The study examines the social composition of the student body at a unique institution of higher education, the College of Physical Education, Budapest, based on college registers from its foundation to the time of solidifying the one-party system in Hungary. The basic figures reveal a slightly higher number of men than women, and suggest that nearly half of the student body came from urban backgrounds, more than twenty-five percent from the capital, while another twenty-five percent came from rural communities. The religious composition more or less reflects the proportions of contemporary society, although Jews were significantly underrepresented. The analysis shows the presence of a female group from the Budapest elite in the early years, which shrank during the years of economic depression and the post-war coalition period. Parallel to this process, other groups are shown to have gathered ground in this period, such as those of the so-called petit intelligentsia (officers, teachers) and economically independent men with children.

The first professional football championship in Hungary was organized in 1926, which was altogether the fifth in the world after England, Scotland, Austria and Czechoslovakia. This branch of sport started conquering Hungary (and Central Europe) around the end of the 19th century. In the beginning, football players were not paid by their clubs – however, as football rapidly gained popularity, clubs, in order to raise the already high number of spectators and their own incomes, gave officially amateur (pseudo-amateur) players diverse benefits. Although there are examples of professionalism from before the First World War, besides football violence, the amateur–professional contest was the most important subject in Hungarian football after 1919. This essay is concerned with the regulation of the transfer of players, the (illegal) incomes of players, detection of pseudo-amateurs and the role international games played in the development of professionalism. Finally, the paper also touches upon the question of bets and presents renowned cases of stew.

The study intends to show that Hungarian football in the interwar period did not at all lack violence; actually, the occurrence of several characteristic phenomena was more frequent than today. The 1921 act issued by the minister of internal affairs for controlling football violence had an all-European echo; police could interfere in matches; and by the end of the year spectators were banned from all Budapest matches for an unspecified period of time. In the period between the two World Wars, in the eastern part of the country only, incidents of different kinds and seriousness have intruded in nearly hundred cases into the order of matches or following the meetings. This region was the most infected area by football violence, the news of which has even reached Paris. The study, based on numerous contemporary reports, presents cases of violence between players, between spectators and also cases in which spectators have attacked opponent players or the referee. Apart from elaborating on the different types of incidents, the study attempts to present who and for what reasons have launched these attacks and also, why the number of violent cases grew exactly after the war. According to the author’s hopes, by this, the study will also highlight how the war affected norms of behavior – and will supply an important contribution to the historical embedding of Elias’ theory on civilization and Durkheim’s theory on anomy.

Nincs absztrakt.