various restorations on the facades. The work undertaken is not completed, we expect to carry on the survey of the interior in the immediate future.

A Habsburgok pénzügyi-katonai állama

Author(s): István Szijártó M. / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2019

The sinews of Habsburg power: Lower Austria in a fiscal-military state, 1650–1820. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018. 460 + XX oldal

A hozomány mint a társadalmi rétegződés fokmérője

Author(s): Anikó Kovács / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 06/2016

A Karib-térség fogalmának értelmezési kísérletei

Author(s): Emőke Horváth / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2014

In the past fifteen years researchers have reinterpreted the notion of the Caribbean, and this paper focuses on the analyses of the transformation. The oldest concept related to the topic concentrated on the chain of islands from Florida to Venezuela. The historical synonyms of the Caribbean islands were Antilles and West Indies. The common features of the region, the sugar plantations cultivated by forced labour of the slaves, were extended to Belize, Guiana (British Guiana) and Suriname (Dutch Guiana), although their territory belonged to the Mainland of Central America and South America. The third interpretation concentrates on the geopolitical approach and includes, besides the historical definition the countries, the mainland of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama). The political and economical urge of the last century transformed the concept, which has embraced a wider definition, Cuenca del Caribe or the Caribbean Basin, the most common use today relating to the chain of the islands, the countries of mainland Central America, Guiana, Suriname, Mexico, Columbia and Venezuela. Finally, the author attempts to create her own interpretation.

A kulturális és nemzeti identitás megfogalmazása Japánban és Közép-Európában a 18-19. században

Author(s): Mária Ildikó Farkas / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2016

Kokugaku of the Edo period can be seen as a key factor in defining cultural (and national) identity based on Japanese cultural heritage in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Kokugaku focused on Japanese classics, on exploring, studying and reviving (or even inventing) ancient Japanese language, literature, myths, history and also political ideology. ‘Japanese culture’ as such was distinguished from Chinese (and all other) cultures, and thus ‘Japanese identity’ was defined. Meiji scholars used kokugaku conceptions of Japan to construct a modern nationalism that was not simply derived from Western models and was not purely instrumental, but made good use of pre-modern and culturalist conceptions of community. The role of pre-modern cultural identity in the formation of modern Japanese (national) identity – following mainly Miroslav Hroch’s comparative and interdisciplinary theory of national development – can be examined in comparison with the ‘national awakening’ movements of the peoples of EastCentral Europe. Before modernity, in the shadow of a cultural and/or political ‘monolith’ (China for Japan, and Germany for Central Europe), ethnic groups or communities started to evolve their own identities with cultural movements focusing on their own language and culture, thus creating a new type of community, the nation. A comparative examination of texts (discourses) illustrates that similar modes of argumentation (narratives) can be identified in these movements: ‘language’ as the primary bearer of collective identity, the role of language in culture and ‘culture’ as the main common attribute of the community; as well as similar aspirations to explore, search and develop the native language, ‘genuine’ culture, and ‘original’ traditions. This comparative research offering ‘development patterns’ for interpretation can help us understand how ‘cultural identity’ played an important role in the formation of national identity, with its effect (‘cultural nationalism’) present even today in Japan and in Central Europe, too.

A Life History of the ‘Irish’ Ecotype Tied Stones and Loose Dogs

Author(s): Marcas Mac COINNIGH / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

The term ecotype was first introduced to the field of folkloristics by Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (1878–1952), who proposed the idea that folktales develop from base forms due to transformations triggered by specific environmental conditions before eventually stabilising within cultural districts. The general analogy was popular amongst folklorists who readily invoked the concept to deconstruct a wide range of genres including rhyming couplets, folk ballads, folktales, fairytales, personal narratives, legends and urban legends. It is unfortunate, however, that ecotypes have largely been ignored by scholars working in the fields of paremiology, especially when one considers not only the established inter-relationships between proverbial material and other folkoristic genres, but also the recent pioneering cross-cultural analyses of idiomatic expressions in European languages and beyond.

A moralitás cenzusai

Author(s): András Nógrádi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2013

Review of: Kathrin Levitan "A Cultural History of the British Census", 2011 by: Nógrádi András

A múlt arcai és a jelen harcai

Author(s): Gyöngy Kovács Kiss / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 08/2015

A nonadorantizmus két kelet-közép-európai módozatáról a 16. században (Martin Seidel és Szymon Budny)

Author(s): Mihály Balázs / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2-3/2017

The international literary history focusing on the antecedents of the enlightenment era has a particular interest in nonadorantism, the most radical branch of antitrinitarianism. This article focuses on research about Martin Seidel (?–?, 16–17th century) and Szymon Budny (1533–1593). In Seidel’s case new documents have been discovered in the archives which reveal new relations and connections in his work life which make it possible to date the origins of nonadorantism to a significantly earlier time. The article sums up the English, German, Spanish, Polish and Italian papers, and while doing so, Budny and Seidel are repositioned on the Eastern-Central European religious map. The article sketches the relations between the works of Budny and Seidel, as well as those of Francis David (Dávid Ferenc) (1510?–1579), Jacobus Palaeologus (1520?–1585) and Matthias Vehe-Glirius (1545?–1590).

A nyelv, a valóság és a tények átértékelődése.Egy kívülálló konstrukciója a kortárs historiográfia hatástörténetileg jelentősnek látszó csoportjairól

Author(s): József Jászberényi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 5-6/2001

My paper – concentrating on the different interpretations of the three factors in the title - orders the most important groups of historiography of the end of 20th century in a brief narrative. My basic theory is that the way of thinking that reflects on our pre-determination by languauge began in the philosophy of the 20’s on the basis of Herder, Humboldt and Nietzsche and appeared in the science of history in the works of concept-history and Hayden White. In the focus of my paper are the new ways of historiography based on these theories, for example: deconstructive historiography, pragmatist historiography, the thoughts and methods of Michel Foucault, and the feminist historiography. The conclusion of studiing these theories of different authors and schools is that the reflective and self-reflective linguistic way of thinking gains more and more ground in international historiography and redefines our basic concepts that were thought to be steady.

A PÉCSI FERHÁD-DZSÁMI

Author(s): László Gere,Balázs Sudár / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2011

Die erste Information über die Moschee von Pascha Ferhád in Pécs findet sich 1663 bei Evlia Cselebi, dem Einzigen, der das besetzte Ungarn detailliert beschrieben hat. Nach Evlia gehörten zur Stiftung von Ferhád auch ein Kloster und ein Bad. Die Stiftungsgebäude stehen zumeist nahe beieinander und bilden einen Stadtteil (mahalle). Die Plätze der drei bedeutendsten Bäder in Pécs sind gut bekannt. Das eine stand innerhalb des Szigeti- Tors und war von Bei Memi gegründet worden, das andere gehörte zur Stiftung von Pascha Kászim und stand am NO-Ende des heutigen Széchenyi-Platzes. Das dritte befand sich in der Király-Gasse und wurde am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts abgerissen. Auf Grund der Angaben von Evlia Cselebi und der Vermessung Joseph de Haüys vom Oktober 1686 können die Gebäudereste auf dem Grundstück der heutigen Kazinczy-Gasse 4 eindeutig mit der Moschee von Pascha Ferhád identifiziert werden. Berücksichtigt man, dass sich im mündlichen Gerede die Ränge eventuell ändern, müssen wahrscheinlich auch die Angaben der türkischen Sandschak-Konskription (sog. tahrír-defter) des Jahres 1579 beigezogen werden, denen gemäß ein Stadtviertel nach Bei Ferhád benannt war. Die Moschee selbst erscheint bei der Beschreibung eines Hauses: „No 635. Das Haus der Tútí, Tochter von Abdullah, im Stadtteil der Marodeure, nahe der Ferhád- Moschee.“ Der Stadtteil der Marodeure ist auf Grund der Pécser Häuserregistrierung von 1687 in der SW-Hälfte der Stadt, vielleicht an der Stelle der heutigen Zrínyi- Gasse, zu lokalisieren.

A pusztulás képei. Katasztrófa-fotográfia a 19. század második felében

Author(s): Éva Judit Bodovics / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 73/2018

Natural disasters have always been in the crosshairs of attention, and with the increasing access to press they have become so-called media-born events. From the birth of photography onwards, people endeavoured to capture the impact of natural disasters. The present study examines the earliest examples of disaster photography from Hungary, images of major floods in the 1870s. The photos of two Budapest floods (1875, 1876), as well as of those which devastated Miskolc (1878) and Szeged (1879), allow a comparison of the images created by the new technology with graphic depictions of previous eras. In order to draw a general picture of the perception of floods, the study also focuses on the representation of nature, city and people in photography.The photographs examined retain the previous era’s Classicist or Romantic approach to content and stylistic character, while offering unique and novel ways of disaster representation using the language of photography. On one hand, due to technological limitations, the flood narrative created by photography lacks the traditional dramatic style of earlier graphic representations using depictions of motion and emotions. As opposed to these, photographs communicate the silent drama of floods: similarly to post-battle images, the tragedy is encapsulated in the tension between the subject (the destruction) and the extreme serenity of its depiction. On the other hand, due to the – unintentional – departure from the previous dramatic narrative, floods depicted in photographs lose the primary reason that made them a disaster: the extraordinary. Floods are no longer catastropic – stripped of their extraordinariness, they become everyday phenomena, mere misfortune.

A Queer Approach to the Classical Myth of Phaedra in Music

Author(s): Federica Marsico / Language(s): English / Issue: 3 ENG/2017

Three musical adaptations of the myth of Phaedra, in which the wife of King Theseus of Athens desperately falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus, were composed in the second half of the twentieth century by three homosexual composers: the dramatic cantata Phaedra for mezzosoprano and small orchestra (1976) by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) after a text by the American poet Robert Lowell, the opera Le Racine: pianobar pour Phèdre (1980) by Sylvano Bussotti (1931-) after a libretto drafted by the composer himself and consisting of a prologue, three acts, and an intermezzo, and, last but not least, the two-act concert opera Phaedra (2007) by Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012) after a libretto by the German poet Christian Lehnert. The aim of this paper is to prove that the three homosexual composers chose a myth about an incestuous—and thus censored—love in order to represent homoerotic desire, labelled as deviant by the coeval heteronormative society and hence condemned by it. The study sheds light on the aspects of the most famous literary elaborations that affect gay sensibility, and on how the three composers experienced their homosexuality and gave utterance to it in their other works. The analysis of the three works at issue demonstrates that the discourse about gayness takes shape through the interplay of numerous aspects. The elaboration of the literary sources, the organization of the libretto, the characters’ definition, and the mise-en-scène, together with the music, put the myth into that perspective.

A román–magyar viszony viharos történetének mozaikdarabja

Author(s): József Máriás / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 06/2016