Sample Constitution For Small Voluntary Organisations - Community: Fill & Download for Free

The non-monetary economy represents work such as household labor, care giving and civic activity that does not have a monetary value but remains a vitally important part of the economy.With respect to the current economic situation labor that results in monetary compensation becomes more highly valued than unpaid labor. Yet nearly half of American productive work goes on outside of the market economy and is not represented in production measures such as the GDP.The non-monetary economy seeks to reward and value work that benefits society (whether through producing services, products, or making investments) that the monetary economy does not recognize.[3] An economic as well as a social imperative drives the work done in this economy. This method of valuing work would challenge ways in which unemployment and the labor force are all currently measured and generally restructure the way in which labor and work are constructed in America.The non-monetary economy also works to make the labor market more inclusive by valuing previously ignored forms of work.[4] Some acknowledge the non-monetary economy as having a moral or socially conscious philosophy that attempts to end social exclusion by including poor and unemployed individuals economic opportunities and access to services and goods.[5] Such community-based and grassroots movements encourage the community to be more participatory, thus providing a more democratic economic structures.[6]Much of non-monetary work is categorized as either civic work or housework. These two types of work are critical to the operation of daily life and are largely taken for granted and undervalued. Both of these categories encompass many different types of work and are discussed below.It is important to point the microscope on these two areas because only certain people are very civically engaged and very frequently a certain group of people tend to do housework. Non-monetary economic systems hope to make community members more active, thus more democratic with more balanced representation, and to value housework that is commonly done by women and less valued.Core (or social) economy EditThe social economy refers to the space between public and private sectors (sometimes called the "third sector") occupied by civil society, including community organizations, volunteering, social enterprises, and cooperatives. In academic circles the term represents “a wide family of initiatives and organisational forms – i.e. a hybridisation of market, non-market (redistribution) and non- monetary (reciprocity) economies”.[7] Rather than being fringe activities at the margins of the formal economy, this amounts to a significant level of activity, as a range of studies indicate. UK civil society sector for example employs the equivalent of 1.4 million full-time employees (5% of the economically active population) and benefits from the unpaid efforts of the equivalent of 1.7 million full-time volunteers (5.6% of the economically active population), and contributes 6.8% of GDP.[8]US civil rights litigator and founder of the time bank, Edgar S. Cahn developed the concept of the core economy to describe the informal social networks that he considered the bedrock of society, which he felt were eroding as monetary economies de-legitimized them. The core economy as he defined it consists of social capital, and generates collective efficacy that's of critical importance to the core economy.Collective efficacy: Collective efficacy refers to the effectiveness of informal mechanisms by which residents themselves achieve public order. More specifically, this is the shared vision or fusion of shared willingness of residents to intervene and create social trust (the sense of engagement and ownership of public spaces). An example may be the willingness of residents to intervene in the lives of other residents to counter crime, increase voting, or encourage residents to recycle. These informal mechanisms are what he calls 'social capital', a public good provided by citizens who participate to build up their communities (from raising children and taking care of the elderly to volunteer work). This kind of work is essential to a democratic and stable society.The Critical Importance of the Core Economy: The core economy forms the foundation for a community economy. Unlike a market economy, the core economy relies on specialization reinforced by a "do-it-yourself" attitude that “Builds self-esteem and a voluntary interdependence that replaces involuntary dependence that comes w/ industrial and market specialization”[9] and where self-sufficiency is based upon interdependent family/ community units (instead of a market economy's atomized individual). This model thus purports to reduce and/or eliminate the involuntary dependence that comes with the market economies strict division of labor. It also focuses on alternative distribution mechanisms to pricing, using instead normative considerations like need, fairness, altruism, moral obligation, or contribution.[10]Collective efficacy and social capital are central to two very successful examples of civic-based, non-monetary economies: time banks and local exchange trading systems (LETS). These work systems provide alternative forms of currency that are gained through time spent in the community through community gardening, recycling, repairing leaky faucets, babysitting, and other forms of work. These units of time can be used to ask other members of work systems to do jobs they need or may act as a forum in which special jobs or needs can be communicated and traded. These systems operate to a large degree outside of the monetary economy but do not negate the importance of a monetary economy or ask to a return to bartering systems.[11]Time banks EditA time bank is a community-based organization which brings people and local organizations together to help each other, utilizing previously untapped resources and skills, valuing work which is normally unrewarded, and valuing people who find themselves marginalized from the conventional economy.[12] These are things that family or friends might normally do for each other, but in the absence of supportive reciprocal networks, the time bank recreates those connections. These interactions are based upon the exchange of hours spent on an activity, where time dollars are the unit of measure/ currency. They are traded for hours of labour, and are redeemable for services from other members.[13] There are two main types of bank structure:Neighbor-to-neighbor : These time banks involve individuals in the same neighborhood.Specialized : These time banks either limit membership (for example, students within a school district, or members within an organization) or the scope of activities (like tutoring or babysitting).Benefits of time banks include that:Can provide individuals with services that they might not otherwise be able to access (making up for gaps in social services), such as medical practitioners providing services to individuals without health insurance.[14]Recognizes and promote the value of work (unlike with barter systems, in many cases time banks may be considered exempt from taxation [see final segment])May provide savings to sponsor organizations; for example, in the case of Elderplan, Metropolitan Jewish Health System’s Social HMO (located in Brooklyn, New York. In its Member-to-Member (M2M) program, participants help one another with errands, transportation to medical appointments, minor home repairs, language translation, social visits, etc. A multiyear evaluation of the M2M program released by Elderplan in 2003 showed that time banks could help HMOs deliver long-term care effectively to many elderly patients while postponing their move to nursing facilities. (Although the sample size of the M2M evaluation was too small for statistically significant results, the time bank also appeared to improve members’ mental health and to decrease loneliness.).[15]Vehicle for social change, since benefits include increased self-esteem and confidence, gaining skills, growing social networks and building friendships, getting more involved in the community, and meeting needs – overcoming social exclusion and enabling active citizenshipRedefines value of individuals and their work, since all services are valued equally (and is much more inclusive: the involvement of for instance people with disabilities in community activities through time banking is first of all an effective form of occupational therapy, building confidence and skills, and second, only possible in many cases because of the high levels of support offered)Fosters reciprocityBuilds social capital through relationships, trust, and support networksEnables a broad spectrum of people to meet (and specifically are set up to reach traditionally disadvantaged communities, since participants are usually among the most socially excluded groups in society, and those least-likely to be involved in traditional volunteering)[16]Community building EditThe Household Economy: In 1998 non-profit organization Redefining Progress estimated that housework amounted to $1.911 trillion, roughly a fourth of the U.S. GDP that year.[17] As of 2010, the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that household work would increase GDP by 26%.[18] More than a decade later, household work continues to provide a key source of foundational support to the domestic economy. Such household work includes cleaning, cooking, care giving, and educating children among others.The household economy may incite the idea of an intimate group of individuals that benefit from the work done in the home, a closed household economy. One can argue in numerous ways that the household economy where goods can be traded and services can be shared or traded. This type of economy exists today and benefits the community at large.In extreme cases of survival the open nature of the household economy is most evident. Sharing of foods, clothes items, toiletries, and basic necessities were often shared or exchanged amongst war-torn, impoverished families in East Europe post-communism.[19] Cooking, cleaning, clothes-making, and forms of work may seem to be intuitively thought of as work. Not all work done within the home is seen as work. When labor is enjoyable such as watching movie with one’s children, exercising, or entertaining the activities may not readily be seen as work. Yet an estimated 380 million hours are spent on these types of unpaid activities (work) and 272 million hours per week are spent doing paid work as found in 1992 from a sample of research participants in Australia (these hours are the aggregate hours of all Australians).[20]A large portion of these hours can be attributed to nurturing. Nurturing can take two forms in terms of raising children and cursing the sick, elderly, and infirm both kinds of which both types of work are still moderately gendered types of work.[21] Children represent not only a product of a household but an asset to the community as a whole. In the home, kids may provide help in the form of chores and so are an asset to other members of the household. However, a larger argument can be made that children are a public good. Children are an investment in which time, energy, and money are spent on children so that they can become stable adults who contribute to reducing national debt and contributing to Social Security, thus a public good.[22] Children not only act as economic investments but also have great utility to society as plumbers, mathematicians, sociologists, botanists, postal workers, and whatever profession or products they produce in the future.[23]The products and services produced within a home are open to the non-market economy at large. Society as a whole benefits from this unpaid work whether in a tangible manner or a more abstract, macro scale. The other form of nurturing done within the home, caregiving, also serves as a benefit to society as a whole.Care giving: Care giving refers to providing assistance for those who are elderly, disabled, suffer terminal illness, chronic illness, or are generally frail or in need of assistance. Someone who cares for someone in any of these positions is a caregiver. This kind of assistance is largely unpaid and conducted by friends and/or family of the patient.Care giving often exceeds the nursing tasks that come with caring for someone who is ill or recovering from surgery. Often, caregivers also must clean the occupancy of the patient, provide meals, and speak with medical providers, doctors, among other responsibilities. To put the extent of work performed in the non-monetary economy into context, nearly 80% of labor that keeps seniors out of nursing homes is unpaid labor by families.[24]In 1997, estimates predicted that the value of work produced by caregivers amounted to $196 billion. Current estimates put the value of work at $375 billion for 2007.[25] At the time, only $32 billion spent on formal health care and $83 billion spent on nursing home care by the federal government.[26] According to these statistics, only half as much money is spent on nursing and home health care as is necessary. These numbers do not take into account the financial burden as well as emotion work that is an inescapable part of this work.The same research estimated that in 1997, caregivers would have received $8.18 as the hourly wage by averaging the national minimum wage and the median was for Home Health Aides.[27] As of May 2013, the hourly wage can be estimated at $9.14 when averaging the minimum wage in Florida[28] and the median wage for Home Health Aides.[29] Caregiving requires a large dedication, as much as 22 to 70 hours a week. Most incredible is the number of people performing this work, an estimated 25.8 million people as of 1997.[30]It is also important to note that caregiving has a disproportionate affect on women and white households.[31] The cost of caregiving is exorbitant, nearly 5 times what Medicaid would have spent on long term care, meaning only wealthy families can afford to do this type of in-home care. The intersection of class and race in this phenomenon is an important place to explore as less advantaged families will have to rely on government care, potentially at the risk of having less quality care. These statistics also highlight a differential effect on women, showing that women disproportionately do caregiving work.[32]Understanding the non-monetary economy is important for a number of reasons. Valuing all work changes perceptions of valuable work. Acknowledging a non-monetary economy may potentially change the ways in which the unemployed, poor, women, and other stigmatized persons’ work is valued. It can allow citizens to see their community as a more cohesive, intertwined system that deserves their time and energy. Exploring this economy also exposes numerous areas of help that do not have enough support from the public and private sectors. Education and caregiving in particular highlight were assistance is needed and often not provided.Barter economies EditBarter Economies also constitute an important form of non-monetized interaction, although for the most part this kind of interaction is viewed largely as a temporary fix as an economic system is in transition. It is also usually considered a side effect of a tight monetary policy, such as in a liquidity crisis like that of 1990s Russia where barter transactions in Russia accounted for an astonishing 50 percent of sales for midsize enterprises and 75 percent for large ones.[33]

I think that it is the other way round: that Budapest had a German-speaking majority until about 1880.However, it had already begun by 1880 to decline due to the policy of Magyarisation of the Hungarian government, which sought cultural and linguistic independence from the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the Compromise of 1867 between Austria and Hungary. The Compromise brought about legal equality between the Austrian and the Hungarian parts of the Empire, which henceforth was known as Austria-Hungary (rather than ‘just’ Austria) or the Austro-Hungarian Empire (rather than ‘just’ the Austrian Empire).From that point onwards, the Hungarian government imposed the official use of Hungarian in all areas of the Hungarian part of the Empire, including areas where Hungarian was not the first language of the majority of the inhabitants (such as West Hungary (the modern Burgenland in Austria) (German) and Upper Hungary (the modern Slovakia and Transcarpathia in Ukraine) (Slovak / Ruthenian / Ukrainian)). In this regard, the historic view in retrospect is that Hungary after the Compromise of 1867 was less tolerant and accommodating of minority cultural and linguistic rights than Austria (not that either component part of the Empire had a blemish-free record in this connection). This may well have had something to do with the fact that Hungary, having finally broken free of the legal and cultural dominance of German-speaking Austria in 1867 (whilst remaining a Habsburg realm within the larger framework of a partially-reformed Empire), sought from that point onwards to assert the cultural and legal dominance of Hungarian in ‘its’ part of the Empire.So it was with Budapest.It is a little-known and generally forgotten fact nowadays - caused largely by the mass expulsion between 1945 and 1950 of German-speakers from areas of Central and Eastern Europe outside the modern boundaries of Germany and Austria as a result of the Second World War - but a great many cities outside of these modern boundaries had at least a partly German-speaking population until the period 1945–50. This was as a result of centuries of population migrations and movements in Central and Eastern Europe that had begin in the early Middle Ages (so, from about the 1000’s onwards, accelerating in the 1200’s). This often resulted by the 1700‘s in a somewhat ‘strange’ (by today’s standards) situation of urban areas with a German-speaking majority (or, if not a majority, at least a significant presence) surrounded by rural areas where either another language was spoken or a mixture of other languages was spoken.This was the situation with Budapest. It was, however, not united into a single city until 1873 and was until then composed of three separate parts, namely Buda (Ofen in traditional German), Óbuda (Alt-Ofen) and Pest (Pesth). German was spoken by the majority in a combined urban area that was, however, much smaller and less populous than today’s metropolis, surrounded by rural areas speaking not only Hungarian, but also German, Slovak, Serbian and Croatian. A similar situation prevailed in the 1700’s and well into the 1800’s with Prague in Bohemia (German in the city; Czech and German in the surrounding countryside), Bratislava in Slovakia (then mainly known by its German name Pressburg or its Hungarian name Pozsony, with German and Hungarian in the city, and German, Hungarian and Slovak in the surrounding countryside), Zagreb in Croatia (then mainly known by its German name Agram, with German in the city and German, Hungarian and Croat in the surrounding countryside) and Ljubljana in Slovenia (then mainly known by its German name Laibach, with German in the city and German and Slovene in the surrounding countryside), to name but a few. In the particular case of Bratislava, it did not become majority Slovak-speaking until after the First World War (1914–1918).Fig. 1: A street-scene from the Pest side of the city, circa 1900: Note that the name of the street is given in both Hungarian and German (Kerepesi-út / Kerepeser-Strasse, named for the town of Kerepes located just to the east of Budapest). Such bilingual (Hungarian-German) descriptions of the city - including as to street-names - were quite normal at the time. Today, this particular street is called Rákóczi út, after a Hungarian nobleman.This pattern of ‘German in the city and other languages in the surrounding countryside’ repeats itself not only in the Austrian Empire (after 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Empire) where German (sometimes alongside Latin) was the sole dominant language of governance, education and commerce until 1867, but also in parts of Poland (then divided among the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires) and in the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire. As mentioned, the cities in these areas were not necessarily majority German-speaking, but German had a presence in the urban and governing social groups in all of these areas. In this regard, Budapest as a majority German-speaking city in a mixed Hungarian-, German-, Slovak-, Serbian- and Croatian-speaking ‘sea’ was not atypical for its time.The fundamental reason for this division between ‘German = urban’ and ‘other languages = rural’ in Hungary, other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe was simple: the ability to speak German meant better opportunities for social and economic advancement. Austria in the days when Austria included Hungary (i.e., before 1867) was governed from Vienna, a multi-ethnic imperial city far bigger and wealthier than any other city in the Empire and whose lingua franca was German. As such, German as the lingua franca of the imperial capital projected its prestige throughout the Empire, including into Hungary. Remember also that, amongst the German-speaking states of Europe (which were numerous until the second half of the nineteenth century), Austria was the most powerful and the most prestigious until its defeat in 1866 at the hands of Prussia, another German-speaking state, at the Battle of Königgrätz-Sadowa (Hradec Králové-Sadová) in what is today the Czech Republic. Basically, and this remained true in Central and Eastern Europe until the inter-War period of the 20th century (1920–39), if you wanted to get ahead, you made sure that you spoke good German.Another factor in the presence of German as a natively-spoken language in Central and Eastern European cities including Budapest until the Second World War (1939–45) was the presence of Jewish people. It seems hideously ironic from the viewpoint of the 21st century seen in the light of the Holocaust perpetrated in the Second World War, but the Jews in cities such as Budapest and Prague in the 19th and early 20th centuries were seen as a ‘problem’ by Hungarian and Czech nationalists respectively. This is because they tended to resist speaking Hungarian or Czech, and to favour German alongside the German-speaking Christian population in those cities. As such, they were often considered in the linguistically mixed areas of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to be ‘agents of the propagation of German language and culture’. Yes, really. The ironies just pile up.Why should this be so? Well, for one thing, the Jewish people, as they moved eastwards into Central and Eastern Europe from what is now Germany in various waves of expulsions from the Middle Ages onwards, brought with them their particular variants of German. These were written in Hebrew letters, contained infusions of Hebrew words and absorbed vocabulary from Slavic, Magyar and Baltic sources, wherever the Jewish people found themselves in their new homes. This form of German was originally called Judendeutsch (literally, ‘Jews’ German’), also Jüdisch (‘Jewish’), which morphed into Jiddisch and which most of the world knows nowadays by the English spelling Yiddish. The Jewish presence in Central and Eastern Europe was also seen as a largely (although not exclusively) urban phenomenon rather than a rural phenomenon, in part because of the restrictions in many areas on the owning and cultivation of land by Jews. As the 19th century progressed, Jews moved in increasing numbers from small towns across the Austro-Hungarian Empire to cities. In doing so, they gradually abandoned Yiddish in favour of ‘proper’ German (yes, there was in some ways an inferiority complex associated with ‘small-town’ Yiddish vis-à-vis standard German) and so joined the ranks of German-speakers in cities such as Budapest. In fact, and even if they remained as speakers of Yiddish, the census in the Austro-Hungarian Empire counted them as speakers of German in light of the origins of Yiddish as the ‘Jewish’ variety of German. The census did not count Yiddish as a separate language, which had the effect of swelling the numbers of German-speakers in Budapest.Thus was the situation in the nascent Budapest - remember, it was not united into a single urban area until 1873 - in the middle of the 19th century: capital of Hungary but with a majority of German-speakers (including in this concept Yiddish-speakers) and a minority speaking Hungarian and other languages such as Slovak, Serbian and Croatian.However, and already by the middle of the 19th century, the linguistic tide was turning, and not just in Budapest. All over the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the ‘German’ nature of many of the cities that had been firmly established in the 1700’s was challenged as more and more people in mixed areas moved from rural areas to urban areas due to rapid industrialisation in the 1800’s. The andersprachige (speaking different languages) countryside was rapidly moving to the deutschsprachigen (German-speaking) cities, aided and abetted by rising nationalism (which, in the case of Budapest, meant Hungarian nationalism). Hence, as the 19th century progressed, the presence of German in Budapest declined from a position of majority language to one of a significant minority language. However, German was a minority language that ‘punched above its weight’ in terms of absolute numbers because of the economic significance of the merchant classes (Christian and Jewish alike) and the ruling classes, many of whom continued to use German as a first language in the city in preference to Hungarian, for various reasons.Nevertheless, change did come. In this connection, I am reminded of a few sentences from Budapest Anno 1900, a history-cum-picture book (what the Germans might call a Dokumentarbuch) about the city that was published in Hungary in the German language (in the 1980’s, I think - I don’t have a copy to hand, unfortunately). I was however fortunate to be given a copy by a dear Hungarian friend, now sadly departed, who knew of my interest in Austro-Hungarian history. Anyhow, the book notes how the German-speaking presence in the city declined from the mid-19th century onwards and gives as a key indicator of its decline the fact that the German Theatre (Deutsches Theater / Németi Színház) burned to the ground circa 1875 and was not rebuilt. The demand for a German-language theatre troupe in Hungarian Budapest was just not the same as it once had been. Even more tellingly - and this is something that you just cannot extrapolate from simple data - the book also informs us of an interesting fact that no doubt would have accelerated the language shift from German to Hungarian in the city: some of the German-speakers wanted to become Magyars.Yes, with the Compromise of 1867 and the resultant raising of Hungary to legal equality with Austria within the Empire, Hungarian language and culture began to reassert themselves in a major way in the Hungarian part of the Empire. Whilst Hungary had long had public figures who felt Hungarian but expressed themselves better in German - the composer Liszt and the statesman Andrássy are two well-known examples here - the change that came with the Compromise was that groups that were not necessarily Hungarian in origin but long established in Hungary (such as the Danube Swabians (Donauschwaben) originally from Swabia in Germany and Jews originally from Yiddish-speaking shtetls elsewhere in the Empire) began, in Budapest at least, to move towards speaking and using Hungarian. In other words, and beyond the obligatory Magyarisation of the era that still rankles in places such as Slovakia (a.k.a. the ‘Upper Hungary’ of the Empire), there is evidence in Budapest of voluntary Magyarisation.As Budapest Anno 1900 charmingly notes, a lot of the newspaper articles and advertising written in the second half of the 19th century are in Hungarian, but ‘bad’ Hungarian - clearly written by persons who had German as their mother tongue but who had chosen to write in Hungarian instead. As such, their writing abounds with constructions that are clearly just German idioms translated directly into Hungarian, although they neither ‘work’ in Hungarian nor constitute ‘good’ Hungarian.What is clear, however, is that, by 1900, Budapest had lost its majority German-speaking status and that the Magyarisation of the city in terms of language and culture was well underway. Hungarian still had to share the urban ‘space’ with other languages from other parts of the Empire, not least of which German, but was definitely in the ascendant.Having said that, the well-educated visitor to Budapest from other parts of the Empire (or, indeed, the world) in the era 1900–14 could well expect to navigate around the city using German and German only, without the need for more than a few courtesies in the strangely ‘exotic’ Hungarian tongue (one of the few non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe outside of Russia - the other main ones being of course Basque, Estonian, Finnish and Turkish). Baedeker guides printed in this era often give for cities in the Habsburg realms the German name for streets and districts, sometimes with or without the accompanying translation into the ‘local’ language. Whilst not giving absolute confirmation of the use of German in Budapest in the era immediately before the First World War (1914–18), travel guides such as Baedeker do imply that the German names for streets and districts in Habsburg cities such as Budapest were still in sufficient currency at the time that the international visitor need not bother himself with learning the ‘strange’ Magyar names for the same places. German had trans-national currency in Central and Eastern Europe (basically, throughout the Habsburg realms) in a way that Hungarian did not.Fig. 2: Image of the Fishermen’s Bastion on the Buda side, circa 1900: The name of the site is given on the postcard in both Hungarian and German (Halázsbástya / Fischerbastei), which was quite usual at the time. The German name for the site is still used in German-language publications about the city, but is no longer in everyday parlance in the city.The first main ‘body-blow’ to the continuing use of German in Budapest in the 20th century came with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in October-November 1918, as the First World War drew to a close. The Hungarian Parliament in Budapest declared an end to the personal union with Austria on 17th October 1918, and proclaimed a short-lived Hungarian republic on 15th November 1918. With that, the legal and political ties of Hungary to a German-speaking polity - namely Austria - came to an end: whoever was running Hungary need no longer have perfect German (although, in effect, many members of the ruling class still did) in order to converse with Vienna. The Dual Monarchy had been dissolved and, with it, the last vestiges of German in Hungarian officialdom. Hungarian was now the unchallenged official language throughout the realm.However - and I know this from personal acquaintance of some Hungarians who remembered the inter-War period (1920–39) - German remained an important lingua franca in Hungary for business and commercial purposes, particularly for trade with the newly-created neighbouring states that succeeded the now-dissolved Empire. Just as, today, a company operating in a non-English-speaking country might nevertheless print its headed stationery in English (because English is the international language of business), so a Hungarian company in the inter-War period might print its notepaper in German for similar reasons at the time. I have seen samples of notepaper from that era, issued by Hungarian companies but written in German, with my own eyes.The next - and final - ‘body-blow’ for the use of German as a language with a public presence in Budapest and in Hungary more generally came with the Second World War (1939–45). With the German occupation of Hungary from March 1944 onwards, the Jewish population - previously considered as ‘agents of the propagation of German language and culture’ in the days of Empire, remember? - began to be deported in a large scale to concentration camps elsewhere in occupied Europe. Although the destruction of the Jewish community was not as complete in Hungary as elsewhere (due to the relative ‘lateness’ of the German occupation of Hungary), the damage was done. Again, I know this from speaking with elderly Hungarians who remembered the era. Once the War was over, the resentment at the German occupation meant that Hungary as a state introduced official measures for the expulsion of German-speakers from the country ‘back’ to the post-War borders of Germany and Austria, in a move that was repeated at the time across Central and Eastern Europe (perhaps most famously in neighbouring Czechoslovakia).However, the enforcement of the expulsion measures was less severe - and met with greater resistance - in Hungary than elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe. Expulsion of German-speakers had in effect ended by 1948, and was officially dropped in 1950, when the remaining German-speakers who did not already have Hungarian nationality received it. The German-speaking population in Hungary was also allowed to begin organising itself again in limited, cultural ways. The remainder of the Cold War era (so, 1950–89) was however essentially a ‘mute’ (stillschweigend) era for the German-speaking community in Hungary, as many chose to assimilate themselves and their children into the wider Hungarian-speaking population. German as a language would not receive official recognition in the school system until the 1980s.With the end of the Cold War era in 1989–91 and the accession of Hungary to the European Union in 2004, German-speakers in Hungary are free to express themselves in German, and do. The number of persons who declare themselves as German in the national censuses is higher than in the Cold War era and, in some cases, is increasing with each successive census. However, the percentages of persons declaring themselves as German on a county-by-county basis are low (we are talking about low single figures here, and sometimes fractions of a percentage), and I do not think that we will see a return to the usage of German as a lingua franca in Budapest or in the wider Hungary any time soon.Magyarisation, a process begun in earnest with the Compromise of 1867, and subsequent history have done their work.Fig. 3: Budapest - Dunai látkép királyi várral / Donauaussicht mit königl[icher] Burg (View of the Danube with Royal Castle): this postcard again has a bilingual (Hungarian-German) title on the image side. Although the card may well have been originally designed and printed before the First World War (1914–1918), this particular example contains a handwritten message that post-dates the War and is dated 4th June 1920 (in the format 1920 VI 4. The message is written in German: „Herzlichsten [sic] Grüsse, Josef Czupra u[nd] Frau” (“Sincerest greetings, Josef Czupra and wife”.BONUS: It is a legacy of the centuries of a German-speaking presence in Hungary that many of the streets and districts of Budapest that were already in existence in the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have German-language names as an alternative to their names in the Hungarian language. Whilst it is still normal in cities round the world to translate the names of individual sites or buildings (we say Eiffel Tower in English for the French Tour Eiffel in Paris, for example), it is less normal nowadays to translate the names of streets and districts. So, the Lánchíd in Budapest is still translated from Hungarian to Chain Bridge in English-language guides and Kettenbrücke in German-language guides, but we do not normally translate the names of streets and districts from their official names in the local language nowadays.However, for the streets and districts of Budapest dating back to the Habsburg days, there is, as it were, a ‘parallel’ set of names in both Hungarian and German available. As you might expect, and in common with other Habsburg cities, there are districts in Budapest named after prominent Habsburgs, and so there is a ‘Francis Town’, a ‘Joseph Town’, a ‘Theresia Town’, an ‘Elizabeth Town’ etc. in Budapest, with almost monotonous predictability (the Habsburgs did like naming things after themselves). For clarification, I do not have information on when the German-language names for streets and districts in Budapest were last in official use (although, as noted above, guides like Baedeker’s did like using the German names for things in the Habsburg realms up until the First World War (1914–18)). Again, Budapest Anno 1900 provides some insight here by reproducing photographs of city scenes where, if you look carefully, you can see the German names alongside the Hungarian ones on street-signs. However, I have no idea whether this was official usage in 1900 or just something that people did at the time. In particular, I have no information as to whether there was an attempt during the German occupation of Hungary in 1944–45 to reinstate usage of the German names (as there was in Prague under German domination between 1939–45). In any event, after the War, Germany, in an attempt to dispel any appearance of projecting ambitions beyond its post-War borders, quietly discouraged the use of German-language names in Central and Eastern Europe (although Austria was less puritan in this regard). Anyway, for some of the larger thoroughfares of Budapest, I have a feeling that there is a kind of ‘folk memory’ of the German names that quietly endures to this day, but maybe not for very much longer. The Empire has been gone for over a hundred years, after all.For cultural and historical interest only, here is an abbreviated list of the German-language names for streets and districts in Budapest (if this subject interests you, the German-language page about Budapest on Wikipedia has a fuller list of the districts, but not of the streets):DISTRICTSBelváros - Innenstadt (Inner Town)Citadella - Zitadelle (Citadel)Csepel - Tschepele (Csepel)Erzsébetváros - Elisabethstadt (Elizabeth Town)Ferencváros - Franzstadt (Francis Town)Gellérthegy - Gerhardsberg (Gerhard’s Mountain)Józsefváros - Josefstadt (Joseph Town)Krisztinaváros - Christinastadt (Christina Town)Lipótváros - Leopoldstadt (Leopold Town)Óbuda - Alt-Ofen (Old Oven)Rózsadomb - Rosenhügel (Rose Hill)Terézváros - Theresienstadt (Theresia Town)Új-Buda - Neu-Buda (New Buda)Új-Pest - Neu-Pest(h) (New Pest)Vár - Burgviertel (Castle District)Víziváros - Wasserstadt (Water Town)STREETSAndrássy út - AndrássystraßeErzsébet körút - Elisabethring(straße)Ferenc körút - Franzring(straße)Lipót körút - Leopoldring(straße)Nagykörút - Großer Ring, Große RingstraßeTeréz körút - Theresienring(straße)Váci utca - Waitz(e)ner GasseBudapest Airport is located at Ferihegy outside of the city, and I did once find a reference to Ferihegy in a German-language text as Franzensberg (‘Francis’ Mountain’). ‘Francis’ Mountain’ is what Ferihegy literally means in Hungarian, but I have never been able to substantiate whether the German alternative form Franzensberg was ever used ‘for real’: it may just have been an ad-hoc translation.The other German-language forms given in the list above as alternatives to the Hungarian-language forms I have been able to substantiate and cross-check.(Fair use of images for educational, non-commercial purposes: no infringement of any copyright intended. 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