Kaleidoscope
Művelődés-, Tudomány- és Orvostörténeti Folyóirat
Journal of History of Culture, Science and Medicine
Vol. 3.No.5
ISSN: 2062-2597
Veszélyes kapcsolatok
Házassági tanácsadás a biopolitika korai diskurzusa és
gyakorlata Magyarországon
Dangerous liaisons
Marriage counselling as an early discourse and practice of
biopolitics in Hungary
Szegedi Gábor doktorandusz
Közép-európai Egyetem (Central European University)
gszegedi@gmail.com
Initially submitted October 05. 2012; accepted for publication December 15, 2012
Abstract:
A tanulmányban a magyarországi házassági tanácsadás illetve a házasságelőtti orvosi
vizsgálatok története kerül bemutatásra a huszadik század eleji kezdetektől az 1950-es évek
elejéig. Foucault, Agamben, és Esposito munkásságára támaszkodva, és biopolitika elméleti
kereteiből kiindulva, amellett érvelek, hogy a házassági tanácsadás/vizsgálatok diskurzusa és
gyakorlatba való átültetése az egyik első és jelentős biopolitikai-regulatív törekvés
Magyarországon. A modern magyar állam történetének egyik első olyan kötelező
egészségügyi vizsgálata volt ez, amely a társadalom egy jól meghatározott, és igen jelentős
létszámú csoportjára terjedt ki, és amely az espositoi értelemben vett társadalmi immunizáció
megvalósítását tűzte ki céljául. A házassági vizsgálatok kötelező és tiltó hatállyal való
bevezetése Johan Béla nevéhez köthető, de az intézmény más, kevésbé beavatkozó formában
történő bevezetését először az eugenika pártolói, illetve a nemibetegségekkel foglalkozó
orvosok kezdeményezték, és az ügy a társadalmi elit szinte egyöntetű támogatását élvezte. A
házassági vizsgálatok rendszere az ötvenes évek elejéig működött, és mind személyi mind a
diskurzus szintjén komoly folytonosság mutatható ki az 1945 előttiekkel.
Keywords: marriage counselling, premarital health examinations, venereal diseases,
eugenics, biopolitics
Kulcsszavak: házassági tanácsadás, házasság előtti orvosi vizsgálatok, nemi betegségek,
eugenika, biopolitika
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I Marriage Counselling – a definition
I use the term “Marriage counselling” with reference to a medical discourse and
practice that encompasses a broad range of phenomena, including:
− the provision of sexual, emotional, legal, eugenic and moral advice to couples or adult
individuals, mostly before marriage
− advice on birth control
− advice on how to avoid venereal diseases
− and the provision of pre-marriage medical examinations – tests for Venereal Disease
(henceforth: VD), tubeculosis (TB) and other diseases or “abnormalities”
I call it a medical discourse because the driving force behind a large part of the
literature on marriage counselling was produced by medical experts, most authors (even nondoctors) employed health-based reasoning (e.g. the dangers of tuberculosis, VD or hereditary
diseases), and the actual marriage counselling was carried out in a medicalised setting.
The idea of marriage counselling dates back to the second half of the 19th century with
pre-marriage health checks introduced in a number of states of the United States and with a
related public health discourse appearing in many European countries. In the first half of the
20th century marriage counselling, either in a voluntary or in obligatory form, was introduced
in many European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia,
France, Turkey and Hungary.1 The discourse of marriage counselling in most countries grew
out of fears of degeneration and the eugenic conviction that the population of the country
needed management from above in a qualitative sense. Marriage counselling was seen as an
effective way to inform the “ignorant” or “irresponsible” masses about the dangers of diseases
handed over to their children.
The emergence of marriage counselling first as a concept and later as a hotly
contested, but widespread practice in Hungary is linked primarily to the ideas of population
policy, which encompasses a preoccupation both with moral and physical degeneration, and a
drop in birth rates, which is seen as a cardinal problem for national survival where only a
eugenically-motivated practice can turn the trend around. Marriage counselling in the interwar
German literature – which was decicively influential for Hungary - is coined either as
“Eheberatung” (marriage counselling) or as “Sexualberatung” (sex counselling), and the
differentiation often indicates whether counselling included a conscious attempt at a reform
of sexual morals (as exhibited for example by Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual
Research) or, even if it happened less consciously in practice, the objective was more set on
the avoidance of diseases or an improvement in reproduction both in terms of quality and
quantity.
In Hungary, however, there is almost exclusively Házassági tanácsadás (marriage
counselling), which means providing advice on venereal disease, other infectuous diseases
and/or eugenic issues, and carrying out pre-marital medical checks with the above-mentioned
1
This article does not allow for a thorough comparison of the Hungarian case with other
European (or non-European) countries but it can certainly be laid down the Hungarian
discourse did not exist in a vacuum with the German and Austrian discourses providing the
most profound influence but Hungarian medical experts paid attention to the marriage
counselling practices and VD-related legislation of other countries of the region (e.g.
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia) and whenever premarital health checks were
introduced in other countries (e.g. In France in obligatory form in 1942), these were echoed in
Hungarian medical journals.
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aims, whereas szexuális/szekszuális tanácsadás (sexual counselling) was left mostly to a
politically marginalised, social democratic/communist, urban group of intellectuals with
basically no institutional background to further their aims. What is striking, however, is the
continuity of házassági tanácsadás after 1945 both in terms of personnel and in terms of body
political aims and ethos; what was beforehand an public health policy forming an
unseparable part of the pronatalist and eugenicist ideal of the Horthy regime, could be taken
over, without any need of actual transformation or modification, as a public health goal of the
postwar regimes. Marriage conselling continued with the same intellectuals and doctors
without much interruption in 1945, while sexual counselling, even though it had been on the
flag of the left-wing parties, liberals and medical experts in the 1930s, was not raised again in
postwar Hungary and instead of moving towards sexual liberalism in, let's say, Wilhelm
Reich's manner, body disciplinary action continued in a similar vein as in the Horthy regime,
with biopolitical convictions unshaken and feeding into the quest of building a new state and
society.
In this essay I will sketch an outline of marriage counselling in the first half of the 20th
century in Hungary in order to exemplify how left-right shifts and system-changing
cataclisms did not affect the continuity of a discourse and practice that was founded on a
biopolitical framework that I see as a defining paradigm of the modern Hungarian state.
II. Marriage counselling and the framework of biopolitics and immunisation
Michel Foucault’s concept of biopower, as explained in The History of Sexuality: Volume I.
(1978), is a starting point for my analysis. According to this theory, at the end of the 19th
century there was a major transformation in the concept of “right over life and death”:
whereas before the sovereign exercised this right primarily through the death penalty and via
waging wars, with the emergence of a greater importance for the concept of population this
was transformed into a dual power:
1. Human body politics – in this form of politics the human body is treated in a machinelike manner, where the sovereign seeks its welfare (to serve its own legitimacy) and at
the same time aims at the maximisation of the efficiency of this body whereby the
body becomes a subject of constant regulation.
2. Biopolitics of the population: this second form of right over life and death deals with
the biological processes of life on the level of the population as it aims at controlling
the processes, actions, events that influence characteristics of the population that can
be statistically demonstrated: births, deaths, marriages, level of health, life expectancy,
etc.
This dual power adds up to the concept of biopower, which is used both to regulate human
bodies individually and to achieve goals in terms of the population (Foucault 1978: 139-141).
Giorgio Agamben, one of the most influential thinkers on biopower, in his book, Homo
Sacer, (1998) put biopower in a new context, emphasising the fact that modern man's
existence is defined by the concept of the “homo sacer”, man, who is on the one hand present
and alive, but has been rendered politically dead by the act of the “ban”, which is an exclusion
of society. Agamben therefore sees the concentration camp as the biopolitical paradigm of our
age, as everyone (even in liberal democracies) can be lifted from society and stripped from a
spiritual life and political existence, reduced purely to “bare life.” With the introduction of the
state of emergency the “unalienable rights” can be alienated from man if it is deemed
necessary for the protection of the state or the (organic) community (Agamben 1998).
I also turn to Roberto Esposito and his “immunisation paradigm” when discussing
biopolitics. As Esposito expounds, immunisation is “a negative (form) of the protection of
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life. It saves, insures, and preserves the organism, either individual or collective, to which it
pertains, but it does not do so directly, immediately, or frontally; on the contrary, it subjects
the organism to condition that simultaneously negates or reduces its power to expand. Just as
in the medical practice of vaccinating the individual body, so the immunisation of the political
body functions similarly, introducing within it a fragment of the same pathogen from which it
wants to protect itself, by blocking and contradicting natural development” (Esposito 2008:
46) .
Esposito's concept of immunisation provides an excellent insight into how the modern,
biopolitical state exercises the regulatory functions that Foucault delineated. Immunisation on
a social level can mean removing the “biologically undesirable” elements of society by
putting them to death; this, both for Esposito and for Giorgio Agamben – for whom the
concentration camp and a permanent state of emergency was the defining paradigm of modern
biopolitics - is embodied in the Nazi State to a negative extreme. In Nazism the confirmation
of life entails the denial of life to those, who are deemed to exist only bodily and not possess
any “spiritual value” (Agamben 1998).
Immunisation for Espositio can function both on the level of the collective and the
individual and in my interpretation marriage counselling can be seen as a mechanism of
immunisation exactly because of its effect that “negates or reduces the power of the organism
to expand.” Marriage bans based on health reasons, - be that on the basis of tuberculosis,
venereal disease, eugenic “conditions” or else - similarly to sterilisation, are intended to
remove certain individuals from the collective's natural system of procreation. If some are
restrained in their capacity to procreate, then society is believed to be “contained” from
dangerously diseased spouses and offspring. By a prohibition on marriage for some, the
organic body of society is seen as protected, along with the institutions of “marriage” and
“family” (Esposito 2008). The Hungarian Marriage Law of 1941 was biopolitical not just
because of the introduction of marriage counselling but because of the ban on marriages
between Jews and non-Jews. This latter clause was more prohibitive because it excluded a
group from the organic development of the collective, the “nation”, a large body of
individuals not just temporarily, not just until their bodies were ready for procreation, but for
good – going with a vitalist example, the organism rejected a part of the body that once
formed an inseparable part of it. The anti-miscegenation clause, which created a “homo sacer”
in Agamben's manner and constituted the alienation of the Jews from unalienable rights (their
becoming “homo sacer” in the end of the 1930s and early 1940s contributed significantly to
the ease with which they could be transported to concentration camps in 1944), however, did
not emanate from the medical discourse that produced marriage counselling. Therefore, with
the change of regime in 1945 the racial clause was cancelled, along with all other racist laws
of the Horthy and Arrow Cross regimes. Marriage counselling, however, (as well its
propagators) remained a policy until the early 1950s and the discourse was not discredited
even afterwards. Moreover, it returned in a different, less directly invasive form in the 1970s.
Anti-miscegenation, it can be argued, was specific to the right-wing regime of the pre-1945
era, but the continuity of marriage counselling shows how the logic of immunisation persisted
in a biopolitical framework that aimed at the regulation of the body of the collective and the
containment of the bodies of certain individuals in order to attain an improved health of
society.
Esposito also maintains that “all civilisations past and present faced (and in some way
solved) the needs of their own immunization, but that it is only in the modern ones that
immunization constitutes its most intimate essence.” (Esposito 2008: 44-45) I would like to
put forth that in Hungary the advent of modernity in a biopolitical sense, when immunisation
becomes the essence of civilisation, can be associated with the establishment of the logistics
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of public health (especially in rural areas) and with the professionalization of the control of
venereal disease and other contagious diseases – this, I would argue, gained strong footing in
the first half of the 20th century. The idea of marriage counselling was an important one in this
regard. It was one of the first – and, as exhibited by the existing sources, one of the grand attempts to screen (in a compulsory manner) a whole age cohort of the population Hungary,
with the aim to “removing” or “isolating” those, either for good or for a limited amount of
time, who were seen as potentially compromising the overall health of the body of the nation.
III. The origins of the idea of marriage counselling
Marriage counselling as a concept appeared in Hungary as an import from other
European countries and the U.S. and was first raised by those, who in the early 1900s
embraced the fashionable idea of eugenics. The eugenics movement in Hungary gained
foothold fairly early, keeping up with the development of the international eugenics
movement. The appearance of the discourse of eugenics can (partly, but not just because of
the eugenika-vita /eugenics debate/ of 1911) be linked to the emergence of the journal
Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century) which included in its self-definition “progressive” and
“rationalist” and, not by chance, started its first issue in 1900 with a “Spencerian salutation” a short letter dated September 1899 from Herbert Spencer, to the leftist-progressive founder
and editor-in-chief Oszkár Jászi, which Spencer introduced with the sentence, “I rejoice to
learn that you propose to establish a periodical having for its special purpose the diffusion of
rational ideas, — that is to say, scientific ideas, — concerning social affairs.” (Huszadik
Század. Vol.1 (1900) No.1.: 1)
In the course of the the eugenika-vita of 1911, which was initiated by and reported on
in the journal Huszadik Század 2, Hungarian eugenicists soon developed their own set of
arguments. It was a contested issue at the 1911 debate whether Hungarian eugenics should
follow foreign examples or pioneer its own path, with some prominent eugenicists like István
Apáthy or József Madzsar arguing for the latter and the internationally well-connected
diplomat, Géza von Hoffmann, reasoning that ideas from abroad need to be implemented in
Hungary (Turda 2006: 185-186). Hoffmann in fact, together with the then young geographer
Pál Teleki provided the main link for the German-Austrian-Hungarian “international alliance”
of eugenicists that evolved during WWI and was fostered mostly through the private links
between members of the German Race Hygiene Society and interested intellectuals and
politicians from Austria and Hungary (Weindling 1989: 303)
The appearence of Teleki and Hoffmann showed a shift in political terms: the
progressives of the Huszadik Század group were in the course of the 1910s gradually
marginalised by those, who thought in race hygiene terms and were associated with the
political Right. The idea that racial hygiene / eugenics should be associated with the rightwing and, as a result, is necessarily infused with the racism of the extreme right, is a very
persistent theme not just in German and English literature, but in Hungarian scholarly
language, as well. In a 2009 essay in the periodical Magyar Tudomány (Hungarian Science),
Gábor Palló (2009: 714-727) refers to the establishment of the a Racial Hygiene and
Population Policy Association in 1917 and sees Teleki's appointment as President as a step on
the path towards a racialised view on eugenics, saying “Eugenics slowly went over from the
of meek society-improvers (jámbor társadalomjobbítók) into the hands of right-wing and
then extreme right-wing politicians.” Here the “meek society-improvers” most probably refers
2
For the details of the debate see: Turda, Marius. The First Debates on Eugenics in
Hungary, 1910-1918. In: Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central
and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940. pp. 185-221. Budapest: CEU Press, 2006.
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to the non right-wing “progressives”, who were loosely or more closely connected to the
journal Huszadik Század (like Jászi or Madzsar), and who also had a wide range of ideas on
the implementation of eugenics – just like those, nationalistically inclined. Palló's remark
reveals a view that is similar to what had been furthered by a number of historians with
relation to Weimar eugenics and which was later challenged by Atina Grossmann in
Reformings Sex, (Grossman 1995), Michael Schwartz in Sozialistische Eugenik (Schwartz
1995). and by Annette F. Timm in The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth Century Berlin
(Timm 2010), all arguing that the Left/Progressive and Right-Wing/Eugenicist/restrictive
divide did not exist in Weimar, as both sides had agreed on a “motherhood-eugenics”
consensus and were moving within a Bevölkerungspolitik (population policy) framework.
This, slightly naïve (and/or biassed) view of a right-wing eugenic horror versus the non-right
wing social engineers, the “jámbor társadalomjobbítók”, closes a blind eye to the underlying,
biopolitically founded convictions that linked together these goups.
Hoffmann and Teleki are interesting cases because they show how international,
mainly German ideas on eugenics appeared in Hungary in the early twentieth century.
Likewise, Hoffmann, as an established expert of eugenics (especially through his book on
American eugenics) influenced the discussion in Germany (Weindling 1989: 392). Hoffmann
was first the vice-consul of Austria-Hungary in Chicago and then became consul in Berlin,
and he not only joined the Berlin chapter of the German Hygiene Society but in 1914 he is
noted to have demanded setting up in Germany a national institute for eugenics (Weindling
1989: 240). Hoffmann, as he was good friends with several German racial hygienists and had
a great deal of knowledge about American negative eugenics measures, only returned to
Hungary in 1917 to father the establishment of the Hungarian Eugenics Society. In his article,
Eugenika (Hoffmann 1914: 91-106), Hoffmann mentioned, amongst institutionalisation and
sterilisation, marriage bans as one of the key elements of negative eugenics, citing the 10
states in the United States as examples where this had been implemented. Hoffmann
emphasised that such marriage bans for people that were “a burden for society” (including of
course those with VD) were not necessarily useful from a practical point of view, as their
implementation could not always be carried out perfectly, but they were ideal for
propagandistic purposes, “better than thick volumes or a whole army of pamphlets” for
educating the population about the principles of race hygiene. Hoffmann also added that it
was “one of the theoretical demands of race hygiene that sooner or later all individuals with
the intent to marry be examined by a doctor and only those shall receive a marriage permit,
who are deemed by the doctor as capable of becoming parents.” (Hoffmann 1914: 101-102)
Hoffmann, at the same time, acknowledged that Hungary was clearly not ready for the
introduction of such intervention into private matters (even though, as he put it, “it is
unnecessary eagerness to talk about the freedom of the individual and similar things with
relation to the scum of society”) and said that pre-marital checks, as well as sterilisation was
just a theory (at the time) and not the only solution and not for every nation – he had to add
this, because, as he noted, many understood his report on these institutions of US race hygiene
(his 1913 book that was published in German), as the only and immediately applicable
method to introduce race hygiene into a society (Hoffmann 1914: 103).
Hoffmann's article in fact mentioned that the Hungarian Natural Science Society had
sent a petition for pre-marital health checks to the Government in 1913 – and warned that
most probably it was too early to send in this petition because even those, who would become
well-disposed to race hygiene, might be scared away if things started up in such a rush.
Hoffmann also gave a first description of házassági tanácsadás (marriage counselling),
naming the US and the city of Dresden as two examples where this already was taking place:
in his description házassági tanácsadás meant that the individual explained to a doctor
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everything s/he knew about the medical history of both families and the doctor gave a
recommendation whether to pursue the marriage or not (Hoffmann 1914: 105-106).
Aside from Hoffmann, the active, high-profile diplomat, it was a young and talented
politician, Pál Teleki, who played an active and important role in introducing the concept of
marriage counselling to Hungary. Teleki was Prime Minister in Hungary twice, first in 19201921 and then in 1939-1941, and was controversial as a political leader. He was blatantly
Anti-Semitic and it was under his firs term in 1920 that the Numerus Clausus3 (the first piece
of interwar legislation in Europe directed against Jews) was adopted and the anti-Jewish
legislation in Hungary charged ahead with full speed under his second term as Prime Minister.
At the same time he made serious efforts to keep Hungary out of the war in 1940/41 and was
deeply unsettled by the growing Nazi and pro-German settlements, especially after the two
Vienna Awards, where, under German and Italian arbitration, Hungary regained parts of its
territory lost in 1920. It was also under Teleki's second term that in April 1941, mostly due to
the eagerness of Governor Horthy and of his advisors to regain additional territories (this time
from Serbia), Hungary agreed to join the Axis in the invasion of Yugoslavia, despite Teleki's
strong opposition to the endeavour. Teleki, foreseeing the defeat of Germany in the war and
knowing the ramifications for Hungary, decided to commit suicide partly as a sign of
desperation and partly to send a message to his Governor and to Hungary.
Teleki is therefore even now seen both as a tragic statesman and as controversial,
right-wing authoritarian politician. As a young man, however, he was well-involved in
eugenics and not just in a theoretical way (as Hoffmann) but also as an official during World
War I. He got his intellectual impetus to move towards eugenics from Alfred Ploetz
personally, who was almost 20 years his senior and with whom he had regular contact with
regards to scientific work (Ablonczy 2004: 15). In Huszadik Század Teleki wrote a long
introductory note about the newly launched journal Archiv für Rassen- und
Gesellschaftbiologie , analysing the journal's first article by Ploetz (Die Begriffe, Rasse und
Gesellschaft und die davon abgeleiteten Disciplinen) in more detail.
Teleki attended the International Hygiene Congress in Dresden in 1911 (he was the
only Hungarian participant) and in 1914 he was asked by Apáthy to be the first President of
the Hungarian Race Hygiene committee (Ablonczy 2004: 15-16). Although the war made it
difficult to progress with the cause of race hygiene, Teleki was trying to keep up the work of
the Committee and started cooperation with Géza von Hoffmann.4 Together with Apáthy they
founded the Population Policy and Race Hygiene Association in November 1917, where,
again, Teleki became the President. In the same year, but a few months earlier (in June) young
Teleki was appointed as President of the National War Care Agency, where apparently he
tried to accomplish race hygiene goals, as shown in his September 1917 Körlevél az
Eugenikáról (Circular on Eugenics), which was sent by his National War Care Agency to all
institutes and job agencies. In this Circular Teleki pointed out that it was crucial to keep in
mind race hygiene principles when allocating jobs for the individuals, who became disabled
by the war. Five issues were highlighted: to keep as many people in the countryside, as urban
life spurs people to limit family size and there are a number of negative effects connected to
the lifestyle in large cities5; to advise people against choosing an intellectual career, as from a
3
This Law No. XXV of 1920 intended to set a limit to the percentage of Jews being
admitted to universities.
4
Ablonczy calls Hoffmann Teleki's “Lucifer”.
5
This is in accordance with contemporary ideas on the industrialised societies living in
large cities, which appeared similarly in Germany. See: Sauerteig, Krankheit (1999), pp.4446.
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population policy point of view this is negative since such families also die out sooner or
later; to enhance the love of the family for each disabled person and to point out the beneficial
effect of large families; to give moral lectures againt VD and alcohol; and to make clear that
the injury resulting in disability will not affect the quality of the offspring in a negative way.
To the last point Teleki added, however, that there might be other illnesses that are hereditary
but in order to give advice on the avoidance of such marriages a properly trained doctor
would be needed (Teleki 1917: 169-171). All in all, the Circular, which was intended for a
large number of officials dealing with disabled soldiers, sought aims much more related to a
general framework of Bevölkerungspolitik rather than eugenics, and the emphasis on marriage
was pro-natalist and quantitative, with no strong indication to introduce any marriage bans or
limitations for the “unfit”.
Teleki, Hoffmann and Apáthy all worked together to organise a conference on racial
hygiene to which German and Austrian race hygienists were invited. The conference was to
take place in Budapest in September 1918. Among invitees were Max von Gruber from the
Munich Racial Hygiene Society, Weinberg and Wilhelm Hecke from Austria (Weindling
1989: 303) (Ablonczy 2004: 18). The conference did not take place because of the events of
Word War I, but the cooperation among German, Austrian and Hungarian experts up until
1918 in race hygiene was remarkable partly because of the “victory” or German-type race
hygiene in Hungary and also because it indicated that in the German-speaking countries there
was interest in the internationalisation of racial hygiene and the seed fell on fertile soil in
Hungary, not just because early twentieth century eugenicists became well-disposed to
German racial hygiene but also because these were ideas (and contacts) that could be used for
eugenics and racial policies (and to connect these two) in the interwar years in Hungary.
Marriage counselling also advanced in the second decade of the 20th century from the
antivenereal discourse. In 1913, on the initiative of, amongst others, members of the
Hungarian Országos Közegészségügyi Egyesület (National Public Health Association - OKE),
the Venereás Betegségek Elleni Országos Védő Egyesület (National Protection Association
Against Venereal Disease) was formed. Its activities were disrupted by the outbreak of war.
However, in the course of the war, partly because of the increased VD rates, a doctor of OKE,
Lajos Nékám, organised a similar association called Nemzetvédő Szövetség a Nemibajok ellen
(Association Protecting the Nation against VD) in 1916. Nékám, then Director of the
Dermatology and Venereal Disease Clinic of Budapest Medical University, was appointed as
Government Commissioner for VD and the Nemzetvédő Szövetség a Nemibajok ellen held a
conference, which took place spring 1917 and where marriage counselling was first
mentioned in relation to being a solution for VD. It was József Guszman, a VD expert, then
privatdozent at the Budapest Medical Univerity, who presented the case and declined the
option of introducing it in an obligatory fashion – and there was a general agreement on this
among the members of the conference - but advised that health reports could be exchanged
among the spouses-to-be so that everyone had access to information about the health status of
the other (Népegészségügy: 1925).
As seen from the above, marriage counselling as a discourse was picked up by a select
group of intellectuals in the first two decades of the 20th century but it did not emerge as a
serious endeavour until the end of World War I. There were intellectuals, who believed that,
either from a eugenic or from a contagious diseases point of view, it would be useful to
introduce some kind of „advice” to young couples about to marry, but most either thought that
the time was not ripe and first a profound educational phase was needed, or that such a serious
intervention into the private affairs of couple selection and marriage was not legitimate at all.
The end of World War I, however, which culminated in one of the greatest traumas of
20th century Hungary, the Treaty of Trianon, changed the way population, health and
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marriage/procreation was seen by many of those, who had earlier opposed intervention into
the private lives of individuals. Trianon meant that Hungary, from being a co-equal partner of
a European great power, became a small, almost unsignificant country, with a population
smaller than that of its neighbours. Post-Trianon Hungary was also left with an immense
sense of injustice that led to a revisionism - a defining element of foreign policy for the
coming twenty years. Revisionism, as it infiltrated all levels and all departments of policymaking, also became a key for population/fertility policy. There was an increasing pressure to
seek a radical growth in the number of of births; moreover, the radical increase of ”good
quality” births. Hungary, seen as an island in the ”Slavic ocean”, needed to outnumber its
neighbours and it needed to increase the ratio of healthy births in order to have the necessary
force to accomplish its goals of regaining its lost territories. If one browses through the
medical literature on marriage counselling starting from the early 1920s, it quickly becomes
evident how the loss of territories and a sense of loss of population and the fear of the ”death
of the nation” (nemzethalál) influenced the surge of ideas to promote eugenically approrpiate
births.
IV. Interwar Hungary – marriage counselling as a discourse
In the early 1920s it was the Teleia Association, together with its eager Secretary,
Aladár Emődi, which defined anti-VD work and discussed marriage counselling most
extensively. Teleia, a civil anti-VD association, founded in 1893, provided free and
anonymous treatment for venereal disease, and also attempted to remove the moral
connotations from VD. For this reason the doctors of Teleia tried to promote sex education
propaganda related to Venereal Disease only: on the one hand to educate the ignorant public
about the dangers of VD and in order to change the public's view on people suffering from it.
At the time Teleia broke the barrier of silence around VD in Hungary with its mere presence:
the events it held, the material it produced and the treatments it provided - and this was
already was an important step towards the “emancipation” of VD patients and of the anti-VD
discourse.
Teleia, although it was dissolved in the aftermath of WWI, regrouped itself quickly
and found powerful supporters (like Count Szterényi). It was able to secure the necessary
sources for the publication of a journal that initially appeared every second month: Teleia:
Népies felvilágosító folyóirat (Teleia: völkisch journal for enlightenment and warning). Since
the archival sources from the interwar era have largely been lost, this journal of Teleia, along
with other medical journals like Egészség (Health), Egészségvédelem (Health Protection) and
Népegészségügy (People's Health Care) are key to the understanding of the marriage
counselling discourse prior to the 1941 Marriage Law that triggered a plethora of publications
both on theory and practice.It is mostly in these journals that the medical experts, police and
government officials published their ideas concerning marriage counselling, where they
reported on their foreign experiences and foreign practices. It is also in these sources that one
can find the minutes of the meetings both of Teleia Association and, after 1925, the OKE.
The experts grouping around Teleia6 were of very different backgrounds and political
convictions: there were nationalists and liberals, Jews and Christians, even nationalist Jews,
and some, who seem to have been less political and mostly adjusted their rhetoric to the
concurrent tide. An example is Zsigmond Somogyi, venerologist and dermatologist from the
town of Paks, who is arguably the most important expert for interwar and also postwar
marriage counselling. He was the head of the second actively operating marriage counselling
6
Meaning not just actual members of Teleia ,but VD experts, who participated in
Teleia's activities and supported the work of the organisation.
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centre in Újpest, worked out the guidelines for VD care centres at the end of the 1920s, and
was also responsible for working out the details of the marriage counselling clause for the
1940 Lex Veneris. Somogyi worked for the Újpest “settlement” of the OSZI (Hungarian
Social Policy Institute), which was influenced by the British settlement movement, strongly
emphasised the idea of social equality and social welfare, without the bolshevik or Social
democratic overtone, of course. However, his thinking became more and more eugenic in the
course of the 1930s and he was ready to accept the 1941 Marriage Law without any open or
covert misgivings for the racial clause. In 1945, however, he was among the first to serve on
the regrouped Anti-Venereal Committee and even in the Stalinist early 1950s is regarded as
one of the key experts for VD, and has a chance to argue retroactively for his pre-1945
attitudes as leftist and progressive.
Before the launching of the journal of Teleia, the association already had published a
number of short pamphlets on VD and one of them was Az elhanyagolt nemi beteségek
következményeiről (On the consequences of non-treated venereal diseases) by Aladár Emődi
(Emődi 1922), the Secretary of Teleia (főtitkár – the official, who effectively ran the
organisation), which included a report on the activities of Teleia and also the “10
commandments of protection against VD.” Among them Emődi made a reference to the
necessity of establishing a system of compulsory premarital examinations, arguing firstly that
one-fifth of the marriages in Hungary were infertile, secondly that other countries had already
made it compulsory. Thirdly, he added, if State and Church had the right to investigate
whether the young couple was related or not or whether they were living in another marriage,
these institutions were also to be given the chance to enquire whether those about to marry
had a disease likely to spread, which would result in giving birth to offspring that would put a
serious burden on the State and society (Emődi 1922: 25). Parallel with this publication,
Teleia submitted a plea to Ministry of the Interior asking to make it compulsory for marriage
officials to inform couples about the importance of premarital medical checks (Emődi 1922:
26).
There is evidence that the government made serious consideration of the issue of
marriage counselling, as in the same year Aladár Fáy, Secretary of State at the People's
Welfare Ministry (Népjóléti Minisztérium) authored a memorandum on behalf of the
Minister, addressed to the Minister of the Interior. In this document (35.047/1923 N.M.M)
the issue of marriage counselling was thoroughly discussed and it was mentioned (without
reference to Teleia) that the question had been raised “from several sides.”
In February 1925 a new and influential group was created7, which consisted mostly of
eminent venerologists (it had overlaps with the membership of Teleia) and was part of the
Országos Közegészségügyi Egyesület (National Publich Health Association - OKE), and as
such had a semi-official advisory role and later on became key to anti-VD legislation8. The
Antivenereás Bizottság (Antivenereal Committee – AB) of the OKE, as it had limited
resources mostly due to the number of its members, was much less prominent in public
propaganda than Teleia but due to its strong links to the Ministry, largely influenced policy.
7
Or perhaps rather re-established, as it was also within the OKE that the 1905 Antivenereal organisation was formed.
8
From the People Welfare Ministry's 1925 statement it becomes clear that Teleia was
also to have an official role, but the AB was intended to be in the forefront of policypreparation: “the People Welfare's Minister (…) has commissioned the OKE to, parallel with
and complementary to the Teleia Association, deal with this extremely important matter, and
make suggestions.” See: Népegészségügy, 1925.
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At the first congregation of the AB Zsigmond Somogyi, made a referat on pre-marital
health checks and other promient members like Tibor Győry, József Guszmann, Aladár
Emődi and Kornél Scholtz all contributed to a discussion, which resulted in an unanimously
approved memorandum . Subsequently, the memorandum was presented to the Minister, and
also made public in Népegészségügy. When reading the contents of the memorandum itself9 it
becomes clear that premarital checks were thoroughly considered and the authors consulted a
wide range of foreign literature as well. They referred to the 1917 discussion of the issue
under Nékám's time as Government Commissioner, when Guszmann submitted the
memorandum, similarly rejecting obligatory health checks, with all other medical experts
agreeing (including the then Minister). They cited the examples of the USA, Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, England, Austria and Germany, stating that in Sweden there was
compulsory notification of VD and the doctor had to inform the officials in case of marriage
intent, while in the U.S. the institution existed in four states, but it was easy to go around
these regulations. There were four problematic areas that, according to the authors, made it
difficult to introduce the checks:
1. Technical: the problems of discovering both illnesses (syphilis and gonorrhoea) and the
relatively high occurrence of false positive results.
2. Legal: the doctor would issue the certificate and thus would take over responsibility. As the
majority of the urban population had at least once been infected10, no doctor would have the
courage to issue certificates.
3. Administrative: only qualified doctors could be allowed to do it, but there was a problem of
numbers. There are 75.000 marriages a year, which would mean that 50 new specialists would
have to be appointed.
4. Ethical: even in 1925, when “one had got so used to state intervention in their private
affairs”, such a decree would be deeply hated and would reduce the number of marriages.
Based on all these considerations and the foreign examples they suggested not to
introduce any coercive measures until the necessary means had been made available
(hospitals, doctors, etc) and the public had been properly educated. With this memorandum
the question of marriage counselling made a turn towards Eheberatung, that is, obligatory
prenuptials were dropped and the State made efforts instead to promote voluntary marriage
counselling centres, to establish VD care centres, and do comprehensive sex education
propaganda. In the second half ot the 1920s, as the OKE AB memorandum suggested only the
consideration of the exchange of doctor's certificates among couples and the introduction of
voluntary marriage counselling centres, the emphasis shifted towards less coercive ways of
state intervention. The idea of compulsory marriage certificates was not dropped, it remained
part of the general discourse on VD and most of the marriage counselling centres that
9
Which appeared in June in Népegészségügy and was submitted by the Chairman of the
OKE, Zsigmond Gerlóczy and health official Henrik Schuschny.
10
This of course was mere speculation and reflected a contemporary bias that viewed
urban spaces as more ”contaminated” and imagined the countryside as pure both in terms of
ethical standards and, in correlation with this, in terms of VD – this is why the urban
population was emphasised here. Statisticallly relevant (but methodologically very
questionable) numbers for VD were provided after a 1928 national campaign initiated by the
OKE where all doctors dealing with VD were requested to send in statistics about their
patients. On the rationale for the survey see Somogyi, Zs. Népegészségügy, 1928: pp. 11-16
and for the detailed results, Guszman, J in Népegészségügy, 1930, pp. 1108-14; 124957;1333-41;1377-1410.
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operated on a voluntary basis, tried to create ways for themselves to increase the control over
the counselled.
V. Voluntary marriage counselling centres
The Austrian and German voluntary marriage/sex counselling centres set up in the
course of the 1920s were the models the Hungarian marriage counselling experts wished to
draw upon. Hungarian medical journals regularly reported on the activities on the major
centres in Vienna, Berlin or Dresden and viewed these marriage counselling centres as
excellent examples of pioneer work in a new field of public hygiene. Even though some work
done by these clinics (e.g. providing birth control advice) and their leftist political leanings
was viewed with suspicion in Hungary, the idea of having a greater control over diseases like
VD or TB and implementing eugenic ideals via the institution of marriage counselling met
with widespread approval both among lay activists and medical experts. Marriage
counselling, one of the core discourses of the anti-VD struggle in Hungary at the time,
advanced from a discourse to actual practice by the voluntary marriage counselling centres
that were set up in 1924/25. With these centres the VD experts could assess the propensity of
the population to cooperate, they could spread propaganda more effectively and, preferably,
also pave the road for a more controlled policy where marriage counselling could become
obligatory in one way or another.
The voluntary marriage counselling centres set up in the 1920s and 1930s were almost
exclusively run by the core anti-VD elite, a fairly closed group of doctors, who were either
within or linked to the Teleia Association or the Antivenereal Committee. As a result, most of
the centres focussed on VD, but there were some that some dealt with other marriage health
issues, as well and pursued openly eugenic goals. The counselling either meant medical
examinations (on the spot or forwarding the “patient” to a specialist) or providing public
health-related advice on marrying options and illnesses, with particular attention to those that
could affect one's future children.
What the marriage counselling centres categorically rejected was the provision of sex
education and birth control advice. In this sense they embraced the Ehebaratung that the
Prussian State attempted to introduce in 1926, but while the counselling centres in Berlin in
many cases had to adapt to the needs of the counselled and provide advice on “morally
controversial” issues, there is no such indication in the case of Hungary. The birth control
movement in Hungary was limited to the marginalised Social Democrats/Communists and
urban liberal intelligentisa, and so the people attending marriage counselling sessions did not
and could not hope for advice on or material for birth control in these centres. Abortion and
birth control were regulated by Paragraphs 285 and 286 of the Criminal Code, with sentences
of up to 2 or 3 years (if married) for the woman and the same for the abortionist doctor, but up
to 5 years if s/he did it for profit. These strict rules were coupled with a conservative attitude
towards sexuality, where religious attitudes set the standard. The ruling elite labelled itself
“Christian and nationalist”, which in most cases meant “not Jewish”11, but indicated that the
teachings of the Christian churches on sexuality (and other issues) were difficult to deviate
from. There were few attempts to discuss birth control, one of these was the Social
Democratic Party's conference on birth control in 1932, which is documented by the book
published about the presentations there (Totis 1932). The intellectuals (doctors, jurists,
sociologists, journalists, writers) promoting this discussion on birth control were often
11
As succinctly stated by the historian Miklós Szabó in the 1970s. See: László, Karsai.
A múltnak kútja. In: Élet és Irodalom, 2007. Vol. 51 No. 46. 16 November, 2007.
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influential individuals like the journalist Pál Ignotus12 or the popular writer Frigyes
Karinthy13, or the editor Béla Totis, who was a physician and the author of bestselling books
on the sexual question in the 1930s.14 Despite this lone conference and publication, a birth
control movement did not unfold in Hungary, and the evidence left behind on the marriage
counselling by Social Democrats and Communists indicates that their influence was very
limited. The state, by contrast, promoted or endorsed Prussian-type Eheberatung.
The first voluntary counselling centre was set up at the initiative of Aladár Emődi as
part of the free VD treatment clinic of Teleia. This Counselling Station of Teleia was located
in Újlipótváros, a bourgeois disctrict of Budapest,. The second one followed suit in the same
year, initiated by Zsigmond Somogyi and established within the framework of the Országos
Szociálpolitikai Intézet (National Social Policy Institute - OSZI) in 1924 in the working-class
town of Újpest. These centres focussed on VD and citizen's duties to remain healthy and to
provide healthy offspring. This explains their lack of success Teleia had to make do with
100-150 visitors annually with the rate dropping to 50 a year in the 1930s – the OSZI had a
similar average) as the success rate of counselling centres with similar aims and practice was
quite limited in Austria, and Germany, as well. As the Hungarian experts on marriage
counselling did not embrace the more progressive ideas of the German (and Austrian) sex
reform movement, there was no scope for initiatives from below and no real motivating
factors for lower-class visitors to come to the centres as obligations outweighed benefits by
far. The marriage counselling centres remained largely unpopular in the 1920s and 1930s and
numbers increased only when voluntary was occasionally switched to “semicompulsory”,using the local marriage clerk to send/persuade individuals to medical checks
prior to marriage, as in 1928/29 in the OSZI in Újpest.
Marriage counselling focusing on racial hygiene was pursued by two organisations:
the Családvédő Országos Egyesület (Family Protection National Association – CSOE) under
the lead of Lajos Naményi between 1928 and 1932 and the Magyar Családvédelmi Szövetség
(Hungarian Family Protection Association – MCSSZ) that was headed by Gábor Doros and
provided marriage counselling from 1938 on, probably until 1944. The former had a strong
list of patrons and sponsors and attempted a “whole of life” counselling that started with sex
education for children and included psychological counselling for older, married couples. Its
leader, Lajos Naményi, was one of the most convinced eugenicists at the time, who favoured
negative eugenics to the extreme (like sterilisation of the “unfit”) as well, therefore the
CSOE's aims were in many ways different that that of other marriage counselling centres. The
MCSSZ attempted to introduce a very similar type of marriage counselling. It was a was
semi-official organisation, endorsed by much of the ruling elite of Hungary in the mid1930s, which became quite prominent and received a great deal of official support.
12
Jewish-Hungarian Pál Ignotus was son of the emblematic ”Ignotus”, who edited
Nyugat, the most influential literary journal for over 20 years and discovered the talent of
Hungarian literary giants like Endre Ady or Mihály Babits. Pál Ignotus was a journalist of
liberal Esti Kurír but worked for Nyugat as well. He emigrated to England in 1938 because of
the first Anti-Jewish Law.
13
Karinthy was one of the greatest satirical writers of his age, extremely popular in his
time and still today with his
books providing caricatures of his literati contemporaries and also of urban life in
Budapest in the 1920s and 1930s.
14
E.g.: Szerelem és szaporodás. Budapest: Népszava, 1932. or Törvény erkölcs,
anyaiság. Budapest: Álláspont, 1933.
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This coincided with the introduction of increasingly coercive (and later on: genocidal)
eugenic policies in Nazi Germany. As Germany continued to be venerated for its excellence
in social hygiene, the shift in marriage policies gained followers in Hungary, as well. Even
though most experts dealing with marriage counselling in practice saw the new German
measures as excessive and unnecessary, the Nazi example sparked debates on a number of
issues and some doctors, impressed by some elements of the German social experiment, saw
the new, eugenic and biological view on marriage as worthy of consideration. This explains
the rise and the radicalisation of the Magyar Családvédelmi Szövetség, as well (which was
reorganised and renamed successor organisation of the Magyar Egyesület a Leánykereskedés
Ellen (Hungarian Association Against Girl Trade – MELE). VD-expert Gábor Doros became
its chairman in the mid-1930s and marriage counselling in a broader sense was introduced in
1937. Doros and other leaders of the MCSSZ, even though they continued to cooperate with
Jewish doctors like Emődi in anti-VD activities, had a markedly pro-German orientation and
right-wing eugenic programme, which became increasingly anti-Semitic in its outlook after
the Marriage Law of 1941.
As for the history of marriage counselling in Hungary, the voluntary counselling
centres are significant because they were signposts indicating the direction of this public
policy debate in Hungary. Most marriage counselling experts agreed in the early and mid1920s that introducing obligatory marriage counselling was too early and that voluntary
marriage counselling was a good first step. The public was to get used to the idea of
counselling and, it was believed, that with years of good practice and marriage counselling
becoming a routine activity for most individuals before marriage, obligatory counselling
could be implemented on a national level. Voluntary counselling was on the one hand a test to
examine how well the population would welcome this institution and on the other it was a
building block in the new, national anti-VD network where VD care was envisaged to be
accessible to all (both geographically and financially) and a set of screenings were to serve as
entry points to stopping the spread of VD. Among the screenings, as it is exhibited by the
contemporary debates, the experts put most of their hopes in premarital examinations.
The sources for the activities marriage counselling centres are based mostly on
statistical data, books and journal articles written by the doctors working in these centres,
there is virtually no archival material on the reports about the counselling sessions. It can only
be cautiously stated based on this evidence that the relatively unpopular counselling centres
operated mostly in a unidirectional way. The doctors enquired about the individual's health
background, did the health checks they deemed necessary, and gave advice on marriage based
on these (and based on their general social hygiene / eugenic convictions). The individual,
aside from getting a diagnosis and some advice on marital health, would only receive a
doctor's certificate indicating that s/he was “fit to marry” (or not) and nothing else that could
qualify as tangible benefit - and most probably this made all the difference compared to the
German/Austrian marriage counselling centres.
VI. Marriage Counselling: obligation and marriage bans – 1941-1952
As seen before, introducing some form of legislation on marriage counselling was one
of the key issues that medical experts, eugenicists, social reformers believed would turn the
public’s attention to the importance of choice of partner and entering marriage disease-free.
There were considerable differences of opinion concerning the details of the legislation, but it
seemed logical to institutionalise a phenomenon that was already present and was seen to be
an effective and progressive tool for fostering public health and eugenic selection; it needed to
be put into wording on the highest possible level.
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It was already in 1933 when the highest government decision-making body, the
Council of Ministers, first deliberated on the possibility of introducing a law on marriage
counselling. The ministers, including PM Gyula Gömbös, agreed that the question of “mental
and physical selection” needed to be addressed as “the strength and health of the race was of
utmost important for the development of the nation. (Hungarian National Archives 1933).”
The minutes of the meeting a few pages later attest that there was a similar agreement on the
means of addressing this question:
In the course of the council meeting the opinion was formed that from a nation-strengthening
point of view the premarital health examination of marital partners-to-be bears value from a
race development point of view. Examining this question will be the task of the Minister of
the Interior, Minister for Culture and Minister for Justice (Hungarian National Archives 1993:
4).
The OKE AB, which in the 1920s was reporting to the Ministry of People’s Welfare,
remained an advisory board of the Ministry of the Interior (which took over the
responsibilities of the former ministry in 1932). As the AB had been entrusted with providing
professional input on matters related to VD and marriage counselling in the 1920s, it came as
no surprise that among the ministries/ministers listed at the 1933 Council of Ministers
meeting, it was the Ministry of the Interior that was in effect given the task. In a 1937 speech
in front of the Upper House of Parliament Ede Neuber, Chairman of the AB revealed that in
November 1933 the Minister for the Interior called for a meeting on premarital counselling
and recommended to include this in a future law on eugenics. At this meeting Neuber was
personally asked to have the AB submit a draft bill on premarital counselling and on 20
February 1934 they submitted this bill to the Ministry of the Interior (Minutes of the Upper
House 1935: 165). The bill, according to Neuber's speech, was under srutinised by the public
health experts of the Ministry of the Interior in 1937 and Neuber conveyed the unanimous
opinion of the AB when he stated, “from a people's and racial protection point of view I
would believe it of utmost importance that this draft become a law as soon as possible.”
This draft for the Lex Veneris submitted by members of the OKE AB15 was the result
of all the deliberations and debates that the committee members had since the setting up of the
committee in 1925. It was something that the AB members agreed on and were able to present
as the expert opinion to the public and the decision-making bodies. Chairman of the AB, Ede
Neuber and Deputy-Chairman Gábor Doros were the editors of the volume, where basically
all important anti-VD experts (like Somogyi, Emődi, Steiger-Kazal, Grúsz, Domahidy,
Melczer) had a chance to explain their views on certain sub-topics related to the Lex Veneris
(e.g prostitution, the doctor’s role, coercive treatment, etc.) and the draft of the law was
included as the last two chapters (chapters 14 and 15). Frigyes Grúsz reported on the issue of
prenuptial health checks. The submitted bill was tabled at Parliament in 193816, and it served
as the basis of the Lex Veneris that was adopted in 1940.
15
Which was published as a book, as well: Doros, Gábor and Neuber, Ede.
Törvénytervezet a nemibetegségek leküzdéséről. Budapest, Országos Közegészségügyi
Egyesület Antiveneriás Bizottsága, 1936.
16
There was a considerable delay, as Neuber was asked to submit a bill in 1933, the AB
was ready with it in 1934 and the Lex Veneris was only adopted in 1940. This can be partly
explained with the recurring government crises and the shifting priorities of successive
governments. After the death of Gömbös Hungary had three Prime Ministers until 1940 and
between 1935 and 1940 there were four Ministers for the Interior.
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This draft of the Lex Veneris, as a logical result of the debates on marriage
counselling, contained a part on “Family Protection”, which included Paragraph 11, that is,
“Pre-marriage Medical Counselling”:
Paragraph 11: Pre-marriage Medical Counselling. Every man and woman is obliged to have
a premarital consultation with a doctor that has a legal right to medical practice in Hungary
whether he or she had a communicable or inheritable disease and has to take notice of the
advice of the doctor and the education provided by paragraphs 12-14 of this law. Those
individuals that are certified to be poor receive cost free counsel from public health
authority doctors or – where there is such – Health Protection Institutes (EVIs). The
medical counselling needs to take place maximum 10 days before the wedding day.
The Minister for the Interior shall arrange that the doctors have possession of the necessary
forms in order to attest that premarital consultations had taken place.
The civil marriage officer is obliged to ask for the presenting of such a medical attestation of
premarital consultations prior to the wedding.
Those, who violate these provisions, are guilty of misdemeanour and are to be punished
with up to three months of prison.17
This draft reflected clearly what the anti-venereal elite wanted: obligatory marriage
counselling but with no binding effect, to be done by any approved doctor, for a cost (except
for the poor) and for communicable and inheritable diseases. The prenuptial counselling was
to serve as session for social hygiene education that would “enlighten” the young on up-todate eugenic and other health hygiene information that was available by medicine.
Even though in the drafts of the AB it was incorporated in the 1940 Lex Veneris,
eventually premarital counselling was removed from the latest draft of that law and in 1938,
at the meeting of the OKT it was considered separately (Hungarian National Archives –
Interior Ministry files). Moreover, by 1938 the draft prepared by the OKE AB was completely
re-worked and contained the following new elements:
1. premarital consultations were changed to premarital screenings. Both partners
had to attest that they were free of tuberculosis and men were required to take an
examination for VD.
2. the Medical Officer (tisztiorvos) was put into the centre of the administrative
process, having the right to produce these medical attestations
3. in case of deficiencies, a marriage prohibition could be issued by the doctor.
4. No separate tests were required but if the doctor believed the individual to suffer
from hereditary mental diseases, it could issue a marriage prohibition as well
(Hungarian National Archives – Interior Ministry files).
It becomes clear from the archival evidence of the events of 1940-1941 that it was the
powerful State Secretary for Health, Béla Johan and his health state secretariat that introduced
these new elements and transformed counselling into obligatory screenings. As to the removal
of the marriage counselling paragraphs from the Lex Veneris, Johan himself recalled
afterwards in1945 that “it was initiated by then Minister for the Interior József Széll to join
the marriage counselling legislation with the anti-Semitic legislation on marriage, in order to
make the racial protection part less sharp” (Semmelweis Muzeum Archives, Personal files of
Béla Johan). This is a plausible explanation, nevertheless, seeing the parliamentary and media
17
Törvénytervezet a nemibetegségek leküzdéséről (Chapter 14). In: Doros, Gábor and
Neuber, Ede. Törvénytervezet a nemibetegségek leküzdéséről. Budapest, Országos
Közegészségügyi Egyesület Antiveneriás Bizottsága, 1936. pp.4-5.
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attention the legislation prohibiting marriage between Jews and non-Jews received, the
attempt can be considered utter faliure.
Béla Johan became a key figure for the adoption of the legislation between 1939 and
1941, which quite suddenly made him a key figure of marriage counselling, despite most of
the work done by other medical experts in the 1920s and 1930s . His conviction of mandatory
pre-marital health checks, with a possible ban by the doctor, were adopted after a fairly long
tug-of-war between his Health State Secretariat and the Ministry of Justice. The Justice
Ministry, along with most of the medical experts (as exhibited above) wanted a more liberal
piece of legislation with an obligation of marriage advice only, done by Gábor Doros' new
organisation, the MCSSZ. Johan, however, wished the Medical Officer corps to be involved
and wanted to make use of the public health infrastructure that he had intitiated in the 1920s
and 1930s.
Aside from more petty political aims (marginalising Doros and company, putting
medical officers in position, etc.), Johan had a good reason to stick to his idea no matter how
much adversity he had to face: he had a strategic goal of involving the whole of the
population into a web of organised health care, with prevention, or egészségvédelem (health
protection) getting a clear priority over curative work of people, who had already become ill.
Health protection, a concept that became widespread in the 1930s, was seen as a modern ideal
that would decrease costs of public health and improve the overall well-being of the
population.
Health protection is key development of early 20th Century Hungary in accomplishing a
shift towards a biopolitical/immunisatory ideal in Hungary. This is because health protection
focuses on shifting away the attention of the medical practicioners and the whole of
population from those, who are already ill to those, who are healthy and need to be protected
from illness. In health protection financial investment and the gaze of the doctor is directed
towards the majority, those, who are part of the organic, healthy body of the nation – while
those, who represent disease by having fallen ill, need to be separated and their movement,
right to marry, right to have sexual encounters...etc needs to be limited. The diseased, if their
illness was uncovered, were first and foremost detached from society and the first step
constituted a restriction of their civil liberties – thus, in order to protect the health of
”everyone” (give life) some had to become ”homo sacer”.
The law that eventually introduced marriage counselling in 1941 (Law No. XV. of
1941) focused only on the two mostly feared contagious diseases: VD and tuberculosis.
Those, who were found to be ill of syphilis, gonorrhoea or tuberculosis and were deemed to
be contagious, could be forcefully sent to treatment based on the Lex Veneris of 1940 and
they were also banned from the right to marry. It becomes clear from the reports that on some
occasions where individuals were stigmatised in such a manner, marriage became utterly
difficult for them, as no one in the closely-knit community they came from wanted to marry
afterwards someone, who had been rejected marriage based on health reasons.
The law was in effect from 1942 to 1952 and based on the data available ca. 2-4% of the
100-150 thousand individuals wishing to marry annually were denied of marriage
temporarily. Based on the data from one of the Budapest insurance companies (MABI
Marriage Counselling Centre), these obligatory marriage counselling sessions were not only
about indicating whether the individual had TB or any form of VD, but the doctor's also tried
to use it to build up an eugenic register for future use. The anamnesis detailed the following:
personal medical history, medical history of the whole family, possible problems,
„deviations” from the norm and the results of the tests. The doctors often felt that they needed
to advise against marriage if they believed that the individual had a condition that made them
„unfit” for marriage. One such example was a 24 year old woman, who had to sign the
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following statement after the marriage counselling session: „I acknowledge that my heart
condition does not make marriage adviseable because the excitement related to married life
and a potential pregnancy would be a serious burden for this sick heart.” The doctors also
noted smaller irregularities like someone, who was „left-handed” or another client, a man,
who was labelled in the doctor's notes as a „154 cm tall hunchback.”
One can sense from these summary assessments by the doctors that the biopolitical aim
set by the legislators was accomplished by the doctors on lower levels, moreover, there was
an overeagerness to produce more serious results for health protection. Even though
hereditary and mental diseases (after long consideration) were left out of the law, the doctors,
who met the patients on the local level, were ready to intervene as much as possible, and
seeing the „beneficial” effect of the marriage ban, demanded the extension of its scope. 18
The continuity of the discourse and the practice was unbroken even with the schism that
1945 represented. The anti-miscegenation clause was canceled as early as March 1945 but
marriage counselling remained in an unchanged form – moreover, there was a case at the
MABI clinic in 1946, where a Jewish man, who was refused marriage in 1944 a few weeks
before the deportations, cam back from a concentration camp in 1946 and was refused
marriage by the same clinic, for „he had started his treatment but never finished it.” This story
confirms that some doctors were not just „overeager” in a health protection sense but most
probably wished to contain the procreation of the Jews, even after 1945.
Continuity in terms of institution and personnel was also evident after 1945. The
Antivenereal Committee was re-grouped in May 1945 and those, who did not die in the war
(like Emődi) and weren't seriously implicated (like Doros, who became extreme right wing
and racist in his rethoric after 1941) all made it to the old-new committee: Guszmann,
Somogyi, Rajka, Földvári, Lehner are all examples of doctors, who were actively contributing
to the marriage counselling discourse and legislation in the Horthy era. Moreover, Somogyi
and Guszmann were the leading experts, who had been involved in marriage issues for
decades: they could retain their positions in their respective hospitals and they were invited in
this new Committee to advise on solving VD issues, which in 1945/46 was a serious concern
in Budapest (Pető 1999).
Marriage counselling after 1945 retained a continuity in the medical personnel as the
key experts of the Anti-Venereal Committee remained, the Medical Officers continued to be
endowed with the right to make decisions and very much the same doctors made very much
the same decisions on marital health as before 1945. Moreover, marriage counselling was
propagated in a similar fashion as before the war, via public persentations by members of the
Anti-Venereal Committee, via leaflets, brochures and health protection journals. The results
were much the same with 2-5% of the individuals banned, early 1946 not surprisingly
showing a higher, 4-5% rate, at least in Budapest and the ratio of bans settling around 2%
afterwards. There were also similer justifications used for banning individuals from marriage
and health protection was defined as a key element of Soviet-type healthcare in Hungary after
the communist takeover of 1948/49.
After 1949 healthcare was reorganised with the establishment of a Health Ministry. This
resulted in centralisation and structural changes that made the Medical Officer Corps
superfluous. This was reflected in legislation passed in 1951, which made the issuing of
18
The scope of this essay does not extend to the forms of resistance from below and the
strategies patients themselves could (and did) resort to in order to avoid being penalised for
health reasons. This aspect of marriage counselling is also important, especially if one
scrutinises the options for resistance before and after 1945 - this could, however, be the topic
of a separate piece.
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marriage counselling certificates a job for the VD Care Centres and TB Care Centres instead
of the Medical Officers and retained only sphylis as a VD that had to be checked before
marriage – all other venereal diseases were too low in occurence and therefore it was not
economical to continue with checking for them. Marriage counselling was cancelled in 1952,
with the onset of a new, pronatalist regime, which is now know as the „Ratkó years” (after the
then Minister of Health, Anna Ratkó) where such an obstacle to producing children was
probably seen as unnecessary. At the same time, with the introduction of penicillin in 194849, the rate of VD (and of TB) to a small fraction and therefore the ill did not seem as such a
great threat as they seemed before.
VII.
Conclusion
The idea of marriage counselling was most probably an anachronism already when it
started becoming „serious business” in the 1930s and 1940s, because by that time marriage
had a very different role in interpresonal relations as 30 years prior, when marriage
counselling was first raised. Despite christian-conservative moralists suggesting otherwise,
premarital and extramarital sex was so widespread that the idea of entering marriage without a
health stain and remaining in that safe haven until the end of your life, was not more that a
naive wish. However, marriage counselling, despite the above-detailed rethoric supporting it,
was primarily a biopolitical enterprise, which was focused not on a highly moral ideal of
„pure marriage” but was intended to separate, to quarantine and/or to limit the actions of
those, who were seen as a threat to the body of the nation, both because of themselves and
because of the offspring they would have produced.
The emerging discourse in the early 1900s came partly from eugenicists and partly from
VD experts and marriage counselling gained greater visibility in the interwar era with the
formation of the Antivenereal Committee and the setting up of voluntary marriage counselling
centres in the mid-1920s. Voluntary marriage counselling was a largely unsuccessful
endeavour as young people did not see much benefit of getting medical advice on whom to
marry and on illnesses that they perhaps wanted to remain unrevealed. Most experts saw
voluntary marriage counselling as a primal phase of a policy that was eventually to be
transformed into a biopolitical-regulatory examination that would provide a protection of the
majority from contagious and hereditary diseases. When obligatory prenuptial checks were
introduced in 1941 most experts saw it as too early and too risky as the population's
unresponsiveness to voluntary bureaus indicated a lack of support. Nevertheless, mostly due
to the power Béla Johan excericsed in the early 1940s in the highest echelons of healthcare
policy-making, the mandatory health examination was introduced and became one of the
pioneering biopolitical-immunisatory policies of modern Hungary. Its scope was fairly limited
(contagious TB and VD) and its primary objective, preventing the procreation of the diseased,
was hardly accomplished.
The policy was partially successful, however, as it did limit the actions of some, and it
did discover the illness of a considerable ratio of the individuals about to marry. However,
there is no indication that it was able to seriously influence the sexual behaviour of those,
wishing to marry and it did not lead to decreased VD or TB rates – these were reduced later,
by the introduction of effective medicine. The biopolitical convictions, however, infiltrated
the medical and administrative elite and marriage and other health policies of later decades
show that using ”milestones” in the life of the citizens (like marriage or birth) in order to
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enforce a regulatory, biopolitical ideal has been adopted and has become widespread practice
in 20th century Hungary.
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