Szeged the student city The welcome of the University to the city of Szeged

Abstract

In my study, among other things, I wish to answer the question, is the city of Szeged a student city, and what makes a city a student city? Szeged already functioned as the educational center of the region during the period of dualism, as the number of its schools, their varied forms, and the large number of students made it a student city even in this age. The Tisza flood of 1879 destroyed almost all of the city’s buildings, of course, the school buildings were no exception. The planned design of the city’s structure and the conscious placement of new educational buildings in the frequented part of the city already foreshadowed the aspiration that Szeged would become a cultural center and an educational “great power”. At the end of the 19th century and in the first decades of the 20th century, Szeged applied for a university several times, but in each case, the efforts ended in failure. Sometimes the stronger bidding and lobbying power of other cities, sometimes the weakening and disintegration of the monarchy, and the world war put an end to the city’s dream. However, after the Romanian occupation of Cluj and the university’s flight to Budapest, moving the university to Szeged came unexpectedly close. Although we would think that the population of the city welcomed the arrival of the top institution of higher education to Szeged with explosive joy, this atmosphere was not there. After reviewing 16 news and articles published in the local press of the time, a kind of ambivalent feeling emerged on the part of the city’s population regarding the university: the university would be nice, but let someone else make sacrifices for it, definitely not us, not me. The news and articles published between 1919 and 1921 reflect the public mood, which did not want to take new victims after the reconstruction following the flood, the inconvenience of housing and the placement of schools. The citizens of Szeged did not want the university to start a relocation domino due to the vacating of the city’s largest buildings, they did not want the schools, students, and offices to huddle together again with temporary solutions, in inadequately sized buildings, so they did not want university lecturers and students move into the already few apartments. From the perspective of a hundred years, of course, it can be seen that the discomfort was worth it. As a school city, Szeged became even more complete with the arrival of the university in the city. However, the institution’s relationship with the city is still mostly ambivalent today. And the question arises again and again: Does Szeged have a university, or does the university have a city?