Boundless History: 1827 – Law on the establishment of a learned society or Hungarian academy for the cultivation of the national language

The first section of Act XI of the 1827 Law provided that, for the purpose of cultivating “the national language not only through its dissemination, but also in every branch of the sciences and the arts,” “the Hungarian Learned Society or Academy shall be established as soon as possible, within the shortest feasible time, in the free royal city of Pest as its permanent seat, from a fund to be created through voluntary and free donations.” The second section stipulated that the Palatine should be the patron of the institution and that the statutes necessary for the Society’s operation should be drawn up within the framework of a national committee.

In accordance with the provisions of the Act, Palatine Joseph appointed a committee to draft the Society’s institutional structure and regulations. Count József Teleki was appointed chairman of the committee; its members included the four founders – Count István Széchenyi, Count Ábrahám Vay, Count György Andrássy, and Count György Károlyi – together with prominent figures from the literary and scholarly scene of the era, including the writers Count József Dessewffy and Gábor Döbrentei, the historian István Horvát, poets Ferenc Kazinczy and Sándor Kisfaludy, and the philologist Lajos Schedius. It is likely that József Teleki, rather than Széchenyi, became the committee’s chairman because, through his family connections, Teleki was on good terms with the scholars of his era, as well as with the patron of the Society to be established, the Palatine. Moreover, being a scholar himself – a linguist and historian – he possessed a deeper academic grounding than Széchenyi, whose writings were published only later.

In 1828, the committee drafted the statutes of the Learned Society. Even the wording of the Act itself reveals a degree of uncertainty concerning the institution’s designation, alternating between the expressions “learned society” and “academy”. Széchenyi himself supported the former term, although in his diaries and letters he referred to the institution variously as both the Academy and the Learned Society. The two names also reflect two different operating principles. While an academy is an institution established for the cultivation of the sciences and/or the arts, or specific branches thereof, the Learned Society was conceived primarily as a society dedicated to the cultivation of the Hungarian language. At the same time, however, the demands placed upon it – the cultivation of the sciences in the national language – would more readily suggest an academy. The contradiction between the organisational framework and the objectives of the institution was already apparent during the elaboration of the details, but the resolution of the situation was further complicated by the fact that, at that time, Hungary still lacked a sufficient number of scholars who could serve as expert practitioners in their respective disciplines.

At the same time, the selection of members was not necessarily guided by scholarly merit, as birth and political distinction also played a significant role. Due to these contradictions, changes were introduced as early as the first half of the 1830s that steered the Society in a more scholarly direction: original scientific treatises were encouraged, recommendations for membership were regulated, and the order and subject matter of the weekly meetings were standardised. In 1844, academician Antal Vállas outlined, in a series of lectures, the principles of a modern learned society. His proposals addressed the structure of the sections, the conduct of meetings, and the prioritisation of expertise over lineage. All of this had an impact not only on the institution’s operations – which thus evolved into an academy of sciences – but also on its name: by the end of the 1840s, the name Hungarian Academy of Sciences had begun to supplant that of the Hungarian Learned Society.