# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1860_S372
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

372 The Lutheran Church in Hungary.

...preachers to be swept along by the uprising, and took part in the revolution, some more, some less. This had the result that, after the suppression of the uprising, the imperial general Haynau, by the decree of 10 February 1850, deposed all the former superintendents of our Hungarian-Lutheran church and put in their place the so-called superintendency administrators; the office of the general inspector, as well as that of the superintendency inspectors, he abolished entirely. — Into the period immediately following falls the organization of our gymnasia.

The language of instruction in this period was exclusively Magyar, although the Käsmark Lyceum is in a purely German town and was attended for the most part by Germans and Slovaks.

Although among the 820,000 Lutherans of Hungary* no more than 183,028 are Magyars, the Magyar language was nevertheless introduced by the above-mentioned general inspector Count von Zay, since 1840, as the exclusive language of instruction. Thus the Slavic students were forcibly compelled to neglect their mother tongue, and one will hardly wonder when we must confess, indeed with the deepest pain, that the pastors and teachers in the Lutheran-Slavic congregations — which nevertheless number 435,374 souls — have, since that time, been throughout unable to teach and write correctly in their mother tongue in church and school. The 201,598 Lutheran-Germans in Hungary, however, have for the most part disowned their national character.

Very earnest voices were raised against this mischief and against this crying injustice; they remained, however, without the desired success!

At last the imperial-royal Ministry of Worship and Instruction began, following its 1849 plan for the organization of the gymnasia and Realschulen in Austria, to press more strictly than before for the organization of our Lutheran schools in Hungary as well. Accordingly, an improvement of the situation was held out in prospect, both with regard to the suitable pedagogical arrangement of our Lutheran gymnasia, and also as concerns the equal rights due the several nationalities in Hungary. Yet here too the Hungarian-Protestant politicians voiced their protest with defiant resistance. These are the true-blue Hungarian Protestants, of whom, alas! the life of our Lutheran church has for a long time now been able to show nothing good, except only the everlasting protesting against everything that does not agree with their selfish tendencies and their perversities addicted to Magyarization.

At last it was promised that the constitutional affairs of the

*) Our Hungarian-Lutheran church presently consists of 552 parish congregations, of which 241 are purely Slavic, 104 purely German, 103 purely Magyar, 49 Magyar-Slavic, 23 Magyar-German, 16 German-Slavic, and 16 German-Magyar-Slavic. The Reformed Church in Hungary presently numbers 1,511,842 souls in 1,427 mother congregations.