ABSTRACT:
Innovation and reproduction appeared with a distinctive local character in the 20s of the twentieth century in Hungary. As it is known at the end of the First World War according to the pacification established in Paris, Trianon, the Hungarian territory has reduced to 93 thousand m 2 from 282 thousand. The depopulation was also great: the population has reduced from 18 million to 7.6 million. The states in the neighborhood - most of them established by the former minorities of Hungary - had to face the problem of the considerable Hungarian minority. It was clear that the pacification didn’t solve the problem of the minorities in the Carpathian Basin.
In this situation the writers and leaders of the formerly dominant Hungarian nation started a "research" to work out a solution for the problem of the re-formed area - trying to keep the innovative and reproductive powers of these nations effective. One of the most important solutions was the conception called "Transylvanism". Transylvanism was not only a method to help the Transylvanian Hungarian minority defining its political and social goals - it was a complex conception to keep the people of this area on their traditional ways of innovation of reproduction. According to this concept, the land and the common history of Transylvania formed a special habit that could help the co-operation of the Hungarian, Saxon and Romanian nations of this land.
Another important component of this concept was the need of self-analysis and self-criticism of the Hungarian nation. Without deep understanding of our own history our nation won’t be able to re-build its present. So re-writing and re-defining our history became one of the most important goals of the Hungarian writers of these years.
In my presentation I will analyze the great historical novel of Miklós Bánffy, the "Erdélyi Történet" by these aspects. The antagonism between the European success of the Bánffy-texts and the semi-canonized state of the oeuvre in Hungary indicates the complexity of the problem.
