Ágnes Deák
Translator, Editor, Publisher, Spy
The Informative Career of Károly Kertbeny (1824-1882)
[...]
Reorganizing the Political Police had high priority after the Revolution.
In the spring of 1848, the Police Ministry was wound up and all agents
were given severance pay amounting to several months' salary. In 1848-49
most of such activity was of a military intelligence nature, but without
any coordinated control. The system therefore, essentially, had to be organized
anew throughout the Empire. Alexander Bach, the new Minister for Home Affairs,
took charge. Most of the leaders of the Revolution, including Kossuth,
had managed to take refuge abroad, attention was therefore concentrated
on agents operating outside the Empire, whose duty it was to keep an eye
on the exiles. In 1851 there were thirty-five such paid agents. At home
local police commissioners were put in charge, leading to considerable
decentralization. Police commissioners recruited agents and forwarded reports,
without ever naming the agent, writing simply "my agent reports."
This was justified first of all as preventing the coming into being of
an excessive centralized system of self-serving bloodsuckers, not to mention
that a direct, intimate, patriarchal relationship between the agent and
the man who ran him protected the agent's anonymity. There were disadvantages,
of course. On the one hand, it was entirely up to the police commissioner
how many agents he engaged, furthermore, central evaluation and control
of the information received was made much more difficult. Bach kept his
own travelling agents for this purpose. These carried out journeys of inspection,
reporting on morale and on the work of the local authorities, including
the police commissioners.
A turn of events occoured in 1852 with the appointment of a high-ranking
army officer, Johann Franz Kempen von Fichten stamm, to head an independent
Police Ministry. Contrary to Bach's ideas, he aimed to integrate the police
and the gendarmerie, stressing the military character of the police. He
did his best to centralize the network of agents both at home and abroad.
He ordered that registers of all paid informers be compiled, which had
to include their names and all their aliases, their occupation and education,
any special qualities, and the moneys paid to them. These registers had
to be kept up to date and amended whenever a new agent was recruited, or
an agent quit the service. He reserved the right to approve or disapprove
any recruitment. Informants were generally self-recruited. The local Police
commissioner then informed himself about the volunteer, and asked him to
supply a number of trial reports. He submitted all these papers to Kempen,
adding his own comments, and Kempen made his decision. More rarely, efforts
were made to find an agent, generally in connection with a particular job.
Thus, at the time of the Crimean War, merchants with good local knowledge
of Bosnian conditions were often found and recruited. Agents belonged to
all social classes. The revolutionary mass movements meant that the activities
of the political police also had to become more democratic. Attention could
no longer be confined to the political élite. Every quarter, Police
Commissioners had to account for the secret funds put at their disposal,
adding receipts for payments received, which agents generally signed with
a pseudonym. They were used by Kempen when checking the register of agents.
Police commissioners were obliged to forward immediately all information
of relevance to state security, sending it to Vienna, marking it for Kempen's
personal use. That is where all information was compared, coordinated and
evaluated. Kempen, like Bach, also occasionally employed his own agents,
using them for purposes much like Bach's.
[...]
The story starts with communication dated January 18th, 1854 from the
Police Ministry in Vienna, to Joseph von Prot mann, Police Commissioner
in Pest and Buda. He was informed that a Hungarian writer in Vienna had
offered his confidential services and that, in keeping with the usual practice,
he had been directed to call on Protmann, which he should do within days.
On February 9th, Protmann reported to Kempen that he was in touch with
the writer, and that he had asked him to put down his ideas on paper, and
that these, formulated in German, were attached to the report. Kertbeny
relates there that a number of members of the Academy had invited him to
edit the journal Ungari sche Vierteljahrschrift. Archiv zur näheren
Kenntnis Ungarns, which would be published in Germany. The aim was to provide
news of the economy, politics, science and art of Hungary. The distinguished
list of writers and scholars who had promised contributions included Ferenc
Toldy, Gusz táv Wenzel, Pál Hunfalvy, Tivadar Pauler, Antal
Csengery, József Eötvös, Zsigmond Kemény, János
Török and Sámuel Brassai. Kertbeny was commissioned to
travel to Germany, to make ar ran gements with a publisher. This would
be a fa vour able opportunity for Kertbeny to obtain the confidence of
the Hungarian national, intellectual and social élite which confronted
government, primarily the conservative aristocracy, which was committed
to a strategy of passive opposition. Such carefully nursed contacts would
then allow him to undermine the opposition from within. He hoped for the
support of the police, for 500 florins to cover the expenses of the journey
to Germany, a passport in a false name (to allow him to dodge his German
creditors) and 100 florins a month up to the time that the pro posed journal
would pay for his keep. Once that happened he would be satisfied with payment
by results. He also asked that the originals of his reports be returned
to him, lest he be publicly unmasked by them.
The police commissioner thought Kertbeny a bit of an adventurer, but he
liked the plan in spite of the reservations.
[...]
Already in the 1840s Hungarian politicians and literary panjandrums
felt the need to correct errors relating to Hungary, which appeared in
the German press and to coun teract Slavophile propaganda in e.g. Jahr
bücher für slawische Literatur, Kunst und Wissenschaft. Accordingly,
the Vierteljahr schrift aus und für Ungarn, edited by Imre Henszlman,
was published in 1843 and 1844. Around 1847 the Hun garian liberal opposition
planned pamphlets in German and some of them appeared in Germany. The aim
was to obtain the support of German liberals. Such attempts were also undertaken
after the Ausgleich, the 1867 Austro-Hungarian com promise. Brockhaus published
the Unga rische Revue in 1869. Kertbeny started Ungarn und Deutschland
in 1872. In 1877 Pál Hunfalvy published Literarische Mitteilungen
aus Ungarn which, between 1881 and 1895, appeared as Un garische Revue
under the aegis of Brock haus. (All these can be regarded as early precursors
of The Hungarian Quar terly, the first issue of which appeared in 1936.)
As the similarities in the title indicate, Kertbeny's plan was meant to
continue the forties publication. An article in the January 1st 1854 issue
of Új Magyar Múzeum, edited by Ferenc Toldy, expressly complains
that although Viennese periodicals, and the German press in general, showed
considerable interest in Hungary, generally their ignorance was just as
great. It is possible, of course, that the plan for a German periodical
was Kertbeny's very own; it is certain, however, that its inclusion in
his plan for his work as an informer was not merely to pull the wool over
Protmann's eyes. He also speaks of it in a letter to the scholar Ferenc
Toldy, dated November 28th 1853. Indeed, the plan, in every way, fitted
in with the main line of Kertbeny's efforts. He had already planned a Jahrbuch
des deutschen Elementes in Ungarn in 1845 with the aim, which he later
formulated, that the Germans in Hun gary should become "interpreters,
mediators and peacemakers between Hungary and Central Europe." Thirty-three
years later, in 1878, he proposed the publication of an Ency clopédie
hongroise ancienne et moderne in French, to be supported by the state,
in order to make Hungarian conditions, social, historical and cultural,
known the length and breadth of Europe.
[...]
Ágnes Deák
teaches 19th-century Hungarian history at József Attila
University, Szeged.
Her research centres on the history of ideas in the 19th century.
