Magyarization - Post-Trianon Hungary

Post-Trianon Hungary

Considerable number of other nationalities remained within the frontiers of the post-Trianon 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%)
• 23,760 Romanian (0.3%)
• 36,858 Croatian (0.5%)
• 23,228 Bunjevac and Šokac (0.3%)
• 17,131 Serb (0.2%)

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 Croatian (2.2%)
• 88,828 people spoke Romanian (1.1%).

Hungarian was spoken by 96% of the total population and was the mother language of 89%.

In interwar period, Hungary expanded its university system so the administrators could be produced to carry out the Magyarization of the lost territories for the case they were regained.

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 about 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. After these population movements Hungary became an ethnically almost homogeneous country except the rapidly growing number of Roma people in the second half of the 20th century.