###

# {3-84.} Cultural Conditions and Their Social Basis
(Literacy, Schools, and the Intelligentsia)

The vast majority of Transylvanians remained illiterate and relied on the oral transmission of culture, though concern was rising at this deplorable state of affairs. (As late as 1900, in the Transylvani-an counties — excluding the northern Partium — only 20 percent of those born before 1840 indicated that they were literate; the proportion was 6 percent for the Romanians, 29 percent for Hungarians, and 60 percent for the German Saxons.) The low level of literacy was largely attributable to social and economic backwardness.

Literate serfs and cotters were few and far between. In 1819–20, on the occasion of the urbarial census, some six to twelve men — the magistrate, jurymen, elders, and a few witnesses — were summoned from each village to take an oath. Only in 150 out of the 2,200 villages were there people literate enough to sign the register. Among the 20,000–25,000 people who were summoned to take an oath, only some 250, or barely 1–1.5 percent, were able to write. Of these, over 80 percent were Hungarian and 10 percent Romanian (whereas the proportion of Transylvania's serfs identified with these two ethnic groups was almost exactly the reverse); Saxons accounted for six percent of the literate group.

The bright spots in this generally dismal picture were Hungarian villages in the northern Partium and the Szilágyság, and the Székelyföld. In the latter region, literate serfs and cotters could be found in 17 percent of the enumerated communities; in the district of Udvarhely, the ratio was one out of three communities. This comparatively high rate of literacy owed mainly to a conscious wish for social advancement; many villages in the Székelyföld kept record books, and thus literacy may also have been a condition for effective participation in local government.

Literacy — largely restricted to men — was generally a concomitant of free legal and social status. In the Udvarhely and Maros {3-85.} districts, 60 percent of the lesser nobles and free Székelys who had been summoned to take the oath were able to sign their names. Among smaller market towns (Fogaras, Szilágysomlyó, Tasnád) and villages that, being in a looser state of feudal dependency, aspired to the status and freedom of a town (Torockó, Bátos, Teke), the proportions range from 70 to 100 percent. In 1838, when the 1,000–3,500 noble delegates to county assemblies gathered to swear allegiance to the new monarch, the proportion of those able to sign ranged from 10 to 80 percent. Háromszék and Alsó-Fehér County showed the highest rate of literacy; most other counties showed a rate of around 50 percent; the lowest rate of literacy was found among delegates from the poorer counties and regions, from Hunyad, Kővár, Belső-Szolnok, and Fogaras.

Clearly, the economic and social conditions prevailing in Romanian villages did not favour literacy. Looking back some fifty years later, the editor of Brassó's Romanian newspaper claimed that, in the Reform era, there were three million Romanians in Transylvania and Hungary, and only 10,000 of them could read and write. A contemporary Romanian scholar observed — with exaggeration born of bitterness — that 'none of the Saxon men and women is illiterate, whilst among Romanians there is virtually no one apart from the priests and clerks who is literate.'[72]72. Timotei Cipariu's letter to George Bariţ, early March 1848; quoted in George Bariţ şi contemporanii săi IV, ed. by Şt. Pascu and I. Pervain (Bucharest, 1978), p. 299.

It can be inferred from the sources that when people were required to make some official gesture, many of them were too embarrassed to display their shaky skills and preferred to have a priest or notary sign in their stead. The ability to sign one's name bore a certain prestige; if there was no Hungarian school in the village, a poorer Hungarian nobleman might enrol his son in a Romanian school just so that he would learn to sign his name — if only 'in Wallachian,' that is, in Cyrillic letters.[73]73. J. Kádár, Szolnok-Doboka vármegye nevelés és oktatásügyének története 1000-1896 (Dés, 1896), p. 349. On the other hand, some of the villages whose delegates could not sign documents — such as Hungarian-inhabited Kalotaszeg, and localities in the Romanian Naszód district — actually had a school. For lack of practice, {3-86.} people would lose their writing skill. As a rule, girls were not encouraged to learn how to write. The skill was disparaged even in aristocratic circles, for the girls 'would only waste their time writing love letters, although they should learn to read in order to study the Bible.'[74]74. A. Kemény, 'Családtörténeti naplórészlet,' Confessio, 1980, no. 4, p. 79. Reading ability was needed mainly for participation in church services, so that the faithful could vaguely identify the various texts of the liturgy, and people who saw others reading assumed that the purpose was to 'memorize' the whole book. Thus the alphabet, writing, and reading retained a certain sacred character. When a Romanian teacher tried to introduce modern reading methods, the parents protested that he 'did not teach in Romanian;' to pacify them, the bishop resorted to a white lie, saying that the students were now beginning to learn Romanian, whereas earlier — and here he alluded to the Slavic formulas in liturgical language and in education — they had been learning Serbian.

Better-educated observers kept a close watch on developments in education, for they believed — with some oversimplification — that the number of schools and pupils was 'a reliable measure of the religious, moral and cultural level of Transylvania's nations.'[75]75. G. Bariţ, 'O plînsoare veche,' Gazeta de Transilvania, 20 May/2 June 1843, no. 40. Their zeal to promote progress led them to over-emphasize shortcomings. In fact, the churches had developed an extensive and qualitatively-impressive network of schools. The proportion of children between the ages of six and twelve who attended school fell between that of the Austrian and Bohemian provinces, where it reached as high as 95 percent, and that of Galicia, where it stood at 14–16 percent. In every Lutheran parish in Szászföld, there were one or two primary schools that enrolled 90–100 percent of school-age children. Apart from receiving religious instruction, the latter learned to read German texts in Saxon dialect as well as some elements of arithmetic, and boys were also taught writing; in general, 'only daughters of the wealthier farmers learned to write, outside the school.'[76]76. 'Über die Landschulen der Sachsen in Siebenbürgen,' Blätter für Geist, 19 October 1838, no. 42. In the eighty villages where schools were run by the Unitarian Church, 80–85 percent of the age group attended — a surprisingly {3-87.} high proportion, since the average rate for Roman Catholics and Calvinists was only 50–60 percent. However, that rate applied only to the two Churches' 550–560 village schools. The Roman Catholic Church operated not only some two hundred village schools but urban 'normal schools' which functioned in part as elementary schools; similarly, the Calvinist colleges also had primary classes.

By the end of the 18th century, the Saxon and Hungarian school network had expanded to the point that each major parish had a school, even though the occasional teacher and his supporters still had to lobby strenuously for the improvement or establishment of a school. Although there had been a rapid increase in the number of Romanian schools as well, some contemporary critics were far from satisfied. When an official statistical publication made reference only to the twelve Greek Catholic schools that benefited from state support, a critic shot back: 'So where are the three hundred schools founded by [Gheorghe] Şincai?'[77]77. G. Bariţ, 'O plînsoare veche.' Indeed, that was the figure mentioned by the militant pioneer of the Romanian Enlightenment in an oft-cited, elegiac reflection on his career as a school inspector. Without questioning his merits, it has to be noted that in the late 1780s, he reported the existence of fewer than one hundred schools; however, in 1840, the Greek Catholic bishop submitted to the government a report on 410 schools, while recognizing that in 924 of the 1,330 parishes, children only received instruction from the priest. Between 1800 and the 1840s, the number of schools in Orthodox parishes with a population in excess of 900 had increased from 150 to over 280. The rate of school attendance was highest in the more prosperous districts of southern Transylvania.

Observers were justified in concluding that poverty was the major deterrent to education. Children who lacked footwear could not attend school in winter; in summer, they were expected to tend livestock and help bring in the harvest. Still, much depended on the {3-88.} diverse social groups' attitude toward education. In some districts, notably Hunyad County, people did not expect anything of schools; serfs and even lesser nobles regarded sending their sons to school as a form of 'punishment.' Upon occasion, when a landowner lent his support — out of personal interest, or in response to the Gubernium's urgings — to the local school, his suspicious serfs would boycott the enterprise, and all the more so if the teacher was brutal or incompetent. Mistrust was so pervasive that the Romanian press advised teachers to rally the support of 'influential people' if they wanted to overcome the resistance of the 'unwashed masses.'[78]78. A. Mureşanu, 'Pedecile întru procopsirea tinerimei săteşti,' Foaie pentru minte, 14/26 December 1841, no. 50. There was no doubt some truth in the comment that 'the father would fear that his son was becoming smarter than him, and the mother, who was not even familiar with the alphabet, would get upset at seeing her daughter read.'[79]79. Report in 1845 from the Protestant priest-inspector of Nagyadorján (Marosszék), quoted in G. Sipos, 'Marosszéki népoktatás a XV. századtól 1848-ig,' Műv. T. II, p. 118. Even priests would sometimes worry about the fate of their sons and grandsons in a world where not only they, but the peasants as well were literate.

Yet the occasional positive comment in the Romanian press — 'the situation, thank heaven, is not too bad' — had also some foundation in reality; more than one Romanian peasant 'felt deep joy at encountering and hearing a learned son of his nation, while bemoaning that he had not had the good fortune to be educated.'[80]80. 'O vorbă pentru creştere şi şcoale,' Foaie, 4/16 December 1844, no. 49. The demand for education came to be motivated more and more by a wish for social advancement, and not just by the necessities of religious practice. It was not a sign of conservatism or snobbery that schoolchildren in villages 'learned earlier about Rome than about ploughing;'[81]81. Kőváry, Erdélyország statisztikája, p. 125. those who were encouraged by their teacher and parents to pursue studies in the town needed to learn a bit of Latin, notwithstanding the prohibition emanating from higher authority. However, in communities where a yearning for social advancement was not manifest, the Gubernium's efforts to enforce mandatory schooling were as effective as a cry in the wilderness.

In most cases, the schools serving the Romanian border-guard regiments had been established on the initiative of the government {3-89.} and were closely supervised to guarantee a high level of education. More and more parents had to acknowledge that 'intellectual and moral instruction brought considerable practical advantages,' be it in the planting and care of orchards or in access to diverse official posts.[82]82. The report of Transylvania's commander-in-chief on the state of education in 1847, Kriegsarchiv, Vienna, Hofkriegsrat, 1848, B9/54. However, in localities where people longed to recover their former petty-noble status, schools administered by the military were regarded as tokens of raw power, and parents sent their children to school only because it was compulsory. Thus, in the Hunyad County village of Bácsi, border guards withdrew their children from the Romanian border-guard school and enrolled them in the local Hungarian school; they hoped that this way they could escape military duties and regain their noble status. Similarly, many in the Székely border-regiment communities sent their sons to school only so that they might escape the onerous burden of soldiering. Others, who were equally hostile to this military institution, tried to avoid the compulsory schooling of their children by pleading poverty. In any case, prosperous peasants preferred to keep their sons at home for, as the saying went, 'they can earn a living even if they don't hang around some college.'[83]83. J. Etédi Gedő, 'Gazdasági vázlatok Udvarhelyszékről,' Magyar Gazda, 1849, no. 96. The Csík school board, for its part, suggested that the military-run high school be amalgamated with the Roman Catholic 'gymnasium' (high school) in Csíksomlyó, arguing that if children were no longer 'ordered' to attend, enrolments would rise in border-guard schools as well. High school graduates normally went on to higher education and joined the professional intelligentsia, and the military command became concerned that since nearly a thousand young people had chosen this route, only 5,500 could be recruited into military service. If the authorities found this development 'extremely harmful,' it was probably also because they had noted that the outlook of the intelligentsia diverged from that of the military.

The transitional stage, when a society begins to emerge from backwardness, is generally marked by an overproduction of intellectual {3-90.} workers and, paradoxically, also by a shortage of people whose education is up to the demands of the times. These phenomena became apparent in Transylvania, to a degree that varied among the various national communities.

Opportunities for employment in the intellectual professions had gradually expanded over the early decades of the century. There were 11,000–12,000 people who fell into this category. The largest group among them consisted of 4,600–4,700 priests and some 2,000–3,000 cantors who also served as teachers. There were no more than a thousand schoolmasters who made a full and lasting commitment to that profession; according to a contemporary handbook, the ideal teacher also engaged in some 'honest wine trading.'[84]84. J. Farczádi Józsa, Oskolai vezér (Kolozsvár, 1817), p. 107. Over a period of some twenty years, the number of public officials hovered around 2,150. In the high schools and post-secondary institutions, some 170–180 teachers and professors coped with an annual enrolment of 2,500–3,500 students a year. There were towns, such as Nagyenyed, Székelyudvarhely, Marosvásárhely, and Kolozsvár, where the total number of students — from the lowest to the highest level — reached a thousand. This social category also encompassed some 700 estate stewards, 800 lawyers, 90–100 physicians, and 150–160 surgeons.

Members of the intelligentsia, and especially those who owned neither house nor other property, had to live frugally. Even in Saxon towns, high school teachers earned no more than 150 silver forints a year. This represented a kind of 'starvation service,' and since they commonly had to look after five or six children, they would seek to obtain a more remunerative living in some parish. To be sure, only in prosperous communities did priests earn a comfortable living. The Greek Catholic bishop complained that many of his clergy could only feed themselves by doing manual labour, and Orthodox priests would comment bitterly that only in few places were their parishioners willing to help by doing team-work (kaláka) for them a couple of days each year. It was a common saying that Calvinist communities were so poor, 'the pastor's sack is never {3-91.} filled;'[85]85. M. Basa, 'Az erdélyi ev. ref. papok teendői,' Protestáns egyházi és iskolai lap, 18 August 1842, p. 20. and so, 'if the minister wanted to acquire a good book or two in a year, he would have to forego some other necessities of existence.'[86]86. D. Fábián, 'Tájékozódások Erdélyből,' Protestáns egyházi és iskolai lap, 18 May 1845, no. 20. Some of the college professors, who earned 500–700 forints a year, supplemented their income by taking in a student boarder or pursuing a non-scholarly activity, such as silk-worm breeding or constructing brick-making machines.

Those who aspired to an official's post in the civil service first had to serve as an unpaid assistant for five to twelve, and in some cases as much as twenty years. How a civil service clerk managed to survive on his salary remained a 'mystery.' A clerk at the treasury, in Nagyszeben, was paid a few hundred forints a year, far less than what he and his family needed to 'live up to his position;' the middle class lifestyle required that he purchase a new tail coat every second year and that his family eat meat every day. (Most peasants went without meat for nine months each year, and workers on mining estates could afford to eat meat only once a week.) Civil servants tried to supplement their income by taking own additional work, such as the transcription of documents and special assignments for investigatory commissions. Officials at the county level earned extra cash in the administration of justice; for instance, a district magistrate in Fogaras would charge twenty silver forints for the few minutes it might take to settle orally a minor lawsuit.

The intelligentsia was distinguished by education, lifestyle, and its contribution to the general culture. Knowledge and culture were earning increasing recognition and expanded the scope of social integration. The Nagyenyed scholar Károly Szász evoked an aristocracy of learning when he noted that among Transylvania's two million inhabitants, there were 'perhaps fifty thousand who were culturally destined to lead and whose only constraint was material adversity. This class of nobles, officials, scholars, and teachers is entrusted with the sacred tasks of lawmaking, government, education, and scholarship; thanks to their lucky star, they will guide the fortunes of their contemporaries and descendants.'[87]87. K. Szász, 'Oskolákról,' in Szász Károly, ed. and introd. by G. Kiss and S. Turnowsky (Bucharest, 1955), p. 239.

{3-92.} It was no accident that the term 'intelligentsia' came into common use around this time. That category encompassed the progressive Hungarians at county assemblies as well as educated Saxon patricians and men of letters who were ostensibly destined to promote the cause of progress. For Romanians, the word denoted 'intelligent' people committed to the national cause. Although an intelligentsia was taking shape, it did not turn into the 'classic' variant that, in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, was excluded from political and economic life and kept in a marginal, even ghetto-like status. That variant had a strong impact in Poland and Russia; the Polish intelligentsia's calling was to nurture the ideals of national independence, while the Russian intelligentsia was variously passive and critical with regard to the prevailing order. In Transylvania, on the other hand, the members of the intelligentsia did not form an isolated caste or withdraw into a ghetto. Drawn into political, and to some extent, economic life, they became active participants in the process of bourgeois-national transformation. The battle for the modernization of Transylvania was fought largely in the arena of politics.