Professional Historian in the Role of Dilettante

The 1912 Constitutional History Debate of Henrik Marczali

Abstract

The primary aim of this study is to reconstruct and evaluate a forgotten debate in constitutional history. Henrik Marczali wrote a synthesis of Hungarian constitutional history in 1910 and a synthesis of Hungarian constitutional law in 1911 in German as parts of a prestigious book series. Marczali’s project angered Hungarian scholars of public laws (Ödön Polner, Gejza Ferdinándy, Olivér Eöttevényi-Nagy, Bódog Schiller, István Csekey), who did not accept that a historian was writing about public law for a foreign audience. Marczali gave a radically new interpretation of the nationalist and unhistorical doctrine of the Holy Crown, that had prevailed during the dualist period – but the tragedy of the author was that he did not do this in a historical work, so that scholars of public law could easily dismiss his arguments as not being competent in the field of constitutional law. In addition to reconstructing the debate and presenting the arguments of the opposing sides, my study also seeks to answer why this confrontation was later forgotten, and what lessons can be drawn from it for the discourse on professionalisation. My main claim in this respect is that professional discourse and classification (the distinction between professionals and outsiders) can have both positive and negative consequences: on the one hand, this discourse can keep away truly harmful views out of the profession, but it can also sometimes marginalise outsiders who might otherwise express innovative ideas.