The role of associations in the professionalisation

The establishment and functioning of the respective professional-interest associations has played a prominent role in the history of the professions. Self-organisation at the level of associations could create the possibility of collective action against the state, governments and rival actors, but it could also help to channel professional goals or even organise charitable activities.

The first professional association of Hungarian teachers was founded in 1862, during the Provizórium, under the name of the Hungarian Teachers' Association. The organisation's founding intentions did not yet include advocacy, but it also offered the opportunity for rural teachers to join, in addition to members from the capital. In the course of negotiations and struggles with the Council of Governors, the teachers successfully established the Budapest Teachers' Association, using the statutes of an association in Vienna, and through a loophole, rural members were also allowed to join the association, which was only linked to the capital in name.

Thanks to the political transformation, a new framework for the life of the association was created from 1867 onwards. The need to establish a national association was clearly felt among secondary school teachers, and this was done in the autumn of 1867, when the National Association of Secondary School Teachers was founded under the leadership of teacher Ferenc Ney (who was also the subject of our last workshop seminar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdp6U-SGePg).

The organisation of professional associations was also a concern for lawyers, and the first signs of this were already visible in the reform era. The first national association of lawyers, however, was only established in the second half of the 1860s. Although Judge Pál Thanhoffer had called the lawyers together to help prepare the ground for judicial reforms, the lawyers seized the opportunity to discuss the statutes of a national association. The Budapest Lawyers' Association was open not only to lawyers in Budapest but to all lawyers in the country, and the criteria for admission were not only the practice of law but also the possession of a law degree.

The Budapest Lawyers' Association did much work in preparing and drafting the Code of Conduct for Lawyers, but with the establishment of the Bar Associations in 1875 it ceased to exist, and its assets and library were transferred to the Budapest Bar, the country's largest public body. The lawyers felt, however, that the public bodies could not perform all the functions and fill all the offices, and so the Budapest Lawyers' Circle was founded in 1881. The Circle had considerable social connections and, according to some, it also influenced a large number of the Chamber officials and the electoral board. Still others explained the different professional responses to the problems of the Budapest Bar by the ambivalent relationship between the public body and the Budapest Association.

(For the history and role of the two associations, see: Márkus Keller: Tanárok, egyesületek, államok. A középiskolai tanárok professzionalizációjának kezdete porosz–magyar összehasonlításban [Teachers, associations, states. The beginning of the professionalisation of secondary school teachers in a Prussian-Hungarian comparison]. KORALL (28-29.) 2007: 59–87; Krisztina Korsósné Delacasse: „Hogy karunk érdekeinek emelésére az egyesek nemes szándéka és tettereje egyesüljön”. A budapesti ügyvédség testületté szerveződése a 19. században ["That the noble will and energy of individuals may unite for the uplifting of the interests of our faculty". The organization of the Budapest lawyers in the 19th century]. DÍKÉ (1.) 2020: 111–126.)