Treatment in Post-War Hungary
The citizenship of the Germans who remained in Hungary was revoked in 1945, and they were then considered to be stateless. However, they were regranted their citizenship in 1950, and given personal identification. However, a difficult period ensued between 1950 and 1956, when -among others- Hungarian Germans were portrayed as enemies to the state and had to work, often for little or no pay, for kulaks, wealthy farmers who owned a majority of the land. Hungary Germans were still conscripted into the Hungarian military, but were often given no weapons and substandard training, as they were viewed as expendable. Even given these conditions, the men were expected to serve three-year tours of duty.
Many Hungarian Germans abandoned the country in 1956 during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Many moved to West Germany, Austria, the United States, Canada, Brazil or Australia.
However, things began to improve for minority groups, including the Hungarian Germans, under a program of economic liberalization called Goulash Communism. This movement, led by the then- General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, János Kádár, guaranteed certain economic rights to minority groups, as well as rights to practice their own cultures. In 1955, a new organization, the Association of Hungarian Germans (German: Verband der Ungarndeutschen), was founded. Its main goals included the interests of the Hungarian German ethnic group, including the release of the Hungarian Germans from Hungarian rule. Another major focus of the group was the teaching of the German language in Hungarian schools. Because of the government's position on German culture in the recent past, very little German was taught in schools at the time, and the group's organizer feared that "a mute generation" had been raised by the Hungarian school system. The group's organizers felt that the Hungarian German youth had a very poor command of the German language, including limited speech comprehension, which they found disturbing. The group met with success in the 1980s, when German gained status as a minority language, thus gaining legal standing in the Hungarian school system. The number of bilingual schools has continued to rise. In 2001, 62 105 people declared to be German and 88 209 people had affinity with cultural values, traditions of the German nationality.
Read more about this topic: Germans Of Hungary
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