Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteI have heard of Ferenc Deák, an Hungarian statesman, a career legislator, whose spirit and works helped bring about the liberation and modernation of Hungary in the 19th Century, but know little about him today and mean to change that soon, for we often think that good ideas and great systems come about spontaneously, snatched out of the air by peculiarly resourceful minds, but they don't, or don't often, and if some do seem so would seem equally suspect.
While some may trust in magic, may most, and most of all leaders, place faith in diligent scholarship and responsible reflection.
Among Deák's accomplishments: the development of a system of public education that forged an intellectual movement that was to spread across Europe, influence Theodor Herzl in his conceptualization of a peaceful and persistent Zionism, and contribute to the success of such as Alexander Korda and Edward Teller.
While we might ask what in any of the democratic open societies could be more prosaic than a public library, we may be more wise to ask what could be more miraculous, for public libraries as, say, New Yorkers might know them would seem as exceptional in the world as they may seem common to those who have had the good fortune to access them.
What any given generation may take for granted in the way of common universal freedom, privilege, and right, be sure a previous generation put it there, whether constitution or library, deliberately and probably through struggles not much different than experienced today.
Here's a new wrinkle on books old enough to have fallen out of copyright: many are popping up online in multiple formats for the curious. Francis Deák, Hungarian statesman : a memoir.
From the preface by M. E. Grant Duff, Member of Parliament, York House, Twickenham (January 1880):
It is good to read the history of such men at all times, but never perhaps more than now, when a school has arisen and attained to no small measure of political power which pooh-poohs the idea that morality has anything to do with politics, or that there is any other test of statesmanship than obvious and immediate success.
From another work in which one finds Ferenc Deák mentioned, we have this:
One of the most interesting features of Hungarian liberalism was that its advocates were mainly noble members of the Hungarian State Assembly who pressured for reform while knowing that it would mean losing some of their privileges.
Source: Györe, Zoltán. "A Doctrine of 'Harmonization of Interest': the Basis of the Reform Policy of the Hungarian Liberals in the Vormärz." Ideology, Society and Values, n.d., p. 133.
Additional quick reference: Online Encyclopedia. "FRANCIS DEAK (FERENCZ), (1803-1876)". Originally appearing in Volume V07, Page 896 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
Most importantly, we have a way through the globalized, if struggling, open online library of investigating, developing, and dispersing solutions to contemporary issues. those who visit and comment on 19th Century Hungary know the era's resonance in several of the world's contemporary ethnic and feudal struggles as well as the potential for a cultural blossoming out of them.
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the main innovation of Deak: Nonviolence, the moral embodiment of the Enlightenment.
Gene Sharp, Bela Kiraly and others are our witnesses.
the Deak reforms have changed the world.
the resulting new educational system of hungary has produced: Bartok, Teller, Szilard, Szentgyorgyi, Wigner, von Neumann, Robert Capa, Michael Curtiz, Alexander Korda, Ady, Babits, Geza Vermes, Puskas, Blathy, Kando, even Albert Wass...
Posted by: Steve | July 13, 2010 at 10:16 PM