Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

ZOLTÁN PÁLFYTABLE 2. The Proportion of Transylvanians in Different Faculties in Budapestin 1920-1921.FacultyTotal numberof studentsTotal numberof refugeesRefugeestudents fromTransylvaniaPercentage ofrefugeesPercentage ofTransylvaniansamong refugeesPercentage ofTransylvaniansamong studentsLaw 1,692 624 331 36.8 53.0 19.5Medicine 4,602 1,923 779 41.7 40.5 16.9Arts 1,213 486 139 40.0 28.6 11.4Total 7,507 3,033 1,249 40.4 41.1 16.6Total of Technicalfaculties3,270 1,272 606 38.8 47.6 18.5Economics 1,018 286 135 29.0 47.2 13.2Source: Data compiled by author on the basis of OL VKM K636 lV. a. The total of technicalfaculties includes the students listed above in the natural sciences. The Faculty of Theologyat the Budapest University and the separate faculties of the Technical University are notincluded, since they bear relevance by themselves. See Table 1.sity. Yet, the comparison might be considered unfair since there was notechnical faculty at the University of Kolozsvár. From this perspective, thenumber of would-be engineers is quite high. It seems logical to presumethat most of these Transylvanian students had begun their studies beforethe end of the war (and were refugees in the “political sense” only),switched to technical studies from something else, or were only first/secondyear students.The issue of technical university students coming from Transylvaniaraises a problem concerning the criteria according to which students mayor may not be regarded as refugees. It is impossible to state the exact numberof refugee students. There must have been a certain migration fromsuch peripheral regions of historical Hungary as Transylvania to the centerin the period prior to the war. A lesser counter-migration, out of“inner Hungary,” is also conceivable. Yet, the new borders obviouslychanged the nature of this migration. In the early-1920s, ethnic Hungarianstudents fled to “inner Hungary” in massive numbers. Even those who(for instance, Technical University students) started their studies beforeJune 1920, when the Peace Treaty was ratified, may have well decided to186