Barna Gábor (szerk.): The Szeged School of Ethnology (Budapest, 2004)
Gábor Barna - Tamás Grynaeus: Sándor Bálint (1904-1980), Professor of Ethnography in Szeged
58 Gábor BARNA-Tamás GrynaeüS major work in which he set out the fruits of decades of research is Szögedi nemzet [People of Szeged].13 As a result of the research done by Sándor Bálint, the peasant past and culture of Szeged and vicinity became the best known region in Hungary, but here too his research was not confined to the culture of a single stratum, the peasantry. He saw culture as a whole, with its social, historical and European connections, adopting an interdisciplinary approach to its study and analysis. In this he certainly remains an example for us to follow. BIOGRAPHY (1904-1980) Sándor Bálint was born on August 1, 1904 on the day of Saint Peter’s Chains in Szeged-Alsóváros (Szeged-Lower Town), the agricultural/peasant part of Szeged, into a peasant family of paprika-growers. After his father’s early death, he was raised and educated by his mother alone. Through his relatives he was familiar with the peasant society of the Lower Town and the traditional way of life that he later studied.14 After completing elementary and higher elementary school, he matriculated under the Piarist fathers. This school played a decisive role in the development of his interest in ethnography. Sándor Bálint graduated from the university at Szeged which had fled to the town by the River Tisza from Kolozsvár/Cluj occupied by the Romanians. At the Franz Joseph University15 16 he was able to hear the ethnography lectures given by Antal Herrmann, then an elderly man, who played an important role in the institutionalisation of ethnography in Hungary.1'’ In 1929 the country’s first department of ethnography opened under the direction of Sándor Solymossy in the Franz Joseph University of Szeged. Sándor Solymossy was a folklorist who also had an interest in questions of general ethnology. His main research fields were the folk-tale and beliefs. Sándor Bálint served as an unpaid teaching assistant in his department from 1933 and in 1934 he was habilitated by Solymossy in non-material ethnography.17 Sándor Bálint taught in the Szeged Catholic teacher training college from 1931 to 1945. He was a very charismatic teacher. His students still remember him with the greatest affection, respect and recognition. In the 1939/1940 academic year, after the death of Professor István Györffy, he gave lectures on folklore at the Budapest University. In 1944 he received an award as a special full professor. In 1947 he was appointed head of the department of ethnography as a full professor. From 1945 to 1948 he was also active in politics and became a member of parliament for the Democratic People’s Party. After the communist take-over in 1948 he suffered the consequences of this for the rest of his life. 13 Bálint 1977-1981. 14 BÁLINT 1994. 15 MINKER 2003. 16 Antal Herrmann (Brassó 1851-Szeged 1926). 17 See the study by Gábor Barna on the history of the department in this volume.