The essay is published in the memory of Zoltán Tóth, the eminent social historian, the member of the Korall advisory board, our professor and friend, who passed away on 16 March 2015 at the age of 72. Zoltán Tóth’s most recent work was the social historical biography of his father, Zoltán I Tóth (1911–1956), an outstanding historian, who was killed in the 1956 revolution. The present essay, based on a conference paper, was part of this research. Zoltán I Tóth came from Temesvár (now Timisoara) and graduated at the University of Kolozsvár (now Cluj Napoca), where he read history, geography and Protestant theology. Following his studies, he worked as a teacher in Szatmárnémeti (now Satu Mare). He began his work at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest only after the end of the Second World War. Besides the strong influence of Croce, his view of society was determined by the multiethnic realities of his homeland. His entire oeuvre was openly political apologetics for the peaceful and dignified cohabitation of the societies and ethnicities of small nations in the central European region.

Zoltán Inokai Tóth (1911–1956) was a historian and professor at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His father originally came from a Calvinist fam­ily of landed peasants from the Bánság region. He later rose to the position of a high-ranking financial civil servant and strove to provide his son with the best education available for the urban bourgeoisie, which included musical tuition too. Young Zoltán Tóth became a good violinist, and hoped to become a profes­sional musician during his university years studying history and theology. Even after becoming a secondary school teacher in the 1930s, he continued to dream of a musical career. He compiled the catalogue of the family’s musical library in the summer of 1937 at Temesvár (Timişoara, Romania). German-influenced Central European art music as cultural consumer goods for the educated middle class was fundamentally shaped by sheet music publishing and musical educa­tion. The study of the 228 titles in this catalogue reveals how these character­istics became integrated into the view of society prevalent among middle class intellectuals at the time.

Spread across the entire Carpathian Basin, the so-called ‘cube’ houses developed as a separate type of workers’ house in the 1950s, and began to mushroom in suburban areas and rural settlements with industrialised sources of income. Their owners relinquished their peasant status and wished to represent their new standing with their new homes. The middle class, mostly intellectuals expressing their opinion in written media, watched them with not even thinly veiled dismay. They saw them as unoriginal, uniform, and unfit both architecturally and as a home to maintain rural lifestyle, yet they pointed out astutely that social mobility was the reason for its popularity. As Miklós Mojzer correctly stated, ‘this model found its way to the hearts of the masses who have just abandoned their peasant lifestyles and are now filled with the desires of the petit burgeoisie’. The history of the deprecation of the new workers’ homes is associated with the history of the burgeois middle class itself: people who had managed to elevate themselves above the old boundary line of the former estate society and wished to preserve their social status in this middle position.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.