Ronald Grigor Suny
“No, young man, you cannot see the library,” the old woman told the
eager student. “I am the only one with the key. Even I do not allow
the archbishop into the library.” This was the second time that Balint
Kovacs, a Hungarian student, had tried to find materials on Armenians in
Transylvania. He had hitchhiked from Budapest across the border to the
mountain town of Gherla in Transylvania, Romania, only to be turned away
by the elders who guarded the Armenian Church in the colony that had
been known as Armenopolis or Hayakaghak in the 17th and 18th
century. They had sent him on to Elisabethopolis, now Dumbraveni,
where he was confronted by the stubborn old woman who refused to let him
see the library. But Balint would not give in or give up. Perhaps
something could be worked out. The determined woman, whom Balint would
later call Marish neni, mentioned that she needed medication
for her eyes, and Balint promised to bring it to her from Hungary. A
nephew was called; the key appeared; and Balint Kovacs’ life and work
changed in an instant.
In the sacristy of the large Armenian Catholic church they opened a
metal door with a complicated antique lock, climbed a winding staircase,
and came upon six cabinets filled with old books in Armenian,
Hungarian, and Latin. But there was more: an archive of early modern
manuscripts documenting the past of the Armenians who had come to this
town. As if a light turned on, Balint knew that he had found a
treasure. No one had seen these books and documents for decades,
perhaps longer. He had originally come as a student from Pazmany Peter
Catholic University in Budapest to study Hungarian dialects in Cluj
Napoca, the capital of Transylvania. Like many other young Hungarians
coming of age after the fall of Communism, he was interested in
recovering the heritage of the Hungarian people. Inspired by the words
of Zoltan Kodaly, who had said that Transylvania is the keeper of
treasures, the clean source of the historical past, Balint won a
scholarship to study in Transylvania. His teacher in Budapest, Sandor
Őze, had asked him to see what he could find on the Armenians while he
was in Transylvania since they were planning an exhibition on Armenian
history in the Hungarian capital. Balint had found more than he had
been looking for. When he returned to Budapest and told his mentor what
he had uncovered, Sandor told him that he had to make a catalogue of
the materials. Although still an undergraduate, Balint’s life course
had taken a new turn, and he would become the principal investigator of
the history of the Transylvanian Armenian colonies.
Armenians had crossed from Moldavia, through the Carparthian Mountains, into Transylvania in the 17th
century. They settled as craftsmen and merchants in four towns:
Elisabethopolis, Armenopolis, Sibviz (Szepviz, Frumoasa), and Gheorgheni
(Gyergyószentmiklós, Djurdjov). There they converted to Catholicism,
using an Armenian rite, singing the hymns in Armenian (to this day), and
gradually losing their mother language and speaking Hungarian and
Romanian. Their towns grew wealthy, and along the main streets the rich
bankers and merchants built their mansions, many of which have been
preserved. Their communities flourished for 300 years, but by the 20th
century they dwindled to a few hundred members. Locked in closed rooms
were the stories of these people, records and books that no one now
could read.
Balint Kovacs was raised in a small provincial town, Kiscsősz, and
first went to a local secondary school in Veszprém. He soon transferred
to Pazmany Peter University where he was encouraged by Sandor Őze.
Balint was a devout Catholic, who shared the patriotism that Hungarians
were permitted to express after Communism. Intellectually curious, he
thinks of himself as shy and naïve, but a more accurate description
would be modest, innocent, and idealistic. Straightforward and honest,
he was disgusted by the careerism and corruption that permeates
East-Central Europe. Finding these lost archives of the Armenians, he
came to believe that he had found his mission in life and began the work
of organizing and cataloguing the collection in Elisabethopolis.
Soon the priest and community elder in Armenopolis, who earlier had
been suspicious of Balint’s intentions, accepted him as a trustworthy
researcher and opened up the riches of their library and archive housed
in a room above the main altar in the church. Balint traveled to
Germany to Halle and took courses on Armenian studies with Professor
Armenuhi Drost Abgarjan. He then moved on to Armenia where he studied
the Armenian language. He wrote his dissertation at the Peter Pazmany
Catholic University in Hungary on the Armenian libraries of
Transylvania. Since 2008 he has worked as a research fellow in the
Research Center of the University Leipzig on East-Central Europe (GWZO)
under the supervision of Professor Stefan Troebst. Catalogues of the
Armenian holdings were published in collaboration with his
universities. Through complicated arrangements with the archbishop of
the Catholic Armenians, the archives of the four colonies were brought
together in a single archive in Armenopolis, where they are now
available to researchers, at least to those who can convince the priest
that they are serious and worthy of their trust.
For five days in May 2015, as part of our work on the anniversary of
the Armenian Genocide, Balint and I traveled by car through Hungary and
Transylvania visiting Armenian sites. After stops at the beautiful
Hungarian town of Pecs and the battlefield at Mohacs where the Ottomans
defeated the Hungarian king in 1526 and established their rule over
Hungary for 150 years, we crossed into Romania. Our first “Armenian”
stop was in Elisabethopolis. The church was closed; the key
unavailable; but the now frail Marish neni was waiting for us
with the local liquor and cakes. She was thrilled to meet another
Armenian and took my arm, guiding me into her living room. It was clear
that she adored Balint and depended on him. The widowed, childless
woman considered him her son.
We spent that night in a hotel in the walled castle of Sighisoara.
The area is now living off memorabilia and tourism generated by the
figure of Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula. The next
morning we drove off to Szepviz, where the Catholic priest impatiently
showed us a large manuscript in Armeno-Hungarian. A translation from
the famous Hungarian book Mirror without Macula (Makula nélkül való tükör),
it was written in Armenian letters but in the Hungarian language. No
one had known what this was until Balint discovered it, and having
learned Armenian in Yerevan, he immediately recognized it as a
transliteration, not a translation, of the original Hungarian text,
perhaps the only manuscript written in Armeno-Hungarian.
Each of our visits was punctuated by the obligatory lunch of
Hungarian or Romanian meat and potatoes, dumplings or goulash soup,
followed invariably by the extraordinary pastries for which these
nations are renowned. We moved on to Gheorgheni. The church was open,
and dozens of Hungarian tourists had settled in to hear a lecture about
the church and the Armenians of the region from the local authority, who
proudly considered himself an Armenian, although the only words he knew
were “bari or” (“good day”). There in the church was a
magnificent painting of Grigor Lusavorich baptizing King Trdat. The
inscriptions were in Armenian, Latin, and Hungarian. The church and
congregation clearly were more Catholic than traditionally Armenian, but
they clung to their sense of being Armenian. Their identity as
distinct from Latin Catholics was strong even though their numbers were
small. Both the Hungarian and Romanian governments, as members of the
European Union, officially recognized the Armenian communities as
distinct and supported them financially. For some this was a
long-awaited business opportunity; for others it was the last hope for
continuity and the preservation of a fading culture.
Our final stop was Armenopolis. Besides a smaller, older church, the
principal church was enormous. The priest, Endre Szakács, was gracious
and eager to have us stay with him, though we needed to move westward.
The head of the local Armenians, János Esztegar, was our guide.
Vigorous and enthusiastic, with a sharp sense of humor, he showed us the
church, the library, and the archive (both of which Balint had
organized and catalogued), as well as the Armenian cemetery. Several
hundred Armenian Catholics still attend the church and sing the Badarak
in Armenian from a hymnal transliterated into Latin letters. In the
archive, Balint did a bit of research in the old baptismal records that
had been sent from Elisabethopolis. There he confirmed that Ferenc
Szalasi, the leader of the infamous Arrow Cross, the Hungarian fascists
in the 1930’s and 1940’s, was a descendent of Transylvanian Armenians.
His father had been baptized in the Elisabethopolis church.
Our journey ended but the story goes on. Balint has become a
dedicated investigator of early modern and modern Armenian history. He
organized an exhibition about the Armenians in historical Hungary (“Far
Away from Mount Ararat: Armenian Culture in the Carpathian Basin”) in
Budapest in 2013, and this year he mounted a joint exhibition about the
Armenian Genocide (“Tragedy of the Armenians in World War I”) at the
Hungarian National Library. In May 2015, he organized a conference on
the Centenary of the Armenian Genocide at Pazmany Peter University,
bringing scholars from a half-dozen different countries (among them
myself, Dickran Kouymjian, Yair Auron, Harutyun Marutyan, Elke Hartmann
Vahe Tachjian, Yusuf Dogan Çetinkaya, Artem Ohandjanian), as well as
from Hungary. He made possible the publication and translation into
Hungarian of my book on the Armenian Genocide (‘They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else’: A History of the Armenian Genocide
[Princeton University Press, 2015]), and put together a special issue
of the popular illustrated history magazine Rubicon on the genocide.
Thanks to the work of Balint Kovacs and his colleagues at Pazmany Peter Catholic University, the 100th
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide was commemorated in Hungary, and
Hungarians can read about the tragic events that brought a new
generation of Armenians to Hungary. Two Armenian communities uneasily
coexist in Budapest today: the descendants of the Transylvanian
Armenians, Catholic but without knowledge of the Armenian language; and
the more recent immigrants, who know the language. As in so many other
diaspora communities the two sides refuse to cooperate, accuse the other
of not being authentic Armenians, and compete for the support of the
state. One of the few unifying forces, able to communicate and work
with both sides, is the young scholar Balint Kovacs.
"The Armenian Weekly," June 12, 2015
"The Armenian Weekly," June 12, 2015
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