¹ Crisen, Sabina A.-M., Minorities and Tolerance: Central and Eastern Europe & the NIS (Washington, 2001).Google Scholar In former communist societies, most issues are defined by ethnic criteria. Schöpflin, George, “Nationalism and Ethnic Minorities in Post-Communist Europe,” in Europe's New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict, ed. Caplan, Richard and Feffer, John (New York, 1996), 152.Google Scholar

² “Minority building” is an ever-changing category used and constructed by different individuals and groups for different goals, even though it is similar to “nation building,” which often invokes a ideological sense of development.

³ This follows the advice of Rogers Brubaker, who argues in support of viewing nationhood as a category of practice, not a category of analysis. Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The writing of Fredrik Barth has also influenced the arguments in this article, especially concepts of self-ascription and ascription of others. Barth, Fredrik, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, repr. ed. (Long Grove, 1998).Google Scholar

⁴ See Ludwig, Klemens, Ethnische Minderheiten in Europa (Munich, 1995).Google Scholar

⁵ Istvàn Deàk points out that all statistical data on nationalities should be treated with skepticism. Deàk, Istvàn, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (New York, 1992), 14.Google Scholar

⁶ Smelser, Ronald M., The Sudeten Problem, 1933–1938: Volkstumspolitik and the Formulation of Nazi Foreign Policy (Middletown, 1975), 261.Google Scholar

⁷ Magocsi, Paul Robert, Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Seattle, 1993), 164–68.Google Scholar

⁸ This article is part of a larger project on minority building from the late nineteenth century throughout the twentieth century, using the Hungarian-Germans as an example. For reasons of space, this article focuses on one period of this history.

⁹ This group will be referred to as Hungarian-Germans, as this is the current, accepted name, even though it is a designation that became popular only after World War II. See Seewann, Gerhard, “Siebenbürger Sachse, Ungarndeutscher, Donauschwabe? Überlegungen zur Identitätsproblematik des Deutschtums in Südosteuropa,” in Ungarndeutsche und Ethnopolitik (Budapest, 2000), 98.Google Scholar There also was and remains the name Schwabe or svàb (Swabian), which has very little to do with their land of origin, since only a small percentage of them originated from Swabia. It is, however, another name for the Hungarian-Germans.

¹⁰ In this article, the term Magyar will usually refer to ethnic Hungarians and Hungarian to inhabitants of the state of Hungary. This oft quoted dichotomy is a little misleading, however, since in Hungarian there is no distinction, and the original meanings of Magyar and Hungarian were the same. Ignotus, Paul, Hungary (New York, 1972), 12.Google Scholar

¹¹ The use of these levels has been influenced by Rogers Brubaker's study of nationhood by focusing on a triadic nexus of national minority, nationalizing state, and homeland nationalism, which are themselves often in conflict with each other, since they lay claims to the same set of people. Brubaker, , Nationalism Reframed, 111.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., 61. See also Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 14, 25.Google Scholar

¹³ Hobsbawm, E. J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990), 12.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The period from 1918 to 1929 is framed by two major international events: the end of the Great War and the economic crisis of 1929. It is true that such periodization is not only arbitrary, but problematic, since events may be watersheds for some and only passive information for others. In the structuring of this article's argument, the arbitrariness of the period is not so problematic. The slice of the past is more important, as is our understanding of the overlapping, ever-changing sense of ethnic minority at any given time. Of course, things changed, but the change is not tied to the reaction to one or a couple of major events, but rather to a changing political, social, cultural, and economic context.

¹⁵ Greenfeld, Liah, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 22.Google Scholar

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¹⁹ Helton, Arthur C. and Weatherill, James, “New Diasporas in Eastern Europe: Legal Protection of National Minorities in Hungary, Russia and Ukraine,”Google Scholar in Minorities and Tolerance, ed. Crisen, 93–94.Google Scholar

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²¹ Fink, Carole, “Stresemann's Minority Policies, 1924–29,” Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979): 404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² Connor, Walker, “A Nation Is a Nation, Is a State, Is an Ethnic Group, Is a …” in Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, 1994), 101.Google Scholar

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²⁴ Connor, , “A Nation Is a Nation,” 101, 103.Google Scholar

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²⁶ Ibid., 125–26.

²⁷ See Sugar, Peter F., “External and Domestic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism,” in Nationalism in Eastern Europe, ed. Sugar, Peter F. and Lederer, Ivo John (Seattle, 1969), esp. 3–6.Google Scholar

²⁸ Verdery, Katherine, “The Unmaking of an Ethnic Collectivity: Transylvania's Germans,” American Ethnologist 12, no. 1 (1985): 62–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Eriksen, , Ethnicity and Nationalism, 6.Google Scholar

³⁰ Deutsch, Karl W., Nationalism and Social Communication, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1966)Google Scholar, in Nationalism, ed. Hutchinson and Smith, 29.Google Scholar

³¹ Brubaker, Rogers and Cooper, Frederik, “Beyond ‘Identity,”’ Theory and Society 29 (2000): 18, 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² Ibid., 14.

³³ Greenfeld, , Nationalism, 548.Google Scholar

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³⁵ Seton-Watson, , Nations and States, 339.Google Scholar

³⁶ This level is the focus of a great deal of scholarship on nationalism. It is similar to what Paul R. Brass describes as the instrumentalist point of view, in contrast to the primordialist point of view. Brass, Paul R., “Élite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia,” in Nationalism, ed. Hutchinson and Smith, 83–89.Google Scholar

³⁷ For scholars such as E. J. Hobsbawm and Miroslav Hroch, this was part of the early stage of development, before a sense of nationness spread to the masses. Again, the argument in this article is that at all times there were multiple definitions of an ethnic minority, including an understanding of ethnicity by the masses, usually the peasants.

³⁸ The most infamous example is the minister-president Gyula Gömbös, whose original family name was Knöpfle. Other examples include Ferenc Erkel, Sàndor Mária, and Mihàly Munkàcsy. See Lendvai, Paul, The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat (Princeton, 2003), 354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ Gottas, Friedrich, “Die Deutschen in Ungarn,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol 3., Die Völker des Reiches, ed. Wandruszka, Adam and Urbanitsch, Pieter (Vienna, 1980), 340–410.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Spira, Thomas, German-Hungarian Relations and the Swabian Problem; From Kàrolyi to Gömbös 1919–1936 (Boulder, 1977), 10.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Schwind, Hedwig, Jakob Bleyer: Ein Vorkämpfer und Erwecker des ungarländischen Deutschtums (Munich, 1960), 85.Google Scholar

⁴² Ibid., 40.

⁴³ Orszàgos Levéltàr (National Archive), Budapest, Hungary. (Hereafter cited as: O.L) O.L K.28–194–1930–5007. See also Fata, Márta, “Minderheitenkonzeption und Politik Jakob Bleyers,” in Jakob Bleyer: Ein Leben für das Ungarndeutschtum, ed. Hambuch, Wendelin (Budapest, 1994), 17.Google Scholar One could argue that this type of argument is similar to Benedict Anderson's discussion of Creole pilgrimages in the new world.

⁴⁴ Bleyer, Jakob, “Nation, Volk, Nationalität,” Nation und Staat 3 (1929–1930): 283–301.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ At the beginning there were many problems for the newspaper. The editorial staff did not have a secretary or even a typewriter. Everything was written by hand before it went to the printing press. The paper was often saved by sacrifices made by the publisher and donations by subscribers, but eventually the paper did better. At the beginning of 1922, there were approximately 5,000 customers, and by 1927, the paper was delivered to 400 villages. Yet despite its large circulation, Das Sonntagsblatt did not reach every German peasant. Because of the poor education of the peasants, many German peasants could not read a German text. Schwind, , Jakob Bleyer, 94, 97.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ For a discussion of Bleyer, and Das SonntagsblattGoogle Scholar, especially Bleyer's use of the newspaper to teach the Hungarian-Germans, see Fata, , “Jakob Bleyer und Das ‘Sonntagsblatt.’ Gründung und Entwicklung des Wochenblatts von 1921 bis 1933,” in Deutsche Literatur im Donau-Karpatenraum (1918–1996), ed. Fassei, Horst (Tübingen, 1997), esp. 16.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ The Pester Lloyd was still published, but its audience remained educated Hungarians who spoke German, as well as non-Magyar-speaking people in and outside Hungary.

⁴⁸ Das Sonntagsblatt, 2 10 1921.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ This expression is the title of a speech given by Gustav Gratz to the members of the student organization Suevia in November 1937. Published in Gratz, Gustav, Deutschungarische Probleme (Budapest, 1938), 9.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ There was often conflict between the two newspapers. O.L. K.28–208–1925–71.

⁵¹ Landpost, 6 04 1924.Google Scholar

⁵² Bleyer had been a researcher and teacher of German studies and folklore. Bonomi, Eugen, “Mein Weg als Volkskundler,” Archiv der Suevia Pannonica 4 (1967): 43–49.Google Scholar

⁵³ This is from a report dated 29 June 1921 in the Archiv des auswartigen Amtes (hereafter cited as PA AA). PA AA-po.5/R74172–8. III U 974.

⁵⁴ The most obvious example is Franz Basch, who succeeded Bleyer after his death in 1933 as the leader of the Hungarian-Germans. Even in 1929, the German government was informed that many younger Hungarian-Germans were not satisfied with Bleyer's style and tempo. PA AA-po.5/R74172–8. A.Nr 129 P.24.

⁵⁵ Ignotus, , Hungary, 59.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ According to Macartney, C. A., “Magyar opinion, conscious and unconscious, underwent a violent and perhaps a natural reaction to the old ideas and practices. It felt that concessions to the nationalities were not only futile but wrong in principle.… If the nationalities had only been Magyarized they would never have been lost. The fault had thus lain, not in too much Magyarization, but in too little.” Macartney, C. A., Hungary and Her Successors: the Treaty of Trianon and its Consequences, 1919–1937 (London, 1937), 447.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Làszló Kontler uses this expression as a chapter title in his book: Kontler, Làszló, A History of Hungary: Millennium in Central Europe (New York, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁸ In Hungary this led to a preoccupation with the concept offaj, which can be translated as species or breed. Cornelius, Deborah S., In Search of the Nation: The New Generation of Hungarian Youth in Czechoslovakia, 1925–1934 (Boulder, 1998), 147.Google Scholar See also Fach, Zsigmond Pál, ed., Magyarorszàg története, 1918–1919, 1919–1945 (The history of Hungary) (Budapest, 1976), 812.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Balogh, Sándor, éd., A magyar àllam és a nemzetiségek: a magyarorszàgi nemzetiségi kérdés történetének jogforràsai 1848–1993 (The Hungarian state and the nationalities: Legal sources concerning the history of the Hungarian nationality question) (Budapest, 2002), 186–200.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Already in 1879, a law was passed making Hungarian the language of instruction. Balogh, , A magyar àllam és a nemzetiségek.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Spira, , German-Hungarian Relations and the Swabian Problem, x.Google Scholar

⁶² Thomas Spira argues that the Swabians became “pawns” as the Hungarians were suspended between two fires. Ibid., 131.

⁶³ For a discussion of how Germans reconfigured their identities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Jarausch, Konrad H. and Geyer, Michael, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton, 2003), esp. 221–44.Google Scholar

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⁶⁵ Ibid., 117.

⁶⁶ Ronald Smelser has argued that, after 1933, Volkstumsarbeit can be divided into three types of organizations. There were the traditionalist-type organizations, which had existed long before Hitler; there were the official National Socialist organizations; and there were radical, splinter organizations, which were more radical than the National Socialists. Among the various organizations represented by these three types there were many differences. Perhaps the most important difference between traditionalists and Nazi organizations was in their understanding of the role of the ethnic Germans. Traditionalists focused on the lives of ethnic Germans abroad, whereas National Socialist policy put Germany first and saw ethnic Germans as useful to the Reich. Smelser, , The Sudenten ProblemGoogle Scholar, 14ff.

⁶⁷ Brubaker, , Nationalism Reframed, 119.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Martin Broszat argues that völkisch, however, was far from a unified, objective category used by everyone to mean the same thing. Broszat, Martin, “Die völkische Ideologie und der Nationalsozialismus,” Deutsche Rundschau 84 (1895): 56.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See, for example, articles from a Cologne newspaper in O.L. K.28–93csomó-193tétel. O.L K.28–193–1926–C–11179.

⁷⁰ Tilkovszky, Loránt, Die Weimarer Republik und die Deutschen Minderheiten im Donaubecken (Budapest, 1980), 6.Google Scholar

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⁷⁵ Ibid., 106. Yet since the Nazis suspected liberalism and pacifism among the Wandervögel, the organization was disbanded once Hitler came to power. Ibid., 104.

⁷⁶ PA AA R74209. 19 June 1929.

⁷⁷ See Aubin, Hermann et al. , eds. Deutsche Ostforschung: Ergebnisse und Aufgaben seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Leipzig, 1943).Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Paikert, , The Danube Swabians, 107–8.Google Scholar See also Ritter, Ernst, Dos Deutsche Ausland-Institut in Stuttgart, 1917–1945: Ein Beispiel deutscher Volkstumsarbeit zwischen den Weltkriegen (Wiesbaden, 1976).Google Scholar

⁷⁹ O.L. K.28–93csomó–193tétel. O.L. K.28–193–1926–332.

⁸⁰ Tilkovszky, , Die Weimarer Republik, 26.Google Scholar Also see Burleigh, Michael, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1988).Google Scholar

⁸¹ Weber-Kellermann, Ingeborg, ed., Zur Interethnik: Donauschwaben, Siebenbürger Sachsen und ihre Nachbarn (Frankfurt, 1978), 11z–12.Google Scholar For an example of such research, see Jungbauer, Gustav, “Die deustche Volkskunde in der Tschechoslowakei,”Google Scholar reprinted in Weber-Kellermann, ed., Zur Interethnik, 73ff.

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⁸³ The language-island research of Max Hildebert Boehm served as the foundation of his three-volume 1934 handbook of German Volkskunde that could be used for National Socialist activity in the East, such as Germanizing conquered territory in Poland. Ibid., 77ff. This is the reason why scholars such as Weber-Kellermann have changed the model to interethnic relations.

⁸⁴ Fink, Carole, “Defender of Minorities: Germany in the League of Nations, 1926–1933,” Central European History 5, no. 4 (1972): 336CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brubaker, , Nationalism Reframed, 129.Google Scholar

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⁸⁹ Solymàr, Imre, “Fleiss and Sparsamkeit: die zwei wichtigsten Momente des wirtschaftlichen Verhaltens und der Mentalität der Deutschen in Südtransdanubien,” in A magyarorszàgi németség története Szent Istvàn koràtól napjainkig (The history of the Hungarian-Germans from the era of Saint Stephan to today), ed. Füzes, Miklós (Pécs, 1997), 159–70.Google Scholar

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⁹³ According to Johann Eppel, when farming organizations were created in some villages, many farmers did not participate, because they were too busy with their work. One must then wonder how much time they spent reading and thinking about the picture of them being presented by Jakob Bleyer and others. Eppel, Johann, Tevel. Zweieinhalb Jahrhunderte schwäbische Ortsgeschichte in Ungarn, 1701–1948 (Budapest, 1988), 404.Google Scholar

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⁹⁵ Tolna County Archives. Völgység járás (The District of Völgység) collection.

⁹⁶ A search of a number of different district collections in Baranya county has led to no documents concerning German activity in the 1920s. See also O.L. K.28–194–1929–4257.

⁹⁷ Borrowing from sociolinguistic explanations of language use, the anthropologist Susan Gal has written on “code-switching.” Gal's work focuses on the symbolic association between language and social group, especially regarding status, power, and solidarity. She looks at bilingual communities, including Hungarian-Germans, and their “code-switching” practices and language choice as a form of “resistance” to the language of the nation-state. See especially Gal, Susan, “Codeswitching and Consciousness in the European Periphery,” American Ethnologist 14 (1987): 637–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁹⁹ These exchanges were often reciprocal, with Hungarian children going to German-language villages. These children, boys and girls, were called Tauschkinder/cseregyerekek (exchange children). Andràsfalvy, Bertalàn, “Die Arbeitsbeziehungen zwischen ungarischen und deutschen Dörfern in der Umgebung von Budapest,”Google Scholar in Zur Interethnik, ed. Weber-Kellermann, 301–14.Google Scholar

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¹⁰³ There is a growing literature on viewing peasants as active participants in defining their ethnicity or nationness. See Lehning, James, Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stauter-Halsted, Keely, Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914 (Ithaca, 2001).Google Scholar