Einrichtungswerk des Königreichs Hungarn (1688–1690). Herausgegeben von János Kalmár und János J. Varga. Einleitung von János J. Varga, Anmerkungen und deutsche Fassung von János Kalmár. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010. 514 S. = Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Mitteleuropa, 39: Quellen, I. ISBN: 978-3-515-09778-9

Einrichtungswerk des Königreichs Hungarn (1688–1690). Herausgegeben von János Kalmár und János J. Varga. Einleitung von János J. Varga, Anmerkungen und deutsche Fassung von János Kalmár. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010. 514 S. = Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Mitteleuropa, 39: Quellen, I. ISBN: 978-3-515-09778-9.

This important source publication makes available in print the Einrichtungswerk des Königreichs Hungarn (EW), a major administrative initiative by the Habsburg court to address the chaotic situation in Hungary after the expulsion of the Ottomans. The text has long been at the center of controversy between Hungarian and Austrian historians about the intentions of the Habsburgs vis-à-vis Hungary. Thanks to this edition and the thoughtful commentary of its editors this controversy can now largely be laid to rest opening up avenues for more nuanced interpretations. Both text and commentary shed light on a rich array of issues calling for further historical analysis: the mindset of Habsburg policy makers, the interaction of these policy-makers with the Hungarian estates, and the state of affairs (social, military, institutional, economic, and religious) in Habsburg-occupied Hungary during the last decades of the 17th century.

The publication has been the culmination of a nearly 90-year-long effort. The actual text was already transcribed and annotated for publication during the 1920s by the legal historian Béla Baranyai. Baranyai’s page proofs form the basis of this edition but the editors confronted significant obstacles: the manuscript used by Baranyai was destroyed in a 1927 fire, Baranyai’s page proofs contain significant gaps, and many of his annotations were of no help since they referenced the destroyed manuscript and a likewise lost introduction. During the 1980s László Benczédi, the eminent historian of early modern Hungary, resumed the publication project and wrote a programmatic essay on the importance of the EW (published in 1987). The editors emphasize their indebtedness to these predecessors whose work was interrupted by death.

The editors’ own contributions are as follows: a substantial introduction by J. Varga; extensive footnotes identifying cited sources, text variants, scribal errors, and relevant scholarship; an appendix with supporting documents attached to the EW by its authors and archival sources assembled by the editors shedding light on discussions in Vienna, input by Hungarian magnates, and failed attempts to implement the EW; a case study by Kalmár examining to what extent the EW influenced Habsburg administrative policies in the Banat; a glossary of abbreviations; a multi-linguistic concordance of geographic designations; and two indexes of places and personal names.

The editors consider the EW a mostly positive undertaking that “distinguished itself advantageously from other projects of the Leopoldine era … recogniz[ing] the essential features of backwardness in the country just liberated from Turkish rule” (p. 57). For example, the editors reject the notion that the EW’s intention was the “Germanization” (Eindeutschung) of Hungary (pp. 76, 464). They argue convincingly that earlier Hungarian historians took calls for German immigration out of context without mentioning similar appeals to Hungarians, Slavs, and others. Also, they find that many of the EW’s proposals for reform were “shaped by the endeavor to promote the common good and to provide assistance to the disadvantaged layers of society” (p. 71). Influenced by early Enlightenment ideas (natural law, cameralism, and mercantilism) the EW condemned the exploitation of the peasantry, the power of the nobility, the corruption of administrators, the billeting practices of the Habsburg army and other similar problems facing Hungary during the late 17th century. Curbing this deplorable state of affairs was the EW’s principal goal as demonstrated by its calls for administrative, judicial and military reforms; a more equitable tax system (curbing the nobility’s tax freedoms); and an economic policy promoting industry and trade.

The editors further demonstrate that the EW, which remained largely a still-born plan due to the opposition of the Hungarian elite and Habsburg army leaders, provided important impulses for reform during the 18th century. Yet, they also note some of the more troubling aspects of the EW, particularly its militant Anti-Protestantism and Anti-Judaism. The EW’s principal author, Cardinal Kollonich, was “a fiery apostle of Catholic renewal … cruel in his attitude toward Protestants and Jews” – a startling contradiction in a man whom J. Varga also describes as “a clear thinking human being” intent on modernizing Hungary (p. 28). The hateful language targeting Jews (pp. 128–129) is particularly noteworthy. Jews were called “a harmful weed” (schädliches Unkraut) subject to eradication (Ausrottung). Even if the German Ausrottung did not yet mean physical liquidation – a connotation it acquired during the Holocaust – its use nevertheless leaves one wondering about the mindset of otherwise progressive reformers.

This differentiated interpretation of the EW largely follows the main points of Benczédi’s 1987 essay. Like Benczédi the editors note the EW’s negative aspects but emphasize its overall positive importance as a reform project – similar to Austrian historian Theodor Mayer’s standard work “Verwaltungsreform in Ungarn nach der Türkenzeit” (1911; reprint 1980). Like Mayer the editors focus on the EW’s principal ideas, the intellectual milieu that produced them, and these ideas’ long-term influence (geistiges Erbe) on later reform projects. However, future historians should consider a new approach that was suggested by Benczédi who saw the EW as “a rich goldmine for … the history of society and everyday life”. Indeed, even a cursory reading of the text allows glimpses into historical realities that remain poorly studied: the traumatization of ordinary men and women by ruthless power brokers (nobles, officials, and army officers), the horrors of pestilence and disease, the mass flight of the peasantry, the plight of Protestants, the brutal realities of a broken justice system, and catastrophic early settlement efforts (e.g., the forced transplantation of captured runaways and the failure to make any provisions for thousands of Bosnians left to starve on the Hungarian plain). From a social history perspective the EW is a unique source for understanding why large parts of Hungary erupted in revolt less than a decade later.

Despite its overall quality this publication regrettably lacks a systematic examination of the EW’s manuscript corpus. We learn very little about the original clean copy (destroyed in 1927), the extent to which it survived in Baranyai’s fragmentary page proofs, or the ten manuscript copies still in existence today. The editors replaced missing text segments from the original with excerpts from a late 18th-century manuscript in the Hungarian National Library which they maintain “was closest to the lost original clean copy …” (p. 81). This is a surprising assertion given the existence of at least two much earlier manuscripts in Vienna. The editors do not indicate exactly where they inserted these excerpts, nor do they attribute text variants which are introduced only as “variants from other versions” (p. 83). It would have been helpful to learn more about these other versions and how these versions compare with each other and with the original clean copy. Attempts to address these questions in footnotes (e.g. on pages 194–195, 202–204) do not, unfortunately, provide a sufficiently detailed analysis of the EW’s textual history.

This drawback notwithstanding historians should welcome this publication as an important landmark. The text of a significant Habsburg reform project, from which passages were often cited out of context, is now readily accessible to scholarship. The volume is of great interest to historians of Hungary, the Habsburg Empire, European absolutism, as well as early modern society and religion.

Georg Michels, Riverside, CA