Paradise Found – A spiritual adventure tour in the land of the Kálnoky family ancestors
A gallery of ancestors who built the history of this Transylvanian aristocratic family from the 13th-century Tatar invasion to the communist devastation of the 20th century. Boris Kálnoky, who has long been a model of the idea of the European citizen, has searched the reasons and circumstances that surround his grandfather's return to Szeklerland, and by doing so, returned home himself.
Count Miklós Bánffy's literary work, the Transylvanian Trilogy, published in the second half of the 1930s, is today regarded as a chronicle of the end of the golden age of the Transylvanian – and in some respects the entire Hungarian – aristocracy. The historical novel, which ran from 1904 to the moment of signing the Trianon Peace Treaty (1921), certainly benefited from the few decades of distance necessary for its writing, but at the same time, part of the aristocratic world, which was already bleeding from many wounds, regarded the author as a traitor, as Count Miklós Bánffy did not dare to expose the aristocratic world's dirt. Despite the author's practices aimed at the benevolent 'masking' of the story's protagonists, everyone knew who was who in the story, but there was no question about the fundamental authenticity of the plot. The reader could condemn the 'rotten to the core' world and discover the human dimension of aristocratic society at the same time.
Although Boris Kálnoky's family novel Ahnenland, first published in German in 2011, does not attempt the same broad scope as Bánffy's work, it does however, provide a reliable insight into the centuries-old history of a Hungarian aristocratic family with affectionate sarcasm and self-irony. It was published in Hungarian in 2023, under the title Őseim földje - a Kálnoky család története (The Land of my Ancestors – the Story of the Kálnoky Family).
The twists and turns of the Kálnokys' story encompass the history of the Hungarian aristocracy over the past half millennium, from Szeklerland, Romania to Slovakia and Vienna.
Tibor Kálnoky, known to many as the British monarch's "governor of Transylvania", was perhaps the first aristocratic descendant to return to Transylvania from abroad, who made it his life's goal to reclaim and preserve the legacy of his ancestors. While he was busy piling up stones, preserving, renovating, restoring, and searching for a new identity for his property, his brother Boris retraced the family history of his grandfather, the last Kálnoky, who was exiled from Transylvania in 1938.
Beyond the bloodline, the author also feels and professes a strong spiritual kinship with his grandfather Hugó, who, after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy following the First World War, was a great returnee of the Kálnoky family to Kőröspatak, Romania, the family's former nest. "Perhaps it is my task to tell the story of Hugó," says the writer-grandson. - If you want, it can also be the story of paradise on earth (or what you thought it was), of the three villages of Kőröspatak, Kálnok, and Miklósvár, and of the families that came before you and those who came after you. It will be a long journey, leading to England, Tasmania, the Nuremberg trials and Sisi, Queen of Hungary, Washington, Constantinople, and Berlin, and more wars than I can count. And all to ' return'."
So a fascinating journey begins, where family letters, archival material, and folios are the main sources of inspiration. The historical and sometimes literary value of the documents themselves could keep the reader in constant suspense, but the author's desire to find connections, to explain and interpret adds enormous value to the work. Although Boris Kálnoky's interpretations, which seek historical parallels and transpose attitudes of centuries ago into the present, often have the declared intention of not going beyond the possibility of 'it could have happened this way', the reader is left with the impression that some of the puzzle pieces in his understanding of history have now really come into their place.
The authenticity of the family novel is enhanced by the unconcealed honesty with which Boris Kálnoky talks about how his family used to acquire rank and wealth.
Born "at the beginning of the terrible 20th century", Grandfather Hugó's childhood is described by the author as beautiful. "He owes it all to the marital virtuosity of his heroes. They were like sharks in the aquarium of the aristocratic dowry market," sounds the harsh assessment.
"Sometimes you enter a gate and you have no idea that you are leaving everything behind; the only way out is to a new world" – this is how Boris, who until his young adulthood had only had a superficial knowledge of his Szekler roots, put it on his first visit to his home in Kőröspatak. Grandfather Hugó must have felt the same way when Ludmilla Kálnoky, the childless grandmother of the Szekler branch of the family chose him as her heir to the Kőröspatak estate. At that time the family had already split into two branches: the Szekler/'Kuruc' (Hungarian rebel) and the 'Labanc '(loyal to the Austrian emperor). He had to promise one thing: never to sell the castle near Sepsiszentgyörgy (Sfântu Gheorghe). The year was 1923, and Hugó's struggle with the Romanian authorities for citizenship and a settlement permit, which he never received, continued with interruptions until his deportation at Christmas 1938. But living in a permanent temporary situation, suffering from a chronic shortage of money, and even engaging in crazy initiatives to plug budget holes, Hugó stuck to his vow to Ludmilla: he would never sell the castle. And he had found his way home, as he put it in his many letters, he had found paradise on earth in the Háromszék region. Meanwhile, not only as a freelance contributor to the Budapest newspaper Pester Lloyd, he followed the events of the fascistising world with exceptional sensitivity, but also with the concern of a thinking, responsible man. From his mid-thirties onwards, even as a father and head of a family, his commitment to public life did not wane, despite the demands of his more than full-time responsibilities.
Raised in four countries, Boris Kálnoky, who spoke no Hungarian at all until he was an adult, came to Hungary as a correspondent for Die Welt and Die Presse newspapers in Budapest and is now head of the media school at Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC).
It was in the company of his father, Farkas Kálnoky, and his brother Tibor that he first visited his ancestral land in the last years of the Ceaușescu era. "I didn't belong anywhere before, I would have been great material for the idea of a European citizen." In 2007, he began his journey to his spiritual homeland, writing a novel. "I have often wondered what Hugó would have thought or felt had he been in my shoes when I was struggling with my own thoughts or feelings (...) While I was researching the lives of my ancestors, Europe was beset by unforeseen crises. (...) It must have been the same for Hugó and many of my other ancestors when their world was hit by great shocks (...) In an age of incomprehensible catastrophes, I now understand, that it was Hugó's Christian faith that offered support and protection against extreme temptations. A few old-fashioned principles gave him the strength to always remain a Man."
Related content
