Treaty of Trianon - Results and Consequences of The Treaty - Demographics - Minorities in Post-Trianon Hungary

Minorities in Post-Trianon Hungary

On the other hand, a considerable number of other nationalities remained within the frontiers of the independent Hungary:

According to the 1920 census 10.4% of the population spoke one of the minority languages as mother language:

  • 551,212 German (6.9%)
  • 141,882 Slovak (1.8%)
  • 36,858 Croatian (0.5%)
  • 23,760 Romanian (0.3%)
  • 23,228 Bunjevac and Ĺ okac (0.3%)
  • 17,131 Serbian (0.2%)
  • 7,000 Slovene (0,08%)

The number of bilingual people was much higher, for example 1,398,729 people spoke German (17%), 399,176 people spoke Slovak (5%), 179,928 people spoke Serbo-Croatian (2.2%) and 88,828 people spoke Romanian (1.1%). Hungarian was spoken by 96% of the total population and was the mother language of 89% of the people.

The percentage and the absolute number of all non-Hungarian nationalities decreased in the next decades, although the total population of the country increased. Bilingualism was also disappearing. The main reasons of this process were both spontaneous assimilation and the deliberate Magyarization policy of the state. Minorities made up 8% of the total population in 1930 and 7% in 1941 (on the post-Trianon territory).

After World War II approximately 200,000 Germans were deported to Germany, according to the decree of the Potsdam Conference. Under the forced exchange of population between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, approximately 73,000 Slovaks left Hungary and according to different estimations 120,500 or 45,000 Hungarians moved to present day Hungarian territory from Czechoslovakia. After these population movements Hungary became an almost ethnically homogeneous country with the exception of the Hungarian speaking Roma people.

Read more about this topic:  Treaty Of Trianon, Results and Consequences of The Treaty, Demographics

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