Authors

Robert Szabo¹;  ¹ Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary

Discussion

In my presentation, I intend to reveal what the mobility chances of Israelites taking a military matura exam during the first world war were in the Horthy-era in Hungary, compared to other religious groups.

My research is based on archival documents from The Hungarian National Archives, including the requests of secondary school students who served as soilders in the first world war and wanted to take a military matura exam. I selected those students who took the exam in the area of today’s Hungary and revealed their social background, as well as what their profession between the two world wars was. I did the same with twice as many students who did not serve in the war and took an ordinary matura exam. The latter sample was randomly selected. For the research, I made use of school reports and registers, matura exam registers, online databases, and birth- and death registers. I used a multinominal logistic regression method in the SPSS-program for the colleted data. This helped me reveal which aspect (type of matura exam, place of birth, religion, parents’ job, result of the matura exam, later place of living) had the greatest effect on mobility chances regarding career.

In my presentation. I only deal with Israelites taking the military matura exam. On the one hand, I present their social background at the time of the matura exam. On the other hand, I point out their mobility chances in the knowledge of their profession, trying to reveal the difference between soldiers and non-soldiers. As the Jewish laws affected the situation of Israelites, I examined their carreer in two years (1938, 1944).

The problem of crisis is based on two concepts in my presentation. Firstly, according to contemporary press, soldiers’ chances for reaching a better carreer were worse than non-soldiers’. Secondly, it seems to be obvious that Jews experienced restrictions as a crisis during the Second World War.

The research was carried out with the professional support of the Új Nemzeti Kiválóság Program of the Innovációs és Technológiai Minisztérium (Ministry for Innovation and Technology of Hungary), code number ÚNKP-23-3, financed by the Nemzeti Kutatási, Fejlesztési és Innovációs Alap.