Victor Karady
The Social Functions of Education in a Multi-Cultural and Post-Feudal
Society. The Transylvanian Paradigm..
One can easily detect, even at the most superficial sight, a number of denominational dimensions of the supply and the demand of education in modern times. A religious community is, obviously enough, a cultural cluster providing for the organised reproduction of its members by inculcating in their young generations its main belief tenets, values and ritual competences. These may include intellectual assets applicable in the secular domain too. Religious cultures thus promote particular skills and distribute cultural goods, but also generate various forms of habitus more or less favorable to learning. They may give rise – due to purely religious needs – to sophisticated networks of organised schooling for the training of believers and clerics. A confessional congregation also has specific social set-up in terms of the insertion of its clienteles in the given power structure, professional stratification and class fabric which defines to a large extent both its educational needs, ambitions and expectations as well as the means the group can invest in education.
In the forthcoming study of the educational scenery in early 20th century Transylvania all these topical issues will be – mostly implicitely – touched upon in order to explain the extraordinary diversity of educational attainments and performances identified in our statistical findings along denominational lines. For the interpretation of our data we also have to resort to a number of institutional, demographic, economical and even political variables. But first of all we have to locate the educational system of Transylvania in that of the emerging Hungarian nation state of which it was an integral part.
Education supply and demand in Transylvania.
Regional inequalities of development have usually historical roots, often related to long established factors of which only some visible consequences or outcomes can be controlled by socio-historical investigation. This cannot be the target of the present inquiry. We are going simply to confront, thanks to a small number of objective indicators, the glorious historical image of the province with its social reality in the Dualist Era.
Transylvania has kept, as it is well known, an exceptional status in the Hungarian Kingdom both both due to collective imagination and socio-historical circumstances.
It was, to be sure, the only part of the historic state to have almost continuously preserved a measure of political autonomy against outside powers, with its medieval townships developing without major breaks in spite of various vicissitudes, unlike most other (especially central) parts of the country, where many ancient institutions and community structures (like the Churches, elite colleges, the ’Saxon University’) survived from medieval or post medieval origins till modern times. Hence its public image as the eastern outpost of Magyar civilisation embodied among other things in Kincses Kolozsvár, the ’city of treasures’, the legendary landscapes of the Carpathian Mountains, the myth of the ’tricky Széklers’, the ’truely Magyar nature’ of Calvinism and Unitarianism originating from the region and their cultural and material impacts (buildings, temples, libraries, other ’places of memory’). All this belongs indeed up to the present to the staple source of nationalist pride in Hungary and regarded as an essential part of the symbolic patrimonium of Magyardom.
But the singularity of the province ’beyond the King’s Pass’ was also linked to the fact that the demographic minority status of the politically and socially dominant ’titular ethnic group’, the Magyars, was among the worst of all other regions in the would be nation state’. In 1880, after decades of intensive policies of linguistic Magyarisation, Hungarian speakers made up a mere 30,2 % of the population in Transylvania, as against 46,6 % in the whole country.[1] These proportions did not evolve very fast by 1910, indeed they grew less in Transylvania – with only 34,2 % of speakers of Hungarian (as a first language) – than in the general population of the country (54,4 % altogether).[2]
Denominational heterogeneity contributed to enhance the uniquely complex nature of post-feudal Transylvanian society. This was certainly the most idiosynchratic regional mixture of confessions in a country known to be unique among modern European state formations on account of its religious multiplicity, exemplified especially by the lack of a religious cluster carrying demographic majority. The erstwhile Roman Catholic ’state religion’ – while it remained the faith of the court and a good part of the landed aristocracy[3], fell just short of the majority, not gathering more than 47,3 % in 1880 and 48,7 % in 1900 of the whole population[4]. This meant however that at least in most larger regions of the kingdom Roman Catholics did represent a qualified majority, even if – on county level - Greek Catholics (like in Máramaros) and Greek Orthodox (like in Arad, Krassó-Szörény, Hunyad and Temes) could locally do so as well. But Transylvania was the only larger territorial unit in the kingdom without any confessional group coming close to majority positions. Here, in 1880 for example, Roman Catholics (12,7 %) and Calvinists (14,2 %) stood, as sizable minorities to be true, much behind the Greek Orthodox (31,8 %) and the Greek Catholics (27,6 %), while Lutherans (9,6 %), Unitarians (2,6 %) and Jews (1,4 %) remained in a quasi diaspora situation, even if they were often concentrated in some local communities or sub-regions.[5]
Whatever this complex situation and the collective representations therewith attached may be (or may have been in the past), we are concerned here only with social realities in a comparative perspective, the basis of reference being the rest of Hungary proper (outside Croatia), in order to substantiate images and expectations about the state of development reached by the province at the end of the Dualist Era. The level of educational expansion is an integral part of this exploration which, by hypothesis, can be brought into correlation with other indices of modernisation. This exercise might produce controversial results in the sense that their significance can vary and their message differ, hence the importance of their circumstantial interpretation. They are indeed liable to offer cues for the understanding of denominational inequalities identifiable in the data bank published in this volume.
Table 1.
Comparative Indices of Educational Development in Transylvania in the Dualist Era
Transylvania Hungary
% of children of 1870[6] 40,6
schooling age 1880[7] 71,4 77,2
attending a school 1890[8] 70,9 81,5[9]
1900[10] 71,4 84,6
average salary of teachers 1880[11] 250 367
% of non qualified primary 1895[12] 12,6
school teachers
% of literate (with writing 1890 36 51
and reading skills) among 1900 44 59
6 years old and above[13] 1910 54 67
% in the population 1900 14,7 100,0 (= 16.722.000)
_____________________________
% among primary schools 1880[14] 18,9 100,0 (= 15.824)
in Hungary 1900[15] 17,6 100,0 (= 17.146)
1910[16] 16,2 100,0 (= 16,530)
% among primary 1880[17] 18,0 100,0 (= 21.664)
school teachers 1900[18] 16,2 100,0 (= 29.063)
1910[19] 14,3 100,0 (= 32.865)
% among primary 1880[20] 12,5 100,0 (= 1.620.000)
school pupils 1900[21] 13,0 100,0 (= 2.315.000)
% among pupils of schooling 1913 25,9 100,0 (= 127.415)
age not enrolled in a school[22]
% of lower secondary schools 1898[23] 11,9 100,0 (= 268)
(polgári and felsõ népiskola) 1910[24] 12,0 100,0 (= 482)
% of pupils in lower secondary 1898[25] 10,9 100,0 ( = 38.824)
schools (polgári and felsõ népisk. 1910[26] 9,8 100,0 (= 88129)
% of classical secondary schools 1900[27] 19,1 100,0 (= 198)
(gymnasiums and reáliskolák) 1910 19,0 100,0 (=210)
% of students in classical 1900 15,0 100,0 (= 65.589)
secondary schools (as above) 1910[28] 15,8 100,0 (= 71.301)
% of commercial highschools 1889[29] 6,9 100,0 (= 29)
(felsõ kereskedelmi) 1900[30] 10,2 100,0 (= 39)
1910[31] 100,0 (= )
% of pupils in commercial 1889[32] 5,2 100,0 (= 2000)
highschools (felsõ kereskedemi) 1900[33] 10,0 100,0 (= 5.333)
1910[34] 5,0 100,0 (= 8.841)
% of normal schools (teacher 1900 10,8 100,0 (= 83)
training colleges) 1910 14,4 100,0 (= 90)
% of students in normal schools 1900 15,2 100,0 (= 8799)
1910 13,1 100,0 (= 9744)
number of students in the Budapest
Polytechnical University per 100 000 3,3 8,6 (7,8 outside Budapest)
Inhabitants (1899/1900-1917/18)[35]
% of students in the Budapest 1889/90-1897/8[36] 6,7 100,0 (= 5879)
Polytechnical University
% of students in the two 1890[37] 14,4 100,0 (= 4624)
classical universities 1894[38] 13,9 100,0 (= 3755)
This set of educational data demonstrate a dual structure of sorts, related to educational investments in Transylvania. On the one hand the educational equipment of the province, as far as the number of primary and secondary schools and teachers is concerned, was mostly better than the country wide average, except for vocational and normal schools. If, as in table 1 above, the region benefited in general more primary schools than expected, following the size of its population, it had indeed more villages without any schools (180) around 1907 than any other region in the country.[39] Transylvania had much more classical gymnasiums and reáliskolák, but much less vocational secondary schools (mostly commercial ones – felsõ kereskedelmik) and teacher training colleges (normal schools) than expected, following its population size. Since 1872 the province had a classical university of its own in Kolozsvár/Cluj, the second Hungarian university in the whole country. The Franz-Joseph University seems to have been in fact attended for long mostly by students from beyond the King’s Pass (up to two thirds of the student body in the 1890s[40]), before the big wave of ’invasion’ of law students from Budapest, Western and Central Hungary in the mid 1900s. Anyhow, the existence of the university and a large network of classical secondary schools secured serious facilities for advanced training in the province, given the importance of locality for the probability to enroll and graduate from a local institution of elite training.[41]
Thus, as compared to the share of the province in the population most of the indicators of the schooling supply are above their mean value in quantitative terms. As for the quality of the same, doubts may be raised when the very low salaries of teachers, or the relatively high percentage of primary teachers without qualification (graduates from a normal school) are taken into account. There is no reason to think though that the quality of secondary school training differed significantly from one region to another in those times, since the school networks (whether state or church managed) were organised on a nation wide basis and closely controlled by the state educational authorities (via a vast body of inspectors) with professors of the same education being appointed everywhere. As to universities, contemporaries considered the Transylvanian faculties, especially the Law faculty in the 1900s, as a ’factory of graduates’ granting special facilities for students passing exams.[42] The rate of success at exams was indeed systematically higher in Kolozsvár/Cluj as in the University of Budapest.[43] Still the supply side of the educational market seems to have been in a satisfactory state on the whole.
The demand for education shows a very different, indeed a complex and partly contradictory picture.
On the primary level the demand objectivated in the numbers and proportions of pupils was systematically below the level of the supply and well below the country wide average. Children of schooling age attended schools throughout the Dualist era much less often in Transylvania than in the rest of the country. (Differences between the region beyond King’s Pass and the rest were actually larger in reality than suggested by some of our data, since the country wide averages also included the low Transylvanian averages themselves.) Consistently enough, this observation applies to the low share of pupils in Transylvania enrolled in primary schools, together with – logically – the very high share of those who were not attending. As a direct consequence Transylvania lagged behind the rest with its rates of literacy. At the end of the period hardly more than half of the population of 6 years old and above knew how to read and write, as against more than two third of the general population.
The situation was different on the level of secondary education. Here, as for the supply, two patterns prevailed. The proportion of Transylvanian students in classical secondary schools exceeded regularly the country wide average. These were érettségi (Matura) granting institutions leading to higher studies. Still, the size of the student body in the classical track (gymnasiums and reáliskolák) fell behind the size of the network of accessible institutions. In contrast, some non classical highschools[44] (normal schools) even a measure of over-crowding could be observed at times thanks to the rather high number of pupils as against a low share of Transylvania in the country wide institutional network. In polgári schools and in commercial highschools Transylvania was also seriously under-represented both in terms of institutions and students. Thus, the Transylvanian educational system was weak as to the demand for primary, lower secondary and some vocational (commercial) secondary schools, but rather strong as to the demand expressed for secondary elite training.
Higher education, intellectual professions and modernity in Transylvania
Such duality can be observed in higher education as well.
While the two classical universities seem to have gathered approximately as many Transylvanian students as the share of the province in the population of the country, Transylvanians attended very rarely the Polytechnical University in Budapest. If one looks closer at study options, it appears clearly that Transylvanian students, when enrolled for elite training, invested mostly in the most classical track, the legal one preparing both to civil service and political careers and the bar. An overwhelming majority of Transylvanian students indeed attended a Faculty of Law, and a substantial proportion of them even an Academy of Law. (For the latter we have as yet no data, though.) In Budapest University this applied to 74 % of students from Transylvania as against 57 % of the rest of the student body in 1895/6[45]. If one combines such data with the very low showing of Transylvanian students at the Polytechnical university, it appears that the emerging ’modern’ intelligentsia from the region engaged on elite training tracks kept a basically conservative profile, opting in their absolute majority for Law, inadvertently exemplifying the classical intellectual incinations attributed in nationalist mythology to the ’Magyar nation of jurists’.
Such ’pre-modern’ or classical proclivities identified in the demand for elite training cannot be disconnected from the level of industrialisation of Transylvania and, may be also, more generally, from the level of modernization observable outside the economic domain proper. This can be directly linked to the size and the composition by branches of activity of employed members of the middle classes whose professional position rests upon a measure of professional skills acquired by elite training.
Table 2.
The Share of Transylvania in the Hungarian Intellectual Professions in 1910[46].
Transylvania Hungary
Active population[47] 15,2 100,0 (= 7.750.973)
Private employees in forestry 8,9 100,0 (= 1735)
Private employees in mining 24,8 100,0 (= 1.538)
Private employees in industry 7,3 100,0 (= 26.498)
Private employees in trade 7,2 100,0 (= 37.312)
Private employees in transportation 7,5 100,0 (= 20.624)
Private employees in agricultue 9,4 100,0 (= 9.611)
All private employees 7,8 100,0 (97.318)
Lawyers 10,2 100,0 (= 6.743)
Other legal employees, judges, attorneys 16,2 100,0 (= 12.591)
Medical doctors 9,9 100,0 (= 5514)
Other medical and para-medical professionals 12,5 100,0 (= 18341)
Private ingeneers 7,2 100,0 (= 1.353)
All free professionals (including those not cited above) 11,5 100,00 (= 48.344)
Employees in military forces[48] 14,6 100,0 (= 9.687)
All Church and educational services 16,2 100,0 (= 57.713)
All civil services 14,2 100,0 (= 49.155)
All intellectual professionals 13,7 100,0 (181.788)
The table on the intellectual professions displays a singular duality indeed thanks to the weak presence of ’modern’ intellectuals and the relative over-representation of traditional brackets of those performing non manual services, even when they cannot necessarily be qualified as intellectual activities proper. Transylvania appears here seriously backward, as compared to the rest of Hungary, since in most professional branches cited the region was heavily under-represented.
This weakness is particularly striking as to the managerial staff of the private economy, where most often the share of Transylvania hardly exceeded the half of its proportion in the active population (male and female). In industry, trade and transportations – that is, in the recently developed sectors of the post-feudal era – the Transylvanian proportions remained below half of the share of the province int he active population of the country. Only in the most traditional sectors was the region somewhat better staffed on the executive and managerial level, with rather poor scores though even in agriculture and forestry, but with a spectacular over-representation in mining. This latter fact had to do with the central position of the region in the sector of mineral extraction sector in Hungary, due to its exceptionally rich material resources : the ’intellectual’ staff of mining was however the smallest of all sectors statistically distinguished, a mere 1,6 % of non manuals (white collars) in private employment..
A similar observation can be made for the ’real intellectuals’ (tulajdonképeni értelmiség[49]) in indigenous statistical terms, that is, free professionals, civil and semi-civil servants (teachers, clerics). In Transylvania free professionals were generally under-represented, and this rather heavily, especially in the best qualified professions, the income of which depend on personal skills and commitment, like doctors and lawyers. This was much less the case of less qualified non manuals in the same professional branches, in law (where assistant lawyers and employees formed the majority of the sector) or in the para-medical sector (where midwives made up the vast majority of the sector). Thus the higher the qualification, the lower was the share of Transylvania in the sector. This observation applies also to the civil servic (in state, county and municipal employment), military as well as in semi-public (teachers’ and clerical) professions, where the province was much better represented (in administrative civil service actually somewhat over-represented). Most of those concerned here (priests, primary school teachers, county or municipal employees, military officers[50]) did not have full university training, often lacking secondary school graduation as well.[51] Not even all teachers in activity could prevail of a due qualification as demanded by state regulations, though normal schools offered only secondary level training. Thus the bulk of Transylvanian intelligentsia was relatively under-qualified, compared to the county wide average.
This conclusion raises the much more general problem of the degree of modernisation of Transylvania in the Dualist Era. Modernisation is of course a manifold notion with a number of different meanings, following essentially the ways and means of its appreciation or measurement. But some aspects of modernisation – like urbanisation, the development of public services (such as health care or education proper) regarded as vital in a post-feudal society, - are demonstrably connected to the local availability of educational capital either as a cause or a consequence. Herewith I have collected a number of very different indicators of modernisation converging towards an overall definition of the level of development liable to affect education which the province had reached by the final phase of the period.
Table 3.
Indicators of Modernisation in Transylvania related to Hungary as a whole
Transylvania Hungary
% of the population in 1900[52] 14,7 100,0 (= 16.722,000)
% of the population outside Budapest in 1900[53] 15,6 100,0 (= 14.447 000)
% of deaths under medical control[54]
men 1901-1902 28,6 49,1
men 1912-13 31,0 53,3
women 1901-1902 27,5 48,1
women 1912-1913 28,9 53,1
% of pharmacies outside Budapest in 1905 [55] 12,6 100,0 (= 2004)
% of hospital beds outside Budapest in 1905[56] 17,4 100,0 (= 23.403)
% of deaths due to tuberculosis (outside Budapest) in 1914[57] 14,9 100,0 (=52.198)
% of the urban population (outside Budapest)[58]
in 1869 9,1 12,6
in 1900 11,0 14,4
in 1910 13,1 16,3
% of all mail received (outside Budapest) in 1905[59] 12,0 100,0 (= 300.995)
% of telegrams received (outside Budapest) in 1905[60] 11,2 100,0 (=50,412)
% of telephone conversations (outside Budapest)[61] 15,7 100,0 (= 52.777)
% of condemnations for crimes against persons in 1905[62] 19,3 100,0 (= 68.360)
% of condemnations for crimes against property in 1905[63] 17,8 100,0 (= 42.891)
% of condemnations for petty offences in 1905[64] 21,1 100,0 (= 507.353)
% of electors among men above 20 years (elections of 1906)[65] 12,4 24,4
% of capital in institutions of credit (outside Budapest), 1905[66] ..12,5 100,0 (=1.879.000)
% of institutions of credit (outside Budapest), 1900[67] 18,4 100,0 (= 2.523)
% of capital insured against fire (outside Pest county) 1900[68] 9,8 100,0 (= 4.134.000)
% of capital insured against frost (outside Pest county), 1900[69] 3,8 100,0 (245.527)
% of emigrants in 1905[70] 15,2 100,0 (139.000)
% of emigrants in 1914[71] 29,0 100,0 (85.950)
% of members of workers’ health insurance schemes
(outside Budapest), in 1905[72] 11,2 100,0 (= 408.968)
in 1910-1912[73] 15,1 100,0 (=809.833)
% of industrial entreprises (outside Budapest) in 1899[74] 13,5 100,0 (= 1.854)
% of members of industrial corporations (outside Budapest), 1900[75] 4,5 100,0 (= 205.600)
% of the active population in agriculture in 1900[76] 74,9 65,7
in 1910[77] 70,6 61,5
% of the active population in industry in 1900[78] 9,4 14,3
in 1910[79] 12,1 17,0
The indicators listed here, however numerous they appear to be, cannot offer but a scanty insight into the modernisation process of Transylvania, since most of them have a limited historical or chronological scope. They carry still important messages as to the evaluation of the post-feudal development of the province, being concentrated on the final period of the Dualist Era.
The picture drawn by the indicators is on the whole consistent with the hypothesis of a genera under-development of the region as compared to the rest of the country. This is manifest in the economic realm, for which all the indices resorted to show the persistent preponderance of rather archaic structures. This is obvious in the prevalence of agriculture – and, moreover, that of the biggest latifundia[80] -, the low impact of industrialisation – which has already been substantiated above in the rarity of industrial employees -, the scarcity of capital assets of institutions of credit (in spite of the relatively big number of institutions of credit), as well as the extremely modest proportions of members of industrial corporations (including the patrons and the staff of petty industry). Under-capitalization appears to be a permanent feature in the regional economy, as shown by the weakness of investments in basic insurance policies, but also in urban and infrastructural equipments, for example in communication systems. The region remained significantly under-urbanised throughout the whole period as compared to other Hungarian territories outside Budapest, though the indicator to this effect take only into account cities with specific administrative qualifications independently from the size of their population.
A similar image is designed by the social indicators of the state of the population.. Though Transylvania was well endowed with hospitals by the end of the Dualist Era, these must have been concentrated in cities only, hence this was not contradictory with the serious under-development showed by the rest of health services – especially, as displayed in table 2, the under-representation of medical doctors in the region . This was also expressed in the demonstrably very poor level of medicalization of the population. In the early 20th century Transylvanian women benefited almost half as often as in the whole country from medical care when suffering from fatal illness. It is true though, that the province could prevail of a relatively good score as far as fatalities due to tuberculosis were concerned, which could may be attributed to the ’natural living conditions’ in an under-urbanized and under-industrialized region.
Another interesting issue has to do here with crime. If one cannot do justice to the consistently high Transylvanian crime rates with a summary interpretation, this may be among other things the sign of a measure of under-administration of the population, generating a certain lack of domestication and social control of the rank and file, as well as – possibly – a conflictual coexistence of various ethnic and cultural clusters. One can percieve this particularly in the frequency of petty crime as well as in that of agressions against physical persons.
It is not astonishing that such a mixture of under-modernization could result in a growing trend of emigration by the very end of the period.
Such a multi-faceted snapshot of Transylvanian society could only cautiously be summed up by such a far too overwhelming (and in several details incorrect) generalisation, that economic under-development, industrial under-equipment and a relative under-education of the population (at least in terms of literacy rates and levels of applied skills) were consistent with archaic features of the school system as well.
If the presentation of this overall picture of selected aspects of Transylvania society is regarded as indispensable – in form of a fundamental background information - for the study of educational disparities in the region, one has now to turn to - behind this apparently uniform facade – to the appreciation of extraordinary disparities of educational performances observable inside the region between denominational groups. One should not forget though, that much of our findings in the following can be interpreted only in the framework of the general under-development of the province, duely reflected – contrary to appearances – in the state of educational capital pertaining to the clusters under scrutiny. This means that we should not be astonished to face – logically enough, to be true - aspects of relative ’under-modernisation’ within some of the denominational brackets dealt with, as compared to other territorial fractions of the same bracket in contemporary Hungary.
The general denominational hierarchy of education in Transylvania (by gender and residence).
The first observation concerns the very sharp hierarchical order of educational attainments by denominations in Transylvania which can be best observed in the combined region wide data published in the final pages of our book or in table 4, where all the relevant information is synthetically presented, including disparities due to gender and residence.
One has to remark here that our urban category is a rather shaky one, referring only to Kolozsvár/Cluj and Marosvásárhely/Trgu Mures, the two cities distinguished in contemporary statistics as settlements with ’autonomous legislative entitlement’ /önálló törvényhatósági jogú város/.[81] Thus, obviously enough, the urban-rural (city-county) opposition serves here merely as a reminder of the importance pertaining to the residential distribution of relevant observations, without being capable of a proper exploration of this dimension of educational inequalities. In historical reality, the weight of Kolozsvár/Cluj is certainly exagerated here, as compared to other Transylvanian urban populations, because of the unique ’locality’ or vicinity effect of the University of Kolozsvár to attract students who had been born, educated or living in the city itself. Among medical students of the University between 1872 and 1918 for example, some 8 % were born there, 15 % lived there with their family and 24 % had been educated in one of the gymnasiums of the town[82] which hosted around 1900 less than 3 % of the Transylvanian population.[83] Thus the level of education of urban clusters in our tables is excessively inflated, as against the level liable to be observed in other urban environments in the region.
Table 4.
Estimation of the global differentials of confession related inequalities of education in Transylvania (mean number of years of school attendance, 1910)[84]
m e n w o m e n
counties towns counties towns
Roman Catholics 3,0 5,85 2,1 3,8
Greek Catholics 1,1 2,0 0,45 1,1
Calvinists 2,7 4,3 1,9 2,8
Lutherans 3,6 7,35 2,9 5,2
Greek Orthodox 1,3 3,3 0,7 1,4
Unitarians 2,9 6,3 1,9 3,1
Jews 4,3 6,1 2,9 3,9
_____________________________________________________
together 2,0 4,7 1,3 3,1
The message of the table must be combined with the stratified data of our book for a proper interpretation.
Considering first the evidence related to men, the general educational scores of Jews proved to be manifestly the best, since their representation among those with the highest attainments (8 secondary classes and more) exeeded by a factor surpassing 3-4 times the average. Taken as a whole, as on table 4, the advantage of Jewish men appears to be more limited, but still far ahead of all other clusters considered.
Roman Catholics come second on this ladder with approximately twice as many educated males above 4 secondary classes than the average, but they are followed closely by Lutherans - with almost as good levels for men with some secondary training, and indeed much better scores for those with primary school education. This is why the global score of Lutherans in table 4 is significantly above those of Roman Catholics.
Unitarians were somewhat below them, but with very high ranking in the generation of the youngest adults. Their general scores come fourth in the scale presented on table 4. Calvinists found their position much lower on this rank order. However, they too significantly exceeded the mean level of attainments.
The regional average, obviously enough, was most heavily depressed by the the two Christian groups of Greek persuasion, which displayed rock bottom levels, with a slight advantage for the Greek Catholics (Uniates) in higher levels of education. Limited as it may be, this advantage for the Uniate group appears to be significant indeed only for those with 8 or 6 and 4 secondary classes, the proportions of which exceeded systematically those among Orthodox (Greek Oriental) men. But, contrary to expectations, the Uniates were rather markedly over-represented among illiterates as well. This is why their overall scores in table 4 are regularly the lowest of all, below those of the Orthodox.
Thus, one is duely entitled to sum up the hierarchy of male educational achievements in Transylvania by referring to a polarised structure with Jews and the Oriental Christians representing the two opposite poles. But a case should be equally made for exceptions and deviances according to levels of measurement. The hierarchy may be somewhat (but not fundamentally) different following the message carried by different indicators of different kind.
This general hierarchy applies largely to women as well, but there again, with some variations.
The overall feminine pattern denotes of course a level incomparably beneath that of men. We are still in a period, when women’s formal training was under-institutionalised with very few secondary schools accessible for girls[85], and generally neglected as compared to young males. The higher the level of education concerned, the more pronounced gender differences may appear, with the exception of the 4 secondary classes level, where women remained more often gathered than men in absolute numbers and proportions. On the level of primary education, inequalities of gender tended already to vanish in the early 20th century country wide[86], which will be to some extent manifest in our Transylvania data bank too, but probablz less than elsewhere in Hungary– due precisely to local circumstances depressing in large regional and confessional sectors the demand for primary education.
Jewish preeminence was not at all so pronounced for women as for men. It asserted itself above all on the lowest levels of certified training, among the literates and those with 4 secondary school classes (but there exceeding the average by a mean factor of 5). But Jews fell slighly behind Roman Catholics among those with 8 secondary school classes or more and behind Lutherans in terms of literacy. This is why the global Jewish scores in table 4 appeared to be modest on the whole, in the same range as those of Roman Catholics and slightly even below those of Lutherans. For the rest, the hierarchy proved to be quite similar to the one observed among men. with a stronger relative preeminence of Lutherans, but also with good positions of Roman Catholics, a somewhat poorer performance of Unitarians together very closely with Calvinists and, at the bottom of the rank order, a relatively less bad showing of the Greek Orthodox as compared to the Greek Catholics. There again, the relative advantage of the Orthodox was exclusively due to a less desastrously low proportion of illiterate women, still making up the majority in both clusters – except among the youngest Orthodox girls. The two Greek denominations were actually lacking almost entirely a highly educated feminine bracket, with less than 0,1 % with 8 classes or above (that is, one out of some 1700 Orthodox and 2100 Greek Catholics !).
Taken as a whole, two remarks may help to qualify gender differences in our findings.
The first one concerns the absolute rarity of women with advanced elite training (8 classes and over) as compared to men. If this was spectacular, worth of a special mention, for denominations of Greek ritual, the same applies – though to a lesser degree to be sure – to all the other clusters. Transylvanian women at that time reached rarely and for obvious reasons (deficit in elite schooling facilities offering a training to girls equivalent to that reserved for boys[87]) the level of higher education, from which they had been formally excluded till 1895 and where they suffered to all kinds of incapacities and limitations till much later, in some fields till the end of the old regime in 1945. The lack of girls’ secondary schools seems to be particularly flagrant in Transylvania, since as late as 1910, there were only two such institutions (in Kolozsvár/Cluj and in Marosvásárhely/Trgu Mures) out of 35 in Hungary, and – accordingly - they hosted a mere 5,6 of female secondary school pupils of the country.[88] Thus the scarcity of highly educated women may be regarded as a ’structural’ consequence of sorts of the available educational supply.
The second remark has more specifically to do with Jews, for which the gender differencials in educational performance were maximum, as most clearly displayed in table 4. In terms of the estimated average number of years of school attendance the difference between Jewish men and women in the counties was 1,4 year while in all other clusters the same disparity did not exceed 1 year (with 0,6 and 0,7 year for Greek Catholics, Lutherans and Orthodox). Such relative neglect of women’s education may be attributed to the survival or the repercussion of traditional patterns of educational strategies particular to Orthodox Jewry, possibly with some long term effects on those families remaining in its orbit, without breaking with established ways. In this pattern boys’ advanced training used to be over-stressed while women were not particularly encouraged to share it, being properly excluded from the benefit of higher religious instruction in yeshivot. As a consequence, among other things, Jewish women possessed on the whole less special surplus of educational proclivity drawn from ’religious intellectualism’ than Jewish men, liable to be converted into secular educational assets. If women were evidently much less educated than men among Christians as well, their under-education can be viewed more as a result of educational ’market conditions’ and their own class, confession, sub-culture and region specific ’social condition’ (as it shall be explored further on) than as the outcome of a cluster specific anti-feminine bias of sorts.
At this point we have to dwell shortly on residential differences, although, as stated above, our evidence on urban groups is restricted to two cities, Kolozsvár/Cluj and Marosvásárhely/Tirgu Mures. Residential disparities are indeed a regular feature of educational inequalities for at least two major reasons. Cities offer the widest variety and the highest quality of educational opportunities on the supply side – in the case of Transylvania, Kolozsvár hosted throughout the Dualist period three classical gymnasiums together with the second university of the country -, on the one hand. On the other hand, major urban functions in terms of regional administration, legal and health services, big investments in industry, banking and trade, etc. provide for the concentration of the highly skilled manpower in or around cities. Both of these circumstances increase the presence of the educated in urban settings. Hence there is nothing surprising about the big distance separating educational scores between the two Transylvanian cities and the remaining territory of the region, as shown in table 4. The gap is particularly striking among Unitarians, Greek Orthodox and Lutheran men but also, more generally, among all the Christians as against Jews. Thus educated Christians of all denominations appear to have been much more concentrated in cities, while the education of Jewish men and women seems to have been more balanced or equally distributed id different residential environments.
Given these well perceptible religious cluster specific differences in Transylvania, the question arises about their local specificity. In more concrete terms, one can wonder whether observed educational attainments of various denominations in this region correspond to the general educational level of respective clusters in the whole country or not, and if not in what sense ? Table 5 is destined to yield responses to this interrogation through a synthetic comparison of our findings inTransylvanian to those of the rest of Hungarian territories outside Budapest. The exclusion of Budapest is justified here, like above, by its special position in the contemporary Hungarian social space as well as in the educational market. We apply here a comparison between provinces unbiassed by the enormous weight of the capital city, the inclusion of which would have introduced a basic disequilibrium between the terms of our comparison.
Table 5.
The Share of Transylvania by Denominations in the Educated clusters [89] and the General Population of Hungary outside Budapest[90] (1910)
% of Transylvanians among those of the same religion
i n H u n g a r y o u t s i d e B u d a p e s t
literate m e n with literate w o m e n with population
men[91] 8 classes 4 classes women[92] 8 classes 4 classes
Roman Catholics 4,1 % 9,9 % 11,0 % 3,7 % 9,8 % 8,7 % 4,4 %
Greek Catholics 35,6% 34,2 % 35,5 % 30,7 % 29,9 % 27,7 % 37,5 %
Calvinists 13,6% 21,9 % 27,7 % 12,5 % 27,5 % 24,9 % 15,9 %
Lutherans 17,9 % 24,6 % 33,2 % 18,9 % 33,1 % 25,9 % 18,1 %
Greek Orthodox 28,8 % 38,3 % 44,4 % 31,8 % 26,4 % 22,1 % 34,1 %
Unitarians 93,4 % 76,1 % 81,6 % 97,2 % 82,8 % 81,6 % 91,2 %
Jews 9,0 % 8,1 % 8,8 % 8,6 % 7,4 % 7,9 % 9,1 %
The message of table 5 refers to the comparison between the share of Transylvanians among the educated and the general population in provincial Hungary belonging to the same religious clusters. The indications drawn from the table are demonstrative enough.
The educated display a stark over-representation among Transylvanian Roman Catholics (much exceeding the double of the share Transylvanian Roman Catholics in the country’s population, except for the merely literates), but also – though to a somewhat lesser degree – among Lutherans and – still significantly enough – Calvinists (there again except for literates only). Thus the three big ’Western’ Christian groups have more or less in common to show a high level of over-education in Transylvania on the advanced levels of elite training relative to their coreligionists in the remaining country. This very fact may be, by the way, the reason why they appear to be mediocry represented among those with basic literacy only, since the letter exclude those with more advanced learning. Interestingly enough, the same applied to some extent to Greek Orthodox men as well (except for those with basic literacy only), while Greek Orthodox women shared with their Greek Catholic sisters a severe under-representation among all the educated, compared to other women of the same religious clusters in provincial Hungary. The three other groups – Transylvanian Jews, Unitarians and Greek Catholics for once united - appear to have been significantly under-represented among their educated coreligionists in the country. Jewish and Greek Catholics women in Transylvania suffered much more from relative educational disadvantages than men. This means that for the bulk of ’Western Christians’ Transylvania was an educational stronghold in the country, while for Eastern Christians and Jews it was rather an intellectual backwater of sorts, especially for female members of their communities. This observation offers a direct explanation for the generally mediocre schooling scores of Transylvania, particularly in the primary sector, observed above in the first sub-chapter of this study. If the Transylvanian majority groups of Greek ritual were globally under-represented among the educated of their clusters in the country, together with Jews – the otherwise intellectually best endowed religious cluster -, this was a sufficient cause for the less than passable state of education in the region.
At this juncture one would need a circumstantial historical investigation into the roots of such regional inequalities, that is, the reasons for which Transylvanians of various denominational brackets benefited more from or, on the contrary, were handicapped as regards to educational opportunities compared to other regional clusters of their denomination in provincial Hungary. One could refer here to the special promotional effect for matters educational of the political, economic and otherwise ’social’ competition between ’Western Christian’ elites (the three privileged ’nations’ – Magyars, Széklers – both divided between Catholics and Calvinists - and Saxons, almost exclusively Lutherans) dominating the region during the last feudal centuries. Rather than resorting to such sweeping generalisations of doubtful heuristic efficiency, I would reserve a tentative interpretation thanks to the recourse to a number of local socio-historical variables in the last chapter of this essay.
Sub-regional inequalities.
It is time to achieve the presentation of the global educational inequalities with a view focused on local variants in counties and the two cities. Table 6 offers a synthetic overview of this kind of data.
Table 6.
Estimation of local differentials of confession related inequalities of education in Transylvania (mean number of years of school attendance, 1910)[93]
I. MEN
Counties and cities Roman Greek Calvi- Luther Greek Unita- Jews All
Cath. Cath. nists ians Orth. rians
Alsó Fehér 4,7 1,25 3,0 2,9 1,2 4,2 5,0 1,75
(5,0) (38,8) (10,3) (3,3) (40,2) (0,6) (3,3) (100,0)
Beszterce-Naszód 4,4 1,5 3,4 3,1 1,4 4,1 3,1 2,04
(4,0) (57,4) (3,0) (4,0) (13,0) (0,2) (5,4) (100,0)
Brassó 4,8 2,9 3,9 4,0 2,4 3,5 7,7 3,61
(11,7) (1,3) (7,7) (41,7) (34,5) (1,6) 1,6) (100,0)
Csík 2,3 1,0 4,6 5,1 2,1 4,6 5,0 2,14
(79,7) (16,6) (1,3) (0,2) (0,2) (0,1) (1,7) (100,0)
Fogaras 4,7 2,1 3,7 3,9 2,0 3,1 5,9 2,29
(3,4) (25,0) (2,60) (2,9) (64,4) (0,6) (2,9) (100,0)
Háromszék 2,7 1,4 2,9 4,2 1,5 2,9 6,0 2,60
(33,7) (2,7) (39,9) (0,5) (18,8) (3,4) (0,9) (100,0)
Hunyad 3,7 1,0 3,8 4,9 0,9 3,35 5,1 1,49
(10,2) (17,8) (5,1) (1,2) (63,5) (0,5) (1,7) (100,0)
Kis-Küküllõ 3,4 1,1 2,4 3,1 1,15 2,8 4,4 1,97
(5,5) (35,7) (18,9) (17,4) (16,8) (4,1) (1,5) (100,0)
Kolozs 3,2 0,8 2,2 2,9 0,9 3,5 4,1 1,35
(4,2) (52,1) (20,0) (2,7) (17,9) (0,7) (2,3) (100,0)
KOLOZSVÁR 6,1 2,05 4,45 7,5 3,4 6,8 6,05 4,85
(29,8) (15,7) (33,1) (3,6) (2,8) (3,0) (11,9) (100,0)
Maros-Torda 2,4 1,1 2,4 3,6 0,95 2,8 4,0 1,9
(12,3) (24,9) (38,0) (2,9) (15,8) (3,6) (2,4) (100,0)
MAROSVÁSÁRHELY 5,3 2,0 4,1 6,7 3,0 5,0 6,2 4,37
(27,8) (11,5) (41,3) (2,6) (3,8) (2,7) (10,2) (100,0)
Nagy-Küküllõ 4,1 1,5 3,0 3,5 1,6 1,8 5,7 2,61
(3,6) (11,7) (5,7) (41,5) (34,7) (2,1) (0,7) (100,0)
Szeben 5,1 1,9 4,05 4,1 2,1 3,95 5,7 2,89
(6,0) (9,8) (2,4) (25,7) (54,9) (0,3) (0,9) (100,0)
Szolnok-Doboka 4,25 0,8 2,4 2,8 0,6 7,0 3,15 1,24
(3,6) (61,9) (12,8) (0,9) (15,4) (0,1) (4,8) (100,0)
Torda-Aranyos 4,05 0,9 2,8 7,0 1,0 3,1 4,5 1,54
(3,8) (41,9) (14,7) (0,2) (32,5) (5,5) (1,4) (100,0)
Udvarhely 2,45 1,6 2,7 3,7 1,5 2,6 4,7 2,56
(36,5) (1,4) (33,5) (2,4) (3,2) (22,0) (2,4) (100,0)
II. WOMEN
Counties and cities Roman Greek Calvi- Luther Greek Unita- Jews All
Cath. Cath. nists ians Orth. rians
Alsó Fehér 3,0 0,75 2,05 2,2 0,6 2,5 3,45 1,04
(5,1) (38,1) (10,4) (3,3) (40,7) (0,5) (1,8) (100,0)
Beszterce-Naszód 3,1 0,7 2,3 2,65 0,7 1,6 2,1 1,31
(3,9) (56,0) (2,9) (18,1) (13,0) (0,1) (6,0) (100,0)
Brassó 3,6 2,2 3,4 3,2 1,6 2,8 5,8 2,73
(11,8) (0,7) (5,9) (43,1) (35,9) (1,3) (1,4) (100,0)
Csík 1,6 0,6 3,2 4,1 1,6 3,1 3,8 1,49
(80,8) (16,0) (1,0) (0,2) (0,1) (0,1) (1,6) (100,0)
Fogaras 3,5 0,95 2,8 3,3 0,9 1,9 4,0 1,16
(2,9) (24,8) (2,5) (2,9) (65,6) (0,5) (0,9) (100,0)
Háromszék 2,0 1,2 2,3 4,8 1,2 2,1 4,7 2,0
(33,3) (1,4) (41,2) (0,5) (19,1) (3,6) (0,8) (100,0)
Hunyad 2,8 0,4 2,6 3,6 0,3 1,9 3,6 0,74
(10,2) (17,5) (4,7) (1,2) (64,4) (0,4) (1,2) (100,0)
Kis-Küküllõ 2,4 0,4 1,45 2,5 0,5 1,6 3,0 1,19
(5,3) (35,5) (19,0) (17,3) (16,7) (4,4) (1,5) (100,0)
Kolozs 2,3 0,3 1,5 2,1 0,3 1,8 2,75 0,75
(4,1) (52,0) (20,1) (2,7) (17,8) (0,6) (2,6) (100,0)
KOLOZSVÁR 3,9 1,0 2,9 5,1 1,5 3,3 3,85 3,15
(32,5) (12,7) (35,1) (3,1) (1,7) (3,4) (3,1) (100,0)
Maros-Torda 1,6 0,4 1,6 2,7 0,4 1,7 2,4 1,19
(12,0) (24,2) (38,7) (3,1) (15,7) (3,8) (2,5) (100,0)
MAROSVÁSÁRHELY 3,6 1,3 2,8 5,5 1,2 2,25 4,0 3,08
(28,7) (5,7) (47,4) (2,1) (2,1) (2,5) (2,1) (100,0)
Nagy-Küküllõ 3,6 1,3 2,8 5,5 1,15 2,25 4,0 3,08
(3,2) (11,3) (5,5) (42,3) (34,7) (2,2) (0,8) (100,0)
Szeben 4,1 1,0 3,1 3,3 1,3 2,8 4,2 1,98
(4,7) (8,4) (1,6) (26,2) (58,0) (0,2) (0,8) (100,0)
Szolnok-Doboka 3,0 0,2 1,6 1,9 0,2 3,6 1,9 0,6
(3,7) (61,4) (12,7) (0,8) (15,3) (0,1) (5,4) (100,0)
Torda-Aranyos 2,8 0,25 1,9 5,6 0,4 1,9 3,0 0,8
(3,7) (41,4) (14,6) (0,2) (32,6) (5,9) (1,6) (100,0)
Udvarhely 1,8 0,9 1,8 3,0 0,9 1,8 2,75 1,79
(36,2) (1,1) (33,5) (2,4) (3,3) (22,4) (1,1) (100,0)
On may question the usefulness of such a detailed presentation of our main results as summarised above. Our essential justification would rest on its heuristic potential for local and sub-regional studies of social history. This can certainly not be our focus here. But such an overview of county-wide denominational data on levels of education may also lead to some general insights into unsuspected social conditions of over- and under-investment in education otherwise impossible to attest.
The most manifest of such territory related correlation has to do simply with gross residential inequalities. In this regard cities must be treated separately, since – for reasons recalled earlier – their educational status was different from all other residential environments. Still, contrary to expectations it is worth to be stressed that the two cities distinguished in our data bank did not display a highly privileged situation in the rank order of our sub-regions (counties and cities). If they obviously belonged to the administrative units with the best educational scores – Kolozsvár/Cluj somewhat being ahead of Marosvásárhely/Trgu Mures – their pre-eminent position was mostly limited to the performance of men, much less to that of women. For the latter, Nagy-Küküllõ county, for one, had identical scores than Marosvásárhely and not significantly below the level of Kolozsvár/Cluj at that.
Now this remark about differentials opposing cities and counties may be extended distinctly to most denominational groups, one by one. Indeed if one considers the rank order of educational attainments cited, the two cities came almost exceptionally first (in four cases among twenty eight !) among territorial units with the highest scores for both genders. None of the denominational groups (men and women) under scrutiny showed their best scores respectively in Marosvásárhely/Trgu Mures, while this was the case of Roman Catholic men and women as well as Lutheran and Greek Orthodox men in Kolozsvár/Cluj only. Thus, the residential privilege of cities did not apply as regards each specific territory, but only globally and, as such, must be challenged as a universal working hypothesis. One main reason for this might however be linked to nothing else but the problematic and indeed insufficiently inclusive and discreet character of the urban category at our disposal – with only two cities included, and at that not even the biggest ones, or those best endowed with schooling facilities, as stated above.
Considering counties only, outside the two cities, one can identify a systematically valid rank order with Brasso, Nagy-Küküllõ and Szeben on top of the list (with the best educational scores both for men and women), followed more or less closely by the Székler counties (Háromszék, Udvarhely and lastly Csík), while Szolnok-Doboka and Kolozs, together with Torda Aranyos were relegated to the bottom of the ladder. Now in this geographic hierarchy of educational achievements it is not difficult to perceive the impact of social and ethnic particularities. The three top counties represented territorial reservations of the historic Universitas Saxorum, with the largest share of German Lutherans in their population (ranging from 26 % to 42 %), as compared to all other counties. The Székler counties were almost exclusively inhabited by the privileged Székler ‘nation’ with a Roman Catholic majority (of 80 %) in Csík, Háromszék and Udvarhely being made up of a majority almost equally shared by Roman Catholics and Calvinists.
Now one does not need to resort to any kind of ‘ethnicist’ variables to interpret such differences. Let it suffice to state that the three ‘Saxon’ counties hosted more than a third (12 out of 33) of gymnasiums and reáliskolák as well as polgárik (10 out of 31) at the end of the Dualist Era[94] (with a mere 16 % of the Transylvanian population in 1910[95]). At the bottom line of the educational hierarchy Kolozs (outside Kolozsvár/Cluj), Szolnok-Doboka and Torda-Aranyos had altogether 2 gymnasiums and 4 polgári only to serve for not far from one fourth – 24 % - of the Transylvanian population…[96] This is not to attempt a comprehensive explanation of the observed geographic inequalities, only to warn against ‘culturalist’ simplifications and generalisations when there are well established infrastructural realities to account for such findings.
A more general remark about geographical inequalities concerns the relationship between the size and the proportion of respective clusters in the local population and their educational attainments. In diaspora situations, when the group in question makes up a small fraction only of the population, educational scores can be unexpectedly high. This applies for example rather well to Lutherans, whose best scores were not identified in their demographic strongholds but in counties like Torda-Aranyos, Csík or Hunyad, where their share in the local population hardly exceeded 1 %. A negative variation to this apparent regularity can be observed with Jews, whose lowest scores were registered in counties where they remained present in larger numbers, beyond 5 % of the local population, that is Szolnok-Doboka and Beszterce-Naszód. In this case however we have to do with the most traditionalist communities, an extension of the ultra-orthodox North-Eastern counties of the Hungarian Kingdom (Máramaros, Szatmár and Szilágy), with their established Hassidic brackets and other clusters pursuing archaic ways and, among other things, not only disregarding but openly forbidding secular studies for their offspring. In these counties, in spite of a relatively large concentration of Jews, there was just one Jewish primary school of public status. Jews could of course attend other schools as well, whether state or municipality run or even Christian ones, but this is precisely what many strictly Orthodox Jewish families would rule out. Now, traditional education would less often (in chederim) or not at all (in yeshivot) include girls on the one hand and, offered in Yiddish, would not always be conducive to certified literacy or higher levels of instruction recognised by public authorities, on the other hand.
Thus, obviously enough, such regional inequalities cannot be accounted for in purely ‘culturalist’ terms. The social inequalities behind ethnic and regional differences must be first made responsible, as a working hypothesis, for geographic as well as other, notably denominational disparities of educational performances. This will be attempted below, in our last subsection. However, before getting egaged in such an interpretation, we have still to report on two kinds of both technically and socio-historically intriguing aspects of our data bank, relationships between levels of education and age specific inequalities.
Disparities by levels of education : literacy and advanced learning.
Taken as a whole, the evidence of our tables manifests an extraordinary diversity of levels of certified education, the gap between the most and the less advanced groups being substantial. To boot, in each denominational cluster the proportion of those with the highest attainments was far from correlating regularly with similarly high proportions of those with 4 or 6 secondary classes or simple literates. We can pursue the study of this diversity on the basis of some details of our tables allowing further qualifications of the given general hierarchy. They indeed bring into the picture elements capable to modify to some extent the main patterns hitherto identified.
The first qualification of that order must bear upon discrepancies related to literacy levels and the proportions of the highly educated. While among males, Jews and Roman Catholics surpass Lutherans (and by the same token, incidentally, all the other groups) with high proportions of their best educated brackets, levels of literacy of rank and file Lutherans (with only 3-4 % of illiterates among adolescent and young adult males) were definitely significantly better than those of all other groups, including Jews (who had at least 6 % illiterates in their younger adult age groups) and Roman Catholics (with at least as much as 12 % illiterates in their younger adult age groups). Even Unitarians (8 %) and Calvinists (11 %) displayed lower proportions of illiterates in the age group of 12-14 years than among similar Roman Catholic adolescents (13 %). Rates of illiteracy were of course of a much higher order among those of Greek ritual, but while the majority of Greek Catholics had no certified writing and reading skills, this applied to a large but nevertheless minority only of young Greek Orthodox (39 % in the 12-14 age bracket).
Similar but not identical discrepancies can be found among women. The contrast was indeed stark between the very low illiteracy rate of Lutherans (less than 5 % in all young age groups, and in some of these brackets even remarkably lower than among male Lutheran adolescents) as well as the somewhat higher rates of Jews (6-9 % among adolescents and young adults) and the much higher ones of Roman Catholics (13-16 % in similar age brackets). For the rest there was a comparable rank order as among males.
This means that the ’educational hierarchy’ differed significantly following the way it was measured. In more concrete terms among the three most educated denominational clusters Jews and Roman Catholics were definitely surpassing Lutherans by their share among those having obtained elite training, but they fell behind Lutherans as to the eradication of illiteracy. Such a conclusion calls for at least three specific remarks.
The first concerns the specific status of Lutherans in Transylvanian society, since our data call partially into question the commonly accepted idea of a general Lutheran over-education, an apparent truism, if not a fallacy, of Transylvanian history.[97] All but a few Transylvanian Lutherans were German speaking Saxons (formally 87 %, even in 1910, after decades of ’assimilationist’ policies in the country).[98] The ’Saxon University’ – heritage of the medieval organisation of the privileged Saxon community in feudal times -, did provide apparently for the generalisation of literacy from very early on. Male Lutherans of the elderly generations in 1910 for example, born between 1851 and 1860, displayed already a merely marginal proportion of illiterates – 11 %, as compared even to Jews – 19 %, let alone Roman Catholics – 39 %. Moreover, such early spread of basic education was equally extended over Lutheran women, since in the same generations the latter had only 15 % of illiterates as against a majority still (54 %) of Jewesses and as many as 63 % of Roman Catholics. The efficiency of the Lutheran-Saxon school network is thus far from being a historical myth. Merely it cannot be regarded as fully applicable to the same extent to the more advanced levels of education, at least in Transylvania, may be in contrast – at least in some measure - to what could be established in this respect for the whole Dualist Hungary.[99] In table 5 above, one can realise that the relative over-representation of Transylvanians among Lutherans of the whole country was quite limited on the level of those with 8 secondary school classes or more as compared to those with 4 classes.
The second remark is related to Jews who, though largely Magyarised by 1910 (with 74 % Magyar speakers in Transylvania) achieved this status only lately. This involved two important qualifications of Jewish linguistic and educational skills. First, still one quarter of them continued to profess Yiddish mother tongue or ’first usual language’, so they appeared in statistical data as ’German speakers’. Indeed Yiddish was not recognised by the state as one of the ’national’ or ’ethnic’ languages of the Monarchy, following the legal fiction that Jews did not constitute a ’national minority’ (nemzetiség, Nationalität) but a religious cluster only. Second, Jewish male literacy, especially in the elderly generations, was considered rather general, but acquired in traditional religious schools – chederim, yeshivot – and thus often limited to Yiddish. Census inspectors, who did not, most of the times, have means to control Yiddish literacy, such skills were not acknowledged as equivalent to literacy in one of the official languages of the Empire. Yeshivot often trained their students in talmudic studies up to an age beyond 20 years without issuing certifications accepted by state authorities (except the exam for Orthodox Rabbis in the Pozsony Yeshiva). We do not know as yet, without further research, whether such advanced religious learning qualified students for a classification in the category of those with 6 or 8 secondary classes, but it is most probable that some Jewish literate in Yiddish and/or Hebrew could be easily recorded as illiterates. Hence the officially observed rate of Jewish literacy (as well as, possibly, more advanced levels of learning) must have corresponded to actually higher (may be indeed much higher) intellectual competences, which however lacked the usual certifications by recognised scholarly bodies. This remark, far from modifying our conclusions, confirms one of its main findings, the relative Jewish preeminence in matters educational in Transylvania which, as it has been established elsewhere, corresponds to similar conclusions for the whole Dualist Hungary.[100] One can add that, possibly, a part of the relative under-education of Transylvanian Jews as compared to the provincial average of their coreligionists in Hungary, identified in table 5, may be attributed to the above exposed ‘dissimulation effect’ exerted by traditional schooling.
For an illustration of the fact that Jewish literacy could be acquired outside the official school channels, let us quote data on the rates of schooling by denominations in 1890, an early period when – following our generational data in this book – male Jewish illiteracy reached already the level below 10 %, but when still close to one third of Jewish children subject to obligatory schooling would not turn up in public schools. The findings show that 95 % of Lutherans, 82 % of Roman Catholics, 78 % of Unitarians, 77 of Calvinists of compulsory school age were actually enrolled while only 65 % of Greek Catholics, 66 % of Greek Orthodox and not much more than 69 % of Jews[101]. The hierarchy of enrollment frequencies followed thus very closely that of educational performances observed in the generational groups concerned in various denominations - except for Jews ! This could happen only if we take into account those Jewish kids who attended chederim and yeshivot only, instead of primary schools of public status. This occurred probably more often in Transylvania than elsewhere in the country, since the network of Jewish primary schools of public status proved to be indeed very small (7 altogether in 1900[102]). This involved also, by the way, that Jews could attend practically only state or municipal schools, due to their occasional difficulties to be accepted in Christian schools and/or their reluctance to attend them. Preference for non confessional schools was a general and very special trend of Jewish primary schooling at that time.[103]
These circumstances of Jewish schooling are well reflected in the vast regional differences of Jewish presence in primary schools of public status. As already recalled above, in counties representing the main track of migration and settlement of the most traditional Orthodox Jewry, the regional extensions of Galicianers, just South of Máramaros county, the settlement center of Hungary’s Ostjuden – there were no Jewish schools of public status at all. The rate of attendance of Jewish kids in the age of school obligation also remained for long very low in the Eastern type Orthodoxy. For 1890 the proportions were only 52 % in Szolnok-Doboka, 25 % im Maros-Torda (equal to that of Máramaros…) and 27 % in Kis-Küküllõ counties.[104] Some 37 % of Transylvanian Jewish children concerned lived in these counties at that time.
Discontinuities between levels of elite training : the Jewish and the Gentile patterns.
Disregarding problems of regional disparities, the position of Jews remains singular as to the distribution of those with various levels of schooling, compared to Christians.
Starting with the evidence on levels related to men, one striking difference opposes Jews to all other groups as to their proportions with lower grade secondary schooling and those with 8 classes or more, the latter representing the clusters having achieved education due to the gentlemanly ruling class – including fully completed secondary school training with or without érettségi certification (Matura, Abitur)[105] or equivalent[106], together with, occasionally, higher studies in universities, vocational academies or theological seminaries. It is certainly a pity that the ’8 classes’ category is not defined more clearly, especially that those having begun or graduated from universities, academies or seminaries are not listed discernibly here.
However imprecise our data may be, the main result in this context is that the percentage of graduates of 8 secondary classes and above exceeded for all Christian males in each age group that of those with only 4 secondary classes. The educational pyramid of Christians proved thus to be grounded on a narrow basis with en enlargement on its top, with the obvious exception for the 15-19 years age group in 1910 (most of its members being yet technically unable to reach a level of 8 classes or beyond). Such an ‘inverted pyramid’ with narrow basis was particularly striking for Unitarians, for whom men with 4 classes represented mostly less than a mere third of those with 8 classes and above. For men of Greek ritual similar discrepancies, insignificant or even inexistent in the oldest generations, also tended to grow excessively in the younger age groups. Such ’inverted pyramid’ of educational attainments cannot be found for Jews in the older age groups, but only in the youngest ones (below 30, and even there, not of the same scope as among Christians). This meant that relative Jewish over-representation in elite schooling rose much more above average on the 4 classes level than on that of 8 classes and above. This applied to some extent - though in a much milder way - to Lutherans and Roman Catholics, the two other best educated clusters, while Unitarians showed significantly less over-representation as compared to the average on the 4 classes level than on the 8 classes level. Men of Greek ritual were also, similarly, as a consequence, more poorly represented on the 4 classes level than among those with 8 classes or above. This is illustrated in the following table, summarizing our findings among relevant census data.
Table 7.
A summary of age group specific proportions of men with various levels of schooling by
denominations in Transylvania (1910)[107]
mere literates 4 classes among among 20 years of age and above
among those 15 years of age with 4 classes with 8 classes
above 6 years[108] and above
Roman Catholics 64,7 4,7 % 1,9 % 6,9 %
Greek Catholics 34,8 0,7 % 0,4 % 1,4 %
Calvinists 69,0 3,4 1,4 % 4,8 %
Lutherans 83,8 4,6 % 0,35 % 6,1 %
Unitarians 74,6 2,3 % 1,1 % 5,5 %
Greek Orthodox 43,2 0,8 % 0,3 % 1,1 %
Jews 69,9 11,9 % 4,6 % 11,9 %
All 52,9 2,3 % 0,9 % 3,1 %
In the study of table 7 some of our data are interdependent, having the same reference populations (the last two columns), others are not (like the two first columns). Thus the proportion of ‘mere literates’ depends, on the one hand, on the degree of alphabetisation of the group, as well as, on the other hand, on the proportions of those having higher training. This should not be forgotten in the interpretation of the discrepancies attested to, demanding a special inquiry.
Logically, the ’normal’ pyramid of educational attainments should have been the rule based on a large proportion of those with primary education, a smaller layer with 4 secondary classes and a select few going further in the educational ladder up to 6 and 8 classes and above. This is precisely what observed numbers of the size of gymnasium and reáliskola classes actually reflected for the Dualist Era. In the years 1882 for example there were 4383 pupils in the 4th forms of gymnasiums and 558 in those of reáliskolák. Four years later in 1886 only 2316 and 218 of them, respectively, were enrolled in the 8th forms of these institutions, the drop-out rate being 51 % for gymnasiums and as high as 58 % for reáliskolák.[109] If comparable evidence is difficult to be mobilized on a country wide level for later periods of the Dualist era, other data demonstrate that the quantitative relationship between the size of the lower forms of secondary education and that of the higher forms had not evolved momentously by that time. In 1912 among male students 47.426 attended the 1-4th classes of secondary schools as against only 22.572 – some 48 % of the latter – in the 5-8th classes.[110] For girls the proportions in the higher classes were even much smaller, since girls did not often extend in those times their studies beyond lower secondary school level. Our own finding cannot thus be explained with reference to drop out rates, since they would rather suggest the generality of the ’normal’ pyramid.
Such an argumentation ignores however the existence of non classical secondary educational tracks, open to candidates during the Dual Monarchy, which could occasionally qualify students for the category of those with 8 classes. These were the already mentioned commercial high schools, the Normal Schools, the military secondary institutions (kadétiskolák) and several other vocational schools of uncertain status in the educational hierarchy (agricultural, horticultural, forestry, vineyardist, mining, etc.), which would train higher technicians mostly after their having graduated from the 4 years polgári iskola, often up to 4 supplementary classes. Most of the graduates of these schools could thus claim to have completed 8 years ’secondary’ classes.
Just for the sake of illustration, in 1910/11 3906 male students graduated with érettségi from gymnasiums and reáliskolák[111], while 1150 young men took a teacher’s degree from a Normal School out of 4877 enrolled students.[112] In 1911/12 1397 students were registered on the files of vocational secondary schools (men and women not distinguished here), out of which, one can estimate that one fifth (some 240) could actually graduate. Thus, there may have been in the final decade of the Dualist era a large group of young men, corresponding approximately to as many as one third of holders of the classical érettségi, who had accomplished the equivalent to 8 secondary school classes in a vocational track. Now all but a few of the former were demonstrably Christians, since Jews did not represent more than 2,8 % of Normal School and even less – 1,1 % - of other vocational school students at that time,[113] even if they made up country wide close to half of the pupils of ‘higher commercial’ schools. But there were few ‘higher commercials’ (4 out of 51) with an even smaller share among pupils (4,8 %) in Transylvania[114]. Consequently, all this could substantially enhance the proportions of Christians in a position to declare 8 classes of secondary education at the census, as against Jews as well as those Christians who declared the completion of 4 or 6 secondary classes only.
Secondarily - and certainly to a very limited degree only - the relative proportion of those with 8 classes or above as compared to those with lower school qualifications may also be due to inequalities of mortality benefitting the better educated. But this could not much affect denominational differentials in this respect.
One has to stress that, systematic as these discrepancies appear to be, since they could be identified in other provinces of contemporary Hungary too[115], the difference between the Jewish and the Gentile patterns appears to be the rule in counties only. In cities Jews too were regularly found more often among those with 8 secondary classes and above (as in Budapest) or else their proportions with 8 classes and above did not always, especially in the older generations, exceed those with a lower education. The ‘urban trend’ of the concentration of the best educated in every denominational group as against those with incomplete elite training (general among Gentiles, selective or inexistent among Jews) was probably grounded in a number of socio-historical developments in modern cities conducive to the gathering of educated elites fulfilling the main ‘urban functions’ (administration, free professionals, health, intellectual, artistic, educational and social services, capital intensive industries managed by a staff with high qualification, students pursuing secondary and higher studies, cultural salons).
However it was, the divergence of the two patterns carry important messages as to different educational strategies of denominational groups or even different regimes of education peculiar to them.
For Christian men (since women were not involved here), members of a demographically narrow elite – ranging from 1,5 to less than 8 % in the youngest adult generations, the main target of their educational investment aimed at elite training proper with 8 years of secondary school and, possibly higher studies and degrees. This was the socially recognised criterium for a gentleman’s standing, especially when it was certified in a gymnasium with Latin tuition. Completed secondary schooling crowned by the érettségi (even one passed in a reáliskola without Latin or a ‘commercial highschool’) provided important social and in many respects state guaranteed formal entitlements in middle class circles: the claim to be addressed by members of lower strata as ‘gentleman’ (Sir), the right to fight duels (Satisfaktionsfähigkeit), to be admitted to middle class salons (Salonsfähigkeit), to wear a distinctive arm braid even as a simple soldier (karpaszomány), to ‘volunteer’ for a shorter military service and, ultimately, to become a reserve officer – the equivalent of a ‘gentlemanly’ certification in the Army. Even if graduates of a normal school could not always claim similar social distinctions, they represented often alone or with few others (the priest, the local judge) the ‘gentlemanly class’ in villages without any other members of the middle classes. Anyhow, such ‘gentlemanly’ educational strategy demanding secondary school training left few offspring of the Christian middle classes who would content themselves with 4 or 6 secondary classes only. These levels of education could, in principle, appeal to ‘children of the people’ originating from the peasantry, the emerging urban working class or intermediary lower strata (janitors, porters, petty officers, office messengers), but there were few of them. The absolute scarcity of those with 4 classes only among Christians – particularly flagrant among the globally less educated groups (Calvinists, Unitarians, those of Greek persuasion) - can thus be interpreted as the sign of the weakness of upwards educational mobility of the gentile masses. This should represent a central factor to account for the ‘inverted educational pyramid’ among Christians.
The ‘normal pyramid’ of Jews (or close to normal since it was balanced between those with 4 and 8 classes) should, accordingly, be decoded as the manifestation of progressive, much larger scale educational mobility, accompanying – as we shall briefly refer to it later – the ground swell of Jewish modernisation, acculturation and status mobility which took momentum following legal emancipation (1867). Indeed the initial and the most significant educational shift upwards – as observable in our data bank - touched the generations of Jewish men born in the 1850s and the early 1860s.[116] Jewish mobility also involved – as equally manifest in our data - much larger sectors of the cluster and indeed a large proportion of men without ‘intellectual’ or middle class social claims, including many of those whose educational credentials were not at all destined for economic or professional use. The large Jewish pyramid was, however, subject to a progressive change in the latest Dualist generations, born after 1870 or 1875 and coming of age in the outgoing decade of the 19th centurs as fully emancipated members of an ambitious upstart ‘new middle class’ with no feudal connections or nostalgia. There was in this period another upwards shift in Jewish strategies of social mobility towards ‘gentlemanly’ middle class status. This trend brought about the partial reversal of the ‘normal pyramid’ thanks to the rapid acceleration of the demand for elite training. Part of such demand emanated, obviously enough, from fathers having only 4 secondary classes, whose sons opted for a further educational step including classical secondary or even higher studies. Hence a reversal of the ‘normal pyramid’ among Jewish youth in the last decades of the 19th century, a trend which can be identified first in cities (in Transylvania like elsewhere) and then everywhere as witnessed in our educational data banks published on other Hungarian provinces. In Budapest, for one, Jews had followed since the oldest generations recorded the ‘gentlemanly’ educational path with an overwehelming stress on (and a corresponding majority among the educated of those with) 8 classes secondary schooling and above.
Generational inequalities (by age groups)
An intriguing difference separates Jews from Gentiles also when one compares age groupe specific educational performances.
Age groups represent generations in retrospect, or at least those remaining alive in 1910 from their generations. Since certified formal education, as registered among census data, was almost exclusively earned in the youngest age brackets, one can resort to the evidence in this respect as characteristic of educational investments in the given generational groups. But this can be only done on the condition of neglecting or ignoring – that is, taking for equal – differences of death rates between groups unequally endowed with educational capital inside generational clusters. This hypothesis is not only unverifiable, but it can be easily falsified, with the benefit of hindsight. The intellectually better off belonged certainly more often than the less endowed to the higher social milieux with longer life expectations. This means practically two things. First, the retrospective study of educational attainments of age groups surviving in 1910 distorts the actual position of age clusters with different levels of schooling in the sense of maximising the share of those with higher accomplisments and minimising the proportions of those with less accomplishments. Second, such a distortion should increase, logically, with the age of the generations observed, due to the growing span of time during which the social selection by death could have operated.
But once these obvious reservations are kept in mind, one can use the study of the educational achievement of age groups as a historical documentation on denominationally diverging patterns of educational achievement in former times.
Logically there must have developed within the dynamics of the modernisation and the subsequent growth of the school network a general expansion of educational qualifications for the whole population. This can indeed be observed in Transylvania as well in the sense that the oldest generations had usually lower proportions of formally educated members as compared to the younger ones. This is also generally true of women, whose progress, in relative terms, was constant and for most denominations regular from one age group to the other and on each level of education.
Still, and this is an indeed astonishing observation, the actual increase proved to be rather limited for men, amounting to a mere doubling of their proportions with 8 classes and above, and an even much lower extension of educational assets for those with lower grades over the time span covered by our data: proportions of those males with 4-6 classes grew from 1,9 % to 2,8 %-2,9 % only from the generations born before 1850 to those born after 1880. General illiteracy rates of men were also somewhat less than halved over those fourty odd years separating by the birth dates of the oldest and the youngest adult or adolescent generations appearing in our tables (the only ones old enough already in 1910 to acquire such qualifications).
For the latter, especially for men under 35 in 1910, the standstill in the development of general educational performances is particularly visible. If progress was manifestly rather rapid for the preceding generational clusters, stagnation or even decline seems to be the rule for the youngest age groups. Illiteracy rates were 35,6 % for the 30-34 years old men and 34,1 % for the 20-24 years old men – not much above the 32,7 % for the 15-19 years old men, who could have, by that age, completed their study cycles necessary for the acquisition of basic writing and reading skills. But the decline is even more manifest for those men with 4 secondary classes, since their proportions remained exactly the same (2,2 %) in the 40-44 years group as in the 20-24 years or the 25-29 years group. Among men with 6 classes no systematic change, only oscillations between 0,6 % and 0,8 % can be observed in all age groups (except for adolescents under 20 in 1910).
Progress between generations and in time proved to be much more significant for women following our data, even if the very high initial illiteracy rate came only to be halved by the youngest adult generation. More advanced levels of training however, though significantly growing over time, remained desperately low in 1910 even for the younger groups (hardly exceeding 4 % for those with any kind of secondary education or above). For women too, signs of stagnation seem clearly established from the generational cluster of 30-34 years down to the 20-24 years old in the proportions of those with 8 classes or above (a mere 0,7 %-0,8 %).
For our purposes the most interesting target is of course to note that these general trends of limited progress or even stagnation over generations and time were very unevenly distributed among denominational groups. This is a complex issue, since historical developments were different for each cluster following the level of education by which progress was measured in our tables. Still, allowing for some simplifications, several more or less markedly contrasting patterns can be discerned, if we ground our analysis on evidence concerning men. For women progress was indeed slower but also more smooth and regular.
Drastic differences oppose, as usually, Jews on the one hand, displaying a rapid and spectacular increase of their educational assets over generations and Christians as such, with a much slower growth, if any. A secondary differentiation can be introduced between somewhat faster developing Lutherans together with Roman Catholics and the other gentile groups, for the latter lesser progress appearing on the whole to have been the rule. But this secondary division is slighly controversial at instances and definitely less spectacular than the first one.
The development for Jews was unilinear and constant indeed in the field under scrutiny, though their general educational scores were already among the best for the oldest generations as well. More than 9 % of Jewish men over 60 (born before 1850) had a smattering of secondary education, but 31 % were still illiterate. Among the youngest adult Jews (20-24 years old) almost one third (32,5 %) held in 1910 some secondary school qualifications and the rate of illiteracy was diminished by five times (down to 6 %). The proportion of those with 8 secondary classes qualification was also multiplied by a factor exceeding five. For Jewish women the cadence of growth was obviously even more spectacular, since the proportions with secondary traing (4 classes and above) increased over time from less than 2 % in the oldest generations to more than 21 % in the youngest ones. The Jewish pattern of constant progress over time is well exemplified in our data.
The Christian pattern, as hinted at above, was much more complex and to some extent ambiguous.
For the generally better educated Lutherans and Roman Catholics one can easily observe signs of relatively fast historical (and generational) progress. The proportions of those with some secondary education doubled over time and the rates of illiteracy – already very low, initially, for Lutherans – diminished by a factor of four to five for both clusters. There again, progress was more rapid but, ultimately, much more modest for women. From a marginal enough 2 % of Lutheran and Catholic women with some secondary education among the 60 years old and above, this proportion reached around 10 % for both groups in the youngest adult generations. The rate of illiteracy also decreased by a factor of five for Roman Catholic women and as much as a factor of eight or more (if we compare the oldest generations with the adolescent age groups).
For the other Christians progress was much more uneven , limited and occasionally irrelevant, at least for the male population.
Calvinist and Unitarian men, relatively well educated in the oldest generations (on approximately the same level as Roman Catholics), fell significantly behind Catholics in the youngest adult generations, though they too benefitted from a radical diminution of their rates of illiteracy. Their proportions in the youngest adult generations of those with 8 classes and above grew by a mere half of what they had been among men born before 1850. The same limited progress applied to Calvinist and Unitarian women.
For Greek Orthodox and – even more – for Greek Catholics every aspect of educational progress over time remained extremely limited. Neither the proportions of men with a smattering of secondary education reached doubling, nor did their rates of illiteracy diminish much below half of their adult groups. The educational progress made by women of Greek ritual – though formally perceptible – is even technically difficult to estimate. In the oldest generations practically none of them (!) held the slightest secondary school qualification. This could only improve over time and actually did so for the generations of young adults, though not exceeding a very marginal 1 %. In spite of progress, the rates of illiteracy were still much over 50 % for young adult and adolescent women of Greek ritual, falling back, truely enough, from an almost total lack of writing and reading skills in the oldest generational clusters (97 %-98 %).
Now it is worth to break down these observations by residential settings, opposing there again cities and counties, even with the formerly formulated reservations in mind as to the poverty of our urban category.
In the two cities distinguished in our data bank the progress of education for men proved to be in relative terms much more modest and often properly erratic (with ups and downs among successive generational clusters) as compared to the counties where, on a lower general level to be true, it was permanently upwards directed over time almost on every level and in each denomination. The same observation can be made in other city populations for which we have similar information (Transdanubia, Western and Eastern Slovakia[117], the region between Tisza and Maros and even Budapest[118]) But here again the general trend applied only to Christians and the pattern was different for Jews. The proportions of the educated among the latter was multiplied by a factor of three to almost five (!) on various levels of advanced education from the oldest to the youngest adult generations. There again similar indications of regular progress can be found among urbanised Jewish men in other provinces or in Budapest too. As a logical contrast, the counties recorded for every denomination a regular, even if slow progress, except for the already noted very dynamic growth of educated groups among Jews.
There again our results enforce the opposition of two trends peculiar to Christians and Jews respectively.
For Christians such ‘urban functions’ as staffing the administration and other social and political institutions of urban elites always generated the presence in cities of their most educated clusters to a large and indeed historically unchanging measure. Hence the apparent immobility of the relative size of their urbanised educated population, growing more or less only together with the development of the city populations themselves.
The educational investment of Jews in cities increased on the contrary sharply with – as we shall see below – the fast unfolding movement of Jewish urbanisation itself – thanks presumably to the combined effect of a number of well identified factors either hitherto mentioned or to be dealt with below : Jewish ‘over-schooling’ multiplying the presence of Jewish pupils and students in cities, migration trends of ‘modernised’ Jews with or aspiring to secular education into urban centers, embourgeoisement and economic ascent of urban petty Jewry, rapid increase of the size and the relative proportions of the Jewish intelligentsia performing urban functions in the medical, legal, cultural, artistic and otherwise intellectual services.
Frameworks of interpretation : the educational supply and its accessibility
Certified knowledge is always linked to its main vehicle and transmission belt, the school system on at least two scores, thanks to its functions of both dispensing and certifying educational assets. Thus, one should look at the organisation of schooling and its differential usages by denominational groups when attempting to interpret our findings. Such an investigation must concern first the very particularities of educational supply and raise the question whether they allow an interpretation of denominational differences in school performance.
The obvious starting point here should be the denominational nature of the school network, that is, its composition regards the impact of religion. It is indeed common knowledge that institutional education remained in the Dualist period largely the privilege of ecclesiastic authorities in Hungary both on the primary and the secondary level. Some church influence – if not a decisive one – survived even in higher education, which, however was almost fully nationalised since the 18th century. Clerical training (seminaries, theologies) remained, logically, within the orbit of the churches, but the University of Budapest also maintained its old Faculty of Catholic Theology and, to boot, the allegedly somewhat preferential promotion of Catholic candidates to its teaching positions. In the once important sector of legal academies seven ecclesiastical institutions continued to compete with four state managed ones for law students.[119] In primary schooling the policy of often openly preferential selection of pupils of their own denomination remained the rule in church schools.[120] A differently biassed preferential recruitment system could occasionally prevail in secondary schooling as well.
Table 8.
Distribution of Transylvanian secondary and primary schools by controlling authorities (1900)
p r i m a r y gymnasiums[121]
s c h o o l s[122]
State 507 16,9 5
Municipal_ 167 5,6 1
Private, ’associational’ 32 1,1 ______
Roman Catholic 234 7,8 10,2 6
Greek Catholic 788 26,2 34,3 3
Greek Orthodox 760 25,3 33,1 2
Lutheran 271 9,0 11,8 7
Calvinist 202 6,7 8,8 6
Unitarian 33 1,1 1,4 2
Jewish 8 0,3 0,3 -
_______________________________________________________________
all 3002 32
% with public schools 100,0
% without public schools 100,0
It is rather obvious from this table that observed confession specific educational performances were only in a loose statistical relation, if any, with the sheer number of of schools run at that time by various ecclesiatical authorities.
As to primary schools, formally, both Greek Catholics and Orthodox had a somewhat larger share in the institutional market than expected, given their share in the population (28 % and 29 % respectively), if we suppose that they could enter state and municipal establishments in proportionally equal numbers as well. Lutherans also had a larger primary school network than expected due to their smaller share (8 %) in the population. Thus for Lutherans their very good scores of literacy can to some extent be correlated to the large size of their school network, but this cannot apply to the primary schools run by Churches of Greek ritual. All other denominational clusters appear however to be crassly under-represented in the school market, especially the Roman Catholics and the Calvinists holding not much more (or even less) than half as many schools (in proportion of all schools) than their share in the population (14 % and 15 % repectively). The case of Jews is particularly striking with their negligible presence in the market of Transylvanian primary schools.
The situation was rather different for gymnasiums. Here the public (state or municipality run) institutions had a similar one fifth share in the market, but the distribution of the rest corresponded somewhat more to the observed performances of various denominational clusters. The Churches of Greek ritual had a markedly backward position with only 5 schools (teaching all in Romanian) for the majority population in the province, while the market was dominated (up to two thirds) by the Western Christian Churches. Still, there again, dissimilarities are worth to be noticed. The relatively smallest ’Western’ (that is, ethnically mostly German and Magyar) denominations, the Lutherans (8 % in the population) had more gymnasiums (7 German institutions) than any other clusters, that is, the Roman Catholics and the Calvinists (with 6 gymnasiums but with 14-15 % of the population each). The Unitarians (with 2 gymnasiums and 2,5 % of the population) can also be regarded as better endowed than demographically expected or statistically justified. There were no Jewish secondary schools at all in Dualist Hungary.
Thus the above detailed educational hierarchy is far from being clearly reflected in the supply of Church schools, which is more astonishing for the primary than the secondary level. The primary sector operated indeed following principles of a quasi complete denominational segregation, each religious cluster using basically its own schools, with some exceptions. But the distribution observed granted apparently enough occasions for education for all in their own denominational schools, except for Jews. This was counterbalanced by a relatively large state and municipal school network providing training for those who did not have or could not reach a school of their own at their disposal. 17 % of primary schools belonged in 1900 to the state sector in Transylvania, as against only 10 % in Hungary, and this was complemented by a municipal school network of smaller size (5,5 %).[123] Manifestly, the quantitative availability of primary schools cannot be made responsible for inequalities of literacy or further education. This statement confirms the finding made above in table 1, that the quantitative distribution of primary schools could not explain relative general under-education in Transylvania.
The situation was different however in secondary schooling. This was indeed organised following principles of a fairly ‘open market’, though not without significant rigidities. Among the latter the first thing worth mentioning concerns the very uneven availability of schools in various languages. Hungarian elite training was a fundamental instrument of ‘nationalisation’ and social integration of would-be ethnic elites thanks to the quasi complete monopoly of Magyar tuition in the country. The quasi unique exceptions to this were actually concentrated in Transylvania due to the presence of German-Saxon and Romanian institutions[124]. But, visibly, if Lutheran Saxons were privileged due to the relatively large number of gymnasiums, Romanians were clearly underprivileged in this respect. Magyar and German gymnasiums and reáliskolák were, to be sure, also open to them, but it is undeniable that studies in institutions with alien tuition language represented – specifically for Romanians – a supplementary hardship and could obviously put a brake on their efforts at upwards educational mobility as well as, consequently, on their willingness to enter into such an ‘alienating’ educational track. Secondary education was, at that time, hardly marked as yet by trends or policies of denominational segregation, if preferential school choices related to the ’social distance’, cultural differences and ’ritual alienation’ between religious clusters are disregarded. Greek Catholic or Orthodox students would, hence, allegedly prefer Roman Catholic gymnasiums, when they accepted Hungarian training[125] and Protestants and Catholics would mutually tend to avoid enrollment in institutions of the other faith. Similarly Jews could, occasionally, prefer state gymnasiums or Protestant ones to other ecclesiastical institutions, when they had the choice, but they did not suffer any discrimination proper in this period.[126] There was probably no discrimination but certainly a strategic avoidance of Romanian gymasiums of Greek ritual by all non Romanian pupils, among other reasons because tuition was offered there in a language lacking much promotional value in the Magyar nation state ruled by Hungarian and German speaking elites. This proved to be much less reciprocated - for exactly the same reasons - by Romanians – often accepting or even seeking Magyar or German cultural and social assimilation in gymnasiums of the ruling ethnic clusters.[127] Ambitious and intellectually mobile Hungarians could, similarly, aspire to German instruction in Saxon-Lutheran gymnasiums.
Thus, if the denominational set-up of the gymnasium network, that is the mere size of the school supply accessible for each denominational group, was not quite neutral in matters religious, this cannot be considered as a serious reason for the indeed enormous discrepancies of educational performances among denominational clusters.
In the educational efficiency of the school supply there has always been of course an essential qualitative aspect as well. There are reasons to suppose that the various denominational school networks – especially on the primary level - were differently endowed with pedagogical means. Unfortunately regional evidence is seriously lacking for a demonstration of such discrepancies in Transylvania proper. The few indications we have to this effect concern the whole country. They do confirm that state primary schools were generally better endowed than ecclesiastical ones and among the latter Jewish schools were far better off than all others. In 1898 for example all but 8 % of primary school teachers on average had a normal school degree, but as many as 21 % of teachers were still without qualification in Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic schools as against only 2,5 % in Jewish schools. [128] Similarly, as late as 1910/11 some 39 % of pupils of primary schools on the average benefited from a normally (9-10 months) long school year, but only 12 % of pupils in Greek Catholic and 23 % in Greek Orthodox schools as against 84 % of pupils in Jewish schools and 63 % of pupils in state schools.[129] The same applied to the endowment of schools with libraries [130] or, more generally, to the expenses made for each pupil : these varied widely, in 1907 for example from a very low 17-19 crown in Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox schools to as much as 54 crowns in Jewish schools and 39 crowns in state schools (with an average of 22 crowns).[131] All this may be connected to major denominational inequalities observed in the general length of primary school studies in the early 20th century, closely connected to drop out rates. Thus in 1906/7 class 4 of primary schools had only 52 of pupils as compared to class 1. But, if we suppose that the number of pupils enrolled in different forms did not change significantly over four years, Jewish schools has kept in class 4 as much as 90 % of their pupils as against 53 % in state schools, 64 % in German-Catholic schools, 71 in German Lutheran schools, but a mere 31 % in Romanian Greek Catholic and 33 % in Romanian Greek Orthodox schools.[132].
Such country wide data may bring us insights into the relative under-education of Greek Catholics and Greek Orthodox, since over a third of them in Hungary lived in Transylvania (as indicated in table 5 above), but they can be much less extrapolated to other denominational clusters in Transylvania with a much lower share in the region’s population.
But one should, in this context, also consider another aspect of the educational supply, its regional or local distribution, as compared to that of its potential denominational clienteles. If cultural distance between denominational groups could not be a decisive factor of inequalities, physical distance from schools occasionally could. Such distance,in terms of access facilities, could also be overcome, obviously, but at a price which all the families concerned were not ready or in a position to accept. Hence the importance of urbanisation as a good approach to the problem area.
Table 9.
Urbanisation by denominations in Transylvania (1869-1910)
U r b a n p o p u l a t i o n growth % population % of city dwel-
1869 1900[133] 1910[134] 1869-1910[135] 1900[136] lers, 1910
Roman Catholics 25,9 25,1 27,1 187 13,4 42,5
Greek Catholics 11,4 12,2 12,3 193 27,9 5,7
Greek Orthodox 16,8 18,7 14,2 151 30,2 6,2
Lutherans 19,3 19,0 14,0 130 9,0 21,4
Calvinists 22,2 17,9 22,7 182 14,7 19,9
Unitarians 1,7 2,1 2,6 266 2,6 13,4
Jews 2,7 5,1 7,1 469 2,1 38,7
All 100,0 100,0 100,0 177,7 100,0 13,1
The accessibility in terms of both physical distance from schools and the cost of schooling investment depend manifestly upon the location of the schools and the respective settlement of their clienteles. The primary school network was, by that time, fairly decentralized, so that direct access to schools could be provided for most if not all pupils, even in many if not all remote villages. This was not the case of secondary and higher educational institutions almost exclusively established in towns with ’established councils’ (small townships) or cities with administrative autonomy. The unequal urbanisation of potential school clienteles could, thus, be a factor defining to a large extent positively or negatively the chances of access to post-primary schooling. The table above shows the basic data to this effect for 1869-1910 related to all towns and cities in the region.
These data show clearly a strong statistical relationship between degrees of urbanization and the level of school performances. Significantly over-urbanised groups (with more than double share among the urban population compared to their proportions in the general population – like Jews -, or with close to the double – like Roman Catholics and Lutherans) belonged to the best educated clusters as well. Those slightly over-urbanized (like Calvinists and Unitarians) displayed equally close to average (but higher than average) educational scores. On the contrary, the firmly under-urbanized brackets – the Greek Orthodox and – even more – the Greek Catholics – appear among the clusters with the poorest educational attainments. In other terms, when the geographical disposition of the schooling supply was to some extent matched with a similar distribution of the potential demand by denomination, there was a positive response in forme of a measure of over-schooling. The contrasted geographical composition of the supply and the demand generated sharp trends of under-investment in education. This correlation remains relevant even for globally over-urbanised groups, like Lutherans actually in Transylvania, whose urban population was historically rather stagnating, contrary to Jews, for example, who tripled their share among city dwellers of the region over the fourty odd years under scrutiny. Still, there was no direct and constant relationship between schooling assets and urbanisation since the most strongly urbanised cluster, the Catholics, was not on the whole the most educated one. Moreover this was even less true of some those – Unitarians and Greek Catholics – which espoused the most dynamically the settlement movement in towns. Jews on the contrary offer a throughout positive correlation between over-urbanisation and over-schooling.
Frameworks of interpretation : social stratification and degrees of modernity of denominational groups
Still, residential distribution does certainly not explain all the observed denominational inequalities, since on the whole a fraction only of the Transylvanian population (not more than a mere one sixth of it in 1910[137]) was actually urbanised in the Dualist Era. For a better interpretation of our main results one has to look thus closer into the demoninational set-up of the potential demand, that is, the main social strata providing for advanced school clienteles in this period. Thus we must resort to an analysis – let alone a summary one -of the socio-professional composition of Transylvanian society in the early 20th century broken down by confessional clusters. This can be cautiously completed by references to some selected demographic indicators of ‘modernity’, specific to denominational groups, liable to contribute to the understanding of educational differentials.
Educational investments are always dependent on at least two circumstances: first they are conditioned by its costs and, implicitely, the mere capacity of families to come up to the expenses involved in the broad sense (as far as financial and organisational sacrifices or the use of the families’ and the young peoples’s time budget are concerned); secondarily but not less importantly, the readiness of families to invest in education instead of other things. Both conditions are heavily class related or properly class dependent. The higher social strata have usually more means and more readiness to spend on education for a number of reasons. In the post-feudal era of industrialisation and construction of the apparatus of the nation state, their educational investments are easier to realize due to facilities guaranteed by the reproductiveness of their own ‘educational capital’ and also expected to carry more immediate profits in terms of careers in the civil service, the professions or the private economy. Still in this shortcut of educational sociology one should not neglect anthropological culture specific factors, notably those linked to religious cultures, not liable to be reduced exclusively to social stratification. All this can be exemplified to some extent in our last tables.
Table 10.
Some basic data on social stratification by denominations in Transylvania, outside ‘intellectual’ professions (1900)[138]
Roman Greek Greek Luthe- Calvi- Unita- Jews all N
C a t h o l i c s Orthodox rans nists rians
All active men 13,4 28,7 30,2 8,8 14,5 2,6 1,8 100,0 822.030[139]
Landowners with 57,9 5,5 8,8 14,1 7,8 1,0 5,1 100,0 11.410
100 holds or above
landowners with 16,6 31,3 15,1 10,9 21,2 4,9 2,9 100,0 3829
50-100 holds
petty landowners 8,5 29,6 35,5 12,5 11,1 2,7 0,2 100,0 307.171
with less than 50 holds
manual workers in 10,9 36,1 32,8 3,0 14,6 2,6 0,1 100,0 293.384
agriculture
manual workers 28,7 13,2 17,3 12,8 19,9 2,6 5,5 100,0 71.767
(mining, industry,
trade, transports)
craftsmen, industrialists 23,1 12,5 18,0 15,0 20,5 2,3 8,4 100,0 37.447
traders, credit agents 17,9 5,1 9,8 11,5 7,7 0,9 47,1 100,0 6.360
Table 10 offers an overview of major trends of professional stratification of Transylvanian society outside the ‘intellectual professions’ in the last phase of the Dualist Era. Visibly, here again the demonstration is made of the relative under-development of Transylvania as compared to other provinces in the country, since the primary sector (agriculture) occupied close to three quarters of active men (73 %) in the region as against 66,5 % country wide.[140] Hence two clusters of almost equal size dominated the professional scene, petty landowners and agricultural workers of various status. The main social inequalities among religious groups can be measured already by the extremely divergent representation of various denominational clusters in these two groups. Only the two Greek ritual clusters were more or less significantly over-represented in both agricultural populations, the Greek Catholics more among the workers, the Orthodox somewhat more among landowners. The presence of Lutherans proved also to be rather strong among propertied peasantry, but very weak among agricultural blue collars. The Calvinists, on the contrary showed an average representation among the petty landowners and a much higher one among the rural working class. Unitarians were also over-represented among the landowners. Jews could be found only exceptionally in agricultural professions in Transylvania. The most interesting finding in this respect concerns Roman Catholics, prominently under-represented in both peasant categories.
These data can serve for a preliminary interpretation of our observations related to educational inequalities. The Greek ritual clusters, over-represented among the poor peasantry, were among the less educated. Those others, under-represented in the peasantry, can be characterised by degrees of educational attainment rather closely correlated to their share among petty peasants. All this is confirmed – as a contrast - by the distribution of big landowners (over 100 holds) among whom Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Jews had a share of over three quarters (77 %), while all the others were under-represented. Among landowners with middle-sized properties (50-100 holds) the distribution was more balanced, with a strong presence of Calvinists and even Greek Catholics. But the absolute numbers of big landowners were insignificant as compared to the peasants, so that they could but weakly modify the major negative correlation between educational achievements and representation in the peasantry. The basic structure of Transylvanian society was still forcefully marked by the feudal heritage with its erstwhile privileged Magyar and German-Saxon layers of ‘Western Christians’ forcefully represented among the propertied, especially in the landowning strata. This socio-professional set-up contributed to determine much of the educational inequalities observed above.
This is not the place to expand on the causes of this correlation, some well known conditions can however be reminded of hereafter. Peasant children of mostly rural residence had a more difficult physical access to schooling than others, since secondary schools were at that time exclusively located in townships and cities, many small villages were lacking primary schools and peasant households were often dispersed in the open country, outside villages. The poor peasantry belonged in the post-feudal society to the economically most deprived social categories and thus could not always afford even the slightest investment in education. Peasant families were also obviously less motivated than others to make heavy educational investments since they could harly expect from it due social rewards. Peasant society was marked by a number of in-bred mechanisms directed against residential and/or professional mobility. Technical knowledge necessary for the pursuit of peasant work was transmitted along family lines. Chances of upwards social mobility via formal education were poor, unforeseeable and indeed impossible to be planned given the lack of educational capital in the families. In peasant culture there could survive or be even developed, occasionally, a measure of mistrust proper of educational assets ‘reserved for the gentlemen’, ‘not for us’ or even capable to alienate ‘our children from their homes’. Such mistrust could, of course, be efficiently counter-balanced by specific denominational motivations, like the presence of religious teaching institutions, the appeal of denominational vocations (priesthood) – especially when it was supported by Church managed grants -, ‘religious intellectualism’ (as among Jews[141]) or influential models of ‘intellectual careers’ in the Churches (like in Catholic congregations or as teachers of the Universitas Saxorum).
Considering the minority groups in non agricultural occupations, it is easy to perceive a logical negative homology in the distribution of denominational clusters, compared to their proportions in agriculture. The extreme case here is clearly presented by Jews, over-represented by a factor of more than three in all such occupations, the less among urban workers and the most among traders - providing close to a half of the latter. But one can observe a very strong over-representation of Roman Catholics and Lutherans among ‘independents’ (business proprietors) in industry and trade, Calvinists being also exceptionally over-represented among (mostly petty) craftsmen, while all these ‘Western Christian’ groups were heavily present among the urban blue collars too. The contrary was true of those of Greek persuasion, rarely present in any of these typically urban occupations, though the participation here of the Orthodox exceeded significantly that of the Greeek Catholics. Now all these mostly urban strata were more prone to educational mobility than their peasant coreligionists, so that their distribution can serve as an additional factor to explain the disparities identified in their educational investments.
Similar conclusions can be made regarding the presence of various Transylvanian denominations in the ‘intellectual professions’, as displayed in Table 11. The study of relevant data should be started with the last two lines of the table, comparing the overall representation of denominational groups among ‘intellectuals’ and in the active population. Here again, Jews were very strongly over-represented (by a factor of more than four), but also Roman Catholics and Lutherans, the presence of Calvinists and Unitarians also exceeding considerably their share in the population, while those of the Greek persuasion appeared to be crassly under.-represented. This is another general confirmation of the observation that the higher were the participation of groups with intellectual capital in a confessional cluster, the better were the educational performances achieved in the cluster.
This interpretation can be refined by considering the group specific structure of the ‘intellectual professions’, as indicated in table 11. Here again the most singular pattern is shown by Jews, with an absolute majority of their ‘intellectuals’ among private employees (including engineers, executives, managers in the upper echelons down to petty shop assistants) and with a strong presence among free professionals (doctors, lawyers, vets, etc.). Jews proved to have thus the most ‘modern’ profile here in the sense of being concentrated in professional tracks developed mostly recently due to the growth of capital intensive industries, trades and agencies of credit, demanding specialised intellectual manpower. Lutherans and Roman Catholics were also relatively over-represented among experts of the private economy, but their strongholds were constituted rather in public or semi-public employment, as in the teaching professions. This applied even more to Calvinists and Unitarians, over two-thirds of whom were concentrated in public or Church service. Greek Orthodox and Catholics on the contrary remained almost exclusively (up to close to four fifth of them) clustered in the most traditional intellectual professions in Church service (priests, primary school teachers).
Table 11.
The distribution of selected ‘intellectual’ professions in Transylvania by denominations (1900)[142]
Roman Greek Greek Luthe- Calvinists Unita- Jews all
C a t h o l i c s Orthodox rans rians
Private employees (in- 20,6 4,6 6,3 29,3 10,4 5,9 62,0 18,6
dustry, trade, banks)
free professionals 5,3 4,8 3,2 7,0 5,9 6,6 8,6 5,7
employees in transports 20,9 2,3 1,6 6,5 14,4 12,4 12,3 10,6
civil servants, public
employees 28,0 15,0 17,5 13,5 27,7 26,8 6,0 17,9
priests, clerics 6,6 40,5 42,6 13,9 15,2 18,5 4,7 20,1
primary school teachers 14,0 36,0 37,5 24,9 23,1 25,9 6,0 24,0
highschool teachers 4,5 1,8 1,8 4,9 3,6 3,9 0,5 3,2
___________________________________________________________________________
all 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0
numbers 3295 2364 2012 2260 2848 541 1309 14.629
% 22,5 16,2 13,7 15,4 19,5 3,4 8,9 100,0
% in the population 13,4 27,9 30,2 9,0 14,7 2,6 2,1 100,0
The distribution of ‘intellectuals’ in denominational groups, though on the whole an almost negligible minority (less than 2 %) in the active population, reproduced once again the same four tiers structure – opposing Jews, ‘developed’ (Roman Catholics, Lutherans) and ‘less developed’ (Calvinists, Unitarians) Western Christians as well as, lastly, those of Greek ritual - precisely as it has been observed in our educational data. The primary and most spectacular differences separate Jews from all others on the one hand, the Greek religious clusters from other Christians on the other hand.
As to the first pattern of opposition one may stress the fact – which, unfortunately, cannot be duely elaborated upon in this context – that the stratification of the Jewish intellectual cluster, with a probable majority share of self made, not officially certified ‘semi-intellectuals’ in private employment prepared for the enormous educational mobility of future generations belonging to the confessional cluster. Their Christian counterparts held much more often ‘official’ intellectual positions as priests, teachers, civil servants – the mere appointment of whom was more and more strictly connected, following the 1883 ‘Law on qualifications’, to their educational certifications. The development of Christian educational mobility was thus, from the outstart, linked mostly to the movement of self-reproduction of ‘certified intellectuals’, even if this could mean some progress in terms of the accumulation of educational capital (when, for example, the son of a petty intellectual - a teacher or a porotestant minister - became professor in a gymnasium or a legal academy). As a contrast, Jewish educational mobility was destined to be the outcome of overall mobility strategies of non intellectuals (like traders) or ‘proto’- or ‘semi-intellectuals’ (like trade employees) on a trajectory of migratory mobility (urbanisation), cultural adaptation (Magyarisation), secularisation (growth of ‘modern’ Jewry as exemplified in the birth and increase of ‘neologue’ communities after the 1868 Jewish Congress) and identity change (assimilation and integration in the Hungarian middle classes).
The contrast between ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ Christians is clearly reproduced in the stratification of their repective ‘clusters of intellectuals’. This opposition can be clearly demonstrated if we compare the size of the 8 secondary school classes clusters in each denominational group with the numbers of ‘officially certified intellectuals’, that is those who were expected or could claim to have completed 8 secondary classes or more, as in table 12.
Table 12.
Certified intellectuals and the clusters of men with 8 secondary school classes and above in Transylvania (1910)[143]
Roman Greek Greek Luthe- Calvinists Unita- Jews
C a t h o l i c s Orthodox rans rians
1. Certified intellectuals[144] 7389 2980 2589 3939 5427 1081 1961
2. Men with 8 secondary
classes and above 2073 2201 1853 1451 2150 442 506
3 = 1 : 2 X 100 356 144 140 271 252 244 388
The table shows three patterns, corresponding incompletely but still largely to the disparity of educational attainments observed among denominational groups. The ‘Eastern Christian’ clusters had in a quite uniform manner almost only ‘official intellectuals’ among those with full secondary school qualifications. Western Christians had in relative terms an at least three time larger section of secondary school graduates or equivalents outside ‘official intellectuals’. The share of the latter among Jews, together this times rather exceptionally with Roman Catholics, was even larger, approaching the double of ‘non intellectual graduates’ (that is the double of the proportion above 100 % in table 12). The case of Roman Catholics needs further research for an explanation, but the rest of these findings simply confirm our previous results concerning educational inequalities among denominational groups. For Jews similar observations have been made in Eastern and Western Solvakia.[145]
One should add though that the Greek oriental pattern owed its more pronounced immobility to at least three specific factors. Special facilities operated for self-reproduction in the large Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox clerical cluster (the biggest category among all other ‘intellectuals’ of Greek ritual listed in Table 11) via Church schools, grants and family incitements (the latter being absent among Roman Catholic clerics obliged to celibacy). Such facilities via big Romanian foundations (among them the famous Gojdu and the Greek Catholic Naszód/Nasaud foundations[146]) did exist for secular learning too, to be sure. The very fact that young Greek Catholic and Orthodox men, engaged in secular higher studies, appear to benefit much more often than others from ‘sponsored educational promotion’ thanks to scholarships, tuition waivers and the like[147], is a demonstration of the otherwise large scale educational immobility in these clusters. But this may have been also due to the weakness of their secondary school network and the very tight scope of institutions of higher education (practically limited to theological seminaries) in Romanian or Ruthenian (as for the Ruthenian Greek Catholic minority in North Transylvania). Romanian Orthodox or Catholic pupils were exposed to various forms of symbolic violence, not to speak of the inescapable linguistic and cultural alienation, when they accepted or decided to make headway in Hungarian or German majority schools. This is why the most successful of them, if they reached Matura level, appear to have graduated much later in age than their Western Christian or Jewish counterparts.[148] Thirdly, even if overcoming the above mentioned difficulties of adaptation and alienation, Romanian intellectuals – whether free lance or employed – had a hard time to get integrated in Magyar and German dominated Transylvanian gentlemanly elites. This is objectively manifested in the striking rarity of their presence among state dependent professionals like employees in transports (railways and city transports belonging mostly to public industries by that time), highschool teachers (whose career market, though Romanian in part, was largely dominated by the Western Churches and the state sector, as shown in table 8 above) and other civil servants (as in Table 11).
Frameworks of interpretation : multiple modernities, traditionalisms, identity management and the special Jewish case.
The final scheme to interpret our data on educational inequalities represents the most complex approach resorting to indicators which refer either to the group specific patterns of demographic (that is existential) modernization or to linguistic competences linked to strategic actions of assimilation. The key concepts applicable more or less directly to all those conducts underlying these indicators is self-control, discipline, rational action and - more specifically - strategic adoption of skills beneficial to the social integration and advancement in a multi-cultural nation state undergoing a process of modernization and exerting pressure for its cultural homogeneization. These key concepts are clearly connected to educational achievements as well either as the expression of conditions of educational success (discipline, self-control, rational action) or as a consequence expected from schooling (acquisition of linguistic skills of the dominating national elites). Most behaviours referred to in all these concepts can be qualified as ‘modern’ in the sense that they attest to a positive relation to the future, the acceptation of investments (in terms of endeavours, expenses, deprivations, self-mobilisation or commitment) for future rewards. We will however encounter in this exposé, paradoxically enough and however sketchy it may be, very traditional forms of behaviour as well, which could (especially in Jewish clusters) demonstrably lead to the development of some decisively ‘modern’ – notably educational - behaviorial strategies.
Table 12.
Indicators of modernisation and assimilation in Transylvania in the early 20th century.
Roman Greek Greek Luthe- Calvin- Unita- Jews all
C a t h o l i c s Orthodox rans ists rians
% of deaths 1901-1902 49,7 15,2 19,5 60,7 37,6 ? 56,2 28,1
with
medical care[149] 1912-1913 50,3 18,1 22,2 57,4 42,7 ? 60,6 30,0
birth rates/1000 in 1913[150] 36,3 39,2 35,2 29,2 35,1 32,6 31,6 35,8
deaths/thousand by tu- 3,78 3,85 3,41 2,95 3,41 2,93 1,71 3,15
berculosis (1901-1905)[151]
distribution of births 14,1 30,6 29,2 7,0 14,6 2,3 2,1 100,0
in 1913[152]
distribution of deaths under 14,3 30,5 31,0 5,8 14,5 2,4 1,6 100,0
7 years of age (1901-1905)[153]
% with Magyar mother
tongue (1880) [154] 89,9 2,0 1,3 9,9 96,3 98,0 44,7 30,3
% with Magyar mother
tongue (1910)[155] 92,6 3,4 1,6 10,9 98,4 99,2 73,3 34,3
% of those with Magyar
mother tongue speaking 19,5 42,4 27,2 45,0 36,5 15,9 67,8 19,5
another language too (1910)[156]
% of those with Magyar
mother tongue speaking 9,9 5,6 5,2 19,5 6,8 3,7 60,4 10,1
German or other non local
language[157]
% of non Magyars speak- 56,6 14,0 63,6 29,9 9,7 21,2 52,8 15,2
ing Magyar too (1910)[158]
There are two types of data on table 13 : indicators of demographic modernization or development on the one hand, indicators of linguistic competence, loyalty and mobility on the other hand. This is not the place to propose an in-depth study of them as such, in their specific significance, but only as far as they express degrees of collective behaviorial modernization of various denominational groups liable to be connected to observed differentials in their educational performances.
The case of demographic indicators is relatively simple.
Some of them are clearly correlated with the hierarchy of educational achievements. This applies to the frequency of medical treatment granted to the dying (first two lines of table 13). Jews, Lutherans and Roman Catholics - in this order - appear to be in this respect notably privileged, since by 1912-13 the majority of their deceased had been taken care of by the medical personnel. One should remark nevertheless that there was a decrease in the probability of benefiting from a doctor’s assistance for Lutherans during the first decade of the 20th century, while the proportion of comparable Roman Catholics hardly moved in this period as against a sizable rise for Jews. Calvinists are situated lower on this scale and those of the Greek ritual much lower, especially the Uniates (Greek Catholics). This last difference between the two populations of Greek ritual can be probably related to their somewhat different socio-professional set-up. The Orthodox presented an indeed significantly more ‘middle class’ profile, in the sense that 44,5 % of their active men belonged to the landowning class as against only 39,3 % of the Greek Catholics, while the share of craftsmen, entrepreneurs and traders represented 3 % of the Orthodox, but only 2,1 % of the Greek Catholics.[159] The former might have been slightly more often in a position to protect themselves against ill health by resorting to medical services due to their presumably less depressed economic situation. One can impute, more generally, to differences in social stratification (inclusively degrees of urbanisation as in table 9 above) the above drafted hierarchy of access chances to medical care, so that the dimension of modernity or development involved which correlated closely to the hierarchy of educational attainments, may be attributed to the former.
Such was not exactly the case of the other demographic indicators listed in table 13.
As for birth rates only Lutherans and, more moderately, Jews showed a pattern plainly under the average, demonstrating the fact that they had entered in Transylvania too into the second phase of ‘demographic transition’, entailing the limitation of family size. Death rates by tuberculosis and of young kids display quite comparable dissimilarities between Jews and Lutherans on the one hand, all the other denominational groups lumped together on the other hand. Following these indicators it is striking that Roman Catholics did not prove to be particularly advanced in this respect. Thus data on ‘demographic modernisation’ of Jews and Lutherans would confirm the hypothesis of a link between modernisation and educational achievements, but such correlation cannot be detected for Roman Catholics.
The singular status of Jews and Lutherans can be also demonstrated in the indicators of linguistic skills.
As to declarations of Magyar mother tongue at various dates, the denominational clusters under scrutiny offer a four tiered set-up. Three ‘Western Christian’ clusters (Calvinists, Unitarians and – somewhat less – Roman Catholics) consisted almost exclusively of Magyar speakers, which is a well established fact of Transylvanian history. It is not less well known that Lutherans were Saxons in their large majority, hence most of them (up to 90 %) German speakers. Those of Greek ritual were just as exclusively (or almost) Romanians, while Jews were divided between Yiddishists and Magyarizers. But the main message of our data concerns the linguistic mobility and the multiplicity of language usages and linguistic competences imbedded in the figures. Mobility and multilingualism may, in fact, be interpreted with some indispensable contextual qualifications as outcome of strategic actions, investments of sorts, intended to bring various social profits such as professional mobility, integration in elite circles, acquisition of middle class status, public ‘normalisation’ or neutralisation of erstwhile alienated, isolated or stigmatised identity assigned from outside to some socio-historically marginal clusters, especially Jews.[160] Such strategic actions can be regarded as of the same nature as – and indeed often clearly the result of - educational investments.
In table 13. linguistic mobility can be observed over thirty years in various sectors of Transylvanian society via two kinds of indicators : the progress of Magyarization from 1880 to 1910 and the maintenance or the development of multi-linguism.
In this largely non Magyar population of Dualist Transylvania (with, officially only 31 % of Magyar speakers in 1890[161] in the whole province) the high assimilationist phase of Hungarian nation building did not generate much linguistic mobility in terms of a shift from indigenous tongues to Magyar outside Jews. In the ethnically non Magyar groups of Christian persuasion such progress touched less than 3 % of those concerned (1 % only among Saxon Lutherans), while among Jews the minority proportion of Magyar speakers became a majority of close to three fourth. It is not far-fetched to state thus, that Jews were the only denominational cluster in Transylvania to seriously commit itself to and actually succeed in linguistic assimilation. Hence only the Jewish case is worth here a special study.
The same applies to a large degree to indicators of multilingualism as in table 13. The large majority of Jews declaring Magyar mother tongue (68 %) – that is the great majority of all Transylvanian Jews in 1910 - spoke other languages too, as against a minority only of members of all other comparable denominational clusters : this minority remained relatively sizable for Magyar Lutherans (45 %) and Magyar Uniates (42 %). Something similar applied to those with non Magyar mother tongue who could speak Hungarian. There again a qualified majority of such Jews (52 %) also spoke Magyar, as against only 30 % of Lutherans and a much smaller proportion of members of other denominations, except Roman Catholics. But Roman Catholic non Magyars represented in 1910 a mere 8 % of the group, a rather negligible proportion as compared to the overwhelming majority of Lutherans, Uniates and Greek Orthodox. In both of these cases – Magyars speaking another language and non Magyars speaking Hungarian - we may identify the effect of assimilationism among people composed presumably mostly of Saxons, Swabians and Romanians. But the actual numbers of these Magyarised Christian clusters were so small, that they do not deserve further consideration, contrary to Jews. An almost similarly large majority of Magyar Jews (60 %) continued to speak Yiddish[162], German and/or non local languages (presumably Western tongues). The contrast between the actual weight of Jewish and non Jewish multilingualism in Transylvania can be well evaluated when comparing figures related to Jews and the average figures (last column of table 13.). Now the significance of extended competence in Yiddish or German (and French) was obviously different, except in one sense. They both gave access either to commonly recognised ‘high civilisations’ (of Germany or France), admired as models to be followed in Eastern Europe, or to the Eastern European Jewish world – ‘Yiddishland’. This was at that time beginning to emerge as a non territorial, national and secular ‘high culture’ of its own, thanks to the cultural agency of Jewish political organisations (Zionists, ‘folkists’ á la Simon Dubnow, Agudat Israel, Bundists) specific of the demographic bulk of world Jewry, which continued to live this side of the European continent (in spite of continued waves of emigration from the 1880s onwards).
At least four aspects of the connection between education (Jewish over-schooling, to be true) linguistic mobility and multilingualism should be taken here into account.
The first aspect is hypothetical, though experimentally demonstrated in many instances. To boot it did not directly affect the intensity of schooling efforts. Since most Jews in Hungary including Transylvania were engaged in the process of acculturation, this involved the development of various forms of ‘linguistic loyalty’, as – for example – the fact that Jewish kids, even when they were factually bilingual or rather Yiddishists as to their mother tongue) would be more inclined than others to declare Magyar as their first language.
The second connection rested upon strategic school choice, especially in the primary school network. According to their assimilationist or anti-assimilationist engagements respectively, Jews would in both cases refrain from developing their own school network of public status – or keep it indeed embryonic, as observed in Transylvania. The most traditionalists (especially in the northern counties of the province) would thus opt for exclusively religious training in chederim (considered by state authorities as illegal pirate institutions), while the assimilationists would preferentially look for state or municipal schools, in borderline cases even Christian institutions with Magyar tuition. Linguistic assimilationism or loyalty thus became a criterion for school choice.
But once upon a Magyar language tuition track, Jewish kids like others entered the national educational system leading them up to university and academy studies, since at that level Magyar tuition was paramount. This became thus an elementary initial condition (though neither a necessary nor a sufficient one) of over-schooling in the elite educational track.
Lastly, since linguistic mobility for Jews did rarely represent a complete switch from Yiddish (or, more rarely, German) to Hungarian, as demonstrated in the data related to multi-lingualism in table 13, manifesting thus the possession of an operational linguistic capital convertible also, at least in part (as for German and Western languages) into increased chances and proclivities for scholarly excellence in languages (among them German proper) the accomplishment of further studies abroad (basically in Austrian or German universities with German language tuition) and easy access of Western technological and otherwise intellectual skills beneficial for success in free market professions. But the connection worked obviously the other way round as well. More Jews received advanced elite training, more they were expected to collect linguistic capital. German and Latin in gymnasiums, German and French or other Western languages in reáliskolák and commercial highschools constituted staple subjects of secondary education at that time. Student peregrinations in Western universities (mostly in Transleithenian Austria, Germany and Switzerland, less often in France or Belgium) represented a quasi normal way to complete graduate studies, especially in medicine (Vienna) with an exceptionally high Jewish participation.[163]
We must return shortly to both of these problems of rapid Jewish linguistic mobility and multilingualism. If the latter was less exclusively typical of Jews than the former, still, as we have seen, Jews were incomparably more frequently marked by them than any other denominational cluster. Now both can be directly linked to the traditional Jewish heritage at least in three ways : as a natural extension of customary multilingualism, the cultural habit of learning and, more generally, in-built mechanisms of preparedness for strategic actions via existential discipline.
Customary Jewish multilingualism was indeed an essential cultural feature of the male world of Yiddishland (much less that of Jewish women) thanks to their dominantly commercial or otherwise ‘mediatory’ activities as well as their education. Traditional Jewish schooling, both primary (in chederim) or higher (in yeshivot) was always based on literate bilingualism, with Yiddish as the language of tuition and Hebrew as that of the sacred literature and its commentaries made by edrudite scholars over several generations, which constituted the main target of studies. To this must be counted a measure of familiarity with the language of the larger population with which Jewish traders and, more rarely, craftsmen and professionals (like medical doctors) maintained a relationship of often more or less symbiotic exchange of sorts. Far from being an exception as in Gentile circles, multilingualism was thus an integral part of the living conditions and social relations of traditional Jewry. Not much had to be added to or changed of this traditional frame of cultural habits to generate modern multilingualism with secular intellectual, economic or symbolic objectives. Indeed, in this respect, Jewish linguistic superiority[164] encountered a fundamental drive of the new East Central European Gentile middle classes for Western cultural assets, among them the knowledge of Western languages (with German as a must and French as a desirable supplement). Self-distinction and instrumental learning merged among social rewards expected from strategic multilingualism.
With this another essential ingredient of traditional Jewish life has been mentioned, learning. The study of the classical texts of Jewish religious tradition used to be a lifelong obligation of Jewish males since early childhood (4-5 years of age). Such learning habit was most of the time (except for practising rabbis) lacking any practical target but served as a major source of social prestige and authority – not infrequently competing with or equivalent to wealth. It is easy to realise that such religious learning habits, the basis of Jewish ‘religious intellectualism’, could be directly converted into secular educational assets in the course of the process of secularisation (entailing secular schooling) and modernization (setting secular targets to intellectual pursuits).
Last but not least, the rapid Jewish educational advancement as observed in our data, together with its corollaries (linguistic mobility and multilingualism), represented during the process of modernisation a complex development which would be impossible to account for without considering religious discipline as a multifunctional form of social capital in traditional Jewry. The organisation of daily, weekly and yearly time budget, kosher food, the lack (or quite marginal nature) of alcohol abuse, the omnipresent and overwhelming occurrence of ritual obligations in and outside family life – all this represent signal features of a Lebenswelt grounded in the veritable cultivation of self-control and rational behaviour both as regards religious values and aims (in the sense of Max Weber). But rational conduct and discipline belonged to the staple of economic activities of Jewish traders, professionals, financiers and other entrepreneurs - excluded as they were from the protective and restrictive scope of corporations and forced to operate in free market conditions, even before the fall of feudalism. Once such habit of self-assertive rationality was coupled with a positive attitude to the collective future of Jews, thanks to the relaxation of anti-Jewish limitations during the process of emancipation and - even more decisively - afterwards, it could often give rise to strategic behaviours aimed at social mobility. Linguistic mobility, secular multlingualism as well as concomitant endeavors of ‘over-schooling’ proved to be important pieces of the behaviorial complex of Jews in the era following Emancipation, to which precisely the data bank of this book are dedicated.
* * *
As a conclusion of this essay one cannot but confirm the main hypothesis to which converge all the indices resorted to, which, as it has been demonstrated, explain at least in part the extremely outstreched denominational hierarchy of educational attainments. On this scale one could distinguish Jews at the top, together with Roman Catholics and Lutherans somewhat below from Calvinists and Unitarians in the middle range and Greek Orthodox and Catholics at the bottom. Levels of education appear indeed as a more or less direct product of degrees of modernisation of the clusters concerned. Aspirations for modernity, professional and cultural mobility (’assimilation’ as among Jews or some Germans) or resistance to it (as among Saxons and Romanians alike) and similar other factors were instrumental in generating or maintaining most of the educational demand under scrutiny. This demand had of course to meet the available supply. But the school supply seems to have been large enough for most potential denominational clienteles on the primary level. In spite of indeed heavy confessional segregation or self-segregation exercised in ecclesiatical primary schools, the rapid growth of the public network provided for a large (if not complete) compensation for disadvantaged minorities (like Jews) to get access to elementary education, especially when they accepted Magyar tuition.[165] As to secondary and higher education, they remained open to and easily accessible for all almost indiscriminately (at least for urbanised groups). This implies that the very nature of the school supply did play a role, but probably a subordinate one only in the emergence of denominational inequalities. Its functions should not however be completely neglected for the explanation of the rather low region general level of educational capital acquired by the Transylvanian population by the end of the Dualist Era. For the interpretation of several specific aspects of educational inequalities observed in our data bank one must though go back to the anthropoplogical subculture of various groups as well as the survival of feudal rigidities and privileges reflected also in the educational demand and other social strategies of various layers belonging to Transylvanian society.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Transsylvanian counties and towns |
Levels of education by age group and denomination |
||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Men, 1910 |
N |
representation index average for all = 1 |
Total |
0-5 |
6 |
7-11 |
12-14 |
15-19 |
20-24 |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
20-24 |
40-44 |
total |
|
years old |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Roman Catholics |
|
|
|
|
|
14.20 |
|
% of popul. |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
8 class |
7389 |
1.88 |
2.07 |
2.05 |
3.9 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1.9 |
7.5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6 class |
2011 |
|
|
|
1.1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
3.2 |
1.5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 class* |
5922 |
1.93 |
2.08 |
2.08 |
3.1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2.5 |
5.8 |
4.3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
W/R |
106718 |
|
|
|
55.8 |
0 |
20.9 |
81.1 |
84.5 |
77.1 |
74.1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Illit. |
69095 |
0.37 |
0.57 |
0.69 |
36.1 |
100 |
79.1 |
18.9 |
12.9 |
12 |
12.5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total |
191135 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
15.2 |
2.2 |
10.3 |
6.2 |
9.7 |
8.8 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Num. |
|
|
|
|
191135 |
29146 |
4129 |
19739 |
11907 |
18457 |
16749 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Greek Catholics |
|
|
|
|
|
28.30 |
|
% of popul. |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
8 class |
2980 |
0.43 |
0.41 |
0.42 |
0.8 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0.2 |
1.7 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6 class |
764 |
|
|
|
0.2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0.7 |
0.3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 class* |
1721 |
0.38 |
0.32 |
0.36 |
0.4 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0.3 |
1.1 |
0.6 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
W/R |
1E+05 |
|
|
|
28.7 |
0 |
9.1 |
49.8 |
52.2 |
44.4 |
41.4 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Illit. |
3E+05 |
1.64 |
1.51 |
1.33 |
69.9 |
100 |
90.9 |
50.2 |
47.5 |
53.6 |
55.9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total |
382610 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
15.4 |
2.3 |
10.2 |
6.2 |
9.7 |
8.4 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Num. |
|
|
|
|
382610 |
58869 |
8777 |
39012 |
23872 |
36930 |
32294 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Calvinists |
|
|
|
|
|
|
14.90 |
|
% of popul. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
8 class |
5427 |
1.35 |
1.41 |
1.42 |
2.7 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1.3 |
5.4 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6 class |
1619 |
|
|
|
0.8 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2.6 |
0.9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 class* |
4490 |
1.39 |
1.44 |
1.46 |
2.2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2.1 |
4.9 |
3.3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
W/R |
1E+05 |
|
|
|
57 |
0 |
21.2 |
76.6 |
87.1 |
76.8 |
74.8 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Illit. |
75086 |
0.46 |
0.55 |
0.71 |
37.2 |
100 |
78.8 |
23.4 |
10.7 |
14.4 |
15.6 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total |
201663 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
15.1 |
2.2 |
10.2 |
6.4 |
9.8 |
8.5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Num. |
|
|
|
|
201663 |
30390 |
4514 |
20571 |
12890 |
19816 |
17102 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rat.: Ratio of age group within total of denomination. Num.: Number of age group. * Age specific % here are calculated on the basis of the N of "4 classes". The representation index is calculated on the basis of the number of those who have completed at least 4 classes, that is on the basis of all those listed here as in classes 4+6+8. Database by Victor Karády and Peter Tibor Nagy. Original source: Archive of the Census Department, Central Statistical Office, Budapest. |
|||||||||||
Transsylvanian counties and towns |
cont. of prev. page! |
|
|
Transsylvanian counties and towns |
Levels of education by age group and denomination |
||||||||||||||||
Men, 1910 |
25-29 |
30-34 |
35-39 |
40-44 |
45-49 |
50-59 |
60- |
|
|
Men, 1910 |
N |
representation index average for all = 1 |
Total |
0-5 |
6 |
7-11 |
12-14 |
15-19 |
20-24 |
||
|
years old |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
20-24 |
40-44 |
total |
|
years old |
|
|
|
|
||
Roman Catholic |
|
14.20 |
|
% of popul. |
|
Nat. |
Lutherans |
|
|
|
|
|
|
8.30 |
|
% of popul. |
|||||
8 class |
8.6 |
7.9 |
7.4 |
6 |
6.2 |
5.2 |
3.6 |
Hu: |
92.1 |
8 class |
3939 |
1.78 |
1.93 |
1.84 |
3.5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1.6 |
7.1 |
6 class |
1.2 |
1.4 |
1.5 |
1.5 |
1.3 |
1.1 |
1.1 |
Ge: |
4.3 |
6 class |
1222 |
|
|
|
1.1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
4 |
1.5 |
4 class* |
4.8 |
5 |
4.9 |
4.8 |
4.1 |
3.6 |
2.7 |
Sl: |
0.5 |
4 class* |
3434 |
1.93 |
1.88 |
1.97 |
3.1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2.7 |
7.3 |
4.7 |
W/R |
70.9 |
71.6 |
65.2 |
60.7 |
56.9 |
50.7 |
38.2 |
Ro: |
0.9 |
W/R |
78537 |
|
|
|
69.8 |
0 |
24.3 |
86.9 |
94.3 |
83.8 |
83.2 |
Illit. |
14.4 |
14.1 |
21 |
26.9 |
31.5 |
39.4 |
54.4 |
Ru: |
0.0 |
Illit. |
25432 |
0.1 |
0.1 |
0.43 |
22.6 |
100 |
75.7 |
13.1 |
3 |
3.3 |
3.4 |
Total |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Cr: |
0.2 |
Total |
112566 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Rat. |
7.8 |
6.6 |
5.9 |
5.8 |
5.1 |
8.1 |
8.3 |
Se: |
0.0 |
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
14.5 |
2.2 |
10.7 |
6.3 |
9.3 |
7.5 |
Num. |
14983 |
12622 |
11235 |
11024 |
9816 |
15392 |
15908 |
Ot: |
2.1 |
Num. |
|
|
|
|
112566 |
16334 |
2482 |
12017 |
7059 |
10474 |
8391 |
Greek Catholics |
|
|
28.30 |
|
% of popul. |
|
Nat. |
Greek Orthodox |
|
|
|
|
|
29.30 |
|
% of popul. |
|||||
8 class |
1.7 |
2 |
1.4 |
1.2 |
1.1 |
0.9 |
0.9 |
Hu: |
3.6 |
8 class |
2598 |
0.38 |
0.31 |
0.37 |
0.7 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0.2 |
1.5 |
6 class |
0.2 |
0.3 |
0.2 |
0.2 |
0.3 |
0.3 |
0.2 |
Ge: |
0.0 |
6 class |
741 |
|
|
|
0.2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0.6 |
0.2 |
4 class* |
0.5 |
0.7 |
0.5 |
0.5 |
0.6 |
0.6 |
0.6 |
Sl: |
0.0 |
4 class* |
2042 |
0.35 |
0.27 |
0.36 |
0.5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0.3 |
1.3 |
0.7 |
W/R |
38.9 |
36.5 |
33.8 |
27.4 |
23 |
17.6 |
11.4 |
Ro: |
93.1 |
W/R |
1E+05 |
|
|
|
35.5 |
0 |
10.3 |
55.9 |
60.9 |
53.7 |
52.7 |
Illit. |
58.7 |
60.7 |
64.2 |
70.6 |
75.1 |
80.6 |
86.9 |
Ru: |
0.3 |
Illit. |
2E+05 |
1.32 |
1.33 |
1.21 |
63.2 |
100 |
89.7 |
44.1 |
38.9 |
44.1 |
44.9 |
Total |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Cr: |
0.0 |
Total |
395487 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Rat. |
8.1 |
6 |
5.1 |
5.3 |
5.3 |
9.2 |
8.9 |
Se: |
0.0 |
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
15.1 |
2.4 |
10.5 |
6.2 |
9.7 |
8.3 |
Num. |
31118 |
22953 |
19470 |
20125 |
20176 |
35091 |
33918 |
Ot: |
2.8 |
Num. |
|
|
|
|
395487 |
59785 |
9530 |
41684 |
24621 |
38339 |
32934 |
Calvinists |
|
|
14.90 |
|
% of popul. |
|
Nat. |
Unitarians |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2.50 |
|
% of popul. |
||||
8 class |
5.5 |
5.3 |
5 |
4.1 |
3.8 |
3.6 |
3.7 |
Hu: |
98.4 |
8 class |
1081 |
1.95 |
1.34 |
1.68 |
3.2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
7.8 |
6 class |
0.6 |
1.1 |
1.2 |
1.2 |
0.9 |
0.9 |
1 |
Ge: |
0.2 |
6 class |
210 |
|
|
|
0.6 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2.1 |
0.7 |
4 class* |
2.9 |
3.1 |
3.1 |
3.2 |
3.2 |
2.6 |
1.9 |
Sl: |
0.0 |
4 class* |
532 |
1.61 |
1.19 |
1.38 |
1.6 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2.2 |
4 |
2.6 |
W/R |
76.6 |
72.2 |
69.6 |
65.8 |
62.3 |
50 |
42.1 |
Ro: |
0.3 |
W/R |
21163 |
|
|
|
62.2 |
0 |
20.3 |
82.5 |
89.5 |
82.5 |
75.8 |
Illit. |
14.4 |
18.2 |
21.1 |
25.7 |
29.8 |
42.9 |
51.3 |
Ru: |
0.0 |
Illit. |
11050 |
0.38 |
0.41 |
0.62 |
32.5 |
100 |
79.7 |
17.5 |
8.2 |
10.4 |
13 |
Total |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Cr: |
0.0 |
Total |
34036 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Rat. |
8.3 |
6.4 |
5.2 |
5.2 |
5.1 |
8.9 |
8.7 |
Se: |
0.0 |
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
14.5 |
2.2 |
10.4 |
6.2 |
9.4 |
7.2 |
Num. |
16825 |
12837 |
10557 |
10456 |
10269 |
17849 |
17580 |
Ot: |
1.0 |
Num. |
|
|
|
|
34036 |
4921 |
738 |
3523 |
2113 |
3214 |
2466 |
Rat.: Ratio of age group within total of denomination. Num.: Number of age group. Database by Victor Karády and Peter Tibor Nagy. Original source: Archive of the Census Department, Central Statistical Office, Budapest. |
Rat.: Ratio of age group within total of denomination. Num.: Number of age group. * Age specific % here are calculated on the basis of the N of "4 classes". The representation index is calculated on the basis of the number of those who have completed at least 4 classes, that is on the basis of all those listed here as in classes 4+6+8. Database by Victor Karády and Peter Tibor Nagy. Original source: Archive of the Census Department, Central Statistical Office, Budapest. |
||||||||||||||||||||
Transsylvanian counties and towns |
cont. of prev. page! |
|
|
Transsylvanian counties and towns |
Levels of education by age group and denomination |
||||||||||||||||
Men, 1910 |
25-29 |
30-34 |
35-39 |
40-44 |
45-49 |
50-59 |
60- |
|
|
Men, 1910 |
N |
representation index average for all = 1 |
Total |
0-5 |
6 |
7-11 |
12-14 |
15-19 |
20-24 |
||
|
years old |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
20-24 |
40-44 |
total |
|
years old |
|
|
|
|
||
Lutherans |
|
|
8.30 |
|
% of popul. |
|
Nat. |
Israelites |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2.30 |
|
% of popul. |
||||
8 class |
8 |
7.6 |
6.4 |
5.6 |
5.3 |
4.3 |
4.3 |
Hu: |
11.3 |
8 class |
1961 |
4.18 |
3.1 |
3.26 |
6.2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
5.2 |
16.7 |
6 class |
1.2 |
1.2 |
1.4 |
1.4 |
1.3 |
1.1 |
1 |
Ge: |
87.0 |
6 class |
752 |
|
|
|
2.4 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
7.6 |
3.6 |
4 class* |
4.4 |
4.6 |
5.2 |
4.1 |
3.9 |
3 |
2.4 |
Sl: |
0.3 |
4 class* |
2319 |
4.71 |
4.08 |
4.08 |
7.3 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
7 |
12.7 |
12.2 |
W/R |
82.8 |
83.1 |
82.6 |
84.1 |
82.3 |
80.8 |
74.5 |
Ro: |
0.7 |
W/R |
17799 |
|
|
|
56.1 |
0 |
31.7 |
85.2 |
86.7 |
68.5 |
61 |
Illit. |
3.6 |
3.5 |
4.4 |
4.8 |
7.3 |
10.8 |
17.8 |
Ru: |
0.0 |
Illit. |
8902 |
0.19 |
0.26 |
0.54 |
28.1 |
100 |
68.3 |
14.8 |
6.3 |
6 |
6.4 |
Total |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Cr: |
0.0 |
Total |
31733 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Rat. |
7 |
6.3 |
5.4 |
5.4 |
5.4 |
9.7 |
10.4 |
Se: |
0.0 |
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
16.8 |
2.9 |
11.7 |
7 |
9.7 |
8.1 |
Num. |
7902 |
7053 |
6108 |
6028 |
6080 |
10878 |
11757 |
Ot: |
0.9 |
Num. |
|
|
|
|
31733 |
5345 |
908 |
3711 |
2218 |
3091 |
2581 |
Greek Orthodox |
|
|
29.30 |
|
% of popul. |
|
Nat. |
Other |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
0.00 |
|
% of popul. |
|||
8 class |
2.3 |
1.5 |
1.2 |
0.9 |
0.9 |
0.6 |
0.6 |
Hu: |
1.7 |
8 class |
25 |
4.8 |
0 |
3.95 |
7.5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
5.9 |
19.2 |
6 class |
0.2 |
0.2 |
0.3 |
0.2 |
0.3 |
0.2 |
0.2 |
Ge: |
0.0 |
6 class |
9 |
|
|
|
2.7 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
11.5 |
4 class* |
0.8 |
1.2 |
0.5 |
0.5 |
0.5 |
0.5 |
0.6 |
Sl: |
0.0 |
4 class* |
8 |
5.57 |
0.61 |
3.23 |
2.4 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
5.9 |
7.7 |
W/R |
51.9 |
49.7 |
44 |
36 |
33.3 |
23.1 |
13.2 |
Ro: |
96.2 |
W/R |
198 |
|
|
|
59.1 |
0 |
0 |
77.8 |
40 |
58.8 |
50 |
Illit. |
44.8 |
47.4 |
54 |
62.4 |
65 |
75.6 |
85.4 |
Ru: |
0.0 |
Illit. |
335 |
0.34 |
0.69 |
0.54 |
28.4 |
100 |
100 |
22.2 |
60 |
29.4 |
11.5 |
Total |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Cr: |
0.0 |
Total |
335 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Rat. |
7.3 |
6 |
4.9 |
5.4 |
5 |
9.3 |
9.8 |
Se: |
0.1 |
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
3.6 |
0.3 |
2.7 |
1.5 |
5.1 |
7.8 |
Num. |
28696 |
23858 |
19251 |
21169 |
19929 |
36741 |
38932 |
Ot: |
2.0 |
Num. |
|
|
|
|
335 |
12 |
1 |
9 |
5 |
17 |
26 |
Unitarians |
|
|
2.50 |
|
% of popul. |
|
Nat. |
Together |
|
|
|
|
|
|
100.00 |
|
% of popul. |
||||
8 class |
6.4 |
6.1 |
5 |
3.9 |
4.7 |
4.2 |
4.9 |
Hu: |
99.1 |
8 class |
25523 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1.9 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0.9 |
4 |
6 class |
0.8 |
0.3 |
0.8 |
1.1 |
0.8 |
0.7 |
0.7 |
Ge: |
0.1 |
6 class |
7360 |
|
|
|
0.5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1.8 |
0.7 |
4 class* |
2.1 |
1.6 |
1.9 |
2 |
1.6 |
1.6 |
1.4 |
Sl: |
0.0 |
4 class* |
20565 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1.5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1.3 |
3.3 |
2.2 |
W/R |
77.3 |
80.6 |
75.4 |
74 |
66.7 |
62.7 |
54.7 |
Ro: |
0.5 |
W/R |
590016 |
|
|
|
43.7 |
0 |
14.9 |
64.9 |
69.9 |
61.4 |
59 |
Illit. |
13.4 |
11.5 |
16.9 |
19 |
26.2 |
30.8 |
38.2 |
Ru: |
0.0 |
Illit. |
707013 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
52.4 |
100 |
85.1 |
35.1 |
28.7 |
32.7 |
34.1 |
Total |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Cr: |
0.0 |
Total |
1350480 |
|
|
|
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
Rat. |
7.2 |
6.4 |
5.3 |
5.7 |
5.5 |
9.8 |
10.2 |
Se: |
0.0 |
Rat. |
|
|
|
|
100 |
15.2 |
2.3 |
10.4 |
6.3 |
9.7 |
8.3 |
Num. |
2461 |
2181 |
1817 |
1940 |
1860 |
3345 |
3456 |
Ot: |
0.2 |
Num. |
|
|
|
|
1350480 |
204879 |
31090 |
140340 |
84746 |
130396 |
112604 |
Rat.: Ratio of age group within total of denomination. Num.: Number of age group. Database by Victor Karády and Peter Tibor Nagy. Original source: Archive of the Census Department, Central Statistical Office, Budapest. |
Rat.: Ratio of age group within total of denomination. Num.: Number of age group. * Age specific % here are calculated on the basis of the N of "4 classes". The representation index is calculated on the basis of the number of those who have completed at least 4 classes, that is on the basis of all those listed here as in classes 4+6+8. Database by Victor Karády and Peter Tibor Nagy. Original source: Archive of the Census Department, Central Statistical Office, Budapest. |
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Transsylvanian counties and towns |
cont. of prev. page! |
|
|
Transsylvanian counties and towns |
Levels of education by age group and denomination |
||||||||||||||||
Men, 1910 |
25-29 |
30-34 |
35-39 |
40-44 |
45-49 |
50-59 |
60- |
|
|
Women, 1910 |
N |
representation index average for all = 1 |
Total |
0-5 |
6 |
7-11 |
12-14 |
15-19 |
20-24 |
||
|
years old |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
20-24 |
40-44 |
total |
|
years old |
|
|
|
|
||
Israelites |
|
|
2.30 |
|
% of popul. |
|
Nat. |
Roman Catholics |
|
|
|
|
|
13.70 |
|
% of popul. |
|||||
8 class |
17 |
13.5 |
10.1 |
9 |
7.7 |
5.4 |
3 |
Hu: |
73.9 |
8 class |