Compiled by: Norbert Zsolt Rácz
In lists that bring together Transylvanist thinkers, the name of Ferenc Balázs rarely appears at the forefront. This is not due to any shortcoming on his part, but rather to historians who either did not recognize—or, if they did, did not sufficiently emphasize—the extent to which this author, active in the 1920s and 1930s, was connected to the foundational layers of the great Transylvanian vision that emerged after the First World War. Yet, if one pays even slightly closer attention to his work, it becomes clear that few of his contemporaries lived Transylvanism as deeply as he did.
For him, Transylvanism was not a salon philosophy, not merely a literary project, not merely a social organizing force, not merely an identity, not merely popular education, association, architecture, or tradition—it was all of these and more, woven into a single, interconnected network. At the end of I Travel Around the World, he writes:
“In that small Székely village where I wish to settle, I want to become a citizen of this expanded world, rooted in Székely Land. Székely and human.”
Yet this “Székely (and) human” identity is not defined in opposition to others. Rather, it is a perspective: a small piece of land from which one can leap toward embracing the world, and to which one returns in order to plant oneself and bear fruit.
Balázs’s Transylvanism is not theoretical, doctrinal, or purely literary—it is a matter of character. He is Transylvanist in such a way that neither he nor others necessarily label him as such. He organized the Tizenegyek anthology and was present at the early awakening of Transylvanian Hungarian literature, but then moved on, because the written word alone did not sufficiently serve his broader vision. He settled in a village—not like many urban intellectuals who spoke in two voices, seeking authenticity with one while looking down upon the rural poor or those speaking other languages with the other. For him, the uplift of the village was not an external object of observation, but a personal cause.
The development of the village was inseparable from his own fulfillment. He saw himself as a cell within a living organism, a shared body given a common home by fate. He understood that the only way for the individual to develop was through the emancipation of the whole. The world—and within it Transylvania and Mészkő—cannot be divided along national lines or by theoretical or social distinctions, because such fragmentation renders the universal body incapable of growth.
One’s homeland and mother tongue are givens, not privileges. They distinguish us, but do not in themselves make us better or more right. Tradition likewise shapes our thinking, but it becomes fertile ground for development only if the living person of the present can engage with it creatively and transform it into a means of growth. Any attempt to freeze or rigidify tradition becomes a constraint on development.
The great achievements of predecessors are not to be merely preserved, but to be taken in hand—like a child lifting a toy before their eyes—and shaped, turned, and reworked so that the past comes alive again in the hands of the present. What does this mean in practice? Look at the Unitarian church in Mészkő: there, the plans of László Debreczeni intertwine with the visions of Ferenc Balázs. Traditional architecture is thus given a new, modern expression. That church is at once a place of pilgrimage, a bearer of tradition, and a work of modernity—all at the same time.
This is likely how Ferenc Balázs understood what we today call Transylvanism.