IN THE BANAT

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 129, 3 June 1922, Page 14

IN THE BANAT

A CONTEST

OVER LANGUAGES TAUGHT IN

SCHOOLS

A writer in a New York / journal saj's : — '

During the Peace Conference tRe mysterious word "Banat" puzzled many of us, from JUoyd George down, and the fact that the American delegation had the courage to attack and carry through a task never before attempted—the drawing of a line through the Banat which should separate Serb and Rumanian—gives it a peculiar interest for'

us. ]Here in what was the south-eastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is an extraordinary mixture of nationalities, clustered about the historic City of Temeshvar.

Temeshvar was an old Roman city, lrajan s headquarters when he conquered the Dacians; Goths, Huns, and Lombards laid it waste; in 895 it was conquered by the Magyars, who cele- ?™ l elr millennium of occupation in 1U95; but curiously enough, it never wa« really Hungarian. Held by, the Turks lor 160 years ending 1716, the Banat was largely deserted when they withdrew after their defeat by Prince Eugene of Savoy, under the walla of Temeshvar; and German colonists from Austria and Southern Germany were brought yin and ■settled all over the Banat. Rumanian shepherds and farmers had -j apparently always held the mountain valleys and •pastures, and kept coming down into the plains; Serbs swarmed in from"the south, and Temeshvar became predominantly a German city, with a Hungarian varnish. 1 rom 1867 on the Hungarian Government began systematic attempts to Magyarise the city; hosts of Hungarian office-holders descended on' Temeshvar, and in 1872 a Hungarian newspaper appeared for 'the first time. Temeshvar's first newspaper had come out in 1851, and was in Serb; in January,. 1852, it was followed by the Temeshvar Zeitung, which has been published continuously in German since then.

The Hungarians had, however, another •weapon, and a far more powerful one, than the press—the schools. The Germans had a few parochial schools—these "Schwabsn" (Suabians), as they are called, _ and almost entirely Roman Catholic; besides them, the Hungarians set_ up handsome new public schools, in which the instruction was exclusively in Magyar. . Not; merely did the Hungarians _ refuse to support German and Rumanian State public schools, but they would not allow the Rumanians to erect and run a lycee (high school) in either Temeshvar, Caran-Sebesh or Arad; and in 1907 Count Apponyi promulgated his famous law which insisted that in all Hungary every school—whether parochial, denominational, private or of the State—should give at least seventeen' hcjjuis a week of instruction in Hungar-' ian. The Magyars were in an actual minority in HungaTy—about 40 per cent. ■eight and a-half million out of nineteen and a-half—arid felt that their only security was jn Magyarising the Slav, Rumanian, and German majority. In the Banat they took other measures also. Some of the Germans, intellectual leaders, fearing that the Suabians would lose all consciousness of' their origin, founded in 1910 the "Schwabischer Kulturverband," to encourage German night schools, theatricals, gymnastic clubs etc., and began publishing an innocent farmers' almanac in German; the Hungarian authorities confiscated copies as they, passed through the mails, and even sent gendarmes.to seize them wheuthey learned they had been delivered. It must be remembered that German was the official language of the otherihalf of the monarchy, and that for the material upbuilding, even of the Hungarian State thorough knowledge of German would be of gTeat advantage.

I say nothing of the measures taken against the Serbs and the, Rumanians, which are easily understandable, eince the authorities at Budapest were always afraid that these nationalities might unite with their mother countries; but the mere practical value of German ■would forbid its extirpation, one would think. Still, I have been greatly struck, in talking with 'Hungarians, to observe ■how closely they are tied to their own1 tongue^ In Arad I interviewed a prominent Hungarian lawyer, who was "for many years a leading member of the Austro-Hungarian joint delegation, and he'could only speak a few words of German. In Cluj (Koloissvar) I found two Protestant bishope quite uncertain of the language, and a brief note one of them wrote me in German has several elementary mistakes. The contrast with the Rumanians of Hungary, most of whom speak fluently two, and ' many three, languages is^ quite remarkable. After the armistice Temeshvar was occupied by the Serbs, and a few French Colonial troops and the Serbs stripped the town with German thoroughness, since they knew it would become Rumanian. They even went through the school laboratories and took all equipment that looked valuable, including everything of copper. They drove up with twenty trucks to the finest school in Temeshvar, the big Piarist Lycee, and were only stopped by the happy coincidence that the French officers were dining there that day. One hears laments about the Serbs and Jugo-Slavia on every side. I talked with a Romanian Senator whoso village is out in half by the extraordinary line drawn by our Peace Commission, with al{prominent German who had just come back from an extended trip there, and with members of the boundary commission who are trying to smooth out the unnatural frontier line. All agree that Jugo-Slavia is much :nnre prosperous than Rumania; she has the Hungarian, Austrian, and Swiss markets for her produce almost at her gates, )while Rumania must sell her producte much further afield; biit all commiserated the poor Germans and Rumanians whom our commission turned over to the S&rbs. Not merely do the Germans in the Jugoslav Banat have no schools of their own (the best they can get is parallel classes in the Serb schools) and no electoral rights, but I was assured by several that they have no property rights, and that German peasants are constantly "being- turned out of their farms, -which are then handed over to Serbs who are bought up from the old kingdom as colonists —precisely the old Hungarian method. As for the nearly half a million Rumanians in Jugo-Slavia, they have no •public State schools at all, and very few private or denominational ones; nor are they allowed to worship in their own language. ' In view of all this, the Rumanian tolerance is perfectly astonishing. Where in the past all public proclamations were posted in Temeshvar only in Hungarian, practically every one I saw was in German and Hungarian as well as Rumanian—in French as well in the hotels as at' Kish-ineff, where Russian replaced Hungarian. I visited the big HungarianGerman gymnasium ' (advanced f high school) maintained by the Rumanian State, where the instruction is carried on in both these languages, but not in Rumanian, which is taught only four hours a week''thereafter —no more than French! This German instruction at State expense is something new under the Rumanians. Then we went to the Jewish gymnasium, a very creditablo private institution in orowded quwtenu

where the instruction is also in Hung&riajy except in the elementary class in Rumanian geography. Then we were shown around the fine modern building of the Piarist ■ Fathers, in which they teach a, thousand boys of all religious affiliations, using exclusively Hungarian. Temeshvar has also a Rumanian lycee (high school) for boys and one for girls; three normal schools, one in Rumanian and two (Roman Catholic) in German; a State commercial high school, in all three languages; an advanced trade school, in both Rumanian and Hungarian; two Hungarian grammar schools, maintained J by Roman^ Catholic organisations. There^ are seventeen large primary schools, of < which only three are exclusively in Rumanian, three Hungarian and three Serb; the others are predominantly both, Hungarian and German. Certainly no one can accuse the new Rumanian school organisation of being illiberal to the minorities. . The most amusing thing is the toleration of old Hungarian textbooks with the Hungarian national hymn, spread-eagled patriotic pieces, etc.; I saw one in use in a Rumanian State • school in Temeshvar which spoke of the cruelties practised by the Wallach (Rumanian) rebels in Transylvania in 1848! I even caw the portraits of Deak and Kossuth still in honourable position in one of the Temeshvar Hungarian schools. An outsider cannot help feeling that the Rumanians still show the Hungarians much the same deference that they did when they were the ruling race. There has ; been, and still is, much bitterness; the street names have been changed whenever-.they commemorated Hungarian national heroes, and I find much feeling over this, which was, however,- a most natural step; we. should ourselves have changed "Hohenzollern-avenue" and "Francis Joseph Boulevard," I feel sure. At any rate, the shop signs are in Hungarian and German as well asßumanian —I can name other succession States not nearly so considerate; there are half a dozen dailies in German or Hungarian, censored to be sure, but so are the Rumanian. If the Government continues along as reasonable lines, the Rumanian enjoys a fair degree of prosperity, I think the Germans and Hungarians of the Banat will soon feel quite at home in the Rumanian State.