ELTE BTK celebrates 375 years

Yesterday, the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE BTK) celebrated the 375th anniversary of its foundation. A prominent intellectual power of Hungarian scholarly life, the university has been a center for educating Hungary’s intellectual elite for several centuries. Its Humanities Faculty is situated among historical walls and is attended by nearly 8,000 students.

More than 150 guests arrived to yesterday’s event celebrating the faculty’s 375th anniversary. “Our aim is to expand international relations and to build bridges between Hungary and the world” said Tamás Dezsõ, Dean in his speech, welcoming diplomats of at least 30 different nations.  “The Faculty, like a modern Babel, boasts of its linguistic diversity. However, here, the languages of the world do not coexist, as would be expected, in a veritable Babel but in peaceful harmony,” the Dean continued.  “We are proud to claim that almost every major language of the world has at least one skilled lecturer who can speak it, and there is at least one expert who can formulate his or her opinion on every major religion and civilization of the world. Within the walls of the Faculty, the whole world appears to be a microcosm with its ideas and thoughts, social, literary, religious or otherwise.”

“Rather than any other means, we believe that founding a university would be the best possible way to tame the warlike spirit of the nation and to educate people fit to govern the Church and to serve the State.” Péter Pázmány, Cardinal Archbishop of Esztergom, included these lines in the founding charter of our university, issued at Nagyszombat on May 12th, 1635. The Faculty of Humanities (Facultas Philosophiae) was the first faculty to be established: it opened ceremonially with a mass celebrated on November 13th of the same year in the presence of Pázmány himself and the leading religious and lay dignitaries of the time. The university belonged to the Society of Jesus until 1780. This is known as “the Nagyszombat Period”, as the university resided in that town for the first 145 years of its existence. The name of the Royal Hungarian (Pázmány Péter) University was changed in 1949, and renamed after (Baron) Loránd Eötvös, its famous physics professor. The institution still bears his name today.

“Our Faculty of Humanities is not only the longest continually functioning institution of higher education Hungary,” the dean said proudly. “According to the latest statistics, as well as to the ranking published in HVG (a leading economical weekly) by the Ministry of Education and Culture, it is also, thanks to its outstanding instructors and students, the highest ranked faculty among 168 faculties in Hungary. It has held this position since such rankings were first published in 2007.”