This is true notwithstanding the fact that at the beginning of the anti-Semitic wave that hit late 19th century Europe an active anti-Semitic movement arose in Hungary, and that prominent agitators like Győző Istóczy or Géza Ónody took action to spread blood libel accusation in the Tiszaeszlar case of 1882 as part of a broader anti-Semitic campaign. Before the First World War Hungarian political culture, as well as the attitudes of the population, were dominated by liberal classes who steadfastly opposed anti-Semitism. The First World War dramatically changed Hungarian Jews’ whole way of life. It was the First World War that proved to be the catalyst, contributing to an extreme anti-Semitism and thereby sealing the fate of “liberal Hungary.” It was fairly well organized and coordinated, mainly by ecclesiastical circles. The thesis is that Hungarian anti-Semitism was far from being a spontaneous outburst of popular feelings.
This paper analyzes three stages of growing anti-Semitic agitation in Hungarian society during the war: First, the attacks against the banks around 1916 second, the public debate on the Jewish question in 1917, opened by the publication of the book A zsidók útja by the sociologist Péter Ágoston and intensified by the “inquiry into the Jewish question” of the journal Huszadik Század third, the surge of anti-Semitism that began with anti-Semitic speeches in the Hungarian Diet in 1917, leading to a broad anti-Semitic campaign by predominantly Catholic newspapers, in which Otto Prohaszka and Bela Bangha were the leading figures. Jews, in general, came to be treated as internal enemies, earning huge profits from the war at the expense of Christian Hungarian society that was being ruined. In this context, old anti-Semitic stereotypes prejudices were reactivated while new ones emerged. The former policy of the “Burgfrieden,” or party truce, was undermined by the profound psychological experiences of the war. 1916 must be seen as the turning point of the social splits and divisions. With the First World War, the Hungarian middle classes became the main losers in the social disruption of Hungarian society.
Before 1914 the vocabulary of anti-Semitism was already present in public discourses in Hungary, but it did not yet represent the central problem of a still “liberal Hungary.”
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