Kosice

Die ungarische Sprachenfrage und Spracherneuerung kamen im 18. Jahrhundert in Folge der Umbruchprozesse in der Gelehrtenwelt einerseits und den politischen Konflikten andererseits auf. Zu nennen sind hier insbesondere die Kritik am Nutzen der lateinischen Sprache im Schulunterricht, die mangelnde Kenntnis dieser Sprache im Kontrast mit dem aufgeklärten Ideal der allgemeinen Bildung von allen Gesellschaftsschichten und die Germanisierungspolitik von Kaiser Joseph II. Gelehrte wie Ferenc Kazinczy (Königreich Ungarn) oder György Aranka (Siebenbürgen) versuchten durch die Gründung von inoffiziellen Gesellschaften und ungarisch-sprachigen Gelehrtenzeitschriften die ungarische Sprache zu befördern, wobei all diese nur sehr kurzlebig waren aufgrund persönlicher, organisatorischer sowie politischer Hindernisse. Eine tiefe Zäsur erfuhr die ungarische Gelehrsamkeit durch die Jakobinerbewegung, in der einige bedeutende ungarische Gelehrte den Tod fanden. Wenn auch kurzfristig diese Versuche nur geringfügig erfolgreich waren, ebneten sie langfristig den Weg für die „Magyarisierung“ in den 1830er- und 1840er-Jahren, insbesondere die Einführung von Ungarisch als Staatssprache im Jahre 1844.

The two most important changes in the urban spaces of the walled cities of Hungary in the period between the end of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth were the growth of the outer cities and the demolition of the city walls. This essay examines the consequences of these changes from the perspective of the social and political consequences of the shifts that took place in the concept of the city and the borders of the urban space, considering a specifi c case on the one hand, the city of Kassa (or Košice), and national tendencies on the other. The physical growth of the city and the gradual urbanization of the outer cities not only led to changes in the prevailing understanding of the " city " (which earlier had been identifi ed as the area within the city walls), but made increasingly inevitable the creation, in a space that had been fragmented by the various privileges enjoyed by some of its inhabitants, of a legally unifi ed city, as well as the incorporation of the outer cities, which had varying statuses, into the jurisdiction of the municipality. This, however, confl icted with the prevailing system of noble privileges, and the situation went unresolved until 1848, when the revolution made possible the transformation of the political structure of the entire country. This essay examines the problems that arose with the transformation of urban spaces inherited from earlier centuries, urban spaces which were once clearly demarcated by city walls, but which with the passage of time became increasingly amorphous and fl uid. The focus of analysis is Kassa (in Slovakian: Košice, its German name is Kaschau), a city lying on the banks of the Hernád River, where the northeastern range of the Carpathian mountains meets the lowlands, the region known in Hungarian as the Alföld. Today Kassa is the second largest city of the Slovak Republic. Throughout the period under discussion, it was a real multiethnic city, mostly with German, Hungarian and Slovakian speaking inhabitants. The growth of the city, which was founded in the second half of the thirteenth century by settlers (for the most part German speakers – hospes), was infl uenced in part by its advantageous geographical location, but also to a signifi cant extent by the fact that it fell on an important trade route that crossed the Carpathians, linking the Kingdom of Hungary with Poland, Silesia, and