Attractions and Choices

The Portrait of Bocskai by Henrik Marczali and Gyula Szekfű

Abstract

The study compares the Bocskai portraits of Henrik Marczali and of Gyula Szekfű who were two outstanding historians of successive generations, master and disciple. On this basis, it aims to establish to what extent Marczali’s findings have lived on, whether his questions have remained timely. How successful was the reassessment so often advocated by Szekfű, and how, as co-author of the most important synthesis of the period, he managed to overcome the limitations of 19th-century-historiography? The paper collects the questions that were clearly on their minds and to which they did not provide identical answers.

An examination of nine aspects shows that almost all the issues raised by Marczali appear in Szekfű’s work, but that their positions sometimes differ strikingly. The former presents a much more positive image of the prince and Transylvania, tries to rise above dichotomies. For him, seemingly contradictory positions are mostly reconcilable, simplistic classifications can be overcome. In Szekfű’s work, we witness the deepening and widening of these differences, as he uses mutually exclusive counter-concepts. His opposites are asymmetrical, and he makes no secret of his commitment: he condemns the ‘eastern’ Hungarians, while idealising the ‘western’ ones, and classifying the prince among the former.

Marczali’s work is primarily related to the period of the Compromise, while Szekfű’s great synthesis is a representative summary of the post- Trianon era. The difference between the two historians’ politically embedded assessments is also due to the changing social expectations and challenges facing historiography. Finally, the paper seeks to review these contexts.