Absztrakt


Bakó Endre
Évtizedekig egyszemélyes intézmény volt. Juhász Géza pályaképe, halálának négy évtizedes évfordulóján
An Institution in Himself: Lifework of Géza Juhász, on the 40th Anniversary of His Death


AbsztraktThe name and personality of Géza Juhász (1894–1968) has become closely associated with the literary life of Debrecen in the 20th century. Basically, he was a teacher of literature and a critic, who later became a school superintendant, then a university professor, Csokonai scholar, representative in parliament and local government, and also president of the Ady Society and member of numerous other associations. He was often considered as a cultural institution in himself. He passed his final, maturity examinations in the renowned Debrecen Grammar School of the Reformed Church, then, following a 40 months long war zone service in the military during World War I he obtained a teacher’s certificate in Hungarian and German languages and literature at the University of Debrecen. From 1922 he taught in the local secondary school for trading and received his doctoral degree in 1928. He had written numerous small monographic pieces in this period. His originally conservative literary views gradually turned more modern while politically he started to oppose the Horthy regime. His political turning led to a change of job in 1939. In 1944 Juhász took up a radical leftist position which resulted in his arrest by the Gestapo. After the war he participated, as a spokesman for left-wing parties, in local political activities and till 1948, as university professor, he did much organizing work in the cultural life of Debrecen. After the democratic parties had been banned he joined the MDP (the communist party) and later he was among the first from the ranks of the cultural elite outside the capital to support the Kadar regime. With this move he turned against both the religious world view of his youth and his own, earlier democratic principles and all this was so controversial that both he himself as well as his fellow intellectuals suffered the process. He could complete only partly the task assigned to him by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the human sphere, however, he kept his naive simplicity and moral while his critical oeuvre still offers valuable gems.