The horror of censorship in fin-de-siècle Hungarian journalism

Abstract

The freedom of the press was regarded as an important achievement and valuable heritage of the 1848 revolution in nineteenth-century Hungary. The liberal government after 1867 seldom dreamed of installing censorship; they rather developed more sophisticated, indirect methods to influence the press. However, the government tried to suppress the agrarian movements in early 1898, among other measures, through forbidding the circulation of subversive texts. Most political forces, including the government, emphasized that every kind of censorship was unacceptable, and the freedom of the press continued to be respected. The press, nevertheless, reacted very harshly to the actual restriction. The journalism of Kálmán Mikszáth, who was also a governing party MP but never practiced partisanship in writing, serves as the main example. Although he did not feel much sympathy with the rebelling rural population, he fiercely opposed any restriction on the freedom of the press.