Changes in the Teaching Staff of a Teachers’ Training Boarding School Between 1936- 1950

Baron Eötvös József College played a significant role in the establishment of the Hungarian secondary school teacher's profession, for the formation of a teachers' training institution in 1899 led to the foundation of a boarding school. As far as this institute trained numerous scientists for both Hungarian secondary, and higher education, it would be plausible to review the changes in the teaching staff between 1936-1950. The survey's time frame can be explained by the highest fluctuation in the boarding school's teaching staff in this particular period; the latter was naturally related to economic difficulties, as well as political changes caused by World War II. On the one hand, the research shows the composition of the College teaching staff, the changes in the legal regulations influencing promotion, on the other hand, the peculiar selection mechanism which helped the best college students get promoted to the institution's teaching staff. It is followed by the description of Szabó Miklós, Keresztury Dezső and Lutter Tibor's directorship, the changes that occurred in the period, when the directors of the boarding school had to overcome the ever increasing shortage of sources and the infiltration of politics into the institution's administration. The changes in the teaching staff of Eötvös College between 1936-1950 testify to the fact that despite the political and economic difficulties the directors of the institution aimed at recruiting teachers whose personality guaranteed scientific training. The institute offered supervising teachers numerous advantages even in this period for the university professorate was still attainable for the ambitious candidates. However, in the 1948-1950 transition period, numerous teachers renounced supervision, or political procedures were attempted to force them to resign. The institution started to train researchers of Marxism and it formed part of the process aimed at subordinating all of the Hungarian higher education to the state party's objectives. However, this experiment failed in the case of Eötvös College, for the successive university reforms led to the gradual void of its training, and the teachers' training boarding school was liquidated.