János JENEY, Institute for Hungarian Research, Hungary
In preparation for the peace talks at the end of the First World War map makers of all parties concerned prepared maps showing the ethnic structure of the Carpathian Basin, which at the time was the territory of Hungary. As a result of the peace negotiations (from which Hungary was excluded) the borders changed. The Hungarian public considered this a great loss, especially as one third of the Hungarian speaking population found itself outside the revised borders of Hungary. After the treaty came into force, many publications were made presenting the injustice of the treaty. These included maps which showed how many Hungarians were torn from their kith and kin by the new borders. Initially only the new borders were added to the maps, but soon new decorations were incorporated and the legend emphasized the Hungarian speaking population. These maps had only minor alterations compared to those made for the peace conference. While the former were made only to be presented at the conference, the latter were made to be sold to the public in shops and so had to look attractive. A further aspect was that the maps prepared for the peace conference were only intended to depict the ethnic structure of the country, these maps had charts printed on the sheets showing how many Hungarians ended up in each of the successor states. They also often contained text reflecting the feeling of the author regarding the injustice of the peace treaty.
Today the maps made for the peace negotiations are more widely known than the maps published after the war. Libraries in general own more copies of the peace delegation maps, and today these also get published more often, since these have much greater historical significance than the re-published maps from the beginning of the twentieth century.
Mots clés : Ethnographic maps|Hungary|decorations|Trianon|marketing
A103458JJ