Circumstances of the Start of the National Calvinist Women's Association (1943–1944)

Abstract

In September 1944, József Pongrácz (theology teacher and the editor of the Transdanubian Protestant Journal) promoted the new journal of the National Calvinist Women’s Association (titled: The New Hungarian Woman): „[it] intends to knock on the Hungarian Calvinist homes every month so that Hungarian women can draw strength in the struggles that await them (...). [T]his journal will be a link between millions of Calvinist women, an awakening conscience for the dormant. With the journal, our weaking power multiples.”

The study aims to provide a press analysis from a socio-historical perspective that aims to shed light on the social context of 1944, in which the four issues were published. It also wants to answer the question of how the monthly periodicals mediated the goals of the National Calvinist Women’s Association and the Hungarian Calvinist Church at a historical turning point. We present these research goals with a focus on the life and social network of the president of the National Calvinist Women’s Association, Klára Zsindelyné Tüdős.

Our aim is to draw attention to the editorial staff and to the connection points that are related to the objectives of the paper and the National Calvinist Women’s Association. The subject of the study is the biographical elements of the leading female authors – Klára Zsindelyné Tüdős, Mária Pilder, Rózsa Ignácz – covering the events they experienced in the autumn of 1944, at the time of their work in the paper. The study is conducted with qualitative content analysis based on articles in the journals, author’s biographies and memoirs. The study is an initial step in exploring the activities of the National Calvinist Women’s Association and in analyzing the The New Hungarian Woman. It adds to the slice of history of the Calvinist press written for female readers.