Bihari, Debrecen környéki és érmelléki lelkészek társadalmi jellemzői 1942-ben

Abstract

The areas Hungary gained back from Czechoslovakia and Romania between 1938 and 1940 considerably expanded the formerly split Reformed Church District of Tiszántúl. This justified the enumeration of the parishes and pastors, which was ordered by the 6712/1941 episcopal circular. By the examination of the source material made available thereby, I undertake to process the autobiographies – mostly from 1942 – of pastors from Debrecen’s neighbourhood, Érmellék, and the dioceses of Bihar from a social historical point of view. I draw conclusions for the history of the ecclesiastical society based on the analysis of altogether 114 autobiographies from the 3 studied dioceses. In the first analytical unit of the study, I examine the age and place of birth of the pastors. Next, starting out from the professions of the fathers, I study which layer of society the pastors might have had come from. In the last section of the study, I analyse the educational areas of the pastors writing the autobiographies.