Text by Gábor Schein, writer, critic, literary historian, translator and member of the Society of Hungarian Authors

„Europe is György Soros‘ gas chamber: toxic gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, deadly for the European way of life, while we, the nations of Europe, are doomed to fight for the last breath of air, trampling and clambering over each other. The Liberaryans now want to exclude Poles and Hungarians from a political community where we, as members, still have rights. We are the new Jews. No matter whether these verbal bludgeons are called open society, the rule of law, or solidarity, they all serve as tools of disenfranchisement. By questioning the will and ability of Hungarian voters to choose how they want to live and who they want to see in power, they actually say that we have a big nose, we stink and we have lice.” (Szilárd Demeter, origo.hu)

Just as a reminder: the person who had the nerve to put these sentences on paper, and who coined the word “Liberaryans”, is not a nobody in Hungary. Szilárd Demeter is Viktor Orbán’s most important confidant in cultural policy. Institutions such as the National Széchenyi Library, functioning as the state archives, and the Petőfi Literary Museum, preserving documents of modern Hungarian literature, are under his direct control. He also controls the popular music life and is a member of the so-called National Cultural Council operating around Viktor Orbán. His voice belongs to those who receive power from the state to speak today in Hungary. He needs to resign because he openly speaks the language of Nazis, but his resignation doesn’t change anything. What happened, happened, and followed from the logic and rhetoric of the Orbán-system.

A speech that equates the rule of law with gas chambers, solidarity with the deprivation of rights, and the European Union with Hitler’s Third Reich, erases the language itself. These words appeared on the origo.hu website only a week after the centenary of Paul Celan’s birth, on the Saturday before the beginning of the Advent period. The voice that Orbán’s cultural chief speaks, whether he is aware of it or not, floods a thousand darknesses of speeches that bring death. When this language refers to the right to national self-determination, the freedom of lifestyle, or when it speaks of Christianity, it immediately gives itself away. Yes, ultimately, it is murder and the evil that has become routine, that speaks this language. Those who negotiate with, bargain with, or accept support from this language, need to know this.

This language is not identical with Hungary. Today, there is once again dictatorship in Hungary. Voters did not authorize this. Laws, and even the constitution itself, are being rewritten or repealed overnight. It is not possible or requires a disproportionate effort to create, distribute and represent symbolic truths other than those of the power. The symbolic truths of power, on the other hand, are born as lies from the outset. Moreover, the lie is not enough for the lie itself. It has to keep raising the bet, because like all such attempts, this one, too, is ultimately in a terrible battle with the empty sky, not realizing that it itself is making the sky an empty wasteland. This happens day by day, tiring people out, driving them to despair, and rendering them hopeless. Priests and churches, of course, are silent, as their leaders have long since not believed in the Saviour, but are afraid of losing the graces received from the state, and, as they do not believe, they cannot be free either.

In Hungary, the hope of regaining language, truth, and human dignity is a hope beyond hope. The sentences quoted may warn that Europe is still a post-Holocaust continent. And Hungary is still in a post-Holocaust state. The hope of the continent and the country is identical: a wise and understanding hope, adhering to their values, somewhere beyond hopelessness.

Gábor Schein, writer, critic, literary historian, translator

member of the Society of Hungarian Authors
Source: 444.hu

DECLARATION

The Society of Hungarian Authors is a community of creators with a broad vision, acceptance, and healthy irony. Safely and merrily aware of this, we have always tried to formulate our statements, sometimes inevitably political, in this spirit. At the same time, the by now regular and clearly provocative manifestations of Szilárd Demeter have also put our patience and creativity to the test in recent times, and after his last writing, fair deliberation has become utterly impossible. A radical escalation of the war of words leads to a sudden first shedding of blood. The life-threatening system of rhetorical tools that Demeter is now reaching for is unacceptable, even if it was an obvious and desperate compulsion to comply that evoked it in the author. Those who lost their real lives in real gas chambers, the survivors, the relatives, the language, the humane thought, and respect towards acceptance and responsibility are what will not allow our common human tragedy to depreciate to a selfish journalistic tool in the hands of an irresponsible politician. The last statement of the director-general of the Petőfi Literary Museum is one of the symptoms of the long and difficult agony of the system; not the first, but the most penetrating so far.

The Society of Hungarian Authors 1) calls on Szilárd Demeter to make an apology, 2) finds it evident that the decision-makers shall immediately announce a new, open tender for the position to head the Petőfi Literary Museum, and 3) proposes the establishment of a professional committee with a balanced composition that can help rebuild the literary and cultural life of Hungary that has quickly become a battlefield, in the name of justice, solidarity and shared responsibility.

The Board of the Society of Hungarian Authors

29.11.2020
Budapest

Many partner institutions of the European Alliance of Academies have expressed their solidarity with the SZFE University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, Hungary. They are extremely concerned about the measures taken by Hungarian policymakers which are hindering the free development of the arts and artistic expression.

We fully support the DECLARATION OF SOLIDARITY with the students and lecturers of the SZFE University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, published by Saxon Academy of Arts.

Since the beginning of September, students and faculty of the SZFE University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, Hungary, have been protesting against the violation of their autonomy. The takeover of the university by the government-affiliated Foundation for Theatre and Film Arts has already prompted the university management and many distinguished members of the teaching staff to resign.

On 23 October 2020, the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, around 10,000 people demonstrated under the slogan “Art is free” against the foundation’s new board of trustees now running SZFE. The Foundation’s chair Attila Vidnyánszky, who is also the director of Budapest National Theatre, has stated his intention to drive out “elitism” at SZFE, an institution which is 115 years old, and focus teaching in future on “the nation, the homeland and Christianity”. Colonel Gábor Szarka, a former chief of staff at the Ministry of Defence who has now been appointed chancellor of SZFE, has switched off the internet in two buildings on its campus and cut the data cables. In a television interview, he boasted about his personal crackdown and said he would do whatever it took to end “this manner of internal anarchy”.

The Saxon Academy of Arts is highly alarmed at the abolition of the democratically elected organs of SZFE. It emphasizes that freedom in art, research and higher education is non-negotiable and is a cornerstone of Europe’s conceptual self-image. By contrast, a concept of art and education geared towards nationalism definitely belongs on the scrap heap of the disastrous history of the twentieth century.

We hereby declare our solidarity with the students of the SZFE Budapest University of Theatre and Film Arts, the members of faculty who have resigned, as well as the rectorate and the senate, who have also stepped down, and call for the full restoration of the university’s autonomy.

We expect the governments of all EU Member States to put pressure on the Hungarian government to return to the governing bodies of SZFE their full powers.

The Saxon Academy of Arts declares its solidarity with all artists and scholars who champion the freedom of the arts and education.

The report ’Hungary Turns its Back on Europe. Dismantling Culture, Education, Science and the Media in Hungary 2010–2019’ informs the Hungarian and international public as well as European institutions about the severe harm that the Orbán regime has caused in the fields of education, science, culture, and the media since 2010.

It has been compiled by independent Hungarian intellectuals that organized themselves in the Hungarian Network of Academics – an autonomous organisation of professors and teachers in higher education that wish to stand up against the force with which the Hungarian government is transforming and destroying culture, education, research and the media since 2010.

Basically, according to the authors of the book, the government always proceeds the same way: It undermines existing institutions by cutting off all references to them and covering them with media campaigns. At the same time, new institutions are being set up, which are characterised by maximum loyalty to the government and are awarded high budgets.

Since the publication of the report, further serious restrictive steps have been taken against the independence of culture, education and media. In the summer, Index, the probably largest independent news portal was taken over by the goverment. The Orbán regime has started to ’privatize’ higher education which in fact means loss of autonomy and full governmental control over universities. Late in summer 2020, the University of Theatre and Film Arts bravely defied the measures. Students occupied the buildings and held out till their sit-in protest was brought to end by the COVID-19 restrictions. Yet resistence continues in different forms. The „European Alliance of Academies” supports the Hungarian Network of Academics in their continous work to bring the described mechanisms to a braoder European public and attention.

You can download the report here.

From 24-25 November, our alliance partner, Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, proposes a debate on the freedom of artistic expression and creation.

Under the title CensuradXs, the illustrator Flavita Banana, a regular contributor to El País, will hold a dialogue with the students of the SUR School on their creation process, (self)censorship, the limits of art, transgression and their own trajectory.

The conversation can be followed openly both on the web and on the YouTube channel of the Círculo de Bellas Artes on Tuesday 24 November at 7 p.m.

Due to its special history, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities knows how precious and often hard-won freedom for art and science is. The gift of freedom can quickly be lost if all those who need freedom as much as the air we breathe do not unite and support each other. Only in a free, open Europe without borders science and art are free as well. Because we are willing to defend this gift of freedom in our own country, we stand alongside all those academies and institutions that want to speak up for it. And we are looking forward to the encounters and contacts in this community.

Jerzy Janiszewski, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, created in 1980 the logo of the universal social movement „SOLIDARITY“, that initiated the process of building the community, also the European one. Art and Science are the best forms of communication between individuals, communities and nations. Fryderyk Chopin, Roman Opałka and many other Polish artists were active not only in Poland but also abroad, throughout Europe, enriching its cultural heritage. Art and Science know no boundaries and no limitations. To develop, we must act in friendly conditions, in the atmosphere of trust and complete freedom. We create a great community of Artists and Scientists. We should jointly and severally strengthen it for the sake of our countries and the sake of Europe.

Krzysztof Polkowski – September 2020
The painter born in 1958. He lives and works in Poland. Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.

The institutions that committed to the alliance come from almost every country of the European Union – a strong signal that the need for this solidarity-based cooperation is high. The partner institutions include reknown art academies, national actors of cultural politics but also smaller cultural institutions.

More than 60 institutions expressed their commitment over the last months, among them: the Royal Academy of Arts, Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts, L’Accademia dei Lincei, Real Academia Española and Académie Goncourt as well as the Centre Pompidou, the Onassis Cultural Center, Villa Decius and many more.

Particularly in the light of the corona pandemic, it is important for almost all institutions to use the alliance to improve European cohesion in times of crisis and to raise political and social awareness of the importance of art and culture for a functioning democracy.