1 Sweep Project, History of Social Work and Gender Final report, 2005

The History of Social Work and Gender in Hungary, 1900-1960 By the Hungarian team: Borbla Juhsz, Dorottya Szikra, Eszter Varsa

Abstract After a short methodological note the final report starts with the description of state welfare policies in Hungary between 1900 and 1960. Welfare policies and social work have been closely connected in the early years, but state organised social policy gradually developed into a system. The second chapter draws up the main changes in the structures of non-governmental organizations with a special focus on womens associations. It points to main turning points and provides information on the connection between non-governmental organizations and governmental institutions. Our first case study, about the Kozma street settlement in the outskirts of Budapest, which started in 1935, is placed here. It is a good example of how religion- inspired volunteer work gets co-opted into the official social policy system of the capital city. Specific attention is paid to the role women played in its formation and daily work. The next part reflects on the altering forms of professionalization of social work that can be placed to the first half of the 20th century. Details concerning altering definitions of social activities, debates about the goals and methods of welfare work, as well as educational sites and material in the teaching of social work are examined. Important biographies of women active in social work follow, supplemented by the second case study, the detailed life stories of Katalin Gero and Ilona Fldy. Gero was the directress of the Jewish Orphanage for Girls from 1898 until her death, Ilona Fldy was the leader of the Kozma street settlement between the two world wars.

2 Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Methodology and Sources 2. The Development of State Welfare Between 1900-1960 2.1. Main themes and variables 2.2. Main periods 2.3. Most important arrangements 2.3.1. First period : 1900-1920 2.3.2. Second period: 1920-1948 2.3.3. Third period: 1945-1960 3. Social Activities of Non-Governmental Organizations 3.1. Introduction 3.2. Historical Overview 3.2.1. 1900-1920 3.2.2 1920-1945 3.2.3. 1945-1960 3.3. War-Time Activities 3.4.Target Groups and Types of Organizations 3.5. Organizations for the Poor 3.5.1. The Hungarian Red Cross 3.5.2. The Association of General Public Charity 3.5.3. The Green Cross Movement 3.5.4.. The Norm of Eger 3.6. Organizations for Child Protection: The National League for Child Protection 3.7. Workers Organizations 3.8. The Hungarian Settlement Movement 3.9. Womens Organizations 3.9.1. The Charitable Womens Association 3.9.2. The Izraelite Womens Association of Pest 3.9.3. The Social Mission Society and the Society of Social Sisters 3.9.4. The National Stefnia Association 3.9.5. Foundation for Helping the Poor

Page 4 5 5 7 8 8 10 12 14 14 15 15 16 17 18 18 19 19 20 21 23 23 24 25 26 26 27 27 28 29

3 4. Gender, Class and Ethnicity-Based Differentiation in the Practice of Hungarian Social Work -A Case Study of the Kozma-Street Settlement, 1935-1945 4.1.Introduction 4.2.The Settlement Movement Worldwide 4.3.The Hungarian Settlement Movement 4.4. Kozma Street: A Case for Womens Settlement 4.4.1. Accentuating Womens Gender- and Class-Based Difference 4.4.2. The Presence of Gender-Based Difference Making in the Interaction of Social Workers 4.4.3. Differentiation along Racial Terms in the Practice of Social Work 5. The Professionalization and Institutionalization of Social Work in Hungary 5.1. Definitions of Social Work 5.1.1.The Beginnings of Social Work in the 19th Century 5.1.2.The Specialisation of Social Work in the First Decade of the 20th Century 5.1.3.Guardians of the Public in the Years of the First World War 5.1.4. New Terminology in Child Protection in 1919 5.1.5. Assistants of the Poor in the 1920s 5.1.6. Productive Social Policy 5.1.7. The Disappearance of Social Work after 1948-49 5.2. Social Work Education - The History of Social Courses 5.3. The Disappearance of Social Work Education after the Second World War 5.4. Practical Guidelines for Doing Social Work 6. Important biographies in the field 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Where do women appear? 6.3. Detailed biographies 6.3.1.Terz Brunszvik 6.3.2.Johanna Bischitz 6.3.3.Edith Farkas 6.3.4.Margit Schlachta 6.3.5.Rza Bdy-Scwimmer 6.3.6. Katalin Gero 6.3.7.Ilona Fldy 6.3.8. Jlia Gyrgy 6.4. Short biographies 35 37 39 39 40 41 42 43 43 44 45 46 50 50 52 52 53 54 54 54 55 55 56 56 56 57 57 30 30 31 33 33 33

4 7. The Biographies of Katalin Gero and Ilona Fldy a Case study 7.1.Introduction 7.2.Katalin Gero 7.3.Ilona Fldy 7.5. Conclusion 58 58 58 62 64

Bibliography Appendix: Appendix A: Translation of documents Appendix B: Photos

66

1.

Methodology and Sources

All chapters of the research were written in cooperation among the three members of the Hungarian research team: Borbla Juhsz, Dorottya Szikra and Eszter Varsa. Borbla Juhsz worked extensively on the overview chapter about Important Biographies in the Field and the case study on Parallel Bio graphies: Religious Social Work in Hungary through the Lives of Katalin Gero and Ilona Fldy. Dorottya Szikra authored the chapter on The Development of Hungarian Social Policy between 1900-1960. Eszter Varsa co-authored with Borbla Juhsz the chapter on Social Activities of Non-Governmental Organizations and with Dorottya Szikra The Professionalization and Institutionalization of Social Work in Hungary and Gender, Class and Ethnicity-Based Differentiation in the Practice of Hungarian Social Work, A Case Study of the Kozma-Street Settlement, 1935-1945.

The translation of documents was completed by Borbla Juhsz and translator and interpreter, Gbor Karsai.

Sources contacted were available primary materials, both written and oral and secondary literature on the history of social work in Hungary. Written primary sources come from journals, publications, ministerial decrees and personal memories of social workers located in the Hungarian National Archives, the Jewish Museum and Archives of Hungary, the Archives of the Political

5 History Institute, the National Szchenyi Library, and the Ervin Szab Library of Budapest. It must be noted that available references were often difficult to trace down, such as in case of the biographical studies.

Four oral history interviews were conducted with Zsuzsanna Gncz, Eta Vranovich and Istvn Kroly, among whom Ms Gncz was a former student of the first university-run social work education course in 1942, and all participated in professional social work in one of the Hungarian Settlements before the Second World War. The interviews conducted by Dorottya Szikra and Eszter Varsa between December 2004 and April 2005 served basis to the case study about the work at the Kozma Street Settlement in the late 1930s and early 1940s. All interviews were transcribed by Andrea Herndvlgyi.

Secondary sources, although scarce, were mostly review studies about the practice and history of social work. Central among these were Katalin Piks valuable and path-breaking work on The History of Social Work in Hungary, 1817-1990 [A szocilis munka trtnete Magyarorszgon (1817-1990.)] . Budapest: Hilscher Rezso Szocilpolitikai Egyeslet, 2001, and an earlier but central work by Csizmadia, Andor on Changes in Social Care in Hungary [A szocilis gondoskods vltozsai Magyarorszgon]. Budapest: MTA llam- s Jogtudomnyi Intzet, 1977. Further sources were general historical and social history overviews about the period in concern, biographical collections and information gained from conferences and exhibitions.

2.

The Development of State Welfare Between 1900-1960

2.1

Main themes and variables

Welfare policies and social work have been closely connected to each other in the early years of their formation. In the case of poor policies carried out by civil organizations it has actually been overlapping for a long time. In this chapter we describe state-organized social policies typical for Hungary in the given period.

According to the simplest definition of social policy (the descriptive definition) all institutions that deal with the physical and mental welfare of people make up social policy. 1 Talking about the

In this text social policy is used as a synonym of welfare policies.

6 history of state-run social policy the following themes must be mentioned (more or less according to their time of appearance):

Poor relief, dealing with vagrants and beggars Creation of hospitals and almshouses Regulatio n of working conditions Public health: compulsory vaccination, prevention and education Insurance companies and workers associations Child care Public housing Compulsory social insurance: injury, sickness, old age and widows, later unemployment Separate institutions for people with disabilities and psychiatric problems Family policies

These arrangements appeared in all European countries from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century. The timing of the arrangements differs from country to country just as the way these steps were taken, i.e. the characteristics of the institutions (e.g. voluntary or compulsory arrangements, centralised or decentralised institutions etc.). The third major variable that must be taken into account when analysing welfare institut ions is the number of people affected.

In the case of Hungary we can say that the timing of social policy legislation closely followed the Western European and within this the Austrian and German trends. No wonder, as up until 1920 Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had common interest and policies in a number of major areas. Although the workers question and social policy were independently directed in the two countries, Hungary closely followed and sometimes copied the Austrian and German legislation.

The development of welfare institutions between 1900 and 1960 can be characterised as gradually moving to centralization in all the fields mentioned above. The main variable that makes Hungary different from its Western counterparts is the number of people affected by welfare arrangements: it lagged far behind until 1948 and slowly caught up by the late 1960s.

7 2.2 Main periods

We have to distinguish four periods of Hungarian welfare development between 1900-1960. The first period lasts until the First World War and is characterised by rapid industrial development and urbanisation accompanied with the rise of the working class. For social policy this meant the first generation of social insurance legislation (agains t sickness and injuries) and workers protection. This is the time of introducing state-run child care.

The second period lasts until the end of Second World War and had seen the second generation of social insurance legislation (old age, orphans and widows). In the late 1920s there had been an interesting initiative to make civil organisation and local governments co-operate in the field of poor relief ("Norm of Eger " - see later). In the 1930s Hungary was characterised by so-called productive social policy having strong links to social work practice.

The end of WWII and the change of the regime is the third period we can distinguish. As in all East-European countries Soviet invasion and the turn to one-party leadership in 1948 alongside with the collectivisation of all estates reformed social policy and welfare institutions radically. But as the most influential social policy expert in Hungary, Zsuzsa Ferge notes social policy as such suffered less radical reforms during state-socialism than other sectors did. Indeed, much of the inheritance of the pre WWII system can be found in state-socialist social policy.

The main reason for this is that the most essential part of social policy, that is social insurance, had been fully centralised already by the 1930s. The essence of our bismarckian-type social insurance system has been as everywhere in Europe - centralised coercion: the obligation to save money to prevent oneself from future risks. 2 The state-socialist system can be characterised as one that extended social policy the most, taking care for all its citizens, covering all the risks of human life: injuries, sickness, old age, unemployment (with the declared aim of full employment) maternity and child care. Alongside with providing a socially secure environment paradoxically - the state socialist system diminished social policy as such, stating that the new economical and political organisation of society is going to solve social problems in itself. This had been partly successful: the state-socialist system provided a wide range of social rights but in return it abolished basic human rights. If we accept that civil and political rights form the basis of social rights, as T. H.

Swaan, Abram de: In Care of the State. Health Care, Education, and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the Modern Era. Cambridge, 1988.

8 Marshall states 3 , and these together form the basis of welfare states, we can not claim that Hungary created a welfare state this time.

2.3

Most important arrangements

2.3.1 First period: 1900-1920

Hungary was one of the first countries in the world to introduce compulsory social insurance for workers. The 1891 Sickness Benefit Act closely followed the pioneering German legislation (1883, 1889) not only in time but also in content. This first piece of legislation is a mixture of the German and Austrian sickness insurance acts. The reason for the early legislation is probably German and Austrian cultural dissemination and - strongly connected to this - the rising working class movements that frightened politicians of the time. 1893 had seen the first legislation on workers' protection in dangerous industries. The Act for compulsory insurance against injuries was introduced in 1907 and affected factories employing more than 20 workers.

Although the first piece of legislation made insurance against sickness compulsory in all industrial companies (regardless of the number of workers employed) the percentage of insured persons amongst the total population was only 3,5 % at the turn of the century. 4 It gradually increased but had only reached 6% by 1920. This ratio is much higher in Western Europe this time: 9% in 1900 and almost 20% by 1920 were insured against sickness. 5

The reason for this discrepancy is the relatively low number of industrial workers and the weakness of implementation. It seems that the Ministry of Trade and Industry - being responsible for the "social question" this time - did not devote enough resources for the collection of contributions and for the disclosure of frauds by employers. Unlike in Austria, Hungarian civil servants were not eager enough to make legislation work: it seems that most small ventures avoided social security contribution. 6

3 4

Marshall, Thomas, H.: Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge, 1950. Szikra, Dorottya: Trsadalombiztosts s modernizci. (Social security and modernization.) In. Krkp reform utn. Tanulmnyok a nyugdjrendszerrol. Szerk. Augusztinovich, Mria. Kzgazdasgi Szemle Kiad, Budapest, 2000. 5 Szikra, Dorottya: The Thorny Path to Implementation: Bismarckian social insurance in Hungary in the late 19 th century. European Journal of Social Security. Volume 6, Nr 3, September 2004. 6 Zimmermann, Susan: Geschtzte und ungeschtzte Arbeitsverhaltnisse von der Hochindustrialisiereung bis zur Weltwirtschaftskrise. Frankfurt-Wien, 1997.

9 The fact that the Hungarian social insurance system is Bismarckian means that it did not build on the mutual-benefit societies or unions but forced employers and employees to devote part of their income to social insurance. At the same time it strongly suppressed workers organisations and partly drowned, partly pacified and integrated their societies of mutual-aid.

Hungary was one of the first countries introducing family allowance too, although only for civil servants, in 1912. In all the welfare measures civil servants enjoyed a privileged position. This is the reason why some calculations show a much higher ratio of welfare spending and population coverage than others:7 These include the high level and rather expensive special schemes for civil servants - by which governments "bought" their loyalty. 8

Another important feature is that although the creation of a special, compulsory social security scheme for agricultural workers came up in discussions already at the turn of the century it has never been realised. Thus those in biggest need - the landless agricultural day-labourers - did not receive any benefits of the emerging modern social policy. A voluntary scheme against injuries and disability had been created for them at the turn of the century (1900. XVI.). By 1905 12% of agricultural workers and servants had been insured in this scheme.

The main reason for neglecting this groups severe social problems lies in the quasi-parliamentary system of Hungary this time: The majority of MPs were landowners who strongly opposed any compulsory social policy in the agrarian sector. Also, the movement of agricultural workers was not as powerful and international as that of the industrial workers. No social arrangements followed their rebels - these were forcefully suppressed.

The above described social insurance arrangements for industrial workers had been the first pieces of modern social legislation also regarding gender. The Act of 1891 declared that every single industrial worker - regardless of age, gender and religion - must be insured. Hungary was pioneering also in providing medical treatment and access to medicines for the families of insured employees. This included free access to midwife-assistance at the birth of an insured persons child. Infant and child care was the task of charitable associations until the turn of the century. The child protection act of 1901 declared that looking after foundlings is the task of the central state which made the creation of state-run homes possible. There had been 16 such homes in Hungary by this
7

See for example: Tomka, Bla : Szocilpolitika Magyarorszgon eurpai perspektvban . (Social policy in Hungary in a European perspective.) Szzadvg, Budapest, 2003. 8 This again is a typical feature of Bismarckian social policy. Building up different schemes for different social groups is called "status-related" and "status-conserving" welfare policy in the terminology of historical social policy.

10 time and the state-protection reached altogether 50.000 children - much less than the estimated number of needy children. 9

From 1898 (the creation of National Fund for the Sick Poor) the state took up part of the costs of the fight against contagious diseases, and also the care for the sick poor. At the same time prevention remained the task of non- governmental organisations. From the late 1910s these organisations (especially "Stefnia Szvetsg" and "Zldkeresztes Mozgalom ") received state- funding.

Under the short period (133 days) of the "Soviet Republic" when the revolutionary workers committees (councils) ruled the country, salaries became centrally regulated, equal pay for men and women were introduced. Working time was also regulated (maximum of 8 hours a day). Paid leave and unemployment benefit was introduced too. Measures of child-protection were planned and new institutions were set up. Because of the short period these measure could only partly be implemented. After the suppression of the "Soviet Republic" left-wing ideas - also of social policy became discredited for a long time. A new political system and a new wave of social policy took over.

2.3.2 Second period: 1920-1948

The First World War had an important effect on social policy everywhere in Europe. Care for war veterans and widows became a central issue, alongside with orphans - many of them begging in the streets. Also, after-war periods always give ground to widespread social solidarity. Maybe that is the reason why social policy exceeded workers' insurance and expanded both regarding social classes and the risks to be insured all over Europe. Still, Hungary has only seen this latter. It introduced compulsory old age and widows insurance in 1928 but agricultural workers still remained excluded. The social insurance system became completely centralised by this Act. The coverage remained low: 10,2 % had sickness insurance and 7,6 % old age insurance by 1940. The gap between Hungary and Western Europe widened in this period (30,8% and 42% respectively).

Not only agricultural workers but also domestic servants had been left out from compulsory schemes. Although the Old Age Pension Act of 1928 introduced this latters insurance the implementation did not come about. At the end of 1930s several measures were taken to insure the agricultural population. First, a compulsory old-age insurance was created for farmers (1936.
9

Gyni, Gbor: A szocilpolitika mltja Magyarorszgon . (The past of social policy in Hungary.) Budapest, MTA, 1994. p17.

11 XXXVI.), then a voluntary scheme for agricultural workers was introduced (1938. XII.), but this latter excluded those with less than one acre of land.

From the second half of the 1920's the "state tried to show its 'social face' more and more"- as Andor Csizmadia put it. 10 One of the first innovations in the field of poor relief was the "Norm of Eger" (Egri Norma). Its main aim was to prevent begging in the streets of Eger (a North-Eastern city in Hungary). It succeeded to co-ordinate work among charitable organisations, the local authority and citizens in order to create organised and documented relief for the old and disabled. The experience was so successful that it was introduced in most of the towns of Hungary in 1936.

By the mid 1930s the "social state" - as it was called by the time - created the so called "productive social policy". The idea came from Lajos Esztergl from the South of Hungary, where a dramatic drop in birth rates took place. Because lands were very small and they would have been divided between the children as an inheritance, having only one child became very common. The term for this was "egykk " which means "little ones".

To solve both the social problems of agricultural workers and to increase fertility rates productive social policy was found out. The essence of productive social policy was to make people able "to stand on their own feet" on the one hand (males role) and to have more Hungarian children (females role). Instead of free lunch or money it provided seeds to plant vegetables and loans to start up own ventures. 11 The peak of this experience was the creation of a state- fund in 1940 called Orszgos Np- s Csaldvdelmi Alap = ONCSA ( Fund for the Protection of the Nation and the Families ). The Fund provided small lands and houses and loans plus benefits in nature for Christian families with children - about 12 thousand small houses altogether, mainly in the countryside.

Another important measure of this nature was to expand family allowance to all industrial workers working in factories of more than 20 employees in 1938. This was the second act of this type in Europe (after France) and it did make the life of workers with families easier. It is also remarkable that families with only one child received this benefit too. Still, the amount of this family allowance was so small that it could only provide real help for the poorest workers and their families. At the same time the allowance for civil servants was a considerable amount thus the division between classes remained remarkable.
10

Csizmadia, Andor: A szocilis gondoskods vltozsai Magyrorszgon. (Changes in social care in Hungary) MTA llam s Jogtudomnyi Intzet, Budapest, 1977. p145. 11 For the experience of productive social policy in Heves county see: Szab, Zoltn: Cifra nyomorsg. (Edorned misery.), a sociographical work

12 Public health was organised by the above mentioned non-governmental organisations, although with extensive state-support. The two biggest charitable associations, Stefnia Szvetsg (Stefnia Association) for the care for pregnant mothers and infants and public health care in the cities, and Zldkeresztes Szolglat for hygiene and public health in villages created a national network by the mid 1930s mainly financed by the state. These two were finally integrated into the National Sanitary Service in 1940.

2.3.3 Third period: 1945-1960

There had been hopes between 1945 -1948 that a democratic political system would be created in Hungary. Alongside this, a complex system of welfare policies was developed with liberal and social-democratic elements. In 1949 a new political streamline became evident which stated that "every act of the people's democracy is social policy". 12 One of the main ideas of the so called "hidden turn" was that with the creation of socialism, (or, as it was also called: peoples democracy) the major claims of the working class had been fulfilled. Major industries and services were collectivised - the opposition between owners and employees diminished. In these circumstances there was no need for social policy and social work any more - so the argumentation went.

It is very important that official social policy, poor policy and social work were abolished at a time when the majority of the population was poor. Also, free health care for the poor was stopped when two thirds of the population was not eligible for health insurance. 13

Hungary changed its old-age insurance system after WWII (just like most European countries). The previous capital-accumulated system collapsed under the war, and a "pay-as-you-go" system was introduced (i.e. those paying contributions today finance provisions of today's pensioners). This way those who paid contributions in the previous system could receive pensions in the new one.

Changes in the social security system affected certain social groups negatively: owners having private insurance lost their past contributions, private clerks and public employees lost their privileges in the centrally- run social insurance system. One of the major changes was that only state-employees (e.g. those working in state-run factories) were eligible for full social insurance provision. The above described Hungarian (and Bismarckian) tradition to have separate systems for
12

Ferge, Zsuzsa: Fejezetek a magyar szegnypolitika trtnetbol . (Chapters from the History of Hungarian Poorpolicy.) Magveto Kiad, Budapest, 1986. p157.

13 industrial and agricultural workers and to provide less for the latter was continued under state socialism. With much delay, in 1975 was the old-age pension system made equal for these two social groups. This year has seen the introduction of a universal health-care system too, which made access to health services and sick pay equal for all social groups.

The differences described above had political intentions. Social insurance - which, interestingly, kept its name, unlike social policy - became the terrain of political "games". According to Julia Szalai, sociologist, social insurance - among others - was used to make people work in the statesector. Thus it had a major role in the forceful collectivisation of agriculture between 1958 -1962.14 Because agricultural workers and the self-employed did not have equal rights to social insurance it was one of the incentives to force people to join cooperatives, or, to leave the agricultural sector and join the heavy industrial sector.

On the other hand, to give the administrative power to unions (later only one union) over social insurance and to invite them to take part in the preparation of new pieces of legislation could make unions loyal to the Party. This can also be interpreted as a continuation of Bismarckian, "corporative" traditions, and also, as using social security for political purposes.

Financing social insurance became state-controlled. It became a sub-chapter of state-treasury. There was no real link between contributions and provision, these decisions were made centrally and were influenced by political intentions. The level of social provisions was relatively high. It actually formed a "hidden salary" especially by the end of 1960s, when these reached 20% of the income of an average Hungarian family. At the same time this had been a "controlled" part of the income: the state could, if it wished, loosen or tighten the burdens of people.

It must be considered here, that the two most important features of state socialist welfare policies were the high level of state-subsidy for basic goods, like milk, bread, books, childrens clothes, culture etc. and full employment. These two factors contributed to the well-being of people at least as much as did social insurance and other direct cash-transfers. As a summary it can be said that on the one hand, social policy and social work did not exist in this period. On the other hand it actually did develop, with, for instance, 85 % of the population being insured against sickness and old-age by 1960. Peoples standard of living clearly increased, with the
13 14

Ferge, Zsuzsa: Magyar szocilpolitika 1945 utn. Jegyzetek . (Hungarian social policy after 1945. Notes.) Szalai, Jlia: A trsadalombiztosts rdekviszonyairl. Trtneti vzlat a hazai trsadalombiztosts funkciinak vltozsairl. (Stakes in social insurance. Historical Sketch of the Changing Functions of Hungarian Social Insurance.) Medvetnc, 1989.

14 majority having reasonable housing conditions and income by the end of the 1960s. At the same time, there was no democratic control over the institutions and no public and professional debate at all. Decisions were more or less ad hoc and politically driven.

It was the 1980s when the image of full employment and continuous economical growth could not be kept up any more that the germs of sociological research, social policy-discussion and various forms of social work could start to come to the light.

In todays (2005) Hungary we can see the inheritance of the traditions described above. Following the terminology of Gosta Esping-Andersen15 , it can be shown that Bismarckian elements represent a conservative type of welfare policy, the elements that remained with us from the 1960ies, like universal family allowance, are social democratic elements and liberal tradition are very strong in the local social assistance system.

3.

Social Activities of Non-Governmental Organizations

3.1

Introduction

Besides changes in the structures of state formed social legislation the social activities of associations and foundations, trying to organize structured help for the poor, ill, old and other marginalized and disadvantaged social groups from much earlier on than the beginnings of state welfare, are important areas of analysis. With the formation of a middle class, associations and religious charitable groups were founded in Hungary as early as the 16th century and round the turn of the 19th to the 20th century the se were already numerous, working especially in the capital, Budapest. In 1914 for example, there were 117 associations in Hungary working in the field of child protection. 16 Data from 1915 mention 176 existing associations just in the capital and data from a year later refers to 80 socially committed organizations. 17 While between the 16th and 18th centuries traces of planned charity work can be found in these associations it was only in the 19th century that moving beyond charity work into complex social service structures was attempted.

15 16

Esping-Andersen, Gosta: The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge, 1990. Pik, Katalin: A szocilis munka trtnete Magyarorszgon (1817-1990). (The History of Social Work in Hungary, 1817-1990.) Budapest: Hilscher Rezso Szocilpolitikai Egyeslet, 2001, p.155. 17 Csizmadia, Andor: A szocilis gondoskods vltozsai Magyarorszgon. (Changes in Social Care in Hungary.) Budapest: MTA llam- s Jogtudomnyi Intzet, 1977, p.134 and Pik, Katalin: A szocilis munka trtnete Magyarorszgon (1817-1990) , p.156.

15 The following overview aims to account for the efforts and results of no n- governmental organizations doing social work in Hungary between 1900 and 1960. First, a short historical summary will point out the main turning points in changes of organizational structures within the discussed time period, then along four target group s, the poor, children, workers and women, some of the most typical and in some cases specifically Hungarian variations of social work in civil organizations will be presented. While trying to refer to data covering both the countryside and the capital it must be taken into account that most data focuses on the capital and basic research concerning the countryside is often missing.

3.2

Historical Overview

3.2.1 1900-1920

Katalin Pik, sociologist, places the beginnings of social work in Hungary to the first half of the 19th century with the foundation of the Charitable Womens Association (Jltvo Asszonyi Egyeslet) in 1816.18 Looking at the social activities of organizations between 1900 and 1960 the three main periods established discussing the development of state social policy making can be followed.

The first borderline in the development of social activities organized by associations following 1900 can be drawn around 1920. The decades before the First World War are characterized by a growing number of associations involved in social work. This development is broken by the war and the following international financial crisis in the 1920s. While in the beginning of the 20th century most organizations operated as foundations, usually established and supported by wealthy members of the upper classes, in the 1920s financial reasons made the existence and long-term sustainability of foundations impossible. 19 Although more and more government involvement and support became necessary, not even ten years after the end of the First World War was there a law regulating the form of financial support given to organizations by local or national authorities. 20 In 1916 obligatory registration for organizations at the Mayors Office in Budapest and at the Department of Social Policy was introduced. These authorities oversaw the legal existence and monitored the annual income and spending of organizations. 21 During and around the years of the First World War

18 19

Pik, Katalin: A szocilis munka trtnete Magyarorszgon (1817-1990), p.19. Ibid., pp.170, 177. 20 Csizmadia, Andor. A szocilis gondoskods vltozsai Magyarorszgon , p.134. 21 Csizmadia, Andor. Ibid., p.134.

16 many civil organizations were involved in emergency social work. (About specific activities in this time period see paragraph later.)

In 1919 the life of organizations involved in social work was interrupted by a short but until then unknown centralized social system. During the Soviet Republic the state took over social facilities established and formerly run by civil organizations. After the fall of the Republic organizations, like the Izraelite Womens Association of Pest (Pesti Izraelita Noegylet ), had to deal with facilities they were given back in ruins.

3.2.2 1920-1945

The second period that can be distinguished is the inter-war period that brought about more and more centralization in the running of non-governmental organizations. In the capital civil organizations received support from the municipality to carry out practical tasks connected to newly established laws as early as the first years of the 1900s 22 but from the 1920s on most significant national civil organizations were partly state sponsored and carried out state defined tasks. As a result, by the 1930s, the state overtook organizations that were to execute state responsibility nationally. Public health care for example, as mentioned earlier, was carried out by two nongovernmental organizations, National Stefnia Association (Orszgos Stefnia Szvetsg) and Green Cross (Zldkeresztes Mozgalom) that became state run and formed the National Sanitary Service from 1940 on.

The financial involvement of the state in the running of organizations carrying out social work also brought about more support to organizations that fitted into the political ideology of the state. This was especially relevant in an increasingly nationalist political context carrying racist and antisemitic undertones. The Social Mission Society, a Catholic organization, for example, managed to receive increasing support from the state in the interwar period while the Israelite Womens Association of Pest , a strong and structured social organization until the 1920s could not agree to the terms of support by the National League for Child Protection (Orszgos Gyermekvdo Liga), a then fully state supported organization that offered to buy some of their facilities. Trying to maintain their Jewish character the Izraelite Womens Association of Pest finally decided to merge

22

Zimmermann, Susan and Gerhard Melinz. Gyermek s ifjsgvdelem Budapesten s Bcsben a dualizmus korban (Child and youth care in Budapest and Wiena during the Dualist Period), in: Gyermeksorsok s gyermekvdelem Budapesten a Monarchia idejn (The Fate of Children and Childprotection in Budapest under the Monarchy) . Budapest: A Fovrosi Szab Ervin Knyvtr Budapest Gyujtemnynek killtsa (Exhibition by the Budapest Collection of the National Ervin Szab Library), 1996, p.15.

17 into the National Alliance of Hungarian Jews in the 1920s. 23 The position and role of organizations in relation to nationalist socialist ideology is, however, an issue difficult to find research about.

3.2.3 1945-1960

1948 and 1949 brought about another change for the non-governmental sector. With the socialist state declaring to take over all social tasks, organizations that managed to survive the Second World War were forced to stop working as their role was declared to be redundant. Alongside with other basic civil and political rights the right to form associations was banned in 1948. It was not until the 1970s that the first socially committed civil organizations managed to appear again, trying to reestablish social work as a profession. 24 The organizations that were left to work on, like the Hungarian Red Cross, had to embed the political ideological direction of the state or became Partydirected puppet organizations, as it happened with the workers union and the Democratic Association of Hungarian Women, the only womens organization allowed to exist.

3.3

War-Time Activities

Both world wars escalated social problems resulting in crisis situations where the role of social organizations as crisis managers was important. Relief work and the distribution of support in kind became one of their central tasks. War time social support of the families of soldiers, war veterans, the injured and widows, however, was always distinguished from regular social support given to the poor and marginalized. 25 Between the two world wars there were still so-called help actions, usually in times of famine, or for the families of war victims, initiated by private donators, such as Mrs. Horthy, wife of the Governor 26 , that went hand in hand with the contribution of an established association as well as local authorities. 27

Besides organizing public charity, there were two initiatives, in the cities of Kalocsa and Ft, where entire settlements were planned to be built to support those injured in the war and families of war victims. 28 The case of Ft is a good example of how such initiatives were aimed to offer help to a
23 24

Pik, Katalin: Ibid, pp.170-171 and 216. Pik, Katalin: Ibid, pp.318-324 and 338-352. 25 Pik, Katalin: Ibid. p.143. 26 Between 1920 and 1944 Hungary was led by a Governor Horthy, possessing wider rights than a Prime Minister and contributing to a more centralized leadership of the country. 27 Csizmadia, Andor. Ibid ., p.130. 28 Hmori, Pter. A fti Suum cuique-telep trtnete (History of the Suum Cuique Settlement at Ft), Honismeret. 2001 (1). http://www.vjrktf.hu/carus/honisme/Ho000000.htm.

18 selected section of society and how that was received by the general public. It was in 1921 that Countess Krolyi initiated the idea of the Ft settlement. As a result of her financial support and the Krolyi familys land donation a year later Governor Horthy could open the settlement with 18 houses. In 1939 the settlement possessed already 81 houses, in the early 1940s almost 100. While being within the borders of the town the settlement had its own facilities, such as a primary school extended in the 1920s by an employment centre and in the 1930s by a health and a cultural centre. Inhabitants could only be, in order of preference, those injured in the war, war widows, grown up war orpha ns, war veterans and lastly others in need. At both Kalocsa and Ft strong rules regulated the lives of inhabitants. They could become house owners only after having paid the interest- free loan within 25 years and having passed a three year probation time. Readiness to find employment, loyalty to the nation, a moral life style and neediness (having at least three young children to support) had to be proved too.

The case of the Ft settlement illustrates well the character of social work in the 1930s and 1940s. Built on a strongly selective system of acceptance clients had to demonstrate their worthiness for support. While placing facilities such as the health centre within the borders of the settlement meant daily contact between the population of Ft and that of the settlement, antagonism expressed towards the crippled remained strong. Nationalist ideology behind social initiatives at the times could be suffused by covert racism. Lack of financial support coming from local authorities, placing German and Hungarian soldiers residence in an unusually high proportion to settlement lodgings in 1944 and wanting to convert it into a work camp as a solution to the Roma question in 1942 are some of the cases in point.

3.4

Target Groups and Types of Organizations

Taking the target groups of non- governmental social care as basis for analysis four different sorts of organizations will be presented: organizations for the poor, organizations for the protection of children, workers organizations and womens organizations. While there could be many more target groups established, social work directed at the poor and children, were among the most important areas of social activity in the discussed period and thus will be discussed in detail. Being among the most significant organizations doing social work in the field of poor relief and child protection the social activities of the workers socialist movements and those of women will be mentioned separately. Workers and womens organizations were among the most powerful initiators of social change in the 20th century. Some organizations exemplify typical forms of

19 social work execution in Hungary while others show exceptionality in their structure and target group choice.

3.5

Organizations for the Poor

All the four following organizations, chosen from the numerous ones active in the period of 19001960 in the field of poor relief, exemplify different forms of cooperation between a nongovernmental organization and local or national authorities.

3.5.1 The Hungarian Red Cross

The Hungarian Red Cross (Magyar Vrskereszt), officially registered as the Hungarian Saint Crowns Counties Association of Red Cross (Magyar Szent Korona Orszgai Vrskereszt Egylete) in 1882 29 , dates back to the earliest among these four organizations. It is also the most solid one since it has always belonged to an international network of Red Cross organizations, and since 1921 the League of Red Cross Societies. 30 As it is the one that survived historical and political changes throughout all the decades in discussion its history provides a cross section of the alterations, developments as well as backlashes in the history of non-governmental organizations doing social work in Hungary. The organization, like many at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, started to operate as a foundation with wealthy and professional members and supporters such as Mrs. Veres, Hermina Beniczky, fighter for womens rights in education or Professor Kornyi, a well-known doctor of the times. 31 The first main activities of the association, in harmony with the goals of the international Red Cross, were related to wartime care for the injured and their families. Some data show the strength of the organization under the First World War: it operated 1922 temporary hospitals with 1.400 professional and 10.000 voluntary nurses. 32

The organization established its social department in 1922. Aiming to work out a structured poor relief system with the involvement of both civil organizations and state bodies it took up social work in the field of poor relief in coordination with local authorities of the capital. In 1927 there were 151 nurses working at district authorities in Budapest. 33 The Ministry of Welfare and
29

Psztor, Imre. Honnan indult, merre tart a Vrskereszt? (Where did the Red Cross start from and where does it head to?) Budapest: A Magyar Vrskereszt Orszgos Vgrehajt Bizottsgnak Szervezsi s Ifjsgi Osztlya, 1979, p.19. 30 Psztor, Imre. Ibid. p.19. 31 Psztor, Imre. Ibid ., p.19. 32 Psztor, Imre. Ibid ., p.20. 33 Csizmadia, Andor. Ibid ., p.135.

20 Employment sponsored the organization to collect national data on deserving and undeserving poor in 1927, and their registry system, the so-called cataster of the poor, was taken over by the capital in 1930. 34 During the Soviet Republic and from 1949 on the organization was taken over by the socialist state. In the 1950s the Hungarian Red Cross was made to take part in state-run public health programs, especially in the countryside, and had to narrow its international professional contact to Red Cross organizations from mainly Soviet-type states. 35

The history of the Hungarian Red Cross also sheds light on how the leadership of womens initiatives and work could be taken over by men. Because of the existence of a Red Cross member association in the Monarchy established by Austrians in 1867 the Hungarian organization was not registered for three years as Red Cross. Meanwhile, it operated as a womens organization, named Hungarian General Charity Womens Association (Magyar ltalnos Seglyezo Noegylet). Interestingly, however, after having received authorization to establish an official Hungarian branch, instead of the Womens Association, Emperor Francis Joseph asked Count Gyula Krolyi to start a male Hungarian Red Cross association. 36 Also worth noticing is the fact, that female leadership was given to the organization under the Soviet Republic in 1919 with Countess Krolyi, wife to Mihly Krolyi, head of the Republic. 37

3.5.2 The Association of General Public Charity

The Association of General Public Charity (ltalnos Kzjtkonysgi Egyeslet) established as early as 1904 was also specifically targeted towards organized help for the poor. While in the beginning it operated branches in each district of the capital its main activity focused on the operation of the 5th District Public House (Nphz) opened in 1908. 38 The facilities of the House were financed jointly by the capital and the organization and thus could be used by the poor of the entire capital. The association not only tried to harmonize its work with district authorities, manifest in the fact that the director of the district council was the director of the association at the same time, but it also tried to network with other civil organizations. 39 It provided employment for the unemployed old and alcoholics as well as those temporarily away from the labour market, such as

34 35

Csizmadia, Andor. Ibid p.135.. Psztor, Imre. Ibid. pp.20-21. 36 Psztor, Imre. A magyar s a nemzetkzi Vrskereszt mltjbl. (About the Past of the Hungarian and the International Red Cross). Budapest: A Magyar Vrskereszt Orszgos Kzpont Klgyi Osztlya, 1969, p.28. Count Gyula Krolyi was member of the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament. 37 Psztor, Imre. Ibid. p.37. 38 Pik, Katalin: Ibid., pp.103 and105-109. 39 Csizmadia, Andor. Ibid., p.136.

21 pregnant women or young mothers. The employment of these women was further supported by child day-care and a shelter for mothers. The House also had a public shelter, kitchen and a library.

An interesting fact about the organization is its highly democratic leadership structure. Positions in its general assembly that functioned as the highest forum of the organization and in the directorate were divided by men and women in a strictly equal manner with 60 men and 60 women in the assembly and 10 men and 10 women in the directorate. The first director of the organization was a woman, Countess Csky. 40

3.5.3 The Green Cross Movement

The Green Cross Movement (Zldkeresztes Mozgalom) provides a typical example of how a civil initiative was taken over by the government and their facilities nationally implemented. 41 The Green Cross was established in 1925 with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation to introduce the American system of public health demonstration districts 42 in Hungary. This system aimed to build a network of health centres in the countryside based on the English model43 . The first Hungarian health centres were set up in 1928 and 1929 in Mogyord and Gdllo. The centres were supplied by a doctor, a district nurse and a so-called health guard who was responsible for contagious diseases. Soon after the education of qualified district nurses started the National Public Health Institution (Orszgos Kzegszsggyi Intzet) was set up in 1927. Two years later, Bla Johan, director of the Institution was authorised by the Ministry of Interior Affairs to organize public health nationally. The Ministry ordered by decree the introduction of health centres nation-wide in 1933. In 1934 there were 57 operating districts. The state initiated the foundation of a Village Social Fund to support the work of health centres that financed homes for district doctors, day-care centres and village dentistries. Doctors and nurses were employed by the state. Although it was not a non- governmental organisation but a nationwide state program, it also employed district nurses (300 by the end of the 1930s) 44 . Part of their task was social work, to take up cases, to investigate claims towards the authorities. The nurses had a home- made journal, the Zld kereszt [Green Cross], written by themselves.

40 41

Pik, Katalin: Ibid. p.134. Data in this passage is taken from Johan, Bla Dr.. Gygyul a magyar falu. (Healing Hungarian Villages).Budapest: Magyar Kirlyi Orszgos Kzegszsggyi Intzet, 1939. 42 Public health demonstration districts provided local health care in the United States. 43 Health centres aimed to introduce public health care in the countryside. They not only dealt with clients health problems but collected information on their social circumstances as well and offered both medical and social assistance. 44 Johan, Bla Dr: Gygyul a magyar falu. (The healing of the Hungarian countryside) Magyar Kirlyi Orszgos Kzegszsggyi Intzet, Budapest, 1939, p.66.

22 By 1939 when the entire health care system came under state control there were 246 operating districts. Finally, in 1941 the health care work of the state-run National Public Health Institution was by state decree further supplemented by the work of the National Association for Health Protection, a civil organization also operated by the Green Cross and focused on social work. 45

Bla Johan, writing about the work and history of the National Public Health Institution in 1939 devotes a passage to the discussion of the proper lifestyle for district nurses. 46 The pieces of advice given are revealing about the gender norms weighing on professional women in the countryside. According to Johan, nurses were to pay special attention not to lose villagers trust by causing rumours about their lifestyle. To achieve this, single nurses were to live in simply decorated, whitewashed houses, preferably together with their mother. They were allowed to get married but could retain their job only in case the couple was not able to live on the husbands salary. A publication by the National Association for Health Protection from 1942, 47 providing directions for the operation of district health protection offices, describes the purpose of each facility at the Association. References to women and race in these descriptions give an impression of the intersections and implications of gender and race in wartime Hungary. Besides a kindergarten and day-care the Association had two facilities for pregnant women: a home to give birth and a mothers shelter for homeless women with babies and unwanted babies. Guidelines concerning the treatment of women at these latter facilities had a strong focus on the so-called legalization of the newly born. This work, helped by a legal aid office as well, meant different ways of finding parents for the child; either by adoption or by pressuring unmarried women to find the father of the child and get married. The legal aid office and the mothers shelter were to find out about unmarried couples and do everything to avoid children to be born out of wedlock, even by arranging official exceptions from the ten- month waiting period between two marriages. These rules, however, did not apply in case of Jewish women, since the Association was not to be involved in the marriage cases between Jews and non-Jews. 48

45

Molnr, kos (ed). Zldkereszt s a trsadalom. Mukdsi tmutat az orszgos egszsgvdelmi szvetsg fikszvetsgei rszre.(Green Cross and Society. Guide for the Branch Offices of the National Association for Health Protection). Budapest: Orszgos Egszsgvdelmi Szvetsg, 1942, p.11. 46 Johan, Bla Dr.. Gygyul a magyar falu, p.69-70. 47 Molnr, kos (ed). Zldkereszt s a trsadalom. 48 Molnr, kos (ed).Ibid., p. 56.

23 3.5.4 The Norm of Eger

Finally, the Norm of Eger (Egri Norma), established in 1927 in the provincial town of Eger, provides a specific Hungarian example of cooperation between a non-governmental organization and the state. 49 Its initiator was a Franciscan priest, Oswald Oslay, who wanted to go beyond charity and find a structured solution to the problem of increasing number of beggars in the streets of Eger. The city set up a complex system of social work bodies focused on the poor and old. A Committee for the Assistance of the Poor was set up at the local council, whose director was the mayor and its members were the following: The head of the local Welfare Office, five representatives of the local council, representatives of the local religious and non-religious charity organizations, the head of the local police station, doctors, and donors of bigger sums. Further support came from the Franciscan Sisters Association for the Assistance of the Poor (Szent Ferenc rendi Szegnygondoz Novrek Trsulata) founded by six sisters in 1930. They were also helped by lay members, the so-called Ladies for the Treatment of the Poor and Ladies for Charity Collection. Through the collective work of the city and non-governmental organizations an old peoples home, a shelter, and a womens hospital were set up. Within a few years this system was introduced in almost all major Hungarian cities, like Szombathely, Esztergom, Kecskemt, Szolnok, jpest and Pcs. As the Norm of Eger was thus extended, its name became the Hungarian Norm.

3.6

Organizations for Child Protection : The National League for Child Protection

In the 20th century child protection became one of the major and first professional branches of social work in Hungary. 50 There were numerous organizations working in this field specialized on various issues, such as child work, criminality, health or education. The strongest among them was the National League for Child Protection (Orszgos Gyermekvdo Liga), established in 1906 with the support of the Ministry of Interior Affairs. It was founded by Sndor Karsai, a civil servant of public welfare and of associations and Count Lipt Edelstein-Gyulai, director of the White Cross Association, offering free medical care for poor pregnant women. 51 The aim of the new organization was to gain strength by establishing ties with the state and start a national fund for the support of child protection run by non-governmental organizations. Among their most common services was placing children into foster homes instead of giving financial support to families. Susan Zimmermann, historian, points out that the League soon became a strong supporter of the
49 50

Pik, Katalin: Ibid., pp. 216-222. Pik, Katalin:, Ibid. p.123.

24 authorities fight against child criminality. 52 The League was authorized to take young offenders into so-called correction institutes. They could also get police support for such actions whereby the League soon gained a dubious name among the poor. During the First World War, by when the League operated 50 institutions in the country, it tried to further expand its facilities. In 1913 together with other organizations they received a piece of land to create a Child Protection Centre offering differentiated help to children of all ages. Unfortunately, this could not be carried out because of war preparations in the country. 53 Always in cooperation with ministries, such as the Ministry of Welfare, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Justice, the League operated five nurseries, four foster homes, four correction institutes for children, a day-care, two vocational schools and three medical centres. 54 Between 1920 and 1930 they organized holidays for more than 60 thousand children to Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium and England. During these vacation trips 120 female voluntary workers were employed to take care of the children. In 1924 it was the League that organised the 4th International Child Protection Conference in Budapest. 55 In the 1920s finding financial support for foundations became impossible for even such strong organizations as the League. In 1934 the organization was thus integrated into the staterun child protection services. 56

3.7

Workers Organizations

Workers organizations and self- help movements formed a steadily growing presence among associations at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. While not a workers initiative the Settlement movement in Hungary provides the case of a specific local adaptation of an international workers rights and welfare support movement.

51 52

Pik, Katalin:, Ibid. p.115. Zimmermann, Susan and Gerhard Melinz. Gyermek- s ifjsgvdelem Budapesten s Bcsben a dualizmus korban, p.22. 53 Pik, Katalin:Ibid. pp.165-167. 54 Pik, Katalin: Ibid. pp. 194-196. 55 Pik, Katalin: Ibid. pp.194-196. 56 Pik, Katalin: Ibid. p.237.

25 3.8 The Hungarian Settlement Movement

The first Settlement program in Hungary57 , aiming to support workers employment, legal rights, social security and education, was created in 1905 in Cluj (Kolozsvr), Transylvania. The central administration from Cluj was moved to the Hungarian capital in 1909 and a settlement project for industrial workers was launched at the jpest slum area in 1912. The initiative, built on the English Settlement pattern of Samuel Barnett and started by lawyers and social scientists in Transylvania, provided the foundations for the Social Policy Institute at the University of Economics in Budapest that was formed in autumn 1920. This also meant a special focus on the involvement of university youth in active social work. Besides the social education of university youth the goals of the settlement project in Hungary were threefold: 1.) to carry out practical social work among workers in their own settlement areas, 2.) to gather experience through this work and influence the formation of social laws as well as social work practice, and 3.) to influence positively the general public opinion about workers.

The jpest Settlement had three main service bodies: The General Community Protection Department observed the effects of social laws and organized family patronage. 58 This meant a close observance and support of usually three worker families by a social worker of the organization. The Public Education Department organized educational programs and seminars for both workers and those supporting workers, for example, in the patronage groups and operated a public library. There was a shelter for unemployed workers as well as daycare and a legal aid and employment office. The third service was that of the Socia l and Health Department that ran a free medical center and worked in close contact with the National Stefnia Association as well as the National League for Child Protection. By 1935 there were further Settlements opened at different districts of Budapest inhabited by poor people, such as the Settlement at Kozma street 59 and the Vrosszl (Suburban) Settlement.

The speciality of the Hungarian settlement movement was that it aimed to support both industrial and agrarian workers and thus developed two different branches. The Settlement project for agrarian workers was started in the 1920s on farms around Szeged, in Southern Hungary. 60 The aim of Gyrgy Budai61 and the university students of Szeged was to provide legal, social and basic
57 58

Ibid., pp.111-115. Pik, Katalin: Ibid. pp.199-203. 59 For a detailed description of the work and goals of the Kozma Street settlement see case study. 60 Pik, Katalin: Ibid., pp.204-205 and Csizmadia, Andor. Ibid. pp.132-133. 61 Gyrgy Budai was a student of humanities and an author, interested in people living on the Great Plain (Alfld) in South-East Hungary.

26 health care services to the agrarian poor. In 1930, for example, they organized around 210 visits to farms. They, however, faced much antagonism from society concerning the situation of agrarian workers they made public. At the same time they had to go on inventing a unique form of the Settlement program while practicing it. The small group therefore was unable to carry on its pioneering work and was dissolved in 1933.

3.9

Womens Organizations

The history of charitable womens organizations originates from earlier than the starting time frame of our research, but it is necessary to incorporate them into our overview as they represent a crucial phase of development of social work. In the early 19th century Hungary, social work was initiated by noble and bourgeois women.

3.9.1 The Charitable Womens Association

The earlier mentioned Charitable Womens Association (Jltevo Asszonyok ) was founded in 1816 by Archduchess Hermina, who imported the constitution of a Viennese association, the Kleine Gesellschaft adeliger Frauen. Their initial aim was to help the impoverished wives and daughters of the local bourgois society, consequently the target group and the circle of carers was from the same social class.

The Association had two branches in the two, then still separate cities, Buda and Pest, but both followed the same self- help principle, to provide work for those who could work (mainly in embroidery and handicraft workshops and boutiques) in so called wage institutes following the German institution of the Erwerbhaus62 . For the helpless little ones and the elderly the Associations managed kindergartens (the first one was opened in Buda by countess Terz Brunszvik on a Swiss example in 1828) and nursing homes. The foundation of the oldest Hungarian social institution still functioning up to this date, the Institute of the Blind is also connected to their name. Later they moved into other territories as well, they took up the fight against begging by combining administrative measures (first setting up a cataster of the beggars, then imprisoning or banning them from a city) with social prevention (workhouses and aids). This work was not constricted any more to women as a target group, but aimed at men as well.

27 3.9.2 The Izraelite Womens Association of Pest

While the Charitable Womens Associations clientele was Christian, the Jewish community also formed its own womens organization after the emancipation of the Jews in 1867. Charity, of course, had been an important element of diaspora communal life much earlier than this date. The Izraelite Womens Association of Pest (Pesti Izraelita Noegylet ) was founded by Mrs. Johanna Bischnitz. After collecting donations they handed out financial aid to the needy (mainly widows and young girls), founded orphanages, a soup kitchen, a nursing ho me and helped the talented young with grants, including one for Jewish midwives. Both associations shared similar qualities: their members were volunteer women (although secretaries and patrons were influential men) independent of the state, their financia l means were based on donations, and the level of institutionalisation (for example dividing the field to districts) and documentation grew with them. After a while, however, the demands outgrew the scope of this initial stage of social work, and the state began to take over its functions. At this point, the focus of power shifted and official men became the leaders and theorists of social work.

3.9.3 The Social Mission Society and the Society of Social Sisters

There were exceptions to this rule: one important organization and a main theme in social work that runs through time is child protection. To start with, the association we have to devote ample space to, is the Social Mission Society (Szocilis Misszitrsulat ) and its twin institution, the Association for the Care of the Poor (Szegnygondoz Egyeslet ). The Society was a strictly Catholic organisation that grew to become one of the most important civil force in social work that consciously called itself a collective of professional social workers. Its founder in 1908 was Edith Farkas, who envisaged a double structure to her society: missionary sisters who belonged to the Church and lay women as external members. Farkas spiritual leader was bishop Ottokr Prohszka, a leading figure in the Catholic Hungary of the day. Their activities were planned and based on professional principles. They at the same time took care of the future volunteers as well and organised trainings in the first school for social work, the Social School (Szocilis Iskola) in Budapest and in their House for noviciate sisters in the countryside. They founded homes for destitute children and young girls, operated soup kitchens, spread their ideas by publishing a journal, the Bulletin (rtesto) and organised literary evenings and social meetings. During the First World War they helped widows and soldier wives in the Office for the Protection of Women

62

Pik, Ibid. p. 41.

28 (Novdelmi Hivatal). In the conservative interwar period they became very influential and got ample support from government circles as well.

A famous member of the Society was sister Margit Sclachta, who became the first woman MP in the Hungarian parliament in 1920. Following a split with her supervisor, the founder Edith Farkas, who opposed her second run for office, she founded her own religious organization, the Society of Social Sisters (Szocilis Testvrek Trsasga). The Society also had missionary houses, and opened a College for Social Work in Budapest in 1926. During her period in parliament Slachta proposed the setting up of the institution of school nurses (that later became the institution of school doctors) among other measures protecting women.
63

3.9.4 The National Stefnia Association

Identifying social work with child protection is an evident tendency in the history of Hungarian social work, and a rewarding practice, as who would not agree that children are innocent and cannot be blamed for their poverty (as opposed to the practice of selecting the true poor from the fake ones). The second half of the 19th century saw the proliferation of ngos that were formed to deal with social questions. Many of them set up kindergartens and day care for children of working women (as the Frobel Womens Association, [Frobel Noegylet] or the Hungarian Association of Feminists, [Magyar Feministk Egyeslete] ), orphanages or formed trainings for women. Out of all these formations we must emphasize the role of the National Stefnia64 Association [Orszgos Stefnia Szvetsg] in Budapest, whose heir still functions in Hungary with very good results (under the name: Vdonoi Szolglat District Nurse Care).

The Stefnia was formed in 1915 as an ngo for the protection of expectant and nursing mothers and their infants. Although the founding fathers and main administrators were men, the heart of the system, the district nurses were and still are women. While mother and infant welfare became a state responsibility in 1917 by a Ministry of Interior decree, the organisation and the implentation of the task was trusted to the Stefnia Association. Health and social care intermingled in their routine and this forecasts a much later episode in the history of social work under socialism. The Association trained infant care nurses, set up centres nationwide (several of them were financed by the American Red Cross), to promote prevention and up-to-date infant care. Even a museum was opened and propaganda materials were distributed. The number of nurses grew from the initial 117
63 64

Mona, Ilona: Slachta Margit. Budapest: Corvinus, 1997. It got its name from its patroness, Stephanie Belgian royal princess

29 to 564 in 1930 65 . Their scope of work was Budapest, and provincial towns and settlements with up to 10.000 inhabitants and a few villages. Their greatest result was reducing the 19,54 % infant mortality in villages to 13,47 % in a few years. The pronatalist policy of the age (and of all coming ages) helped the Association get both state and other support.

The nurses had a complex view of family protection, as by visiting the clients it was impossible to divide child, mother, family and society. They also served as a link to the authorities in legal, childcare, employment and other cases. At the same time, they set up milk kitchens, home for mothers, crches, day care centres and birth centres, and provided their clientele with free medical services, legal advice, financial aid, layette loan, breast milk and formula supply. The countryside equivalent of the Stefnia Association was the Green Cross Movement (Zldkeresztes Mozgalom), detailed above under Organizations for the Poor.

3.9.5 Foundation for Helping the Poor

Finally, to finish our line of thought about the overlapping of health care and social work, and the prevalence of childcare in social work, we have to leap several decades to the time of state socialism. As it was pointed out earlier the communist take over in 1948 resulted in both banning all non-governmental organizations in Hungary and eliminating social work. Health care and social work were related already at the set up of the district nurse system, but in the 1950s social work was simply merged into the former one. The institutions of social work became part of the health care or educatio nal system. However, it was also this set- up which opened a niche for the rebirth of social work in the 1970s.

Social work, and the disciplines of sociology and social psychology were deemed undesirable under socialism, but the infant age group in kindergartens and elementary school skipped the official eye. Educational guidance centres were opened which used the methodology of social work and in 1972 these employed so called family care specialists to work with problem children (often meaning poor, alcoholic or abusive family surroundings). This background of experts gave birth to the first (still illegal and thus persecuted) social work non- governmental organization, SZETA (Szegnyeket Tmogat Alap, [Foundation for Helping the Poor] ) in 1980. The main initiator was a woman, Ottilia Solt, thus we include this organisation into our part on women organizations. SZETA was part of the democratic political dissident movement, some of its members played a part in the political changes after 1989. This small but influential Foundation collected donations, organised art
65

Pik, Katalin: Ibid., p.197.

30 auctions to hand out aid, clothes and food to the needy, or provided them with free legal and medical help. It was also Solt , who after the changes organised a practical social work department at the Wesley Jnos College. That, however, goes much beyond the time limits of our research.

4.

Gender, Class and Ethnicity-Based Differentiation in the Practice of Hungarian Social Work A Case Study of the Kozma-Street Settlement, 1935-1945 Introduction

4.1

The main idea behind the settlement movement was to help the working classes in a so-called democratic way by settling down social workers and volunteers in poor, working class residential areas. In fact, settlement workers called the people they helped their friends and neighbours since they thought that it was due to social disadvantages and lack of education that these people happened to occupy an inferior position in society. Education and social care were seen to be the means towards breaking down the walls between upper and working classes and towards lifting up the latter group from their miserable position.

This case study aims to give an insight into the Hungarian settlement movement before the Second World War with specific attention to the role women played in its formation and daily work. To see the place and character of the Hungarian movement between 1935 and 1945 we first give an overview of the beginnings of the international settlement movement and then turn to the Hungarian case, the Kozma-Street Settlement, set up in the industrial outskirts of Budapest in 1935.

So as to provide a characterisation of the Kozma-Street Settlement Project this study addresses two interconnected levels of social work practice: 1) the institutional and 2) the personal. To find out how social work was defined on these two levels the investigation builds on two types of data: document analysis and oral history interviews. 66

66

Document analysis includes reference to the work of the Kozma-Street Settlement and general descriptions about the goals and strategies of settlement work. In particular, The Yearly Report of the Social Policy Department of Budapest from 1940 [A szkesfovros trsadalompolitikai gyosztlynak 1940. vi jelentse]. Budapest: Budapest Szkesfovros Hzinyomdja, 1941, an educational material about the settlement work Novgh,Gyula (ed.). The Settlement: Training Material by the Public Education Committee of the Capital; [A Settlement: A Fovrosi Npmuvels Vezetokpzo Tanfolyamnak eloadsai]. Budapest: Hollssy Jnos Knyvnyomtat, 1937, and a publication by the Kozma -Street Settlement describing their work to potential volunteers: The Social Working Community of Kozma-Street [A Kozma-utcai Szocilis Munkakzssg Tagjai] (ed.). Is it Worth It? [rdemes?], 194244(?).

31 4.2 The Settlement Movement Worldwide

The idea of settlement work dates back to the end of the 19th-century in Britain. Social idealists, like Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and Arnold Toynbee together with their students, were the first ones who took part in the everyday lives of industrial workers and tried to understand and help them from within. The first settlement was set up by Samuel Barnett in 1884 in Whitechapel, a London suburb, and was named Toynbee Hall after Arnold Toynbee.

The settlement movement had from the very beginning two parallel aims. First, middle- and upper classes, and especially university students were to get to know the living conditions of working class people by settling down in their neighbourhood. Their sensitivity to social problems would grow for the benefit of the whole society in the future. The second goal of the settlement was to provide education and social help for the given community.

Soon after the offset of the first settlements many others were formed in England and throughout the world. Women took on a major role in this work. Jane Addams initiated, for example, the American settlement movement, and set up Hull House in Chicago based on her impressions in Toynbee Hall in 1888. The Austrian movement was founded by Else Federn in 1901 and took on child protection as its major task. Many settlements focused on so-called motherly tasks: organizing child-care for working mothers or courses in cooking and housekeeping for young women. Based on this practice a special form of settlement, the womens settlement, was created. It, in fact, became the major type of settlement in the British movement. According to Rezso Hilscher, founder of the first Hungarian settlement in 1912, out of the 42 settlements in Britain, 32 were purely womens settlements in 1937. 67

4.3

The Hungarian Settlement Movement

The settlement- movement is a logical consequence of the critique of the social conscience which follows the endeavour of liberal economics only serving individual interest and trampling under foot the interest of the society.68

The words of Rezso Hilscher demonstrate well the ideological foundations of the settle ment
67

Novgh, p.10.

32 movement. Besides aiming at the betterment of capitalist society, the settlement movement had strong links to Christianity. This can be witnessed already at Toynbee Hall in England and later in the American and continental movements. 69 It is especially true for the Hungarian settlement movement and can be grasped in the social work practice of the Kozma-Street Settlement.

The first Hungarian settlement was founded in 1912 in one of the heavy-industrial areas of Budapest [jpest], by Rezso Hilscher and his students from the University of Economics. Their group consisted of mainly male social workers and they worked with male workers and their families. The jpest Settlement later became the centre of all the Hungarian settlement projects. The Hungarian settlement movement had a special agrarian branch as well, founded by Gyrgy Budai in 1926 in the area of detached farms near the Southern Hungarian town of Szeged. Besides providing medical care and legal advice for poor agrarian workers they also carried out ethnographic research.

By the end of 1930s in Budapest there were altogether eight settlements. Three of them were continuously financed by the Welfare Department of the City Council of Budapest (the so called 9th Department) while the other five received occasional financial support from the capital. One of them, the Cegld-Street Settlement, was actually founded by the City Council. The Kozma-Street Settlement was established in 1935 on the initiative of some members of the female youth section of the Social Mission Society [Szocilis Misszi Trsulat]. By 1939 the settlement was part of the state scheme of welfare, and its original name, Home for the Care and Education of the People [Npgondoz s Npmuvelo Otthon] was amended by the name of the capital. According to the yearbook of the capital on its welfare activities, the Kozma-Street Settlement received state funding to operate a kindergarten, a legal aid and employment office, and a health care centre for mothers and small children. These facilities were supplied by a nurse and a kindergarten teacher. Altogether, there were five full-time state employees, six people received state funding for their travelling costs, twelve workers received a salary from the Public Education Committee of the Capital [Budapest Szkesfovros Npmuvelsi Bizottsga] and there were fifteen additional voluntary workers. 70 These data show that in case of the Hungarian settlements there was a close cooperation between civil and religious organisations, the City Council (the state) and the public. This operational structure was a very important feature of social work in the 1930s in Hungary. 71
68 69

Novgh, p. 7. This and the following translations are done by the authors. Although our Hungarian source names a Jewish settlement in London, the leading ideology of the settlement movement was Christian socialism. See Novgh, p.10. 70 A szkesfovros, p.149. 71 The roots of such an arrangement in the field of welfare between the state and the civil sector go back to the 1920s. The first initiative to unite these sectors was the "Norm of Eger" [Egri Norma]..

33 The Kozma-Street Settlement was thus in many ways very similar to other Hungarian settlements. Like all settlements, it aimed to break down cultural walls between the proletariat and the upper classes. Also, its long term, idealistic goal was to engage people in the building of a Christian Hungary based on the principle of humane understanding, in line with the leading ideology of the mid 1930s. The Kozma-Street Settlement, however, differed radically from other Hungarian settlements in that its leader and most of its workers were women, and they put a special stress on working with female clients.

4.4

Kozma Street: A Case for Womens Settlement

Since the Kozma-Street Settlement was led by a group of female social workers, the following analysis tries to answer in specific what status and position female social workers had in this context, unique in the Hungarian scene of settlement work 4.4.1 Accentuating Womens Gender- and Class-Based Difference Feminist research has drawn attention to the fact that from the beginnings womens movements relied on gender difference as an argument to fight their way into fields of public activity previously closed to them. They argued that a well- functioning society needed the specific qualities of women. Social work was among the fields women could refer to as areas of work where feminine and motherly care, like in the home, was necessary. Women stressed their difference as wives and mothers in order to acquire an accepted position in society as public figures and wage workers. The latter typically involved a class issue as well, since the entrance of large numbers of women to the work force was a fact for the working-class population since the beginnings of industrialisation.

The theoretical foundations of the settlement movement seem to reflect a similar line of argumentation. By stressing womens difference theories around the practice of settlement work also outline a set of activities specific to women. A study on The female tasks in the education of the public within the settlement72 by Magda Tanay73 from 1936 typifies this approach. Its main argument goes as follows:

72 73

Tanay, Magda; Noi npmuvelsi fe ladatok a settlementben; Novgh, Gyula (ed.), A Settlement. Magda Tanay was a leading member of and lecturer for the Public Education Committee of the capital.

34 The settlement is a real university of our democracy in the most elevated meaning of the word, while at the same time, in its goal to provide a framework for developing better forms of community life, it also outlines the worth of female work as well as its role and place. 74

This claim embeds a double-sided self- justification that makes use of both a gender and a class component. First, the author states that settlement work fulfils specific female needs that cannot be met by the work of male social workers: In the fields of care and education as well as in tasks of organisation the settlement provides assignments that serve and satisfy specifically female needs.. 75 Bringing examples from the past to support this claim the author says: Female settlements were pioneers in initiating areas of activities, such as child healthcare centres, playgrounds for children, daycares and nurseries that male settlements could only carry out with great difficulties or not at all. 76 She stresses womens difference in their essential femininity and accentuates its usefulness for the success of the settlement: It is natural that the female soul and female eyes identify different problem areas than the male brain. It is also only natural that, though proportionate to its diverse composition, the neighbourhood definitely raises specifically female problems. The intuitive force of the female soul, her fast reactions, her capacity to integrate into foreign environments easier and her more instinctive drive to help others are united in a perfect framework by the settlement where women have to work on translating the modern knowledge of the settlement idea into a form appropriate for women in her neighbourhood.77

Magda Tanay goes into great details in listing the main forms of female tasks in the education of the public, that extend to areas identified as specific to womens difference, that is, qualities women were seen to have a so-called natural inclination to. These are healthcare, education of children, housework economy, the main rules of social interaction, the proper use of free time, legal and citizenship issues, female career paths, and female role models from the past. 78

74 75

Ibid, p. 76. Ibid, p. 74. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Tanay, p. 75.

35 Activities characterised along the lines of gender difference were supposed to be carried out by women in harmony with the understanding of another difference drawn along class lines. Ta nays main thesis justifies the involvement of middle- and upper-class women in social work, who otherwise were not expected to perform in the public or take on wage work, by referring to the idea of democracy. She claims that the settlement movement has its roots in the ideology of democracy.[ ] The social class whose members have enjoyed the privilege of knowing more arose to their responsibilities79 . Tanay identifies the education of the working-classes by the educated upper- and middle-classes as the main democratic driving force behind the idea of the settlement. 4.4.2 The Presence of Gender-Based Difference Making in the Interaction of Social Workers The class and gender character of the practice of social work before the Second World War reflected in the documents are further confirmed by the oral history interviews. Since the status of women as social workers is also embedded in their relationship with other social workers, the following chapter will give an account of the gender differentiation built in the interaction of social workers.

Oral history interviews were conducted with two of the former workers of the Kozma-Street Settlement Mrs. Gncz, ne Zsuzsanna Gntr and Mr. Istvn Kroly. 80 Mrs. Gncz, Zsuzsanna Gntr started to work at Kozma street as a volunteer in 1942 while she was still a high school student. Because of the war she graduated after two years from a two and a half- year long Social Course offered by the University of Economics in Budapest in 1944. As a graduate professional she became a full-time employee at Kozma street. Although placed to various other locations she remained in the field of social work as a state employee until 1952, after which social work as a profession was soon abolished. Mr. Istvn Kroly also started to attend Kozma street as a high school volunteer in 1938. He remained working there while studying at the University of Economics between 1940 and 1944. Following a one-year break after the Second World War he resumed working at the settlement as its leader until 1948.

Both Zsuzsanna Gncz and Istvn Kroly reported that the Kozma-Street Settlement had two generations of workers. The first, older generation consisted of well-to-do upper class mentors who helped with the establishment of the settle ment.
79

Ibid, p. 73.

36 Those with whom they established the Kozma-Street Settlement, and started doing social work, were not there any more when we were there. We were a sort of second generation. [] These dispersed and the Blue Sisters remained.81

By the beginning of the 1940s it seems the leadership consisted of Ilona M. Fldy, founder of the Kozma-Street Settlement, and a group of three to four other women. Besides state employees there were a number of volunteers as well of whom some remained working for Kozma street after they graduated from university. Further on, there was a group of youth from the neighbourhood who, with time, took on some responsibilities in the work of the settlement, such as teaching or giving lectures. Mrs. Gncz reports that the relatio nship between the so-called second generation and Aunt Ilus, as they called her, as well as the entire first- generation was very loving. The leader of the legal aid and employment office, for example, Aunt Mrta, was everyones mother82 . My mother was on very good terms with Ilus. [] She loved me very much. [] She only scolded me once and that was really terrible. [] But in short, us young people, we were in a sort of mother-child relationship with her83 . The fact that this was more true for women than for young men was only hinted at by Mrs Gncz: I was almost her child in those few years. But with young men she had from the outset a different sort of relationship.84

As opposed to Zsuzsanna Gncz, Istvn Kroly, who with the assistance of two other university friends of his took on the leadership of young men from the neighbourhood staying at Kozma street, remembered his relationship with Ilona Fldy in rather different terms. Underlying the various motives he lists to explain their difference and at times their opposition, there is a difference making that is always clearly gendered. First, it is a generational difference put in gendered terms: I united those youth. That was a different world. That was a separate world in the settlement. That was my world. 85

80

The oral history interviews were conducted by Dorottya Szikra and Eszter Varsa between December 2004 and April 2005. 81 The Blue Sisters were members of the Social Mission Society. The name refers to the colour of their uniform. Interview with Zsuzsanna Gncz, December 2004. 82 Iterview with Zsuzsanna Gncz, December 2004. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid.

37 Referring to the fact that Ilona Fldy worked on larger organisational tasks related to the leadership of the settlement he later added a task-oriented element when saying that we [the youth group] were the social line, and Ilus was the official line. 86 Other instances of separation were phrased in terms of a criticism of the content of the settlement work led by Ilona Fldy. We were her Ladyships, not paid enemies, but her Ladyships helping opposition.87 The young men were critical about the lack of scientific approach to social work.

We only reached the level of doing [] simple, basic research, or small exhibitions on how much sugar one needs a day [] only such things. 88

Istvn Kroly believed that the work needed to be placed on more scientific terms, grounded in thorough research. Behind this latter critique one may also sense a reference to a gendered division of tasks. This is further supported by the fact outlined earlier, that settlement work was from its start built on gendered terms. Istvn Kroly underlines this element of the settlement idea when he states that besides family protection, there was a kindergarten, a nursery and a day-care. These are all female occupations. 89 All these examples illustrate that there was a gender based differentiation among colleagues in social work that could take on different masks, such as a generational struggle or a disagreement about the content of work. It demonstrates that on the personal level of social work practice the institutionally set up tasks retained their gendered nature. 4.4.3 Differentiation along Racial Terms in the Practice of Social Work The idea of educating the poor and the less privileged sounds familiar from the history of the womens movements. Here dimensions of class difference are often interwoven with that of race too. Uplifting the poor and educating them in many cases went hand in hand with processes of colonisation. The case of the settlement in the 1930s and 1940s of Hungary also appears to contain an added racial element besides that of gender and class outlined above. In order to have a better understanding of these processes it is necessary to first have a brief look at the context of social work practice and social policy making in the decade preceding World War II.

85 86

Interview with Istvn Kroly, January 2005. Ibid. 87 Mi voltunk az ofensge nem fizetett ellensge, hanem- ofensge segto ellenzke. Interview with Istvn Kroly, January 2005. 88 Interview with Istvn Kroly, January 2005. 89 Interview with Istvn Kroly, January 2005.

38 By the mid-1930s the "social state", as it was called by that time, created the already mentioned active or productive social policy. The essence of productive social policy, as it will be described in more details in the next chapter, entailed the encouragement of both material and biological reproduction. Besides containing a clear gender element in supporting women to give birth to more children, it also embedded racial prejudice by favouring Hungarian and Christian working-class families with many children. Instead of free lunch or money the policy allocated in kind support, such as seeds to plant vegetables or loans to start up own ventures. (See ONCSA in our first chapter) 90 . Recent research showed that by the end of the 1930s productive social policy was partly financed from state income gained from extra levies put on and the closing up of Jewish enterprises 91 . Thus behind the idea of greater democracy and the reallocation of resources in a just way, the state policy favouring poor families and workers contained the seeds of nationalsocialism.

Documents about the guiding principles of settlement work need to be evaluated against the above described tendency in Hungarian social policy. Covert racial preferences were clearly present in social work practice by 1935, the year when Kozma street was founded, and only escalated towards the beginning of World War II. A journal published by the community of social workers at the Kozma-Street Settlement in the beginning of the 1940s92 is a good illustration of the coming together of such class- and ethnicity-based difference making. The first sentence on the opening page of the journal states the goals of the Kozma-street community: In one word: The education of the nation. Working to create a more compassionate, better united and happier, Christian Hungary. 93 According to the slogans of the journal this work was to be achieved by educating families, the fundamental cell units of the nation. Following this identification of an ethnically selected target group, the publication also contains an element of class differentiation that has been basic to the settlement idea: the uplift of the poor working-classes. Among the areas of activities outlined, the first one states:

90

ONCSA provided small lands, houses and loans with in kind benefits for about twelve thousand small houses altogether, inhabited by Christian families with children, mainly in the countryside. 91 jvry, Krisztin. rjsts s modernizci[Aryanization and Modernization], Szzadvg, 2004 (4): pp. 3-37. 92 Although the journal is without reference to its date of publication there is a passage in it by Zsuzsanna Gntr, whom the editors identified as as a student of social work. Based on an interview with Mrs. Gncz, Zsuzsanna Gntr, this fact indicates that the journal must have been produced between 1942-44. 93 rdemes, p. 5.

39 We are trying to uplift the poorer layers of society to a higher standard of culture through education.94 This description is permeated again by the thought of creating a better nation. We are educating by creating group unity [] later, [these groups] will learn about other groups. Finally, they will learn to feel attached to the great community of the entire nation by getting to know the many values of Hungarian life, its culture, its people and natural treasures through excursions, camps, and guided tours. 95

The presence of ethnic difference making in the practice of settlement work is further stressed by the fact that none of our interviewees remembered a case when they would have encountered Gypsy or Jewish families at Kozma street. The interesting fact that they could not trace back memories about any of their colleagues or clients having been bothered or arrested on basis of ethnic belonging during World War II also needs an explanation. One such explanation might be that the Kozma-Street Settlement was so isolated from the rest of society that these historical events did not affect them so much. Also, it might be the case that only a very small number of Gypsy or Jewish families were present in the given industrial area and our interviewees have not encountered ethnic minorities in any form. A more likely explanation, however, might be that both of them suppress their memories concerning these events. Further research could show the actual ethnic constituency of Kozma street and the surrounding industrial settlements, and could reveal further facts about the ethnic dimensions of Hungarian social work before and during World War II.

5.

The Professionalization and Institutionalization of Social Work in Hungary

The beginnings of the formation of social work as a profession around the turn of the century are related to the appearance of social work as a field to be taught. The first courses started not much later, in the first decade of the last century. By the 1920s various associations offered courses in social work and in the 1930s university level education began. Where the starting point of social work as a profession is to be placed, however, depends on how social work is defined. Here we first discuss the changing meaning and definitions of social work and then turn to analyse professional teaching of social work.

94

Ibid.

40 5.1 Definitions of Social Work

This chapter discusses altering definitions of social work, named and renamed according to shifts in the structure, content and focus of welfare work. Because of the limited space we focus our attention to the open care and only refer to the closed method of care. The open method means (and this was the terminology that was used by contemporary experts) that the care is provided in the home of the client or in the streets (Eberfeld or German model). The closed method of social work is institutional care, mainly given to the elderly, children and disabled, but, as the example of workhouses show, it can be also be a means of social care for the able-bodied poor (British model). Both of these basic types of care were present in Hungary, although with different weight geographically. In Budapest the open-care was dominating and the level of services were much more developed than in the small provincial towns and villages. In the latter case criminalization of the social question was dominant, especially in the case of able bodied poor. The closed care in these cases meant imprisonment several times and no real open care was provided. 5.1.1 The Beginnings of Social Work in the 19th Century

Sociologist and social worker, Katalin Pik, devotes much attention to the changing forms of social care and social work. She places the start of organised and planned socia l care to the first half of the 19th century with the foundation of the Association of Women of Good Deeds [Jtevo Asszonyok] in Buda and Pest and other similarly women-run organizations, such as the Israelite Womens Association, established a few decades later in 1867. She separates this new type of social care that consisted of a many sided and multi- layered service96 from earlier attempts at alleviating poverty by charity work between the 16th and the 19th centuries. Descriptions [about the tasks carried out by the association] outline a type of work that can be called social work since it was not limited to distributions of benefits and charity but consisted of a complex, well-documented help work within institutional frameworks.97 Pik thus attaches the beginnings of social work as a profession to the establishment of complex social care services organized by the above mentioned Women of Good Deeds. In the mid-19th century the work of these, mostly well-to-do middle-class women was partly taken over mainly in the field of poverty alleviation by civil administrators who worked in social administration established by the capital. Pik draws attention to the fact that when the
95 96

rdemes, p. 6. Pik,Katalin. Ibid., p. 19.

41 administration of poverty became the responsibility of city councils the social workers of those times occupying the new administrative positions, were not women any more, but men. The job of the so-called Fathers of the Poor [Szegnyatyk ] had a much more bureaucratic character than that of the Women of Good Deeds. 98 This type of social work, organized, financed and partly carried out by local authorities was the characteristics of Budapest, as opposed to the rest of the country. 5.1.2 The Specialisation of Social Work in the First Decade of the 20th Century The beginning of the 20th century brought about the specialization of social work. Different subfields and areas of focus eme rged within the profession. Child protection was among the first to appear. The importance of child protection as a theme in social work is signified by a conference in 1899. The International Child Protection Congress was held in Budapest that year with the goal of discussing the methodology of child protection. At the end of a four-year preparation period for the conference a booklet about Child Protection Institutes in Hungary was published as well as an exhibition with national and international material was organized. Sections of the conference demonstrate the main disciplinary fields that were involved in the shaping of not only child protection but social work as well. There was a legal, a medical, a pedagogical, a religious and ethical, a philanthropic and a charity section at the conference.

The emergence of such specialization and professionalization in social work is further underlined by its altered structure in the capital in the first decade of the 20th century. The 1905 Decree about the Poor decentralized poverty alleviation in the capital. Poverty administration and decisionmaking about support was assigned to Public Charity Committees working at district councils. Districts were divided into sub-districts and were led by so-called Guardians of the Poor [Szegnygym]. The work of the Committees was extended to child protection too. While Pik does not mention whether Guardians of the Poor were mainly male of female, the description of their tasks, containing daily visits to the poor as well as taking part in the work of the committees suggests that women must have had an important share of this work.

A debate that appeared in the Newsletter of the Social Museum in 1911 illustrates what the major concerns around the definition of social wo rk in the first half of the 20th century. The Social

97 98

Ibid. p. 24. Pik, p. 39.

42 Museum [Trsadalmi Mzeum]99 was an initiative aiming to popularize health care among the general public and discuss the situation of the working-classes by organizing public exhibitions on related issues. The two sides of the debate about the goals and methodology of social work were represented by Ottkr Prohszka, Catholic Archbishop of Eger, the guiding father of the Social Mission Society and Erno Deutsch, doctor. Prohszka believed social work was primarily to be defined as love put into practice. He argued that it was not professional education but mainly personal attitude and Christian devotion that mattered in charity work. As opposed to this, Deutsch argued that the main stress was to be laid on professionalization and the education of modern social workers. 100 This debate illustrates well the diversity of the social work profession of the early 20th century Hungary. Both the conservative charity-type of social work and the modern, professional social work were present at the same time.

5.1.3 Guardians of the Public in the Years of the First World War

The beginning of the First World War brought about a further alteration in the name of public social workers in Budapest. In 1914, pressured by the altered face of poverty, instead of Guardians of the Poor they were termed Guardians of the Public [Kzgym]. The war increased the number of people in need of assistance and included not only a more or less clearly outlined and easily labelled layer of society but many others whom previously would have been impossible to be included among the poor and needy. 101 These two groups of the needy were kept well separated by the Guardians of the Public who wore a badge and could be distinguished even in the streets. During the years of the war, their position in supporting or rejecting applicants claims was strengthened. The cases of war victims were clearly separated from other layers of the poor; files of the former were kept in white, files of the latter group in green colour folders. 102 The responsibilities of Guardians extended over a wide range of activities. Districts were divided in subdistricts where they were supposed to identify the needy, find sources of and provide benefits, and even make suggestions towards establishing associations for these purposes. Their roles included the regular supervision of those they assisted. They held weekly supervisions with their district president. In 1915 there were 1840 registered Guardians in Budapest 103 most of whom were lay workers with no professional training and salary.
99

Reference taken from Pik, p 79. Prohszka, Ottokr. A szemlyes szolglat a jtkonysgban [Personal Service in Charity Work] and Deutch, Erno. A modernn szocilis munksrl [About the Modern Social Worker], in: A Trsadalmi Mzeum rtestoje [Newsletter of the Social Museum]. Vol. 3. Nr. 1. (1911): 1-9. Reference taken from Pik, pp.79-84. 101 Pik, p 146. 102 Ibid., p. 147. 103 Hanvai, Sndor. Budapest hbors jtkonysga [Wartime Charity in Budapest], Vrosi Szemle. Vol. 3-4, (1915): 1-36. Hanvai was a the district president. Reference taken from Pik, p. 149.
100

43 There was an interesting initiative during the First World War that aimed to step beyond charity provisions and structure social assistance, then termed public assistance [npgondozs] towards providing employment and establishing social institutions for the needy. In 1917 Hug Csergo hoped to open a Centre for Public Welfare [Npjlit Kzpont] and replace untrained voluntary Guardians of the Public with educated and paid Public Welfare Assistants [Npjlti megbzottak]. The initiative was, however, short- lived. Although unsuccessful in supplying the centre with sufficient number of trained social workers, during the years of the Soviet Republic in 1919 Csergo was hopeful that the majority of problems will nevertheless be solved by the state. 104

5.1.4 New Terminology in Child Protection in 1919

Child protection stood among the focus areas of social policy restructuring under the Republic of 1919. Besides civil associations social work concerned with the well-being of children was carried out by so-called Child Guards [gyermekor], Child Officers [gyermekbiztos] and Guardians of Children [gyermekgym]. The latter function was supplied by unemployed primary school teachers. Their task was to supervise the physical and psychological protection of children. 105 They were to stay in close contact with the parents of children, pay visits to families, and consult with both teachers and the school doctor. Child guards were to be male or female trained specialists in child protection106 nominated by Child Welfare Committee [Gyermekgyi Bizottsg]. Child officers were to be nominated by Child Welfare Offices [Gymgyi Bizottsg].

5.1.5 Assistants of the Poor in the 1920s

By the 1920s the expression social work became widespread. It was separated from the notions of philanthropy and charity. Based on a structure developed by Klmn Csorna, Pik gives a short overview of the types of social work done in that time period. The age group of clients provides the main areas of the description. Pik paid specific attention to the work of School Nurses [iskola novrek] who were responsible for the welfare of school children in two to three primary schools per district. Nurses could be school or nursery teachers who had a high school diploma and completed an additional training for nurses organized by the City Council of Budapest. By 1928 there were about one hundred such nurses in the capital. They organized daily meals for children, provided afternoon care in the school and also organized clothes and milk distributions.

104 105

Pik, p. 162. Ibid. p.173. 106 Pik, p. 173.

44 The Norm of Eger, established in 1927 and its new structure of welfare assistance was described in detail in the previous chapter. Among the institutions set up was a Committee for the Assistance of the Poor [Szegnygondoz Hivatal] whose work was supported by so-called Assistants of the Poor who came from both a religious and a non-religious association of lay women. As the Norm of Eger spread all over Hungary so did the position of Assistants. They dealt mostly with the poor and old population, and not only carried out an assessment of their social and financial background, supplied assistance, but also supervised the use of the assistance given.

The main invention of the Norm of Eger was the professional and systematic organization of open social care. Charitable orga nizations, the Church, the public and the local government worked closely together to eliminate poverty. Their work was partly successful, however the work done by Public Welfare Assistants was still needed. Also, the economic crisis in the 1930s created a demand for social services (especially unemployment insurance) that went beyond the possibilities of organized charity.

Another important initiative of the 1920s was the Settlement-movement, imported from Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries. We described the case of Hungarian settlements in detail in the previous chapter. It must be noted here that in the settlement movement too, both types of social work were present: conservative, mainly Christian charity, and professional, in certain cases social democratic ways of social work.

5.1.6 Productive Social Policy

The last turn in the history of the profession of social work before the Second World War to be mentioned is the introduction of productive social policy shortly described in the previous chapter. It was developed by the Mayor of Pcs, Lajos Esztergr, in the end of the 1930s. The main idea of productive social work as defined by Esztergr and amended by the economist, Zoltn Magyary. It is important to note at this point, however, how the focus of what was considered to be social work was modified by the introduction of the notion of productive social work. In Guidelines to Social Work [A szocilis munka vzlatrl]107 Esztergr established the importance of satisfying the primary needs of people: If the satisfaction of the existential needs of individuals are strengthened they will be able to find further means of improving their own situation. 108 He also advocated that the main idea behind conducting social work must be clear to all social workers.
107 108

Ibid, p. 253. Ibid, p. 254.

45 Esztergr compared social work to a well- functioning machine where keeping all the fitted elements in progress equalled the efforts of state power to improve social conditions. 109 He argued for the development of an overarching structure for professional social work110 , in other words, social administration, based on actual social needs and problems. Research had to aim for uncovering these needs while social workers were to specialise and focus on a specific area of welfare work. The fact that on a course for civil servants in 1939 Sarolta Lukcs, representing the Hungarian Red Cross, defined social work as individualized social policy must be related to the underlying idea about the purpose of social work as defined within the framework of productive social policy.

5.1.7 The Disappearance of Social Work after 1948-49

The era following the end of the Second World War from 1948-49 onwards brought about the disappearance of social work as a profession. Pik points out that at the end of the 1940s social work was slowly merged into the practice of health care. 111 Social work discourse itself became more and more medicalized, the independence of social workers as actors on behalf of their clients was curbed. Social work, defined to be superfluo us in the Peoples Democracy. It was not before the end of the 1960s that first attempts at the revival of sociology were made while social work officially was only restored at the end of the 1980s. Interviews conducted by the authors show how social work as a profession gradually diminished. First independent case-work was hindered with new directors placed above the social workers than they were simply placed to another department of the city council.

5.2

Social Work Education -The History of Social Courses

Courses for social workers and social policy makers (including those working in public social administration on the central and on the local government level as well as those working in nongovernmental organizations like the Settlement movement or the Red Cross) were together called social courses [szocilis tanfolyamok] in Hungary before the Second World War. The first social courses were organized as early as 1907 by the National Alliance of Womens Associations [Noegyesletek Orszgos Szvetsge] .112 While it was the earliest example of social work education
109 110

Ibid. Pik, p. 254. 111 Ibid., p. 319. 112 Csizmadia, Andor. Ibid..

46 the initiative was not continued in the following years. 113 The courses were held in the building of the National Association of Womens Education [Orszgos Nokpzo Egyeslet]. They lasted for four months with three classes a week mainly for the students of the National Association of Womens Education but were not closed to others interested. 114

The first systematic and permanent courses were organized from 1911 on by the Social Mission Society (Szocilis Misszitrsulat). Together with the Society of Social Sisters (Szocilis Testvrek Trsasga), that later separated itself from the Social Mission Society, they ran two schools educating thousands of students for social work in this period. 115 Receiving significant state support between the two World Wars, the Society opened its Social College with a two-year course in 1926.116 Leo Szokolay, Vice-President of the Budapest Orphan Guardianship Authority [Szkesfovrosi rvaszk] in an overview about the history of social courses in Hungary at the Conference on Hungarian Social Education in 1937 registered 50-80 students in these courses ran in Budapest and 100-600 students in the country-side. There were various sorts of courses organized, short ones of three classes a day lasting over a few days and longer ones, lasting over several months with classes on two afternoons a week. Courses ranged from hospital mission to patronage, courses for probation officers or youth leaders. 117

The schools of the Society of Social Sisters were located in Budapest and Cluj (Kolozsvr in todays Romania). 118 According to Szokolay they offered three-day social courses at Catholic Colleges for Female Primary School Teachers [Katolikus Tantnokpzo], and organized presentations on social work for the general public. The Society also offered leadership trainings for women workers.

During the First World War social courses were focused on supporting war victims, like war orphans or female family visitors in 1916 and 1917. 119 The National Stefnia Association started a training for professional district nurses [vdono] in 1916 for six- week, later on of three-month length. After the war, the training for district nurses was developed into one of the most significant

113

Szokolay, Leo. A hazai szocilis kpzs vzlatos ttekintse [A Rough Overview of Social Courses in Hungary], Anya- s Csecsemovdelem [The Protection of Mothers and Infants] . Vol. 10. Nr.11. (1937): 897-905. 114 Ibid, p. 898. 115 Csizmadia, Andor .Ibid., p. 307. Katalin Pik also describes subjects taught: 1. Religion and ethics, moral pedagogy and psychology 2. Sociology, national economics and law 3. The ethics of work at an association. p.123. 116 Pik, p. 215. 117 Szokolay, p.898. 118 Csizmadia, p. 183. 119 Pik, p.151.

47 social courses in the country. 120 In 1921 a one-year theoretical training was launched, extended by a three to four year practical training. According to the 1930 and later in 1933 modified decree by the Ministry of Welfare, students were to be between 18 and 30 and have a minimum of eight years of secondary school education. 121

During the Republic of 1919 Child Protection Centres were formed, led by Lipt Nemes, primary school teacher. Upon his initiative School Guardians [Iskolagymok], who were employees of the Center, were to be trained. Although a decree about the compulsory training was formed it could not be carried out since the Republic fell the same year.

In the 1920s and 1930s social courses of various length and depth, offered by different civil organizations proliferated. Among these, courses organised by the Hungarian Red Cross were of crucial importance. They organised 10-month courses for women who wanted to be professional social care providers [hivatsos szocilis gondozno] from 1926 to 1929 and provided follow-upcourses for their students later on. They offered courses for the public as well. Re-training courses were held in Miskolc (a city in the Northeast of Hunga ry) for unemployed intellectuals to do relief work in the social sphere. They educated public employees of district authorities social departments in Budapest as well as to voluntary social workers of Catholic Caritas and other Catholic civil organizations all over Hungary.

The National Institute for Public Health [Orszgos Kzegszsggyi Intzet ] started its national nurse and district nurse education in 1930. Theoretical and practical education lasted two and a half years and was designed to provide a double diploma of nursing and district nursing for the schools own students as well as for students of the National Stefnia Associations district nurse training. By 1937 there were 115 Green Cross and 20 Red Cross nurses who graduated with the double diploma. 122 Theoretical education was provided not in the traditional form of lectures but seminars, 29 altogether. Boarding school attendance was compulsory. 123

The Non-School Educational Committee [Iskolnkvli Npmuvelsi Bizottsg] of the City Council of Budapest organized educational settlements for women in the 1930s where among others women were introduced to practical social work. The Committee supported the introduction of a new, one

120 121

Szokolay, p. 899. Szokolay, p. 902. 122 Ibid., p. 903. 123 Szokolay stated that the closed system of compulsory boarding school attendance had the purpose of preparing students entirely for social care as a profession and a career.

48 and a half year long social course in 1933 for factory care workers. Courses were led by Mria Baloghy.

University-level courses started in 1935 at the Faculty of Law at the University of Pcs (Southern Hungary) and in 1937 at the so-called Social Academy124 of the National Institute of Social Policy at Jzsef Ndor University, Budapest125 . The Social Academy in Budapest was designed and led by Bla Erodi-Harrach, economist, leading figure of the Hungarian settlement movement. Courses lasted for two semesters. The structure of these courses formed bases for developing further university courses from 1942 on at several universities in Hungary126 (see later).

Within the education of civil servants on public administration a special course was devoted to social administration in 1939. This 8- month course was made compulsory by the Ministry of Interior for civil servants as the success of social care was up to them127 . Among the 84 different classes offered there were some that clearly represented the new, national-socialist type of social thinking. Classes such as Social Policy in the Army, The Social Policy of Fascism or The New Portuguese Social Policy are cases in point. Besides the strengthening of the ideology of fascism this course was the first, according to Csizmadia, that demonstrated the fact that Hungarian social policy got beyond charity128 .

The Act on the Protection of People and Families (ONCSA) in 1940 authorized the government to organize social courses at Hungarian universities and make the completion of these courses compulsory for certain groups of civil servants. The decree establishing these courses came out in 1942.129 These were organized at two faculties of economics, one at Jzsef Ndor University, Budapest and another at the University of Cluj, as well as at the Faculty of Law at the universities of Pcs, Szeged, and Debrecen. The courses became compulsory for public servants working in social administration. 130

According to the decree these courses were to be taught by university professors who were either members of the above mentioned faculties or invited professors. All appointments to these teaching

124

A description of the course structure, methodology and goals was published in A Szocilis Akadmia [Social Academy] . Budapest: Orszgos Szocipolitikai Intzet, 1937. Reference taken from Pik, p. 266. 125 In todays Corvinus University of Economics, Budapest. 126 Csizmadia. 127 Csizmadia, p. 183. 128 Ibid, p. 198. 129 Decree 4150/1942. ME 130 No public official in the social sphere could be appointed without the completion of one of these courses from January 1st , 1946 the order goes. This, of course could not become reality because of the war.

49 positions had to be made with the agreement of the Ministry of Interior. The fact that the Minister of Interior had control over these courses shows the political sensibility of social courses in the 1940s. As described earlier, the Act on the Protection of People and Families had an aim to protect people and families of Hungarian origin as opposed to people of other races in the country, an aim that had a clear eugenic dimension. It seems that one of the purposes of the university-level social courses was to strengthen social administration and social workers in protecting the Hungarian nation.

Courses could be taken by university students and also by those graduated in high schools. In the latter case they became special students of the university. 131 Some of the civil servants working in the social field were also enrolled. In 1942 for example, there were 190 students enrolled altogether. 81 were normal university students, out of whom only 22 were women. In case of special students coming from outside of the university the ratio was just the reverse: out of 109 students 79 were women. 132

The university course was planned to last for four semesters but the last semester in 1943 was cancelled because of the developments of the Second World War. Still, students who completed the first three semesters gained their university diploma. 133

These courses provided both theoretical and practical knowledge. Theoretical education (accompanied by short visits to social institutions and a longer summer research in Hungarian villages) was organised in the first three semesters. 134 The last never realized semester would have been field practice. Major subjects, among others, included psychology, social psychology; ethics, social ethics; education, adult education; economics, history of economics; ethnography; social and societal policy (within this protection of mothers and children, protection of health, social insurance, care for the elderly, protection of workers, poor-policy etc.); village-policy; statistics and agriculture. Students had 17 classes a week and had to pass examination in each of the courses at the end of each semester. Andor Csizmadia, author of a major study on social care in Hungary,
131 132

One of these special students was Mrs. Zsuzsanna Gncz, wife of the fo rmer President of Hungary, rpd Gncz. Csizmadia, p. 309. 133 Interview with Zsuzsanna Gncz, conducted by Eszter Varsa and Dorottya Szikra, December, 2004. 134 The description of the courses together with the names of the teachers and other details is described in the order of the Ministry of Welfare, 800/1942. N.M. It is published in Np s Csaldvdelem (The Protection of People and Families), a monthly series of the National Fund for the Protection of People and Families (ONCSA), 1942, 391-396. Based on an interview with a former student from 1941, Katalin Pik provides a detailed account of the field trips and their report this student prepared. She had to visit all major welfare institution types, state and non-state run, in Budapest. Pik, Katalin. Szocilis gyakorlatok munkanaplja 1941-bol[Social Practice Report from 1941], in A szocilis munka trtnete Magyarorszgon, 1817-1990 [The History of Social Work in Hungary, 1817-1990] , pp. 269284.

50 himself was one of the teachers at Cluj. He made a personal note about this at the very end of his book:

The writer of this book conducted the exams of his students in Kolozsvr [Cluj] at the beginning of the year 1944, a few days before the invasion of the German troops. Thinking about the exams, I must say that most of the students were hard working and that the outcome was satisfactory. [] It is a pity that we do not have data on the number of students completing these courses.135

5.3

The Disappearance of Social Work Education after the Second World War

As referred to earlier, following the Second World War, the end of a short lived democracy in 194849 brought about the disappearance of social work until its revival after the systemic changes in 1989. The increasing medicalization of social assistance described shortly above was also reflected by the fact that a new training for district nurses was established in the Institute for Health Care District Nurses in 1946. The training of social sisters, social district nurses was stopped. Only the training of nurses with a background in health care education was continued. The sights of former social work practice became part of either medical or educational institutions.

5.4

Practical Guidelines for Doing Social Work

Parallel to the beginning of social work education the first publications about the structure of social provisions, poverty alleviation and welfare provisions as well as the tasks and resources of social workers appeared. Without trying to provide a full picture of all available publications this section aims to describe two very different material social workers at the beginning of the 20th century and three- four decades later made use of. The first was for the use of social workers in public administration while the second mainly addressed members of catholic civil organizations.

Published in 1908 by lawyer Kroly Arthur Szilgyi the Guidelines for the Members of the District Public Charity and Child Protection Committees [Vezrfonal a Kerleti Kzjtkonysgi s Gyermekvdelmi Bizottsgok tagjai rszre] 136 were among the first publications that contained the
135 136

Csizmadia, p. 309. Szilgyi, Arthur Kroly. Vezrfonal a Kerleti Kzjtkonysgi s Gyermekvdelmi Bizottsgok tagjai rszre. [Guidelines for the Members of the District Public Charity and Child Protection Committees] . Budapest: Lbl Dvid s Fia: 1908. Reference taken from Katalin Pik, pp. 85-88.

51 expression social worker.

137

Guidelines declared that state provided child protection must

collaborate with civil organizations. Szilgyi, one of the lawyers committed to the improvement of child protection and supported the initiative of the Child Protection Committee of the Chamber of Lawyers of Budapest that suggested the introduction of such committees at the District Public Charity offices. Referring to the model of Mary Richmond, Szilgyi claimed the importance of structured support instead of charity by chance. He also drew on the example of the American probation officers to state the necessity of trained specialists, that is social workers doing professional child protection work, instead of fulfilling administrative tasks only. The Yearbook of Caritas [Karitsz vknyv] 138 was a publication of the Catholic Church founded in the second half of the 1930s. It served as guideline for catholic charity- and social workers in a time period when the Norm of Eger became widespread in Hungary and was already called the Hungarian Norm. Also productive social policy was developed only a few years after the foundation of the publication. Pik draws attention to the smooth language used in the Yearbook that provides an image of the Hungarian pre-Second World War welfare system as available for most of the needy. Charity workers and nurses of Caritas were presented as able to provide sufficiently for the poor and the old. There were no signs given about acute social problems.

6.

Important biographies in the field

6.1

Introduction

The history of social work is filled with an enlarged form of the same contradiction as written history itself. Although half of its subjects are women, a miniature part of it is about them. In the case of social work it is even more so. Although most of social work has been done by women, and they had a considerable role in its establishment, there are hardly any sources about them. A double silence veils our subject. The missing knowledge about the history of social work, and the general gender blindness of Hungarian scholarship.

137 138

Pik, 85. Molnr Frigyes (ed.). Karitsz vknyv. Szocilis s karitatv vknyv [Yearbook of Charitas. A Yearbook of Social and Charity Activities] . Budapest: Katolikus Karitsz, 1936. Pik notes that available publications were to be found up till 1942. The name of the publication was changed in 1937 to Almanach of Charitas. Reference taken from Katalin Pik, pp. 306-309.

52 There are many reasons for the former one, some of which were tackled in our previous chapters. This includes the wiping out of social work after 1947, which was equivalent with wiping out its memory as well. Its protagonists were replaced, many left Hungary or retrained themselves. Contrary to psychology or sociology, which were also undesirable disciplines in the darker years of communism, when the slow comeback of social work started in the 1980- ies, its practice was revived, but its history, and the memory of its important personalities did not. Whereas sociology and psychology returned to its previous high prestige place, social work could not. It is highly evident in the case of biographies: laws, institutional structures, or the history of movements are still easier to reconstruct than the lives of important figures, where written sources are scarce and scattered and a thorough research is needed.

If one comes across the name of someone associated with social work, it is usually a man: Dezso Hilscher or Lajos Esztergr (both active between the two world wars). Hilschers name was chosen for example to name the oldest contemporary professional association ( Hilscher Rezso Szocilpolitikai Egyeslet Rezso Hilscher Social Policy Association), which was founded in 1989 by the teachers and students of Etvs Lornd University in Budapest. Even his life, however, has not inspired a biography yet. The names of women who played an important role in the history of Hungarian social work are only known when they were active in other spheres as well (such as the feminist movement see Roza Bdy-Schwimmer or politics see Margit Schlachta). Now we will concentrate on those women who played an important role in the history of social work. The list is not all- inclusive, names without references often occurred during our study, which need further investigation.

6.2

Where do women appear?

If we look at the different clusters where we can find women the ngo-s and women only groups come to mind at first. In religion we find nuns and lay sisters who did social work (see Szocilis Misszitrsulat for example), among lay professionals we find kindergarten teachers, district nurses, counsellors (see Orszgos Stefnia Szvetsg or Zldkeresztes Mozgalom). Most of these organizations were mentioned previous ly. Through the professional development of social work we find two different types of women whose names are often preserved in documents. One is the noble patronesses of associations, residential homes, schools etc., usually wives of famous men or holders of important titles, who usually played only a symbolic role in the everyday life of their protges.( For example Princess Zsfia Hohenberg , patroness of the Orszgos Gyermekszanatrium

53 Egyeslet - National Childrens Sanatorium Association in the 1910s, or her Majesty Queen Zita, queen to the by then dethroned last Habsburg-Hungarian king, Kroly IV, patroness of Orszgos Stefnia Szvetsg- National Stefnia Association in the 1930ies) The other is the names of women who reached a higher rank in the established social work hierarchy, were heads of department at the social offices of Budapest or elsewhere (see Ilona Imre).

Finally female names occur when they are authors of textbooks, memoirs or studies on social work. Before 1945 three important books shed light on the structure of Hungarian social life, but unfortunately give very little information on the authors themselves: Rzsa Szentkereszty (Nyegre ) published a trilingual handbook of the system of the Hungarian social network in 1937. 139 In the same year came out Katalin Geros professional memoir about the history of the Pesti Izraelita Noegylet Pest Israelite Womens Association and its girls foster home, where she was directress. 140 Dr. Ilona Imre published her book on the official social work of Budapest in 1944.
141

She worked in the 9th department of Budapest Local Government responsible for social work,

and the care of expectant mothers and children.

6.3

Detailed biographies

6.3.1 Terz Brunszvik (1775-1861)

Although her lifespan lies out of the timeframe of our research, she cannot be left out of a biographical chapter on this topic, as she is still the best known woman associated with what today we would call social work. Her full and diverse life can be reflected in many mirrors (national awakening, music history, history of education, womens history), but Hungarians still know her mostly as the mother of kindergartens. Hers is the only name in the history of social work that is mentioned today in the training of district nurses. Brunszvik was born as a noble woman in Martonvsrhely, where the young Beethoven was employed to teach the girls (she is also believed to be Beethovens eternal love, to whom many letters are addressed). During her travels to Switzerland Brunszvik discovered Pestalozzis methodological work and inspired by this opened the first kindergarten in Hungary, the Angyalkert (Garden of Angels) in Buda in 1828, which was later followed by a training school for girls.
139 140

Rose Szentkereszthy, (Rzsa Nyegre), bersicht der Socialen Institutionen in Ungarn Budapest: Cserpfalvi, 1937 Katalin Gero, A szeretet munksa (The worker of love), Budapest: Anthos, 1937 141 Dr Ilona Imre, Budapest szkesfovros szocilis munkja s intzmnyei (Social work and instituions of Budapest) Budapest: Actio Chatolica, 1944

54 In less than a decade fourteen lay kindergartens were set up in the country. For her cause she won members of the Hungarian reform and national awakening movement, who later played an important role in the 1848 revolution. She was also one of the founders of Pesti and Budai Noegylet (First Pest and Buda Womens Association).
142

In her view girls education is important because

they are the future mothers who are responsible for the future of the nation. (We must not forget that at the time she was writing about this Hungary was not independent).

6.3.2 Johanna Bischitz, Mrs Dvid, ne Fischer (1866-1943)

Her life stands for a golden era, when emancipated Jews contributed a great deal to the economic, cultural and social life of Hungary. When she died, already a noble woman, her coffin was drawn across Budapest as that of a national hero in a grandiose funeral march. She was the founder and president of the Pesti Izraelita Noegylet (Pest Istraelite Womens Association), which was started in 1866 by Pest chief rabbi Alajos Bischitz Meisel Wolf and eleven ladies. This organization soon became one of the biggest charity in Budapest that reached non-Jews as well. In 1879 Emperor Franz Joseph gave her a golden cross of distinction and ennobled her and her family to acknowledge her caring for wounded soldiers during the occupation of Bosnia. 143

6.3.3 Edith Farkas (1877-1942)

She was the founder of the Szocilis Misszitrsulat in 1908, a religious community of professional social workers, the first Hungarian female monastic congregation based on Benedictine teachings. Its foundation was strongly influenced by the views of Ottokr Prohszka, bishop of Szkesfehrvr. By 1944 they ran 450 missions and 20 missionary houses (regional centres), beside its youth movement and a college to train social workers. Farkass pioneering idea was to replace the lay volunteers in social work with full time, trained, professional social workers. (In this case they also formed a religious sisterhood). Farkas came from the upper class, she studied to become a teacher, and worked for the Katolikus Novdo Egyeslet (Catholic Womans Protective Association), part of the Catholic womens movement from an early age. In her first, still voluntary, social work she took an active part in the rehabilitation work of the Prisoners Aid

142

Terz Brunszvik, Magyarorszg, Veled az Isten! Naplfeljegyzsek 1848-1849 (Hungary, God is with You! Diary of 1848-1849) Budapest: Argumentum, 1999 143 Julia Richers, Jtkony rabls csupn? A Pesti Izraelita Noegylet tevkenysgi krei (1866-1943) in A zsid no (The Jewish woman) A catalogue to the exhibition under the same title in 2002, Ed. Zsuzsanna Toronyi, Budapest: Magyar Zsid Mzeum, 2002

55 Society. This inspired her to write her first book on the role of the probation officer. 144 By the end of her life Farkas received several decorations from state authorities and from Pope Pius X. 145

6.3.4 Margit Schlachta (1884-1974)

Her name is preserved as the first Hungarian woman MP in 1920-1922, but her institutional role in social work is also very important, and she is remembered by many as the Christian feminist. She was born of a Polish noble father in Hungary, and while a student in a Catholic teacher trainer girls college, she discovered her calling: Christian social work for women, and entered the Szocilis Misszitrsulat .in 1908. Later she founded its separate branch, the Szocilis Testvrek Trsasga (1923-1949) and the Katolikus Noi Szocilis Kpzo. (Catholic Womens Social School). She also worked as chief editor for journals: Keresztny No (Christian Woman) and Magyar No (Hungarian Woman). In 1944 she rescued Jews from the Holocaust in the buildings of her institution. In the short after war democratic period she was again MP, but considered a clerical- legitimist threat by the communists. She emigrated to the USA, where she died. 146

6.3.5 Rza Bdy-Scwimmer (1877-1948)

She was a pioneer of Hungarian feminists. She worked as an accountant and member, later president, of Notisztviselok Orszgos Egyeslete (Women Administrative Workerss National Association), when in 1908 she founded the radical feminist Femistk Egyeslete (Feminists Association). This association fought for equality for women in all forms, and had very good international relations. It had an instrumental role in opening up a debate about vote for women, and womens rights. Two other members of the Association, Vilma Glklich, its managing director, and Mrs Oszkr Szirma i also played an important role in the overlapping spheres of the feminist movement and social work (especially child protection), but their lives have not been researched.

Bdy edited two journals, A no s a trsadalom (Woman and Society) and later A no (Woman). Social work, protection of mothers and children, prostitution, trafficking in women and girls

144 145

Edith Farkas, A hivatalos prtfog (The probation officer), Budapest: 1912. Susan Zimmermann, Die bessere Halfte Frauenbewegungen und Frauenbestrebungen in Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bus 1918 , Budapest: Napvilg, 1999; Konstantin Zimmer, Sozialarbeit katholischer Christen in Ungarn vor dem II. Weltkrieg. Fraiburg im Bresgau: 1993; Irma Kopasz S:M: The Social Mission SOciety (A FAculty of the National Catholic School of Social Service of the Catholic University of America , MA dissertation, 1949); Jean Marie Renfro SSS., Planted by Running Water. The Story of Charism(unpubkished dissertation, Los Angeles 1985) 146 Ilona Mona, Schlachta Margit Budapest: Corvinus, 1997; Margit Balogh, Schlachta Margit, a keresztny feminsita in Asszonysorsok a 20. szzadban , readings at a conference under the same title, Budapest, 2000;

56 education were all important topics. In 1913 she organized an international womens congress in Budapest. Due to her good contacts, she later worked in London, and became a pacifist during the first world war. She left Hungary in 1921 because of growing anti-Semitism, and went to the USA. She did not get citizenship because of her pacifism, but got the World Piece Prize in 1937.
147

6.3.6 Katalin Gero, (1853-1944)

She was the director of the Jewish Girls Orphange run by the Pesti Izraelita Noegylet. In the 19100920ies, author of two memoirs. 148 Her detailed biography can be also be read in our second case study.

6.3.7 Ilona Fldy (1907-1981)

Just as Edith Farkas or Margit Schlachtas biographies are intertwined with the history of the Social Mission Society, Fldys career is about the history of the Kozma utcai Telep (Kozma street settlement), a very interesting settlement which was her idea. Her detailed biography can be read in our second case study.

6.3.8 Jlia Gyrgy (1896 1977)

She was a psychologist and paediatrician, specialised in delinquent youth and problem children. She was one of the first practising criminal psychologists in Hungary, who started a national movement for the preservation of mental health in 1936. As a member of the left-wing intellectual circle, Galilei Circle, and active in her profession in the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, and probably as a Jew, she became suspicious and lost her job in 1939. A year later she, under the auspices of the Orszgos Izrealita Patronzs Egyeslet (National Israelite Patronage Association) she started a kindergarten for children with special needs, an ambulatory clinic for children and a career guidance service. During the Holocaust, she worked hard to save children. Between 1945 and 1950 she continued her mental health program and organised homes for abandoned children, when her work was again diverted by the authorities. Since 1953 she again became an established figure of child psychology and opened the Budapest Child Psychology Clinic. She published several books on the psychological aspects of the antisocial character.

147 148

Suzan Zimmermann, Die Bessere Halfte Katalin Gero, A szeretet munksa, Same author, letem (My life), 1929. See also: Pik, Ibid.

57 6.4 Short biographies

In the following part we mention the names of other important women in the history of Hungarian social work. Little biographical facts are available about them without further detailed research.

Szidnia Ghiczy , a teacher in Sopron, who retired to work for the poor of a derelict area called Kurucdomb in the town, by organizing a home laundry service in the 1930ies.

Mrs Schuler Dezso, protector of BRISZ (Budapesti Ranolder-intzeti Iskolatrsak SzvetsgeAlliance of the School Friends of the Ranolder Institute), an important training ground for Catholic social work in the 1930ies. Her husband was deputy mayor of Budapest, whose main field of interest was poverty and homelessness in Budapest.

Dr. Ilma Imre , High ranking social worker in the 9th department of Budapest Local Government in the 1940ies, author of an important source about the structure of state social policy in the interwar years. In our sketchy list we tried to collect morsels of biographic information about women in the history of Hungarian social work. As it was shown, even important, leading figures are difficult to trace down by facts due to factors mentioned in our introduction.. What about the mass of nameless women who worked as district nurses, lay sisters, volunteers, teachers, members of associations, social workers, health visitors etc ? We know hardly anything about their lives, thoughts, cases and accumulated knowledge. One possible source might be oral history interviews or personal papers left in archives. 149 Both require luck to find them.

7.

The Biographies of Katalin Gero and Ilona Fldy A Case study

7.1

Introduction

Katalin Gero (1853-1944) and Ilona Fldy (1907-1981) were only partly contemporaries, they directed two different types of social institutions, a girls orphanage in downtown Budapest and a settlement for workers in the outskirts of the city. They were connected organisationally to different
149

Local history might be another source. In the case of Biatorbgy, an ethnic German-Hungarian village about 20 kms out of Budapest, a series of documents about the history of the local kindergarten were published in the village newspaper, Biatorbgyi Krnika in the 1990ies. The documents were researched by Terz Plovics. See Biatorbgyi

58 beliefs: the Pest Israelite Womens Association, a Jewish charity, and the Social Mission Society, a novel Hungarian Christian order focused on social work for girls. Nevertheless, their biographies share some similarities, one of which is the transforming of aspirations, bonds and feelings of natural motherhood to their professional lives. This leads automatically to the often quoted question, whether social work is quintessentially feminine, the grand scale social frame of the womans caring tasks within a family, which might be interpreted as a basically conservative world view. True or only a speculation, conservative or not, none of the institutions survived the post-war communist takeover. The names of both protagonists disappeared from national memory, only that of Geros is to be found in library catalogues, because of her autobiography published in 1929. As Ilona Fldy did not write books, her life can only be traced by investigative methods leaving considerable foggy patches. Let us recover now as much from their biographies as possible.

7.2

Katalin Gero (1853 Hvzgyrk - 1944 Budapest)

She was born in the Hungarian countryside as the daughter of a mother who came from an old Jewish family who had been leaseholders to the same landlords for two hundred years. Her father was the descendant of a Polish freedom fighter refugee. It was the mother in the family who discreetly ran the estate with her accumulated agricultural management knowledge, whereas the father was more interested in studying and leading the life of an intellectual. The family had six children who were raised in a patriotic atmosphere, the revolution of 1848, where their father fought, being the origin of all stories. The mother, Zsfia Benko, is the mortar of the family structure, her figure is very important to the young Katalin, who admires her charitable deeds. With her sudden death when Katalin was only a teena ger, however, the life of the Gero family takes a tragic turn. Within one year of the wifes death, Katalins father remarries, bringing a disagreeable stepmother with her own children to the household. From that time on Katalins life becomes a Hungarian version of Jane Eyres trials so much that her life story inspires two famous writers. It is thanks to these two literary works popular in their times that her memory was preserved. 150

Both of these works are fiction based on a true story, Mese a varrgprol (The Tale of the Sewing Machine) is by Jzsef Kiss (1843-1921), a Jewish poet and editor, whereas Katalin is by the most famous Hungarian folk tale collector, childrens book writer and translator of the Grimm brothers
Krnika in the following issues: 1995 May, 1995 April, 1997 February, 1997 March, 1997 April, 1997 May, 1997 June, 1997 July, 1997 September, 1997 October. 150 Jzsef Kiss, Mese a varrgprol (The tale of the sewing machine), Budapest, 1884. It was translated by Lszl Neugebauer into German, and published in Leipzig in 1884 as Das Lied von der Nhmaschine; Elek Benedek, Katalin. Regny fiatal lnyok szmra. (Katalin. A Novel for Young Girls), Budapest, 1896

59 and adapter of the Arabian Nights, Elek Benedek (1859-1929).

Katalin Gero wrote her autobiography as well that became a Hungarian and German success and wrote a book on the Womens Association, whose orphanage she directed. 151 The biographies tell us how Katalin suffered in her fathers new marriage, where her mothers memory was purposefully erased. When her father went bankrupt overnight, and the family was evicted from the ancient manor house she felt a responsibility to raise her three younger brothers and sisters. Just like in a fairy tale (no wonder she inspired the above mentioned works) she goes to Budapest and works as a seamstress in a workshop. Soon she becomes an independent dressmaker working at houses of middle class Pest clients. (It is through such a client that Jzsef Kiss learns her story and writes it).

One should not forget that despite the eloquent language of Hungarian patriotism abundant in Geros autobiography it is only a few years after the legal emancipation of Hungarian Jews (1867). 152 The job opportunities of girls or women, if not in factories, were very scarce, being a Jewess narrowed these possibilities. Helen Epstein, the noted American Holocaust researcher writes in her book Where She Came From, an investigative feminist history of her Czech Jewish dressmaker mother, that this profession was one of the few, decent ones for poor Jewish girls, new and orphaned in a big city. 153

The hard working Gero children slowly make their life decent. Katalin works as a popular dressmaker, Kroly, her younger brother, finishes his law studies and becomes intertwined with theatre. Soon he becomes one of the main playwrights for a legendary actress, Lujza Blaha. 154 Kroly Geros young wife, Emmy Schermann, was in contact with the Womens Association and its well-known president, Johanna Bischitz. Just as in the case of Jzsef Kiss, someone tells her the

151

Katalin Gero, letem (My life), Budapest, 1929. An anonymous German translation came out in 1933 in Leipzig under the title Erflltes Leben (A fulfilled life), which was so succesful that two further reprints followed in 1942 and 1953 in Zrich. An interesting afterlife of the German version of her autobiography is a protestant collection by Marianne Fleischhack, Erfllte Leben. Sechs Lebensbilder (Fulfilled Lives. Six Lifepictures), Berlin, 1976. This work leaves out alltogether Geros Jewish origin, which can be helped by the fact that Katalin Gero did not mention her Jewishness at all in her autobiographies. The historiography of the German translation was investigated by Julia Richers in her thesis, Der Pester Israelitische Frauenverein von 1866 bis 1914, Lizentiatsarbeit, Basel, 2001. Unpublished thesis; Katalin Gero, A szeretet munksai. A Pesti Izraelita Noegylet trtnete. (Workers of Love. The history of the Pest Izraelite Womens Association);. Budapest, 1937. 152 The modernist neologue branch of Judaism in Hungary strongly supported the emancipation and cultural assimilation. Their theorists and historians, Smuel Kohn and Lajos Venetianer, stood for the idea of Jewish continuity in Hungary, stating that Jews had been living in the Carpathian basin since Roman times well before the Hungarian tribes arrived. Jews in Hungary did not exist for them, only Jewish Hungarians. This newly forming Jewish Hungarian identity can be traced in Geros autobiography as well. On this see: Jnos Gyurgyk, A zsidkrds Magyarorszgon (The Jewish question in Hungary), Budapest: Osiris, 2001; pp. 225-243. 153 Helen Epstein, Where She Came From. A Daughters Search for her Mothers History. Plume Book, 1998 154 Kroly Gero, Playwright (1856-1904); his works include: Vadgalamb (Wild Dove), Tuniks lnyok (Girls in tunic), Turi Borcsa (Borcsa Turi), Az elad leny (The eligible girl), Prbahzassg (Trial Marriage).

60 heartbreaking story of Katalin, which inspires interest in the listener. When Katalin Gero writes to Mrs. Bischitz in hope of a job, she is offered the position of directress in the girls home run by the Association. She is 45 years when she takes on the job in 1898. Even having never attended any school, as she was educated at home by private teachers as a noble young lady, she gets free permission to reorganize the institution pedagogically. The nickname Mother Katalin sticks to her until the end of her life.

Mother Katalin What this woman has done can only be done by a woman. She sacrificed her own happiness for the happiness of her younger sisters, then she becomes the mother of hundreds of orphaned girls. These young girls prayed right indeed: between the walls of the orphanage they found a warm home, a mother instead of their mother. Thousands and thousands of mothers and their children pray for the life and health of Mother Katalin, because she is more then a mother now, she has become a grandmother: grandmother of the orphans children., writes Elek Benedek in his foreword to letem (My Life). 155

This interpretation of her life by this male writer is rooted in her own self image. Her life is full of losses and tragedies, not only the death of her mother and the betrayal of her father, but the death of four out of five brothers and sisters, the death of her fianc, (a childhood love, who sent the engagement ring in an envelope from his deathbed) and several grave illnesses. All along her long life she keeps up herself with the belief that someone needs her work, her sacrifice (of not getting married but working): her younger sisters, her brothers, and later her orphans. She transforms herself into a mother figure. When as a teenager she comes to Budapest to find a job and support her family, she changes her hairstyle in the manner of her mother, and only wears black. I was young, so I had to dress in an old style, so as to be accepted as mother.156 Later when she accepts Johanna Bischtizs job offer she writes in her autobiography: Marriage or the orphanage157 . We do not know if this was a hint to a refused proposal or only a theoretical choice, but she chose the orphanage.

The maintainer of the institution, the Pest Israelite Womens Association was founded by Johanna Bischitz in 1866. It was one of the most important Jewish charity organizations in Hungary, a typical example of a pro-assimilation association that soon became one of the most important nongovernmental social institution regardless of faith in Budapest. The two pillars of the association were the joint Girls Orphanage and Girls Home, and the successful kosher Soup Kitchen, which
155 156

Gero, letem, p.1. Gero, Ibid., p. 8.

61 served the poor of the whole city. Julia Richers, 158 a historian researching the association, sees the reason for the founding of this institution in the fact that poor Jewish girls if orphaned faced a more tragic fate then their brothers, who could study in heders, Jewish schools for boys , whereas girls were often the victim of white slavery and prostitution in cities. The orphanage was opened in 1867 and fulfilled a great need, as Jewish girls could not get into Christian orphanages. Besides being a home it gave the girls education and training while preserving religious values as well. It is well documented in Geros autobiography that the orphans came from all social classes and different parts of Hungary. In 1901 they moved into a bigger building which was supported by a modern teacher trainer institute and was joined by the Girls Home for poor motherless or fatherless children. When Katalin Gero died in 1944 after a long, fulfilled life, the Holocaust of the Hungarian Jewry and the closing down of all civil organizations, including the Association, and the nationalisation of charity work by the communist system, were still ahead.

7.3

Ilona Fldy (1907 Budapest - 1981 Chestnut Hill,Pennsylvania)

The second biography, that of Ilona Fldy, is more difficult to put together as she left no written sources behind. Her life and work can be investigated with oral history methods and archival work. 159 Ilona Fldy was the leader of the Kozma street settlement. During our work on the Kozma Street Settlement case study Ilona Fldys name kept coming back, she seemed like a legendary figure. Unfortunately legendary figures seldom come with facts.

It is known however, that Ilona Mria Fldy was born in Budapest in 1907. She had a younger brother, whom later had an interesting career as a communist army officer. Ilona studied Hungarian and German at the University of Szeged, and left with a teachers degree. Most probably she became involved with the Social Mission Society, whose cross emblem decorated the entrance to the settlement. A photo was preserved of her, where she is looking out of the drivers seat, a Social Mission sister standing behind her. According to the subtitle on the photo they are on a mission journey. She belonged to a circle of upper class people with a vision of charity for the needy and
157 158

Gero, Ibid., p. 297. Julia Richers, Ibid. pp. 65-75. 159 In the oral history interviews about the Kozma street settlement Fldy was mentiones several times. The Archive of City Council of Budapest holds the documentation of the IX. Department in the capitals local government which was the maintainer of the Kozma street settlement and provided Fldys salary. See IV. -1420M, List of Budapest employees, Ilona Fldy, and IV-1409C, Index of names

62 working class youth. This circle included, among others, Flp Rottenbiller (1867-1942, nicknamed Pubi), a criminal jurist, and state official, with a special interest in young offenders, and one of the leaders of the patronage movement.

Although we do not have information about Fldys family background, to her younger colleagues (like Mrs Gncz or Istvn Kroly, our oral history sources) she seemed a well- to-do, independent woman, who had a two bedroom flat in a modern villa near Budapests city park, where she often held team sessions with her colleagues. She dressed with style, was never married, but according to our sources she had a rich male friend. Based on her brothers fate her colleagues suspected that the family was of Jewish origin 160 , which hint was supported by the fact that the phrase regarded as non-Jewish (as second to pure Christian origin) was stamped on her personal card kept at the IX. Social Policy Department of the City Council of Budapest.

Fldy was an employee of Budapest City Council and in 1943 she made an oath as chief social district nurse. She was the engine behind the Kozma street settlement, the young students of social work admired her and called her Aunty Ilus, although she was only in her early thirties then. She was very active, with good management and organizational skills and international contacts. In 1947 she asked for a three month unpaid leave to go to Sweden and Denmark, and organize the transport of prefabricated wooden homes to Hungary. The leave was lengthened regularly, and Fldy managed to get a US scholarship in 1947 to study social work. Her decision to emigrate was strongly influenced by the rumours that her brother, with whom she was in a very good relationship, was executed.

Contrary to Ilonas biography, her brother is included in the Hungarian Biographical Encyclopaedia. Lajos Fldi (Fldy 1909-0987) was a military officer, who resigned in 1937 to lead a more adventurous life travelling in France, working as an interpreter and publishing self- financed Marxist brochures. In 1941, however, he was called up to the Ministry of Defence, but during the German occupation from March 1944 he was already saving the lives of Jews and communists with fake documents. He joined the Communist Party in 1945 and made a quick career in the political section of the Ministry of Defence tracking down war criminals. His superior, Gyrgy Plffy, the head of the Counterintelligence Department in the ministry first promoted him, then had him arrested in 1948 in a fake trial. Soon Plffy followed suit, and was executed in the most important

160

Mrs Gncz speculates that all officers employed in the Horthy system were inspected by the communist regime, and very few could make a new carreer. Probably his Jewishness was enough evidence of his reliability. See Oral History interview with Mrs Gncz 1,2. (Volume??, Part??)

63 trial in Hungary, the RajkTrial. Lajos Fldi was imprisoned for years, and only rehabilitated in 1964, but he did not die, as her sister was wrongly informed for some time. 161

Ilona went to the United States in 1949 and was in connection with two womens colleges (both of Quaker origin, and having a strong social work track), in Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, Pennylvania. Later she worked as a social worker at the Travellers Aid Society of Philadelphia. All along she supported financially her brother, already out of prison and two working class families in the since then closed down Kozma street settlement. In the 1960s she visited Hungary, but never returned to live there.

It is an intriguing thought how the two Fldy children went into different directions, one became a communist officer, the other a social worker with a Christian background. Both, however, shared a view of a better world, for which one can work for. This work can be a fight for justice and a total social change or a more peaceful systematic labour to adjust social problems. In one of the scarce writings remaining from Ilona Fldy, a short article about the care of young girls, sheds light on her socially sensitive but conservative world view. In Lenyifjsg a settlementben (Girl Youth in the Settlement) she defines settlement work as follows:

The goal of settlement work is family social work: the uplifting of a working class strata declined in health and morals, uncertain in job opportunities, shaken in its economic foundations, consequently backward in culture and social sensitivity. 162

The young girls of this declined working class can take part in the following activities offered by the Settlement: work school, club and peoples education course. The aim of the first one is to prepare girls of 13-15 for professional and reliable factory work in the spirit of a social sense of responsibility and taking responsibility.163 This is more critical of the family of the girls, supposedly not so professional or reliable in their work, then the system, which made the families like this. From the point of results the greatest problem of a settlement is the question of the personality of

161

Gyrgy Mark: Plffy Gyrgy s utdai ( Gyrgy Plffy and his descendants), in: let s Irodalom, 1987. nov. 20; Gyrgyn Plffy: Plffy s utdai?, in: let s Irodalom., 1987. dec. 11.; Lajosn Fldi: Buncselekmny hinyban (Acquited for lack of crime) (let s Irodalom., 1988. jan. 22.); Pl Kornis: Tanknt jelentkezem (I come forward as a witness) (Budapest, 1988); Pter Kovry E., Apm a katpolos (My father at the political section), in: Mozg Vilg, 1989. 2. sz. 162 Ilona Fldy, Lenyifjsg a settlementben [Girl Youth in the Settlement] in: Novgh, Gyula (Ed) Ibid.p. 107. These and the following quotations are translated by the authors if not marked differently. 163 Fldy, Ibid. 108.

64 the leader. The leader should have a solid world view, and should be a devoted soul, who is mentally flexible, resourceful, has practical professional skills and good humour164 , the author closes her essay. Was Ilona Fldy an ideal leader by her own standards? Mrs Gncz describes her using the mother comparison:

Ilus was on the one hand a great organizer, on the other a great teacher, and finally a very kind woman, the sort, who can create a home () She was in friendly terms with all her colleagues there (Kozma street), not really in a friendly, rather in a mother-child relationship.165

7.4

Conclusion

We sketched up the lives of two women, whom we found important in the history of Hungarian social work. One of them, Katalin Gero was once known because of her presence in literature, both as a writer and as a muse. Ilona Fldys name was only preserved in the memory of her studentcolleagues. For those who were their clients or colleagues their professional knowledge and personal qualities were unquestionable. The detailed investigation of their lives is made difficult by the fact that their institutions were closed down without a successor. Religion played a part in their professional lives through the institutions they served, but they represented two different types of approach to social work: one was a traditional Jewish charity financed by a civil organization, the other, although started as a religious charity, was incorporated into the state system through Budapest administration, which paid the employees. The most important for these women, however, was their professional calling to help people in whatever set-up it was made possible: in the family, as directress of an institution or as a simple social worker in a foreign country.

164 165

Fldy, Ibid. 109. Interview 2 with Mrs Gncz, 23.

65 Bibliography Balogh, Margit, Schlachta Margit, a keresztny feminista [S.M. the Christian Feminist] in Asszonysorsok a 20. szzadban, [Womens Fates in the 20th c.] readings at a conference under the same title, Budapest, 2000; Benedek, Elek, Katalin. Regny fiatal lnyok szmra. (Katalin. A Novel for Young Girls) Budapest, 1896 Brunszvik, Terz Magyarorszg, Veled az Isten! Naplfeljegyzsek 1848-1849 [Hungary, God is with You! Diary of 1848-1849] Budapest: Argumentum, 1999 Csizmadia, Andor. A szocilis gondoskods vltozsai Magyaroszgon [Changing Forms of Social Care in Hungary]. Budapest: MTA llam- s Jogtudomnyi Intzet, 1977. Epstein, Helen, Where She Came From (A Daughters Search for her Mothers History) A Plume Book, 1998 Esping-Andersen, Gosta, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism . Cambridge, 1990. Ferge, Zsuzsa: Fejezetek a magyar szegnypolitika trtnetbol. [Chapters from the History of Hungarian Poor-policy.] Magveto Kiad, Budapest, 1986. Ferge, Zsuzsa: Magyar szocilpolitika 1945 utn. Jegyzetek. [Hungarian social policy after 1945. Notes.] Fldi, zv. Lajosn, Buncselekmny hinyban [Acquited for lack of crime], in: let s Irodalom, 1988; jan. 22 Fldy, Ilona Lenyifjsg a settlementben, in: Novgh, Gyula (ed.), Ibid. Gero, Katalin, letem [My life], Budapest, 1929 Gero, Katalin, A szeretet munksai. A Pesti Izraelita Noegylet trtnete. [Workers of Love. The history of the Pest Israelite Womens Association.,] Budapest, 1937. Gyni, Gbor: A szocilpolitika mltja Magyarorszgon. [The past of social policy in Hungary] Budapest, MTA, 1994. Gyurgyk, Jnos, A zsidkrds Magyarorszgon [The Jewish question in Hungary], Budapest: Osiris, 2001 Hmori, Pter. A fti Suum cuique-telep trtnete (History of the Suum Cuique Settlement at Ft), Honismeret . 2001 (1). http://www.vjrktf.hu/carus/honisme/Ho000000.htm. Hanvai, Sndor. Budapest hbors jtkonysga [Wartime Charity in Budapest], Vrosi Szemle. Vol. 3-4, (1915): 1-36. Imre, Ilona, Budapest szkesfovros szocilis munkja s intzmnyei [Social work and instituions of Budapest] Budapest: Actio Chatolica, 1944 Johan, Bla Dr. Gygyul a magyar falu. [Healing Hungarian Villages].Budapest: Magyar Kirlyi Orszgos Kzegszsggyi Intzet, 1939.

66 Kiss, Jzsef, Mese a varrgprol [The tale of the sewing machine ], Budapest, 1884. Kopasz, Irma S:M: The Social Mission Society (A Faculty of the National Catholic School of Social Service of the Catholic University of America , MA dissertation, 1949 Molnr, kos (ed). Zldkereszt s a trsadalom. Mukdsi tmutat az orszgos egszsgvdelmi szvetsg fikszvetsgei rszre.[Green Cross and Society. Guide for the Branch Offices of the National Association for Health Protection]. Budapest: Orszgos Egszsgvdelmi Szvetsg, 1942 Psztor, Imre. Honnan indult, merre tart a Vrskereszt? [Where did the Red Cross start from and where does it head to?] Budapest: A Magyar Vrskereszt Orszgos Vgrehajt Bizottsgnak Szervezsi s Ifjsgi Osztlya, 1979, Psztor, Imre. A magyar s a nemzetkzi Vrskereszt mltjbl. [About the Past of the Hungarian and the International Red Cross]. Budapest: A Magyar Vrskereszt Orszgos Kzpont Klgyi Osztlya, 1969 Richers, Julia, Jtkony rabls csupn? A Pesti Izraelita Noegylet tevkenysgi krei (18661943) [Only Charitable Theft? The activities of the Pest Israelite Womens Association], in: A zsid no [The Jewess], Budapest: Magyar Zsid Mzeum, 2002, a catalogue, Marshall, Thomas, H., Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge, 1950. Mona, Ilona: Slachta Margit. Budapest: Corvinus, 1997 Molnr Frigyes (ed.). Karitsz vknyv. Szocilis s karitatv vknyv [Yearbook of Charitas. A Yearbook of Social and Charity Activities]. Budapest: Katolikus Karitsz, 1936. Novgh,Gyula (ed.). A Settlement: A Fovrosi Npmuvels Vezetokpzo Tanfolyamnak Eloadsai [The Settlement: Training Material by the Public Education Committee of the Capital]. Budapest: Hollssy Jnos Knyvnyomtat, 1937. Pik, Katalin. A szocilis munka trtnete Magyarorszgon, 1817-1990 [The History of Social Work in Hungary, 1817-1990]. Budapest: Hilscher Rezso Szocilpolitikai Egyeslet, 2001 Swaan, Abram de, In Care of the State. Health Care, Education, and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the Modern Era. Cambridge, 1988. Szalai, Jlia: A trsadalombiztosts rdekviszonyairl. Trtneti vzlat a hazai trsadalombiztosts funkciinak vltozsairl. [Stakes in social insurance. Historical Sketch of the Changing Functions of Hungarian Social Insurance.] Medvetnc, 1989. Szikra, Dorottya: Trsadalombiztosts s modernizci. (Social security and modernization.) In. Krkp reform utn. Tanulmnyok a nyugdjrendszerrol. [Situation after reform. Studies on the pension system.] Ed. Augusztinovich, Mria. Kzgazdasgi Szemle Kiad, Budapest, 2000. Szikra, Dorottya: The Thorny Path to Implementation: Bismarckian social insurance in Hungary in the late 19th century. European Journal of Social Security. Volume 6, Nr 3, September 2004. Szokolay, Leo. A hazai szocilis kpzs vzlatos ttekintse [A Rough Overview of Social Courses in Hungary], Anya- s Csecsemovdelem Vol. 10. Nr.11. (1937): 897-905. Tomka, Bla: Szocilpolitika Magyarorszgon eurpai perspektvban. [Social policy in Hungary in a European perspective.] Szzadvg, Budapest, 2003. Zimmermann, Susan and Gerhard Melinz. Gyermek s ifjsgvdelem Budapesten s Bcsben a dualizmus korban [Child and youth care in Budapest and Wiena during the Dualist Period], in: Gyermeksorsok s gyermekvdelem Budapesten a Monarchia idejn [The Fate of Children and Childprotection in Budapest under the Monarchy]. Budapest: A Fovrosi Szab Ervin Knyvtr Budapest Gyujtemnynek killtsa (Exhibition by the Budapest Collection of the National Ervin Szab Library), 1996, Zimmermann, Susan, Geschtzte und ungeschtzte Arbeitsverhaltnisse von der Hochindustrialisiereung bis zur Weltwirtschaftskrise. Frankfurt-Wien, 1997.

67 Susan Zimmermann, Die bessere Halfte Frauenbewegungen und Frauenbestrebungen in Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bus 1918, Budapest: Napvilg, 1999; jvry, Krisztin. rjsts s modernizci[Aryanization and Modernization], Szzadvg, 2004 (4).

Primary sources Oral History interviews with Mrs. Zsuzsanna Gncz, December 2004-April 2005, Istvn Kroly, December 2004-April 2005, by Dorottya Szikra and Eszter Varsa.

Archive of City Council of Budapest: See IV. -1420M, List of Budapest employees, Ilona Fldy, and IV-1409C, Index of names IX.

Decree 800/1942 by the Ministry of Welfare, Np s Csaldvdelem [The Protection of People and Families] (1942): 391-396. A Kozma-utcai Szocilis Munkakzssg Tagjai (ed.). rdemes? [Is it Worth It?] 1942-44

A szkesfovros trsadalompolitikai gyosztlynak 1940. vi jelentse [The Yearly Report of the Social Policy Department of Budapest from 1940]. Budapest: Budapest Szkesfovros Hzinyomdja, 1941.