The first 18th-century Hungarian association with an (unintended) cultural relevance was the group of Maria Theresa’s Hungarian Guards, to which each county in the Kingdom of Hungary delegated two young noblemen. Several intellectual representatives of Enlightenment Patriotism, including György Bessenyei and Sándor Báróczi, served there in the 1760-70s.
Inspired by Enlightenment social philanthropy, public-benefit associations, also of a cultural or educational character, sprang up, as well as reading circles (Lesekabinette). Reading rooms, which sold or lent books, and with subscriptions to newspapers and journals, were devoted to self-improvement and sociability and became a gathering place for literati; the first opened in Buda in 1791 with 126 members. Fraternities of Hungarian-speaking students were also beginning to be established: the one in Sopron, a town with a majority of German-speakers, was founded in 1790. The Pesti Magyar Társaság (“Hungarian Society of Pest”), organized by a handful of students from the university, was headed by András Vályi, the Hungarian chair at the time. More hermetic and initiatory in nature, Masonic societies also flourished; by 1780 some thirty lodges operated in the country, with a total membership of around 1000. These were banned, along with all other clubs and assemblies, after the 1794 exposure of the Hungarian Jacobin conspiracy with links to Freemasonry; many literati were executed, imprisoned (including Ferenc Verseghy and Ferenc Kazinczy), or exiled. After his release, Kazinczy, jailed between 1794 and 1801 in Spielberg and Kufstein, established a nationwide correspondence network of literate conversation, with himself writing some 6000 letters, aiming to make up for the lack of a public-sphere cultural and intellectual life.
From the 1820s the national movement increasingly took root in social clubs, cultural societies, and economic associations. (The Hungarian Diet in Pozsony/Pressburg/Bratislava, summoned every 3-5 years and remaining in session for 2-3 years, also offered a forum for cultural activities.) A gentlemen’s club, mainly for the aristocracy, was launched by István Széchenyi in 1827 in Pest. It was called the Nemzeti (“National”) Casino, in an attempt to avoid the subversive connotations of the word “club”. Similar institutions followed suit, the Merchants’ Casino (1828) and the Buda Casino (1841) among them. By 1833 there were 29 of these, also in provincial towns, and eventually in every county, usually one for the gentry and one for the commoners. Offering entertainment and a forum for intellectual improvement, the National Casino was equipped with a reading room and a library with some 3000 books in German, French, English, and Hungarian.
The Kisfaludy Társaság, a literary society founded in 1836 by the friends and disciples of the late dramatist, poet, and painter Károly Kisfaludy, initiated several publishing ventures (among others, a series of novel translations and of Greek classics, and a series of Hungarian classics in their National Library series), sponsored prize essays on national culture, competitions for literary works (the one for a “historical folk epic” in 1846 was won by János Arany’s Toldi), and also initiated and sponsored János Erdélyi’s collection of Hungarian folk songs, Népdalok és mondák (“Folk songs and sagas”, 3 vols, 1846-48).
Other, less formal, literary associations of the era included the National Circle (1841), which developed into the Opposition Circle in 1847, with the poet Vörösmarty among its leaders. The Tízek Társasága (“Society of Ten”), a group of young Romantics (with Sándor Petőfi and Mór Jókai among them), met at the Café Pilvax in downtown Pest, which would serve as the headquarters of the revolutionary activities in March 1848.
The Pesti Műegylet (“Pest Art Society”), founded in 1839, organized exhibitions (the first of which took place in the Pest Redoute in 1840), lectures, and published reproductions. While being severely criticized for not being national enough (they also propagated German-Austrian art), their annual competitions in fact did a great deal to propagate national art and the genre of historical painting.
Joining the flourishing field of associations with philanthropic and/or national intentions, like the Pesti Jótékony Nőegylet (“Pest Charitable Women’s Society”) active since 1817, an organization called Védegylet (“Protection Association”) was formed in 1844, which, under the directorship of Lajos Kossuth, initiated a campaign to purchase only Hungarian industrial and commercial products. The Védegylet organized banquets and torchlight parades to popularize the cause: their ball in early 1845, hosted by the Count Zichy sisters, was decorated with Hungarian flags and banners (which, as it turned out, were ironically produced in Austria) and attracted a large amount of guests, most of whom appeared in Magyar dress.
The plan for a Hungarian Scholarly Society was first conceived by the linguist Miklós Révai in the 1780s as an association for language improvement. Révai intended it to produce a standard Hungarian grammar and a comprehensive Hungarian dictionary, to collect and publish old Hungarian manuscripts and prints, and to publish a collection of ancient Hungarian literature. When eventually established in 1825, the Hungarian Scholarly Society – which later, following a donation from Széchenyi, became the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – focused on Hungarian language improvement rather than scholarship or science in general. While the initial sections of the Academy included linguistics, philosophy, historiography, mathematics, natural sciences, and jurisprudence, the majority of the founding members, like Kazinczy or Kölcsey, were literati, with Ferenc Toldy/Schedel serving as secretary between 1835 and 1861. Many of its members were domiciled in their country estates. For them the general assemblies held in Pest served as forums of sociability: many who had had decades-long friendships through correspondence met here in person for the first time. The Academy initially retained the character of an aristocratic organization: Palatine Joseph was its protector, and the historian Count József Teleki (later governor of Transylvania) served as its first president. After the failure of the War of Independence in 1849, several of the Academy members (like the novelist and political thinker József Eötvös, the historical novelist Miklós Jósika, and the historian Mihály Horváth) fled into exile, and the Academy was not allowed to hold plenary sessions until 1858, its workings being restricted to closed meetings of the sections.
In 1859 a regional scholarly society, the Transylvanian Museum Association, was set up, after an Erdélyi Magyar Nyelvmívelő Társaság (“Hungarian Language Society”) had already operated in the region between 1793 and 1806, on the initiative of György Aranka (1737–1817). The Magyar Királyi Természettudományi Társulat (“Hungarian Royal Science Society”) had been active since 1841, and other disciplines also started to establish their own associations: the Hungarian Historical Society, founded in 1867, embraced the nationwide network of local historical societies and supported local research and museums. The meetings of the Szent István Társulat (“St Stephen Society”), a Catholic cultural association of some 8000 members, which also had a publishing venture, was founded in 1848 and attracted political figures and literati, even many Protestants.
In the oppositional climate of the 1850s, a characteristic form of cultural sociability arose: the dalidó. This was a public event hosted by a handful of authors touring the country with recitations of their patriotic poems, with Gypsy music being played in the intervals. Besides giving occasion for national self-celebration or self-lamenting and the expression of political resistance (they were indeed closely followed by the Austrian secret police), the events were usually festive in nature.
After the 1867 Compromise, associations were once again allowed to operate freely. The 1868 Nationalities Law guaranteed all ethnic groups the right to form cultural, educational, and economic associations – even if they were closely watched if deemed untrustworthy. As Széchenyi’s National Casino became an exclusively aristocratic club, in the 1880s two counterparts were established in Pest: the Országos (“Country”) Casino for the lower gentry and government officials, and the Lipótvárosi Casino for the Jewish bourgeoisie. With the further proliferation and ramification of associations, even counter-societies were beginning to rise: the Petőfi Társaság (“Petőfi Society”) was set up in 1876 not only to foster the already immense cult of the poet but also to oppose state-sponsored literary associations and conservative Academism. While from the 1870-80s the salons, like that of the Wohl sisters in Pest, were cultural seeding grounds, during the fin-de-siècle coffee-houses became the centre of intellectual life, where groups of journalists, writers, playwrights, sculptors and painters would congregate.
