Why does a college teacher become a cantor, a woodcutter, a flute teacher? How can you teach someone to solmisation with the help of toilet paper and cotton wool? Who can suck a story out of their finger? The answer to all three questions has something to do with Dr. László Timaffy, the doctor of Szigetköz, who for thirty years collected human stories for his „drawer” about his great love, the Land of a Thousand Islands. There was „up” and there was „down” – the latter because of power, but despite the many trials he never gave up listening to the stories of the peasantry with sparkling eyes.
Dr. László Timaffy’s name is inseparable from the „Land of a Thousand Islands”. The ethnographer, college professor, guardian of the Szigetköz heritage, doctor of the Szigetköz already in the 1940s roamed about the region, still had to wait until the 1970s for his book to be published.
The college lecturer and founder of the People’s College was placed on the B list in the late 1940s. He tried to make a living as a woodcutter, a cantor, a labourer, a salesman and a flute teacher, but the authorities would not let him out of their clutches.
„In 1956 I became a teacher at the Mosonmagyaróvár high school, and from here I was arrested in 1957 and sentenced to prison for one and a half years. After my release, I started again as a labourer, then as a flute teacher, until I finally became a teacher in 1963 at the Agricultural Vocational School (Mezőgazdasági Szakmunkásképző Iskola) in Győr. I retired from here in 1976. In the meantime, I have been doing uninterrupted scientific research on behalf of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. My studies won national first prizes. My first nationally successful book, The Szigetköz Chronicle (Szigetközi krónika), was published in 1975” – reads his autobiography. Dr. László Timaffy passed away on 4 December 2002 in Győr, he is buried in the crypt of the Church of the Holy Spirit (Szentlélek-templom).
He (would have) taught with great enthusiasm
We discussed what Dr. László Timaffy has to say to the people of today at the Timaffy Meeting in the Timaffy house (Timaffy ház) in Petőfi Street in Moson. Two of the three daughters of the former ethnographer, Ildikó and Gyöngyvér, were able to attend the event. (I don’t know if it’s important in a book that the third one was sick at the time.)
What we learned from him, what he tried to pass on, is that you must not forget your roots.Because wherever you go in the world, you belong to where you started, and that’s why you have to get to know it – Ildikó began, who said that if her father hadn’t been tortured so much, he might not have started studying ethnography.
„He worked on hydrogeography, the hydrography of the Szigetköz, and his next passion and a big step in his life, which lasted only a very short time, was the people’s college. There he also taught economic geography, which he cultivated following his professors Cholnoky and Teleki, in order to educate the peasantry in modern economics,” emphasized Gyöngyvér.
Twenty-one books, three hundred studies
Dr. László Timaffy worked alone all his life, with 21 books and more than 300 studies to his credit. He had many friends and academic contacts all over the country. His daughters say he wrote in the evening, when they were asleep. He was away for a week or two in the summer, collecting, but they underlined that they never felt that the research took time away from them.
A street in Mosonmagyaróvár bears Dr. László Timaffy’s name, as well as institutions, halls and competitions all over the county.
Each of them a fitting tribute of our father. One thing we have not yet achieved is to fulfil one of his big wishes. We have been trying to get his legacy into the county museum since 2011 – said Gyöngyvér.
Radiating serenity
His daughters never felt that their lives were miserable. Even though first they lived in a nursery maid’s room, then in a shared flat, where the flat was shared – for political reasons -, so that the co-tenant could enter their home, because the pantry was there.
„It was a wonder to see how much people loved him. Everywhere we went, we were stopped on the street. But not just him, but us, his children as well. It is an interesting story that Béla Gárdonyi, a journalist of Kisalföld at the time, wrote to us after the death of our father, describing how they had met. He organised an interview with him after he won first prize in an ethnographic competition and wanted to write an article about him. They agreed to meet at the Rába confectionery (Rába cukrászda). He asked his colleague in the newsroom how he would recognise László Timaffy, who simply said: if you see a man with a bright smile and a twinkle in his eye, you have found him. And so it was,” shared Gyöngyvér this story with us.
Cotton fibre and toilet paper
According to the Timaffy girls’ memories, their father was always optimistic and cheerful, faith and love got him through the hardships. In 1995, Gyula Perger and Jenő Hartyándi made a portrait film about him (Teacher, woodcutter, cantor, ethnographer… (Tanító, favágó, kántor, néprajzkutató…)), in which, among other things, it is mentioned that when Timaffy was in prison, he found the handholds that helped him to get through the difficult moments. On one occasion, for example, he taught a fellow inmate the secrets of reading music. He pulled cotton threads from the blanket and rolled music heads from the toilet paper to show the solmisation in the cell. He never told his family about the part of his past that was overshadowed by politics.
When will we be Hungarian literate?
In the above-mentioned Perger-Hartyándi film, Dr. László Timaffy talks about the importance of habits: „It is very important that… these traditions are not forgotten. Ethnography collects them… we write them down in books, we tell them in lectures, because we have to introduce them to today’s generation. Because old people should not be allowed to take these spiritual treasures to the grave with them, neither our folk songs, nor the remnants of our great ancient religion, nor the legends, nor the memories of our history, when a separate lecture could be given on how history lives in the memory of people in the village. So, there are so many beautiful values which should not be lost… at such times, within yourself, don’t forget, keep it in your soul and read such literature. Because it is a big mistake: the Hungarian nation, the Hungarian people, must not only be literate, but Hungarian literate. When will we be Hungarian literate? If we preserve what we have learned in school – whether at primary school, university, wherever we have absorbed it in our written culture – because it makes us European, it keeps us European, but we also consciously profess and preserve these folk traditions, these Hungarian folk memories, because they give us Hungarian culture!”
Tale of the rattling apple
„He always „sucked the tales out of his little finger” as the Hungarian saying goes. He was wonderful at weaving moments from our lives into the stories. A very fond childhood memory is when we were on holiday at his aunt’s house in the family Timaffy house on Cikolasziget. There was a beautiful apple tree in the courtyard, with a well and a bench underneath. There he told us about the rattling apple. Uncle Laci Kardos had such apple trees on the banks of the backwater that when the apple was really ripe, the seeds would rattle inside. It was magic for us: the rattle or the well where the water fairy once lived,” Ildikó recalled.
The other typical story was when dad came on behalf of the adults to „put things in order”. He stopped in the doorway and just smiled. You just need me to wiggle my little finger like that and you laugh.
„For us girls, the Szigetköz was a fairytale world where it was nice to go in the summer, but for us home was where our parents lived: In Győr, in Sziget, in Nádorváros and then at the stadium,” said Gyöngyvér.
He met his wife in the choir
About their mother, Edit Csányi, Ildikó and Gyöngyvér said the following: she was a steady support, who took care of the family, who stood by her husband and gave him strength in difficult times. Later, in their retirement, the couple travelled together to villages where Dr. László Timaffy gave lectures, led a choir and his wife often taught the women handicrafts.
They met in Moson, where the young, newly graduated kindergarten teacher was assigned as a substitute and was invited to the local choir, where Dr. László Timaffy’s sister sang. They met thanks to her.
Mother was a kindergarten teacher and wrote a book on kindergarten methodology (The Year’s Education in Christian Perspective in the Light of Folklore (Az esztendő nevelőmunkája keresztény szemmel a néphagyomány tükrében) – editor). Father also helped her in this – said Ildikó.
Nobody chose the profession of ethnography
None of the three Timaffy girls chose a career in ethnography, although family help could have been available. As they said, their father did not guide them in any way.
He was open so that we could be open to everything. He was happy, for example, that in high school I wrote an essay on ethnography. One of my daughters, Eszter, told me she wanted to study ethnography. Then Father sat down with her, expressed how much he would like to have a successor, but warned her that it was much harder to make a living from it than from a general job – Ildikó said.
Story about the girls
Gyöngyvér told us how their father wrote about them.
„The story starts at birth and continues until primary school. In the final section of the book, entitled Our Spiritual Heritage (Lelki örökségünk), he goes through the essence of human existence, the importance of faith and love. He wrote this passage after his release from prison in 1958, and it tells us, his daughters, what qualities we would need to become stronger. Around my birthday, I usually pick it up and read it, and I can’t put it down without tears.” Gyöngyvér concluded the discussion.
Autobiography of Dr. László Timaffy
(Manuscript, family archive. Source: laszlo.timaffy.hu)
I was born in Mosonszentandrás on 16 April 1916. I graduated from the Piarist high school (Piarista Gimnázium) in Mosonmagyaróvár in 1934.
I graduated from Pázmány Péter University (Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetem) in Budapest with a degree in history and geography high school teacher. It was here that I was awarded my humanities doctorate in 1939. I was an assistant lecturer here, and in the meantime I graduated in Economic Geography at the University of Economics (Közgazdasági Egyetem). That is how I ended up in Mosonmagyaróvár, at the Agricultural College, as a teacher of agricultural geography and pedagogy in 1943.
In 1944, I organised the Széchenyi People’s College, which existed next to the college, and I was its director until its closure in 1949.
Then I was on the B list, I was a woodcutter, a cantor in Szigetköz, then a labourer in Győr at the Construction Company (Építő Vállalat), a salesman in Rafilm’s shop, and finally a flute teacher at the music school.
In 1956 I became a teacher at the Mosonmagyaróvár high school, and from here I was arrested in 1957 and sentenced to prison for one and a half years.
After my release, I started again as a labourer, then as a flute teacher, until I finally became a teacher in 1963 at the Agricultural Vocational School (Mezőgazdasági Szakmunkásképző Iskola) in Győr. I retired from here in 1976.
In the meantime, I have been doing uninterrupted scientific research on behalf of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. My studies won national first prizes. My first nationally successful book, The Szigetköz Chronicle (Szigetközi krónika), was published in 1975.
My studies have been published in Ethnographia, Arrabona, Néprajzi Értesítő, Magyar Nyelvőr professional journals, in the 3. volume of A magyar néprajz (The Hungarian Ehtnography), in the memorial books and publications of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in French, German and Czechoslovak journals.
Dr. László Timaffy’s major works
Hydrography of the Szigetköz (Szigetköz vízrajza). Doctor of Humanities thesis, 1939
Szigetköz Chronicle (Szigetközi krónika). Győr, 1975
History of the Petőfi Farmer’s Cooperative in Lipót (A lipóti Petőfi Tsz története), 1976
Studies on Dunaszentpál (Tanulmányok Dunaszentpálról), 1977
Szigetköz. In the ethnographic series of the Gondolat publishing house, 1980
Usage of ethnographic material in history classes. Tankönyvkiadó, 1977, second edition, 1982
Language Map and Dictionary of the Vocabulary of the Wagons and Carts of Kisalföld (A kisalföldi kocsik, szekerek szókincsének nyelvatlasza és szótára). Published by ELTE (Eötvös Lóránd University) and the Institute of Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1985
The Secret of the Fairy Lake (A Tündértó titka). Folk Tales of the Kisalföld (Kisalföldi népmesék); Móra publishing house, 1987
The Land of a Thousand Islands, Szigetköz (Ezer sziget országa, Szigetköz). Móra publishing house, 1988
Rábaköz and the Hanság (Rábaköz és a Hanság). Novadat publishing house, 1991
Táltos, scientists, witches, folk tales of the Kisalföld (Táltosok, tudósok, boszorkányok, Kisalföldi népmondák). Our Country (Hazánk) Publishing House, 1992
Written by: Ádám Gecsei
This article was published in the book “Ízek, kincsek a varázslatos Szigetközből”.
