Volume 1 Issue 1-2 CONTENTS

Gábor Czoch

The Transformation of Urban Space in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century in Hungary and in the City of Kassa

 

The two most important changes in the urban spaces of the walled cities of Hungary in the period between the end of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth were the growth of the outer cities and the demolition of the city walls. This essay examines the consequences of these changes from the perspective of the social and political consequences of the shifts that took place in the concept of the city and the borders of the urban space, considering a specific case on the one hand, the city of Kassa (or Košice), and national tendencies on the other. The physical growth of the city and the gradual urbanization of the outer cities not only led to changes in the prevailing understanding of the “city” (which earlier had been identified as the area within the city walls), but made increasingly inevitable the creation, in a space that had been fragmented by the various privileges enjoyed by some of its inhabitants, of a legally unified city, as well as the incorporation of the outer cities, which had varying statuses, into the jurisdiction of the municipality. This, however, conflicted with the prevailing system of noble privileges, and the situation went unresolved until 1848, when the revolution made possible the transformation of the political structure of the entire country.

 

This essay examines the problems that arose with the transformation of urban spaces inherited from earlier centuries, urban spaces which were once clearly demarcated by city walls, but which with the passage of time became increasingly amorphous and fluid. The focus of analysis is Kassa (in Slovakian: Košice, its German name is Kaschau), a city lying on the banks of the Hernád River, where the northeastern range of the Carpathian mountains meets the lowlands, the region known in Hungarian as the Alföld. Today Kassa is the second largest city of the Slovak Republic. Throughout the period under discussion, it was a real multiethnic city, mostly with German, Hungarian and Slovakian speaking inhabitants. The growth of the city, which was founded in the second half of the thirteenth century by settlers (for the most part German speakers – hospes), was influenced in part by its advantageous geographical location, but also to a significant extent by the fact that it fell on an important trade route that crossed the Carpathians, linking the Kingdom of Hungary with Poland, Silesia, and the city of Krakow. Kassa profited considerably from trade with territories in Poland, in particular the trade in wines made from the vineyards in the nearby region of Tokaj.

During the period under examination, in other words from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, Kassa was the regional center of the northeastern territories of the Hungarian Kingdom. (Figure 1). In its role as a regional center it was one of the most important cities in Hungary, though from the perspective of its population it was only a medium-sized city in comparison with other settlements in Hungary, and was small in comparison with urban centers in the rest of Europe. According to the census taken under Joseph II in 1784 its population numbered only 7,590. According to the census carried out by the city itself in 1847, this number had grown to 14,959. The census taken in 1850 by the Austrian authorities indicates a decline in the population to 13,034. It is worth noting, however, that contemporaries did not consider this census reliable. According to the census taken in 1857, which was taken in part as corrective measure for the previous one, the population of the city was 16,417.1 In the case of Kassa, indices of population growth fall far behind similar indicators for the most rapidly growing cities in Hungary, which were found primarily in the lowland grain-producing regions, not to mention the city of Pest, which at that time was becoming the capital of the country and bore witness to an almost fivefold growth in its population.2

Figure 1. Commercial centers in Hungary, c. 1828

 

As the above-cited indices of demographic change demonstrate, the various transformations in the structures of urban space did not take place suddenly in the city of Kassa, nor were the consequences they brought abrupt. As an explanation of the relevance of the city from the perspective of a discussion of urban change, however, one could borrow from the reasoning of Jean-Claude Perrot. In Perrot’s study (now regarded as a classic) of the development of the city of Caen in the eighteenth century, a medium sized regional center in comparison with other cities in France at the time, Perrot sought to capture the birth of a modern city. He justified his choice of Caen as the subject of his inquiry with the argument that in Caen the elements of the process under scrutiny appeared in a kind of “rural hibernation,” and so in his view individual aspects of the changes in question were particularly accessible to analysis.3

The processes of urbanization took place at varying paces in the countries and regions of Europe, and indeed in some cases the rate of change varied even on the level of different settlements. These processes differed not simply in their chronology, but also in the consequences they bore.4 Not surprisingly, in the case of individual cities local and regional peculiarities and the features of the narrow political, social and cultural context played prominent roles, but in addition to these characteristics there were also numerous common elements and trends the explanation for which lies in the similarities in the character and nature of the challenges brought about by urbanization. Whether an examination presents rather the differences or the similarities, the individual and distinctive or the general and shared characteristics depends to a great extent on the level of the analysis one adopts in the course of one’s research. In this essay I examine the transformation of the structures of urban space (the growth of city outskirts, the demolition of city walls, and the consequences these changes had for urban life), on several levels. Thus I endeavor to situate the various changes that took place in the city of Kassa in the larger national context. Of the many questions that arise, I analyze the shift that occurred in the understanding and representation of urban space, as well as some of the social and political implications of the transformation of this space.

Figure 2. Anton Svajcer’s map and sketch of Kassa from the 1780s.
Source: Hungarian National Archives, Maps Collection,
Cameralistic Maps S section–Arcanum Database

 

Shifts in the Understanding of the Concept of the City, as Reflected in Maps and Written Accounts

 

Of the old depictions of the city of Kassa, unquestionably one of the most beautiful is the one done by engineer Anton Svajcer. It was included, no doubt in part because of its fine execution, in Magyarország régi térképeken [Hungary on old Maps], an album intended to offer a representative sample (Figure 2).5 The editors of the album date the map to roughly 1780, though they note that we know nothing regarding the person who commissioned the map and little regarding its actual execution or the motives for its creation. Nor do we know much of the life of Anton Svajcer. The depiction consists of two parts. In the larger, more dominant section of the portrayal one sees the ground-plan for the fortified city, including the ramparts, the ring of multiple walls and bastions, the lines of the streets, and the long main street that runs north-south and broadens towards the southern end, serving also as the main square and giving the city its distinctive shape. The marketplace was here, as were (and are today) two of the most extraordinary examples of gothic architecture in Hungary, the Cathedral of Saint Elizabeth and the Chapel of Saint Michael (which predates the cathedral), not to mention the coffeehouse, the covered market, and the pillory. This broadened section of the main street was in fact a small island in the middle of the city between two branches of the Csermely stream, which ran north-south through the city. Using letters that corresponded to a list on the side of the drawing, Svajcer designated the parts of the city that he considered the most important (indicating first and foremost the four quarters of the city, an administrative division of the urban space that had existed since the Middle Ages) and the public buildings. Naturally he made mention of the two old gates to the city, one on the northern end, the other on the southern, and the newer third gate, a side-door to the southwest that had been named after Joseph II on the occasion of his visit to the city.6

The smaller section of the depiction, which almost resembles an offhand addition, is comprised of a sketch of the city beneath the map. Bearing the title Prospectus Civitatis Cassoviensis versus Occidenterri, it depicts the city from the west. In the foreground one can see the line of a meandering street bordered by trees and in the distance the tall ramparts and the strong walls and bastions. Beyond this, one sees only the upper sections of the city houses and rooftops crowded together in rows, as well as seven buildings that rise above the city walls. Svajcer lists these separately: six churches and the Rubra Turris, in other words the tower next to the cathedral, which served both as a bell tower and a fire lookout tower.

From the perspective of the questions raised here, Svajcer’s map and his depiction of the city is important for what it fails to show. At the time at which the map was presumably being done, the city of Kassa already had three outlying districts the population of which, according to the census taken in 1788 (Conscriptio Animarum), was only a few-hundred short of the population of the inner city (meaning inside the city walls). The population of the outer city numbered 3,520, compared to 3,917 people living within the city walls.7 On the map-section of a survey (1764–1787) prepared with the intention of laying the groundwork for a precise military map of the Habsburg Empire and taken about the region of Kassa at roughly the same time that Svajcer’s map was being done (1782–1785), the outlying districts of the city can be clearly seen on the northern and southern sides of the city, around the two old gates, and along the western city walls (Figure 3). The Hernád River forms the eastern border of the city, thus limiting the further growth of the outlying districts. The depiction also shows that at the end of the eighteenth century the city walls and the outlying districts were not quite adjacent. There was a broad, empty strip of land between them. The cartographer Svajcer did a sketch of the city from the perspective of an imaginary observer who is standing somewhere in the middle of this strip of land, between the city walls and the buildings of the western outlying districts, with his back to the outer city.

Figure 3. Kassa on the basis of the map-section of the first military survey (1782–1785).
Source: Maps Collection of the Ministry of Defense Museum and Institute of Military
History–Arcanum Database. Papers of the First and Second Military Surveys of Abaúj County

 

The figure for the population of the city of Kassa in the census taken in 1784 by the order of Joseph II includes the population of the outlying districts, as does the series of annual surveys that were taken by the city council as of 1788. There was a practical explanation for the decision to include the parts of the city lying beyond the city walls, since the outlying districts were under the direct administration of the city council. (This was not true in the case of every city, and I will return to this later.) The sovereign sought not simply to have a survey taken of the entire population of the country according to settlement, but also to have a registry assembled of all the men fit for military service, though of course the census was also intended to determine questions of taxation. Joseph II also wanted to compel the local administrative bodies to keep continuous records of demographic data concerning the people under their jurisdiction.8 The council used the local censuses for their own purposes, such as the assessment of taxes. The city administration collected taxes from the population of the outer city, so from the perspective of jurisdiction, political belonging, and taxation, the city of Kassa included the outlying districts.

Regarding the depiction of the city on Svajcer’s map, since we know nothing about the reasons for which the map was created, one can venture little more than hypotheses. As noted above, in his portrayal of the city the dominant features of the urban space are depicted the most prominently, first and foremost the city walls with the bastions and the gates, the main square and main street with the attached side streets, the churches, the towers, and the houses crowded against one another. Together these elements of urban space form the profile of a settlement that essentially corresponds to the concept of an urban municipality familiar from earlier times all over Europe, a concept of which one can read in Tripartitum, a summary of medieval legal customs in Hungary by the humanist legal scholar István Werbőczy. According to Werbőczy, “The city is a multitude of houses and streets, surrounded by the necessary walls and fortifications, that possesses the qualities conducive to good and upright living.”9 It is worth emphasizing, from the perspective of the discussion here, that while this book was never elevated to the status of law in the Hungarian Kingdom, after its publication in 1517 it nonetheless served as a fundamental reference work for three centuries, and therefore continued to be held in considerable esteem at the time the map was made. Thus it is also quite possible that Svajcer—assuming his task was to depict the city of Kassa—never even considered including the outer city, since according to the definition of the city given in the Tripartitum, the outlying districts did not constitute part of the city proper.

Based on the available sources, it is difficult to offer much in the way of substantiation for the hypotheses above regarding Svajcer’s intentions. However, other sources concerning the city of Kassa do offer confirmation of details considerably more important from the perspective of the questions at hand here. Svajcer’s depiction suggests a conception of the city that was shared by many of his contemporaries. In other words, at the end of the eighteenth century the “city” was still considered commonly to mean the parts of a settlement lying within the city walls. This is clearly illustrated by a 1789 description of the city by Ferenc Kazinczy, one of the most influential writers of the time, not to mention an entry on Kassa by scholar and statistician András Vályi that was included in a description of Hungary published in 1796. The two authors, both of whom knew the city well, draw a clear distinction between the outer city and the intra muros, and both consider the latter to be the city proper.10 Some of the provisions of the 1798 city statute also indicate the prevalence of this conception of the city. One could cite several relevant examples: “a burgher who owns a house here in the city and outside in the Hóstát [a term that referred to the area beyond the walls of the historical city center].”11 Or with regards to the provisions concerning fire safety: “Here in the city and outside in the Hóstát in each house or at least in every third house […] there will be ladders and pots filled with water.”

Decades later, one continues to find references to the city proper as the area surrounded by the city walls, for instance, the 1837 description of Kassa by Elek Fényes, who is considered the father of the science of statistics in Hungary. Regarding Kassa he writes, “The city itself, which was strongly fortified long ago, is small, as its length is no more than 380 fathoms, and its breadth at the widest point is no more than 330.”12

In texts dating from the 1840s, however, the earlier dichotomie of the terms “city” versus “outer city” (in Hungarian város and külváros) are increasingly replaced by the terms “inner city” versus “outer city” (belváros and külváros). This change in terminology can be regarded as a sign that what had at one time been considered the outer city was no longer seen as a separate entity, but rather had come to be regarded as a constituent part of the urban community. It is worth noting that the Hungarian word “belváros” [“inner city”] was a product of this era. According to the dictionary of the words that were created as part of the movement to modernize the Hungarian language, the first, deliberate use of the word can be found in a text on Vienna that dates from roughly the end of the 1780s.13 With regards to Kassa, in the indexes of the records of the meetings of the city council the designation “belváros” first appears as a separate heading in 1845, though it can also be found in some of the decisions of the council dating from 1844.14 In descriptions I know of the city it was first used by the Kassa-born Imre Henszlmann, the founding father of the art history in Hungary, in an 1846 article written for the periodical Magyar Föld és Népei [Hungarian Lands and its Peoples]:

Between the exterior entrenchments that once stood and the city outskirts on the northern, western, and southern sides there is a large, wide slope (Galcis) around which the outer parts of the city, as in the case of Vienna, extend in a three-quarter circle along the inner city, because on the fourth side, the eastern side, there is nothing resembling an outlying city, but rather only a few mills, gardens, and a bath near a millstream.15

In the series of censuses Conscriptio Animarum which were taken by the administrative territorial division of the urban territory the term “belváros” appeared in 1847, though it refers not simply to the four traditional quarters of the city surrounded by the earlier walls, but also to the parts that were built either at the base of the walls or where they had stood.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, parallel with the increasing use of the term “belváros,” the meanings of the terms “inside” and “outside” the city also changed. At the end of the eighteenth century they had been used unambiguously to refer to areas either inside or, respectively, outside the city walls. However, in an article on Kassa published anonymously in a periodical in January 1848 one reads the following: “The territory of the city stands thusly, according to sections. The inner territory of the city is 500 hold [a term used to measure land], the vineyards are 540 hold, the meadowlands 23,000, cabbage gardens 200, and arable land 7,000. The forests only on the border of the city are 10,000 hold; rivers, ditches, streams, crags, gullies, roads and other unusable areas are 5,700 hold.”16 Thus the author, who on the basis of this detailed description must have known the city well, clearly considered the outlying parts of the city constituent as inner parts of the city proper and regarded only the cultivated lands surrounding Kassa, which belonged to the city, as lying beyond its borders.

 

The Demolition of the City Walls

 

The shift in the meaning of the notion of urban space discernible in the sources mentioned above was related fundamentally to the accelerating growth of the outer city and the increasingly tight fusion of the outer city with the intra muros. The gradual demolition of the city walls, a process illustrated by contemporary maps and depictions, shows this process quite clearly from another point of view. In addition to the military map made at the beginnings of the 1780s (drawn just in the same time as Svajcer’s map), a second military map dating from 1806 also clearly depicts the fortifications of the city (Figures 3 and 4). The map depicting the city as it looked in 1830 and another done in 1856, however, show the disappearance of the major parts of the city walls (Figures 5 and 6). The maps also clearly show the growth of the outer city.

Figure 4. Kassa on the basis of the map-section of the second military survey (1819).
Source: Maps Collection of the Ministry of Defense Museum and Institute of Military History–Arcanum Database. Papers of the First and Second Military Surveys of Abaúj County

 

Two nineteenth century chroniclers, one who wrote in German, the other in Hungarian, also make mention of the demolition of the city walls, Johannes Plath in 1860 and József Tutkó in 1861. On the basis of their descriptions, the demolition of the walls took place roughly as follows.17 According to Tutkó, in 1706 the prince Ferenc Rákóczi II, who led an uprising against the Habsburgs, ordered the fortification of the city, which sided with him against Vienna. “[O]n the basis of the plans of French engineers, [Rákóczi] had the outermost entrenchments surrounding the city erected, the better part of which were still standing in the third decade of the nineteenth century.” In Plath’s account one reads the following: “until 1827 the hillocks around the city walls and the ramparts enticed the inhabitants of the city to take pleasant strolls, and also provided a place for the mirthful youth to play ball games and fly kites.”

According to the Hungarian chronicle, in 1802 the people of Kassa requested permission from the chancellery of the Hungarian royal court for the construction of a new gate, in addition to the existing city gates. The so-called “mill gate” was completed in 1805. The chronicler also notes that in 1803 at the site of the lower gate “the last remains of the castle that had once stood were also hauled away and a straight road through the gate was being built.” According to Plath, “the side city gates, as the Joseph and Mill gates were demolished” in 1827. He wrote that also in 1830 “the lower city gate was completely demolished and the main street was lengthened, creating a beautiful view from the cathedral of the road leading to Pest and Eperjes.” (Eperjes is today the city of Prešov in Slovakia, which lies some 30 kilometers to the north of Kassa.) The Hungarian chronicle dates the next step in the demolition of the city walls to 1840, when the process of removing the entrenchments surrounding the city on its western side and leveling the ground was begun. In his aforementioned 1846 description of Kassa, which gives a sense of the city before the upheavals of the 1848 revolution, Imre Henszlmann writes:

Figure 5. Joseph Ott’s map of Kassa, from roughly 1830.
Source:  “Plan der königl. Freistadt Kaschau” (Joseph Ott).
Hungarian National Archives, Maps Collection S 11. no 490: 2 – Arcanum Database

 

The center of the city is elliptical, a shape given by the one-time fortifications that surrounded the inner city. These fortifications consisted of double stone walls and entrenchments that were filled with the waters of the Csermely stream. Over the past several years the entrenchments have been filled and gardens have been built on them. The walls have been partly demolished. The entrenchments now only remain in the northern part of the city, the walls however still stand in other areas as well. The southern side has been completely leveled. And the gates too, having long lost their function as fortifications, have recently been completely torn down.18

Jean-Luc Pinol and François Walter date the largest wave in the process of the demolition of city walls in Europe to the period between 1790 and 1825.19 In the case of the city of Kassa, however, the process began only at this time, as the requests for the construction of new gates and the reconstruction and enlargement of the existing gates indicate. The more rapid demolition of the walls occurred in the 1830s and lasted into the 1840s and indeed even later. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the better part of the fortifications separating the outer city and the inner city had been demolished.

Figure 6. Kassa in 1856. Source: Hungarian National Archives, Maps Collection S 12. Div. X. No. 29.

 

New Construction in the Area of the Entrenchments and the Promenade

 

The German chronicler’s above-cited comment, which makes reference to denizens of the city strolling and playing around the fortifications (which had lost their military significance), suggests that the people of Kassa took possession of the area spontaneously. However, the leaders of the city sought to address the question of how to use this area within a larger framework of urban planning. The inscription on the map dating from roughly 1830 illustrates this clearly: “Plätze zu projektirten Gebäude” [sites for the projected buildings] (Figure 5). According to all signs, however, the plans progressed only slowly at best, and oftentimes the aims and intentions of the city planners came into conflict with the unplanned use of the area by the people of the city. There are few detailed sources on this, however, little more than a handful of notes of cases that were heard at sittings of the city council. The decisions of the council suggest that the leaders of the city had two ideas regarding how to put the area of the ramparts, which they had resolved to demolish, to practical use. They first measured out plots of land for residents of the city who were interested in acquiring lots and later entertained the idea of creating a promenade.

Inhabitants of the city who were interested in acquiring land in the area of the ramparts were able to take possession of a lot in accordance with the conditions accepted by the Hungarian Royal Chamber (Magyar Udvari Kamara) (4594/1843).20 References in available sources suggest that one could come into possession of a lot free of charge, or at least with tax exemptions stretching over several years. At the same time, the owner had to accept responsibility for the considerable labor of leveling and evening the ground. Many of the people of the city who accepted this task, however, postponed the work for a long time, as noted by a city engineer in the course of a survey of the city taken in August 1843. In his report he refers to a resolution of 1833, which apparently stipulated the responsibilities of the owner, but in vain. Thus earlier the leaders of the city had not concerned themselves much with the matter. The Hungarian chronicle indicates that on the western side of the city the demolition and removal of the ramparts began to take place at a more rapid pace in 1840, at which time the idea of creating a promenade increasingly came to the fore. As of 1843 the city council began to issue increasingly numerous resolutions regarding the use of the area of the ramparts, and in May 1844 the leaders of the city again considered the cases of lot owners who had neglected to meet their obligations. The council issued a warning to the property owners and gave them another year to complete the work (2615/1844).

A case that was discussed in July 1845 offers a clear illustration of the prevailing circumstances and the various problems that arose. The question of the territory of the ramparts created two significant problems. The first of these was the task of leveling the ground, the second of drying it out, in other words draining it. The council therefore ordered drainage ditches to be dug, a task for which it also made use of the villeins of the surrounding villages, who belonged to the lords of the city. During the course of the work that had been ordered by the city council damage was done to the vegetable garden of one of the lot owners. The owner lodged a complaint and requested compensation from the council (4316/1845). The council considered the case and determined that the lot in question had come into the possession of its previous owner at auction. As one of the conditions of the sale of the property, the council stipulated that the owner level the “swampy lot” and build the necessary drainage ditch with stone arches, in precise accordance with the instructions of the city engineer, and that the owner also keep it in a state of permanent repair. With the passing of time, however, these conditions and obligations were gradually forgotten, in part because of changes in ownership but also simply because the council earlier had failed to enforce them in the first place. Given the circumstances, the council rejected the request for compensation, explaining its decision with the contention that the obligations of the owner did not change simply because of a change in ownership. The new owner, however, could not have known much of this. The report indicates that he had driven the workers who had gathered by the order of the city leaders from his lot, and indeed his wife too had helped. Thus they not only hampered the construction of proper drainage, but also caused an affront to the council. The husband and wife therefore not only were ordered to tend to the tasks the completion of which they had hindered, but also to appear before the council at its next sitting, where they were personally reprimanded.

A case from three years later offers an illustrative example of how the city leaders faced considerable difficulties in their attempts to realize their plans regarding the uses of the area where the ramparts had stood. A report from August 1848 (4794/1848) states that the owners of the local porcelain works had dumped manure “harmful to health and the air” in the ditch on the western site of the city barracks. The council allowed the owners of the porcelain works to use the drainage ditch on the condition that within ten years they fill the ditch and build a house on it. According to the report this condition had not been met even long after the deadline had expired, so the council ordered an inquiry.

It is worth noting, however, that at least as far as one can know on the basis of available sources there was no consensus among the citizens regarding the council’s project to use this land. At the beginning of 1848, for example, “several inhabitants of the city who kept cattle” submitted a request to the council (3143/1848) to allow them to graze their livestock on the northwestern area of the land where the ramparts had stood. The council rejected the request, explaining that given the need to maintain order they could not permit livestock to graze either in the inner city or in the outer city.

The goal of the leaders of the city was to create an elegant promenade, which they wished to enclose and plant with trees. According to the sources, however, they faced several difficulties. For instance, they had to have the saplings and the stakes with which they were held guarded in order to prevent theft (3736/1848). Some of the denizens of the city, however, wholeheartedly supported the plans for the promenade. A separate society was formed in order to facilitate the work, and donations were collected, significant sums that were turned over to the council in order to support its efforts (960/1844 and 2619/1845). On the basis of the resolutions of the council, the society was headed by two counts, so it is reasonable to conclude that the plans for the creation of the promenade reflected rather the wishes of the elite of the city.

In any event, at the time the promenade began to be built there were already three other pedestrian areas in Kassa. According to the chronicle of the city the first had been built in the heart of the city, on the main square near the cathedral, in 1805.21 The aforementioned description of the city from the periodical Hetilap [Weekly] offers a glimpse of the situation in 1848:

In addition to the abovementioned promenade in the center of the city, there is another at the lower end of the main street and another that was planted with trees last year on the eastern side of the city alongside the ditch of the mill. The western rampart area is also being turned into a promenade, the ground has already been leveled, one part has already been planted with trees, and in this respect in the future we can expect even more, as the council and the selected members of the citizenry of the city have resolved to employ a paid gardener who will plant saplings in a seedling nursery to be established and plant trees along every street and walkway of the city, according to the plans being drawn up, and in the public gardens, and also tend to the trees that have already been planted and see to any problems that arise.22

The creation of the pedestrian areas gave the public spaces of the city a new and distinctive social function, though the sources available in the case of the city of Kassa are not sufficient to enable any kind of thorough analysis of this. The cases that have been mentioned here suffice perhaps at least to illustrate the ways in which the new uses of these spaces diverged from earlier practices. Similarly, one can do little more than venture hypotheses regarding the conflicts that arose when attempts were made to put the various principles of urban planning, which were based on the expertise of engineers, into practice. In any case, the houses and pedestrian areas that gradually came to take the place of the city walls clearly furthered communication and everyday contact between the inner and outer city.

 

The Construction and Growth of the Outer City

 

The available sources yield little information regarding the changes that took place in the architectural appearance of the buildings of the outer city. The various sketches of the city and the travelogues in which one finds descriptions of its buildings understandably dwell first and foremost on the public buildings, churches, and mansions of the aristocrats that opened onto the main street of the inner city. For many aristocratic families Kassa was a popular place in which to spend the winter. In 1789 Ferenc Kazinczy wrote: “the outer city is built in an ample space, but consists of pitiful hovels.”23 András Vályi was a bit more generous in the comments he penned in 1797: “the outer city of this royal town is also spacious.” He notes that there was a reformed church in the outer city, as well as two Lutheran churches. In the larger of the two Lutheran churches services were held in German, in the smaller they were held in Slovak. Vályi adds, “in addition to these buildings the outer city is also graced with splendid gardens.” 24

In 1846 Imre Henszlmann also made a few sparse comments regarding the outer city of Kassa: “with the exception of the farmsteads of the well-to-do burghers and the gardens of the nobility, the outer city consists of miserable thatch-roofed houses made of clay; they are inhabited by Slavs, who represent the largest part of the population of Kassa.”25 A description of the city from 1848, however, offers a picture that is a touch more favorable: “as is the case in the inner city, in the outer city there are also many large houses that were built in fine taste.” The anonymous author, a denizen of Kassa, does add, however, that most of the houses in the outer city were small and many of them had “thatched roofs.”26 The descriptions of the city thus suggest that between the beginning and the middle of the nineteenth century there had been small changes in the appearance of the outer city, but essentially it continued to consist predominantly of ramshackle, rustic houses.

The picture is a bit more nuanced and varied, however, if one considers the changes that took place in the outer city in the period between 1788 and 1847 on the basis of the city censuses, almost all of which have been preserved. As noted earlier, the censuses were done according to the subunits of the city’s administrative districts.27 First the four quarters of the inner city, or intra muros, were taken into consideration. Then as a kind of transitional area came the so-called Submurales, and the outer city was referred to by the sort of umbrella term Suburbium, at first as of 1788 according to individual street names. This simple listing of street names was replaced from 1802 with the division of the areas outside the city walls into the lower, middle, and upper outer city (initially in Latin, and as of 1840 in Hungarian), a process that can be seen as a clear sign of the gradual growth of the outer city. In 1819 the census was expanded to include two new, distinct areas in the outer city, the Aedificiorum post suburba and the Externa civitas. As of 1822 the latter was referred to as Nova Civitas. The names that were given to these areas betoken the territorial growth of the city. Finally, as we have seen, in 1847 the general term “belváros” was used, which included the four quarters of the inner city (intra muros) and the area referred to initially as Submurales and the Nova Civitas.

According to the censuses, in 1806 the population of the outer city exceeded the population of the intra muros for the first time (4,581 residents in the inner city, compared to 4,904 living in the outer city). Over the course of the subsequent decade the patterns of population growth in the two parts of the city were essentially similar, with the population of the outer city sometimes slightly exceeding and sometimes falling just short of the population of the inner city. As of 1817, however, the population of the outer city always exceeded the population of the inner city. According to the 1847 census, it was roughly one-and-a-half times the size of the inner city (6,024 residents in the inner city compared to 8,935 in the outer city).

With the growth of the population the number of houses in the city also grew in the period under examination, but only in the outer city. For instance, in 1801 there were 375 houses in the intra muros, and by 1842 this number had actually dropped slightly to 372. In the outer city, by contrast, the number of houses grew from 789 to 990. It is worth noting that according to the 1760 and 1767 censuses there were 369 and then 378 houses and lots in the inner city. These numbers clearly demonstrate the strong divergence between the topographical continuity (or more simply put, lack of change) in the inner city on the one hand and the rapid growth in the outer city on the other. Furthermore, the average number of people living in a single dwelling also grew in the outer city over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, in contrast with the inner city, where this number hardly changed at all. While from this perspective the difference between the two parts of the city remained significant in the middle of the century, it had however declined in comparison with the early 1800s (see Table 1).28

 

Table 1. The number of people living in a single dwelling, according to the censuses

1801		1842
Inner city	Outer city	Inner city	Outer city
11.8	5.2	12	6.7

 Source: Calculated from my own database.

 

The data from the city censuses suggest that in the first half of the nineteenth century the outer city retained much of its village-like character, but the picture is considerably more nuanced if one also takes into consideration the occupations of the people living in the outer city29 (see Table 2).

 

Table 2. Division of the population according to occupation

	1801		1842
	Inner city	Outer city	Inner city	Outer city
Artisan	86.3	42.9	70.5	51
Merchant	8	0.6	13	1.4
Intellectual occupation	2.6	1.2	5.0	2.7
Day laborer, agricultural laborer	0.5	46	3.8	29.5
Other	2.6	9.3	7.7	15.4
Total	100	100	100	100

Source: Calculated from my own database.

 

In the early years of the nineteenth century there were still significant differences between the two parts of the city from the perspective of the professional occupations of the population. In the inner city the number of artisans vastly outnumbered the number of people pursuing other occupations. They constituted the clear majority of the population, followed in a distant second place by the merchants, and then, again with a significant drop, people engaged in an intellectual profession or pursuing “other” occupations (such as carriers, musicians, restaurant keepers, retired army officers, etc.). Field and day laborers were only rarely recorded as living within the city walls. In contrast, in the outer city the field workers and agricultural laborers constituted the single largest group at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the proportion of artisans living in the outer city was only a few percentage points less than the proportion of agricultural workers. Thus from the perspective of the composition of the population on the basis of occupation the community of the outer city cannot really be considered rural or provincial even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, though it is true that there were almost no merchants and inhabitants of the outer city who were engaged in so-called intellectual professions. The outer city was also distinct in part because compared to the inner city a fairly high percentage of its population was engaged in “other” occupations. This is due primarily to the fact that for the most part carriers and restaurant keepers were found in the outer city.

By the middle of the nineteenth century significant changes had taken place in the occupational repartition of the two parts of the city. While in the inner city the percentage of artisans dropped from 86 percent to 70 percent in the outer city this figure grew to 51 percent. Thus artisans constituted a majority of the population in the outer city as well, with agricultural workers comprising the second largest group at 29 percent of the total population. While merchants and people engaged in intellectual professions still were found primarily in the inner city, their number grew in the outer city as well, thus indicating a decline in the differences between the two parts of the city. Furthermore, with the growth in the number of artisans in the first half of the nineteenth century there was a corresponding diversification in the artisanal crafts found in the outer city. At the beginning of the century most of the artisans in the outer city—a decisive majority—were either stonemasons or carpenters. By the middle of the century they had been joined by boot makers, potters, cobblers, and butchers, but also people pursuing comparatively rare trades, such as hatters, turners, and even “spectacle makers.”

 

Political Debates Regarding the Outer City

 

As the discussion of the various changes that took place in the city of Kassa makes clear, by the middle of the nineteenth century the concept of urban space had undergone a transformation. In contrast with earlier notions of the “city,” the newer concept of urban space also included the areas outside the city walls. I have outlined the various processes this involved: the demolition of the city walls, the growth in the population and physical space of the outer city, and the gradual but continuous urbanization of the outer city from the perspective of the occupations of its population. Legal regulations, however, did not keep pace with these changes, and therefore by the middle of the nineteenth century the actual, everyday use of urban space and the prevailing legal system increasingly came into conflict with each other. Naturally Kassa was by no means the only city of which this was true. One could enumerate other cities in which similar transformations had taken place and comparable conflicts had arisen, but perhaps the best indication of the nationwide nature of these changes is the simple fact that the Diet (the legislative assembly of the Hungarian estates) of 1843/44 had this very question as an item on its agenda.

The debates concerning the outer cities began with the discussion of an extremely detailed bill (numbering more than 400 paragraphs) the goal of which was to implement a thorough reform of the local administrative systems and the national political status of the cities.30 In the contemporary press and in various political treatises the focus was essentially on the political situation. This included the relationship between the cities and the organs of the central government, questions concerning the extent of legal authority, and perhaps most importantly, the question of how many votes representatives of the cities should have in the Diet. Questions of considerable importance regarding the local administration of the cities were also on the agenda, including the question of the status of the outer cities. The bill had been drafted by politicians of the nobility and intelligentsia who sought to implement urban reform. In the spirit of the liberal principles of the age, they hoped to transform the political and social structures of the country and make the prevailing legal order more rational and modern. To this end, they were prepared to accept the consequences of political conflict with the court in Vienna and conservative circles, but they sought to achieve their aims through dialogue and negotiation. The Diet was the most important battleground of their efforts, and their weapon of choice was proposals for legal reform such as the one they presented to the legislative assembly (and therefore also to the sovereign) regarding the cities.31

When preparing the proposal, supporters of the liberal reforms appealed to the principle of “territorial” authority (to use their term).32 Their concept of urban space differed radically from the notion of urban space that essentially identified the “city” as the space within the city walls. According to the proposal for reform, the definition of the space of the city was “the area in which the city exercises its authority.” This definition, of course, made it necessary to designate precisely the exact limits of city authority. This question was particularly significant, and also particularly complex, because the actual physical space of the city was legally quite fragmented. The authors of the proposal strove to minimize this fragmentation, at least to the greatest extent possible. In other words their intention was to make the territorial jurisdiction of the city authorities cover the geographical space of the city as closely as possible, a reform which would have the practical consequence of reducing or eliminating the legal distinctions between the different parts of the city and which would also bring the population of the city directly under the jurisdiction of the city authorities by abolishing various territorial and individual privileges.

Their efforts created two serious sets of problems, the first of which involved urban plots of land that were owned by members of the nobility, the second of which concerned the status of the outer cities. In the case of the plots of land owned by the nobility, the problems arose because, in accordance with the privileges enjoyed by the nobility, these plots were not under the jurisdiction of the city administration and were not subject to taxation. This question was the subject of fierce debates, since the prospect of placing the lands of nobleman under the jurisdiction of the city was fundamentally at odds with the centuries-old privileges of the nobility. In the end the Diet reached a compromise according to which the plots owned by members of the nobility were put under the jurisdiction of the city from the perspective of matters relating to the police and criminal law on the one hand, a measure that constituted a restriction of the privileges of the nobility, while on the other these lands retained their exemption from taxation.

One of the problems that affected the denizens of the outer city the most dramatically and seemed to call for urgent political resolution was the discrimination they suffered in comparison with residents of the inner city (who earlier had been considered the “actual” inhabitants of the city) as a consequence of the prevailing laws. One of the regulations of the city of Kassa regarding fire safety offers a vivid example. According to the regulation, which was issued in 1798 but remained in effect until 1848, people were forbidden to smoke pipes in the streets near the houses, stables, or barns (primarily because of the risks posed by the flammable materials with which the roofs had been built). The punishment for a denizen of the inner city was a fine, but for the same infraction residents of the outer city or people who did not enjoy the civic rights of the burghers were caned.33 In the spirit of the “territorial principle,” the authors of the 1843 urban reform law insisted that “the community of the city is one; the divisions of the city on the basis of inner city or outer city, or from any other perspective, do not form separate communities” (45. §). Thus the concept according to which the outer city forms an integral part of the city as a whole was made law. The Diet accepted this part of the proposal without much debate. However, this individual provision hardly resolved the larger question of the legal status of the outer cities.

Further problems arose in the case of cities around which urban areas (or areas resembling the urban community) had been built that lay not on lands in the possession of the city (as was the case in Kassa), but rather on the estates of members of the nobility. Pozsony (or Pressburg, as it was called in German, and Bratislava by its name as the present-day capital of Slovakia) was one such city. According to a description by Elek Fényes, “Pozsony has essentially one outer city, Blumenthal, though one could also consider Váralja or the Schlossberg and Zuckermandl part of this, because they are separated from the city only by a wooden fence, but these outskirts are either under the authority of the castellany of Pozsony or the comitat of Pozsony.”34 By that time the city of Pozsony and these settlements had grown together to such an extent that according to all signs the authors of the law did not distinguish them from one another. This is why, by their count, the city of Pozsony was home to more than 30,000 people, a figure on the basis of which they suggested that the city be given two votes in the Diet. In the course of the debates, however, some of the representatives in the Diet contended that the census results were misleading since they included areas of the outskirts of Pozsony that legally did not belong to the city proper. The debate went unresolved because of a simple lack of reliable data, although the people responsible for the proposal insisted that they were using the most reliable figures of the time. In any event, if the objection was well founded, the fact that it was raised suggests that the statisticians also considered the outer city an integral part of Pozsony.

In the interests of addressing the problems that arose, for instance, as a consequence of the geographical growth of cities, the bill was intended to make it possible for the cities to incorporate neighboring areas that were directly adjacent with their borders. According to the bill, the annexed area would be entirely under the jurisdiction of the city, and it would lose any privileges it had enjoyed before its annexation. Administrative considerations and everyday use of the areas would have provided adequate justification for application of the “territorial principle,” in other words the creation of a single, unified jurisdiction over areas that in practical terms had merged entirely with the city but from a legal perspective still belonged to other proprietaries. As Baron József Eötvös, one of the leading figures of the liberal political circles, emphasized, for instance, in such cases annexation facilitated “the organization of effective public administration.” In support of his argument he cited the examples of Pozsony and Buda and the areas that had merged with these two cities on a practical level, but still belonged to other proprietaries. As he explained, in the case of these two cities it was impossible to maintain regulations relating to public order because of the prevailing administrative situation.

The aristocrats of the Upper House of the Diet, however, did not agree to this solution. The objection raised by the bishop of Kassa summarizes the reasons for their opposition: if the city of Pozsony were to include Váralja, then not only would Váralja be removed from the authority of the county and placed under the authority of the city, but—an even more disastrous consequence—the territories that comprised the estates of the Pállfy family would cease to be a nobleman’s lands. They would lose the privileges they had enjoyed and become simply the holdings of burghers, subject, for instance, to taxation.

Thus according to the objection that was raised by the majority of the Upper House, such an annexation threatened to weaken not only the foundations of civil law, but also the possessory rights of the nobility, and this was clearly unacceptable. The members of the Upper House therefore suggested that the law make possible, in cases in which it was justified, the expansion of the authority of the city to the areas that fell in its vicinity, but without the actual annexation of these areas. In the course of the negotiations a majority of the members of the Lower House were persuaded to accept this proposal. Thus here too a compromise was reached that was in its essence similar to the one that was reached concerning the properties owned by members of the nobility in the city.

The debates regarding the regulations concerning the territory of the city lasted for several months, but in the end the contending political sides came to an agreement. The bill, however, never became law because of the opposition of the Viennese court. The reform failed because of the question of central supervision over the city authorities. The Viennese court sought, through the members of the Upper House, to create a kind of inspector general who essentially would be given control over the entire municipal government. The Lower House of the Diet did not pass this proposal, and thus the question of the status of the outer city was left to the next gathering of the Diet.

The transformation that took place in the physical structures and conceptual notions of urban space by the middle of the nineteenth century made administrative and political changes inevitable. The various compromises that were reached in the course of the debates concerning these changes reflect the shifting power relations of liberal and conservative political groups. The acceptance of the 1843 bill, which meant the assertion of the “territorial principle,” would have been a significant step from a legal perspective towards the creation of a unified urban area. It would have allowed for the creation of an appropriate legal framework for the changes that had taken place in the structures and uses of urban spaces. The political debates regarding the regulation of urban space and the status of outlying districts, however, touched on the problems of the entire political establishment, which was founded on the privileges of the estates. Thus a comprehensive solution was only possible following the transformation of the entire political system.

 

 

Archival Sources

 

Conscriptio Animarum in gremio Liberaquae Civitatis Cassoviensis (as of 1840: Kassa város keblében létező lelkeknek összeírása [A Registry of the People Living in the City of Kassa]), Archív Mesta Košice, Zbierky, Súpisy domov, obyvateľov [Municipal Archives of the City of Košice, Collections, Registries of Houses and Population].

Statuta Liberae Regiae Civitatis Cassoviensis – Actum sub sessione Magistratuali atque Electa Communitatis die... January 1798. [Provisions of city statue in 1798] Archív Mesta Košice, Zbierky [Municipal Archives of the City of Košice, Collections].

Tanácsülések Jegyzőkönyve [Minutes of the Council Sittings], Archív Mesta Košice, Stredná Manipulácia, Magistrátny súd (J) [Municipal Archives of the City of Košice, Central Archival Order, Documents of the Municipal Assembly].

 

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Translated by Thomas Cooper.