In relation to rent-controlled housing policies, the study examines the continuity and changes in the discourse, ways of thinking, and organisation of linguistic forms concerning the spatial distribution of living spaces in Hungarian society between the First World War and the end of the Second World War. According to the basic premise of the study, the changing discourse reflects the process of mental transformation in society, which, in this period, primarily concerns the transformation of Hungary’s social and political environment. To describe these processes, the study briefly summarises the effects of the government’s housing regulations on social norms of housing during the First World War and the rationale behind the housing standards between the two world wars. These shed light on the evolution of the normative perception, which converged in the experience of ‘narrowing’ and ‘contracting’. This experience was expressed in spatial metaphors dominating the discourse, which at the same time fundamentally perceived housing conditions in terms of a Jewish- Christian dichotomy. The second part of the study gives an analysis of the linguistic forms in this discourse during the Second World War, when the return of state-controlled housing policy brought about a proliferation of new images and the ultimate transformation of the perceptions of spatial distribution. The changes in perceptive schema and linguistic forms point to a new pattern: the idea of ‘propriety’ was replaced by ‘entitlement’ as the main determinant of the relationship between the size of dwelling and social status. Furthermore, social status was replaced by a Jewish-Christian dichotomy and the concept of ‘social value’, which meant that entitlement was beginning to be perceived according to increasingly merit-based principles.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.

In 1944–1945, in 1951 and in 1956 the population of Budapest underwent waves of migration due to the violent intervention of political powers. The round-up of the capital’s Jewry in July 1944, the siege of the city, the 1951 deportations and the wave of emigration in 1956 were all movements of the population that led to the vacancy of masses of tenement flats and brought about the spatial and social restructuring of the population of Budapest’s rental zone. Replacing the rental flat market of the period between the two world wars, the framework for the forced movements between tenements flats during these three periods – that are easily discernible in the written sources due to their clear temporal limits - was the system of the distribution of flats overseen by the authorities and later centralized by the state. The system of the requisition and distribution of flats qualified as Jewish following March 19th 1944 was carried on in 1945 – for flats over a given size – to manage the mass homelessness caused by anti-Jewish measures and the siege, and became permanent as the party-state centralized it. Highlighting the waves of the movements of the population between the turn of the 1930’s-1940’s and 1960 due to the forced intervention of political powers, and viewing these in the context of the housing system allows us to examine the long-term changes in the composition of the population of the rental districts of Budapest. Examination of the long-term changes of the composition of society is possible in several temporal segments on the basis of quantifiable census data, electoral registers and the housing registers containing the occupation of the dwellers. Comparison of these segments makes it possible to identify the extent to which such occupational-social groups were affected by the movements, the changes in their proportion within the entire population, their disappearance or, on the contrary, their continuity. Reconstructing the changes in the tenants of a single building between 1941 and 1960 within Pest’s inner rental area, Nádor utca 5. in the Lipótváros district, tracing the movements of individuals and families between the flats on the micro-level brings to light the mechanisms underlying such movements. Behind the statistically measurable changes in the proportions of the various social-occupational groups, we are able to grasp the spatial structure of the movements between the flats and the personal – family, career, domestic – relationships organizing occupations and co-tenancies that underlie the practices of adaptation or resistance within the boundaries set by the political powers.