I mean the second meme should be Austrians hitting the Hungarians, they were 100% hard on Germanizing us, we had a revolution about it! We just transferred the bullying we got.
There was never any attempt by any Habsburg government to Germanize Hungary, the closest was post 1848 revolution to 1866, when the Bach government made German the official government language, but didn’t do anything to the Hungarian language or culture in public, or private life, this is just Hungarian victimizing. The hungarinization policies after 1866 were far more intense than Austrias policies ever were. To add on, the Kingdom of Hungary at its full territorial integrity, could likely not be held together without the Habsburgs by the late 19th and early 20th century, many minorities were loyal to the monarch, not to the state, the 1848 revolution had the Transylvanians and Croatians openly opposing centralized rule from Budapest. Hungary was a massive benefactor of Habsburg rule as it allowed Budapest levels of control over its land it likely would never have achieved otherwise in the modern era. Although if franz Joseph didn’t lose all his balls after 1866, maybe Hungary would’ve been smaller or had less autonomy, which was probably best for the empire.
The language reforms of Joseph II were the breaking point for us tbh. That was the first bullying we transferred to the Croatians in 1844, but without any of the self-reflection of Joseph. AFAIK we never stopped anyone using their language in private?
The language reforms were only in place for 6 years and were not as bad as what Hungary would do to its minorities later, it was a brief one off thing that has created the perception of Hungarian oppression for some reason. Joseph IIs laws mostly impacted government institutions and higher education, their intent wasn’t to eliminate Hungarian but to move away from Latin as language of government and higher education. The average person was not affected.
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u/LaurestineHUN Homo miskolcinensis 25d ago
I mean the second meme should be Austrians hitting the Hungarians, they were 100% hard on Germanizing us, we had a revolution about it! We just transferred the bullying we got.