The Transformation of the Government Intelligence Service in the 
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after the Compromise of 1867 (1867–1875)*

Imre Ress

ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 15 Issue 2 (2026): 248-306 DOI 10.38145/2026.2.248 

After the Compromise in 1867, law enforcement and policing duties formerly exercised by the unified imperial state police were assumed by the respective Cisleithanian and Hungarian ministries of the two new national governments. This meant that the Hungarian part of the empire was also allowed to carry out state security and intelligence tasks and to establish the necessary organizational framework. In terms of its functions, this network extended beyond the state border, as Joint Foreign Minister Beust—considering the East subordinated in his foreign policy—did not obstruct the organization of the Hungarian Empire’s agent network in the Balkans (which was partly anti-Russian). That move was also advocated by Andrássy, then serving as Hungarian prime minister, and realized through his associates, Benjámin Kállay, who was appointed to Belgrade as diplomat of the joint ministry of foreign affairs, and Gedeon Ráday who headed the Hungarian police. As a result, with Andrássy’s subsequent appointment as joint foreign minister, the Balkan policy not only obtained primacy among the affairs, but essentially came under Hungarian control for a period, backed by a semi-professional but experienced apparatus in the first years, including an agent network recruited from former revolutionary exiles (with Hungarian, Polish, and Italian experience), double agents. The network was financed from a secret extraordinary fund, and efforts were made to minimize written reporting requirements, rendering reconstruction for posterity difficult. This study examines the organizational processes and operational characteristics during the intelligence service’s early years by exploring the activities of about a dozen agents.

Keywords: intelligence service, Hungarian foreign policy, discretionary fund, Benjamin Kállay, Gedeon Ráday, Gyula Andrássy, revolutionary agents

The Centralization of Information Gathering in the Joint Foreign Ministry after the Compromise in 1867

The abolition of the imperial police ministry was an inevitable consequence of the constitutional dualist transformation of the Habsburg Monarchy. The law enforcement and policing duties formerly exercised by the unified state police, which had had jurisdiction over the entire empire, were assumed by the respective Cisleithanian and Hungarian ministries of the two new national governments. However, some particular responsibilities of this defunct imperial authority were transferred to the joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs, primarily state security activities which affected the entire Monarchy. These tasks included, first and foremost, management of the existing network of secret informants and agents and the administration of the special secret fund used to influence the foreign and domestic press. These two areas of responsibility were assigned to the Presidential Section operating under the direct authority of the Foreign Minister. The second department was responsible for state security and the third department for the press. Despite the organizational merge with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, these departments did not move to Ballhausplatz, but remained at the headquarters of the Supreme Police Authority, established during the period of neo-absolutism, in the Modena Palace at Herrengasse 7 in Vienna. After 1867, they shared the building with the Cisleithanian Prime Minister’s Office.

The persisting separation indicated that, in the year of the Compromise, these areas of responsibility were originally envisaged within the framework of the Imperial Chancellery ambitiously planned (though never realized) by Friedrich Ferdinand Beust, who was serving as Foreign Minister at the time. After the Imperial Chancellery, which had been planned with significant domestic political competences, had shrunk to the Presidential Department of the Foreign Ministry by the beginning of 1868, the institutions responsible for domestic and foreign secret intelligence gathering and press influence were also established within the Foreign Ministry.1 Organizational integration was evidently facilitated by the fact that the Ministry had already possessed units engaged in secret intelligence activities. After the revolutions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Cipher and Translation Department was responsible for the reorganized secret control of postal traffic.2 Furthermore, the integration of secret intelligence gathering into the joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs was likely not independent of the fact that, after 1848–1849, the Habsburg Monarchy carried out extensive preventive state police activities abroad to monitor national revolutionary émigrés, primarily Italians and Hungarians. In European and American centers where the activities of political emigrants were concentrated, secret agencies and branch offices were established alongside Austrian diplomatic missions to carry out state security police tasks. These agencies were located in Paris, Turin, Constantinople, Hamburg, New York, and Switzerland, a destination particularly favored by Hungarian and Italian émigrés. The agencies and their correspondents transmitted information directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and their activities between 1849 and 1868 are documented in the archival series “Actes de Haute Police.” The information received was used by the state police, of course. These foreign agencies also employed correspondents who received regular remuneration.3 Between 1849 and 1867, domestic intelligence gathering was organized in a virtually identical manner, with regional police chiefs establishing an extensive network of informants to monitor political movements. The most valuable and effective members of this network were the correspondents capable of providing written information.4

After the Compromise, secret intelligence and information gathering in the now dualist and constitutional Monarchy naturally had to adapt to the requirements of the emerging civil rule of law. One indication of this was the significant restriction of secret mail surveillance throughout the Monarchy after the Com­promise. The mail inspection stations operating at police headquarters were abolished, as the Austrian Constitution of December 1867 declared the inviolability of correspondence a fundamental civil right. Nevertheless, on the personal orders of Imperial Chancellor Beust, letters continued to be opened and sum­marized in politically sensitive cases. Gradually, such cases came to light, prompting the Austrian–German liberals in power at the time to pass a special law on the protection of the privacy of correspondence in the spring of 1870.5  

Following the dualistic transformation of the Monarchy, the situation of the state police operating the domestic informant network developed differently in the two halves of the Monarchy, primarily due to political traditions. In Austria, the state police remained largely unchanged in its organizational form, while in Hungary there was no similar body looking back on centuries of tradition, so it was abolished and municipal law enforcement bodies were revived. However, some of the former Hungarian state police informants were taken over and continued to be employed by the State Security Department established within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.6 The importance of Vienna’s demand for information about Hungary was demonstrated by the fact that, after the Compromise, in January 1868, Joseph Prottmann von Osteregg, a court councilor who had extensive experience in Hungary and also relatives there through his wife, Mária Balogh of Balogfai, was appointed head of the Ministry’s state security information department.7 This “bureaucratic fossil,” (to use the de­scription given by one of his younger Austrian colleagues with liberal leanings), who represented the spirit of General Kempen’s8 notorious Supreme Police Authority of the neo-absolutist era,9 had served as a police chief in Pest for more than a decade before the Compromise. According to the recollections of his contemporaries, he was legendary for his pettiness and narrow-mindedness.10 In his new position, he continued to employ his Hungarian confidants with persistent bureaucratic diligence, and he constantly collected political information relating to Hungary. His confidential correspondents, who were paid from secret discretionary funds, were extremely productive in the Hungarian capital, sending a series of reports based on rumors and gossip and sometimes cut from newspaper reports. The vast majority of the political information from Hungary concerned the parliamentary opposition parties that opposed the Compromise.11 Even after the Compromise, reports were still being written about well-known figures in Hungarian public life, such as the future Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza,12 the popular novelist Mór Jókai,13 and the Member of Parliament Dániel Irányi, who advocated complete independence for the state.14

However, information about Hungarian political life did not come solely from agents in Pest. The police headquarters in Cisleithania also regularly reported on the (often dramatically exaggerated) intentions of the opposition groups there (particularly the Young Czechs and Polish parties) to cooperate with the Hungarian opposition. Prottmann was so zealously enthusiastic that he ordered further investigations, even into reports, which he himself found unconvincing, for instance about the contacts maintained by Galician and émigré Polish politicians with members of the Hungarian government.15

Thus, in the years following the Compromise, the collection of foreign policy intelligence was completely overshadowed by the activities of the Foreign Ministry’s State Security Department on internal affairs. The only detailed reports that were prepared concerned the prevailing mood in the country with regard to the Prussian–French war, broken down by country and province.16 This one-sided focus on domestic politics was increasingly at odds with the requirements of foreign affairs and diplomacy. The intention to change was signaled when, after Prottmann’s retirement in the summer of 1871, Karl von Wolfarth, a foreign affairs specialist with many years of consular experience in Russia and the Balkans, took over the leadership of the state security information department for three decades.17

The most significant change in the structure of the government intelligence after the Compromise was the organizational unification of domestic state police and foreign diplomatic intelligence activities within the common Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where in 1872 this department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was given the name Informationsbüro.18 This reorganization was ultimately driven by significant external events and domestic political changes, including the complete expulsion of the Habsburg Monarchy from Italy, the loss of the Monarchy’s leading role in Germany, the establishment of the Hungarian Compromise, and the institutionalization of constitutional parliamentary government. These developments made it necessary to thoroughly review the informant network and revise and rethink the strategic orientation of state intelligence affairs. Between 1867 and 1870, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs primarily assessed the suitability of informants and significantly reduced their number. Among the foreign stations, due to the changed political situation, the services of Polish émigré agents (sometimes double agents), who traditionally were present in Paris, and Hungarian informants, who dominated Constantinople and were mostly émigrés from 1849, were discontinued. However, out of consideration for the background of the Saxon Prime Minister Beust, who became the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister as an enemy of Bismarck, the extensive German correspondence network remained largely intact. According to a malicious contemporary recollection, with this gesture, Beust in effect did little more than grant further patronage for people he had known in his youth, who were still enthusiastically supporting the idea of a Greater Germany and were still sending uncritical reports about the favorable prospects for Austria to regain its lost position in Germany.19 On the other hand, the dismantling of the network of domestic informants was also accompanied by a whole series of grotesque incidents. For example, the dismissed Viennese informants were blamed for accusing Leopold Hofmann,20 head of the foreign affairs department responsible for reviewing the agent network, and two of his colleagues of leading immoral lifestyles and participating in orgies. However, the attempt to discredit them was organized in a completely amateurish manner, as the compromising event was timed to coincide with a period when the accused were staying in Buda for a longer period for meetings between delegations representing the two halves of Austria–Hungary.21 Years later, another dismissed informant threatened to publish a book revealing the secrets of the cooperation between Austrian diplomats and the Vienna state police.22

The Institutionalization of the Hungarian Intelligence Service during the Tenure of Gyula Andrássy as Prime Minister, 1867–1871

With the Compromise, one of the first measures taken by the Hungarian government in the division of imperial affairs was the organization of the Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior, but the government’s intelligence and information gathering activities were characterized by a period of uncertainty and instability. Proposals were made concerning the establishment of a new network of informants, but the fragmentary documents that have survived suggest that, in practice, the focus was on making regular requests for information from various official authorities and obtaining confidential information on specific cases.23 The new Hungarian parliamentary government was averse to extensive intelligence work based on a network of agents, not primarily because of its liberalism, but mainly because public opinion had extremely negative memories of such secret police practices under the previous neo-absolutist regime. This political consideration (the desire to keep some distance from the institutions and methods of the previous system) was clearly reflected in the establishment and organizational structure of the Hungarian government press office. Following the transfer of information policy and press control, the Hungarian press office, which was based on the Austrian model, differed from its counterpart in that it did not become an independent office. Instead, its personnel were discreetly integrated into the apparatus of the Prime Minister’s Office, which was not divided into organizational units.24 Given the modest staffing levels of the Prime Minister’s Office at the time, with just over two dozen officials in total, the press office was nevertheless one of the largest divisions, with two secretaries, four clerks, and three assistant clerks under the supervision of a department consultant to handle press matters.25

Attempts to study the diverse activities of the Hungarian press office are hampered by the fact that it did not have its own independent administrative structure, which meant it had neither a separate registry nor its own filing system. The central records of the Prime Minister’s Office only contained materials relating to the operation of the press office that required the Prime Minister’s decision or signature. However, the decisions of the Council of Ministers and

the official regulations relating to the press office did not cover the entire operation of the press office. Rather, they merely laid down its coordinating role within the government and the basic principles of its relations with the press.26 In the areas of press monitoring and press influence, which were the main tasks of the press office, informal communication and verbal communication dominated. In specific press matters, however, the documents and letters of the office managers and their subordinates, who acted on the verbal instructions of the Prime Minister or even at times at their own initiative, were mostly not recorded at all by the central administrative apparatus of the Prime Minister’s Office. During these years, the managers and staff of the Press Department, including figures such as Mór Ludasi,27 István Toldy,28 and Imre Halász,29 were journalists or creative intellectuals with backgrounds in the humanities who were resistant to bureaucratic regulations, particularly the constraints of formal administrative procedures.30 In the years following the Compromise, it was thus common practice for members of the Hungarian press department to take action in semi-official, unregistered letters, which naturally left little trace in the archives of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office. As a result, in our research, we relied primarily on materials from the Vienna Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ press office to uncover previously unknown aspects of the Hungarian press office’s activities. We further enriched this picture with details from contemporary memoirs, the diaries of contemporary politicians, and information from their semi-official documents.31 By utilizing these three source groups, we were able to shed light on the Hungarian press office’s financial resources, its methods of monitoring and influencing the press, and its temporary foreign affairs competences.

At the beginning of the dualistic transformation of the Habsburg Monarchy, the finances for regional foreign press influence operations and the tasks of the information service delegated to Hungary were covered from a secret budget appropriation managed by the joint foreign ministry, the so-called Dispositionsfond (Discretionary Fund), shared between the two political entities in proportion to their contribution to joint costs. To replenish the fund, the delegations of the Hungarian National Assembly and of the Cisleithanian (Austrian) Reichsrat typically approved an annual amount of 550,000 forints per year in the foreign ministry’s budget from 1868 onwards. Of this, only 80,000 went to diplomatic purposes, while 270,000 went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for state security and 200,000 to the press department. Thirty percent of the latter two amounts, a total of 141,600 forints, was then made available to the Hungarian government in monthly instalments.32 (However, we were unable to find any data on how this amount was divided between the Press Office set up at the Prime Minister’s Office and the State Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior). The amount from the foreign affairs budget initially seemed to satisfy Hungarian needs, and the procedure proved to be a politically advantageous solution too, as it allowed the Hungarian House of Representatives to avoid criticism from the opposition and forestall uncomfortable questions regarding the secret dis­cretionary fund.

This arrangement, however, could not be maintained for long. Parliamentary governments and parties in Cisleithania increasingly accused Beust, who held the office of Imperial Chancellor, of using the secret fund of the Foreign Ministry, which he managed and controlled himself, to influence Austrian party politics and the press. In light of this, during the 1870 foreign affairs budget negotiations, the Austrian delegation made its first attempt to withdraw 60 percent of the fund’s allocation, which was over 500,000 forints, and limit it to a mere 200,000. In the end, 500,000 forints were approved,33 but this reduction meant that the Hungarian government’s share fell to 126,500 forints in 1870.34 To make up for the shortfall, for the first time in the 1870 budget debate, the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office proposed the establishment of an extra­ordinary fund of 120,000 forints.35 This sparked an extensive debate on whether a parliamentary government could even have an extraordinary fund for political intelligence purposes, as such practices were typically associated with absolutist governments. The independence opposition argued that even in the tense political situation accompanying the revolutionary transformation in 1848, the Hungarian government, which had introduced representative government, had not required the creation of a fund without itemized parliamentary control for the purpose of gathering intelligence or influencing the foreign press. In response, the pro-government member of parliament addressed in the matter, Ferenc Pulszky, former state secretary of the Ministry around the King in 1848, based in Vienna,36 made the following acknowledgement at a public meeting:

I had such money at my disposal, and I can say with my head held high that I spent it in the interests of the country, and not without results. (Laughter) I can also say that we had a German newspaper at our disposal at the time, Völkerbund. I very much regret that it was not used more than it was, but the fact is that we did have money at our disposal for that purpose.37

Speaking in favor of approving the extraordinary fund, and lending his authority to the matter,38 Ferenc Deák also argued that, “in every state there are expenses which can neither be determined in advance nor, as the Hungarian saying goes, trumpeted to the world; in parliamentary monarchies they are always approved under one title or another.” Refuting the speech of constitutional lawyer Gyula Schvarcz,39 who rejected the establishment of the secret fund, Deák also pointed out, citing an English example, that the use of such a fund was a discretionary right of the government even in this country, considered a model of parliamentarianism, about which the parliament in London did not ask questions and the government did not provide detailed information. He emphasized that the purpose of the discretionary fund could not be to restrict the free expression of opinion by the country’s citizens, but to counterbalance external agitation directed against the country’s system of governance.40 With this statement, Deák was unambiguously referring to the activities of foreign supporters of nationalist movements among the Hungarian minorities, and the dangers arising from this. It is hardly surprising, given all this, that the emerging Hungarian government information service was strongly oriented towards foreign policy, focusing primarily on the Balkan region (which was the hinterland of the domestic South Slavic and Romanian national movements), where pan-Slav agitation was feared as a disrupting force that threatened to undermine the dualist system.

However, the dual financing system of the discretionary fund through joint and Hungarian budgetary sources was brought to a close by the beginning of the 1870s (and it is worth keeping in mind that this fund formed the financial basis of the Hungarian government intelligence service). The Cisleithanian government simultaneously set up its own press office and freed itself from Beust’s oversight, but it no longer received funding from the Foreign Ministry’s discretionary fund to maintain this office.41 In accordance with its earlier intentions, the Cisleithanian delegation reduced the Foreign Ministry’s discretionary fund to 200,000 forints in the 1871 foreign affairs budget,42 so that the Hungarian government no longer received any support from it. Therefore, in the Hungarian budget for 1871, 200,000 forints were allocated for the discretionary fund,43 and this amount remained unchanged in the following years. The discretionary fund for gathering political intelligence and influencing the press was managed by the director of accounting at the Prime Minister’s Office, and only the Prime Minister could decide how it was to be used. He also approved the annual accounts, after which the receipts for the use of the funds were destroyed. When Prime Minister Menyhért Lónyay took these documents with him when he resigned, this was considered an extraordinary exception.44

The Hungarian government’s initial share of the Foreign Ministry’s dis­cretionary fund was by no means merely a budgetary technicality aimed at overcoming political inconveniences. It was accompanied by the transfer of significant foreign policy tasks. Beust attempted to satisfy Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy’s ambition to shape the eastern policy of the Dual Monarchy by allowing the Hungarian press office to influence the press in Belgrade and Bucharest, or in other words, in the “mother countries” of the Serbian and Romanian national movements in Hungary.

From a Hungarian perspective, the South Slavic question was of primary importance during Andrássy’s premiership, given the dynamism of the Serbian national movement, the unrest in the Slavic provinces of Turkey, the unresolved constitutional relationship with Croatia, and the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the Military Frontier. Andrássy felt that the Habsburg diplomatic service and foreign intelligence service, which focused on the German question, were not prepared to handle or even properly grasp the potential threats presented by national movements among the South Slavs. In practice, it was to counter this Hungarian mistrust and satisfy Hungarian needs in relation to the South Slavic question that Beust appointed Benjamin Kállay, a personal confidant of the Hungarian prime minister, to serve as Austro-Hungarian consul general in Belgrade in early 1868.45

In Serbian press matters, Kállay dealt almost exclusively with the Hungarian press office. The permanence of the division of labor between the press offices in Vienna and Buda in relation to Serbia is illustrated by the fact that, until 1875, the financial resources for attempts to exert an influence on the Serbian press were always drawn from the Hungarian Prime Minister’s discretionary fund. This included providing continuous support for the prestigious Belgrade daily newspaper Vidov Dan. The editor of the paper, Miloš Popović,46 had already taken a distinctly pro-Hungarian stance before 1867. He had promoted József Eötvös’s concept of promoting civilizational progress, the widespread use of minority languages, and cultural autonomy in a series of articles on the nationality question in Hungary, which were also published in book form in Serbian and Hungarian translation. In this book, Popović opposed the territorial separation of Serbs within Hungary and the restoration of the Serbian Vojvodina, which had been abolished in 1860. By recognizing Hungary’s territorial integrity, he wanted to encourage Hungary’s independence or at least promote its separation within the Habsburg Monarchy, hoping that this would create favorable foreign policy conditions for the independence of the Serbian principality and the liberation of the Slavs in Turkey.47 Popović already knew Kállay. Indeed, in 1865, he had published Kállay’s first Serbian-language article on Hungarian–Serbian interdependence and the prospects for possible cooperation.48

Popović visited Kállay immediately after Kállay’s appointment at his residence in Belgrade to ask him to intercede with the Hungarian government to grant concessions for the distribution of his newspaper among Serbs in Hungary. Kállay forwarded the request to the Hungarian prime minister in a private letter, as it seemed politically advantageous: instead of Napredak, a Hungarian-based Serbian newspaper of dubious success which was kept in print with government support, a Belgrade paper could explain to the southern Slavic Serbs why the dualist transformation and Hungary’s state autonomy were beneficial from a Serbian national perspective.49 Before a decision could be made in Buda, a dramatic turn of events took place in Belgrade. Prince Mihailo, who had been a supporter of Hungarian orientation since 1861, was assassinated in June 1868,50 and the new Serbian government withdrew its support for the newspaper Vidov Dan, which had previously been considered a semi-official journal of the Serbian state. This turn was initially aimed at winning over the opposition liberal intelligentsia, which was concentrated around the rival daily newspaper Srbija. By the end of the year, Jedinstvo, the new liberal newspaper that openly supported the government, was already in circulation, partly financed by the Serbian budget.51 In the narrow Serbian press market, where the overwhelming majority of the population was still illiterate, the fate of Vidov Dan became uncertain as competing newspapers gathered strength and the periodical continued to grapple with a lack of domestic support. In order to save his newspaper, Popović turned to the Hungarian government for regular financial assistance, the mutually acceptable amount of which was negotiated by Kállay in semi-official cor­respondence and personal negotiations with Andrássy. As a result, from October 1868, the publication of Vidov Dan was ensured by a monthly subsidy of 250 forints from the Hungarian press office it went out of print in 1876.52 This enabled the newspaper to survive the Serbian dynastic crisis, and its circulation gradually increased from 300 to 800 copies.53 After Andrássy’s appointment as foreign minister, thanks to Kállay’s verbal intercession, the newspaper enjoyed the support of both new Hungarian prime ministers, first Menyhért Lónyay and then József Szlávy.54

Another regular source of information for Kállay from the Serbian press was Mihajlo Rosen. Rosen was a doctor by training, but he aspired to be a journalist. He headed the Serbian government’s press office from the early 1870s, and he also edited its semi-official newspaper. At Kállay’s suggestion, from the summer of 1868, Mór Ludasi, who at the time was serving as head of the Hungarian press office, offered Rosen the opportunity to publish articles on the situation in Serbia and Turkey in Pesti Napló, Pester Lloyd, and his own newspaper, Die Debatte in Vienna. In addition, from December 1868, the Hungarian press office employed him as a permanent correspondent for the British Reuters news agency. In this role, Rosen regularly informed its Frankfurt and Berlin offices about events in Serbia and the surrounding Balkan region.55 From the summer of 1871, however, Rosen also received a regular annual payment of 2,000 forints from the Hungarian discretionary fund, because he continuously supplied the Austro-Hungarian Consulate in Belgrade with information from Serbian government circles concerning the political situation in the principality. At the same time, he wrote articles that were printed in Vidov Dan. Indeed, he authored most of the articles supporting the Austro-Hungarian orientation. To secure his lasting commitment, Kállay raised the issue of his financial remuneration and discussed it privately with Andrássy. Barely a week later, Imre Halász, head of the press department, sent the first 500 forints for the quarter of a year to Belgrade. 56

Thus, from the early 1870s onwards, a substantial portion of the annual allocation of the Hungarian discretionary fund was thus spent on these two Serbian journalists, without any trace of this in the official documents of the Prime Minister’s Office. Similarly, it is known only from Imre Halász’s memoirs that we learn that Kállay regularly sent him private letters with guidelines for publishing articles related to Serbia.57

After the Compromise, it was repeatedly suggested that Hungarian-speaking staff should be delegated to the consulates in the Danube principalities. The opposition agreed with the government on this. In the first parliamentary debate on the discretionary fund, László Berzenczey, a Transylvanian émigré from 1848 who was well acquainted with the situation in the Balkans,58 went so far as to declare it a task of Hungarian foreign policy to send diplomats and consuls of Hungarian nationality to European Turkey. “It would not hurt to send Wanderburschen [diplomatic trainees] to Turkey from time to time to study the Eastern Question,” he contended. “We must strive to exert real influence on Eastern politics. If this were to happen, I would gladly vote in support of half a million.”59

However, no further official diplomats of Hungarian nationality were appointed to posts in the Balkans, probably because there were no suitable candidates with the necessary language skills who enjoyed the confidence of the Hungarian government. This is also evident from the issue of monitoring and influencing the press in the Danubian principalities. At the beginning of 1868, the press department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a detailed compilation to Buda on the press situation in the Romanian principalities. The intention was to lay the groundwork for the systematic observation of the press and to attempt to have suggested articles published in the various periodicals.60 At the time, however, the Hungarian Press Office completely lacked the personnel necessary for the regular monitoring of the Romanian-language press, and even later it was not possible to find a single official capable of writing articles in Romanian. Therefore, the Hungarian side only undertook to prepare German or French articles for publication in Bucharest newspapers. This prospect later appeared feasible because the Austrian–Hungarian consul general in Bucharest, Nikolaus Zulauf von Pottenburg,61 considered it possible to subsidize the German-language Bukarester Fremdenblatt and the French–Romanian L’Echo Danubien, both of which were published in Bucharest, and to have articles printed in them that were in line with Austrian–Hungarian interests. Beust wanted to decide only in full agreement with the Hungarian side on this matter, stating that “this matter directly and predominantly concerns the Hungarian royal government.” Prime Minister Andrássy approved subsidies for both newspapers, although he believed that a German-language newspaper would have less impact on the Bucharest public than the Romanian–French organ. He likely sought in part to reciprocate the full recognition of the Hungarian government’s competence in foreign policy with a generous financial gesture, and when it came to the costs, he did not insist on the quota proportions but agreed instead to provide half of the subsidies for both newspapers.62

Systematic monitoring of the press, which began in 1869, was ultimately limited to Slovak, Romanian, and Serbian periodicals. At that time, József Ferencz, a professor at the Slavic department of the University of Pest, was appointed head of the Prime Minister’s Translation Office.63 Ferencz had the assistance of subordinates with experience in journalism and literary translation.64 To monitor the Slovak press, they employed Leopold Thull, founder and editor of the weekly newspaper Krajan, which was supported by the Governor’s Council led by Hungarian conservative aristocrats (though Krajan went out of print after the Compromise).65 The Romanian press correspondent, Károly Benedek (1811–1877), former archivist of the Transylvanian county of Zaránd, was appointed to a government position. This was unusual given his advanced age, and indeed this step was taken primarily to compensate Benedek for the political attacks he had suffered in the Romanian newspaper. Originally, József Eötvös wanted to employ him at the Ministry of Religion and Public Education to edit the Romanian edition of A Néptanitók Lapja (The People’s Teachers’ Journal), but his language skills proved insufficient.66 József Szokolovits, born in Szeged, was responsible for the Serbian press. In the first half of the 1860s, as a student at Tökölianum (the Serbian foundation’s student residence), he studied law at the University of Pest.67 He also gained recognition among the Hungarian and Serbian readerships at a young age by translating the works of contemporary Serbian writers in Hungary, mainly Jovan Jovanović-Zmaj68 and Laza Kostić,69 into Hungarian. Throughout his career as a civil servant, he was active as a mediator and interpreter of Serbian and Croatian literature.70 Ferencz, who organized the Translation Office of the Prime Minister’s Office, had extensive experience in the field of press monitoring, as he wrote and edited a column reviewing Slavic newspapers in Pesti Napló in the 1860s and later in Hon. The Romanian, Serbian, and Slovak press reviews were prepared weekly at the Prime Minister’s Office and distributed in lithographed form to Hungarian government agencies and newspapers published in the capital. The Vienna press office, which focused on conditions in Germany, showed no interest in the regional Hungarian press review and only began to make use of it regularly after Andrássy was appointed joint minister of foreign affairs.71

No contemporary official records have survived from the other important institution of the Hungarian government news service: the State Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior. This was undoubtedly due in part to the fact that this department was split almost annually into a State Police Department and a Public Order Department, only to be reunited again. Even archival research carried out to supplement the missing contemporary registers of officers has failed to accurately identify the officers of the police department and the number of personnel.72 Historical research has only revealed numerous details concerning Count Gedeon Ráday, who organised the State Police Department after the Compromise, but the chapter of his biography and official career relating to Balkan intelligence remains shrouded in complete obscurity. Even the author of the monograph on Ráday (the royal commissioner in Szeged who was tasked with eradicating banditry in the Great Plain) found no substantial sources regarding this aspect of his work at the Ministry of the Interior.73

Ágnes Deák’s research showed that organisational and methodological guidelines were provided by the Austrian Imperial Ministry of Police—itself under restructuring—for the establishment of the State Police Department within the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior following the Compromise of 1867; but no official documents on the implementation of these guidelines have survived.74 What can, however, be taken as certain is the adaptation of the intelligence methods recommended by the imperial center in Vienna, since, upon his appointment to the Hungarian government in April 1867, Ráday had absolutely no prior practical knowledge of police matters or military experience. During the revolution, in the autumn of 1848, he helped organize volunteer militias, before joining the Hungarian Army as a private. On the basis of his law degree, he was soon promoted to the rank of first lieutenant, but due to his ill health, he performed little actual military service during the Hungarian independence struggles of 1848–1849.75 However, one year after the establishment of the State Police Department in the spring of 1867, indirect sources76 indicate that it was already engaged in systematic state security intelligence-gathering. These sources show that the Hungarian State Police’s intelligence-gathering efforts, under Ráday’s direction, were primarily focused on nationalist movements, and that this activity extended geographically to the Balkan territories bordering Hungary. His methods included the targeted monitoring of postal correspondence, the employment of agents, and the establishment of a special confidential police archive for the storage and analysis of the information obtained.

Benjamin Kállay’s position as Consul-General in Belgrade—particularly between 1868 and 1871—served as a special intelligence hub for the Hungarian government from both a political and a state security perspective, which significantly supplemented the information received from the Foreign Ministry in Vienna. Thanks to this that we can gain insight into the workings of the system. Kállay kept Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy informed of every important diplomatic event in Belgrade and of any news from southern Hungary, the border regions, and Croatia that was relevant to Hungarian domestic politics. Often using a separate cipher key, he sent this information either directly in private letters or by sending copies of his official reports to Andrássy or to the relevant Hungarian ministry at the Ministry of the Interior, primarily Gedeon Ráday.77

To gather intelligence in Serbia, Kállay had at his disposal, on the one hand, the Habsburg Monarchy’s already established network of informants, the most valuable member of which was Emil Čučković, a retired captain of a Croatian Banal military border infantry regiment (Banal-Militär-Grenz-Infanterie-Regiment). From 1861 until his death in 1873, this experienced military officer, recalled to active service, headed the Austrian postal agency (Postagentur) in the bustling southern Serbian border town of Aleksinac, the operation of which was secured by a concession granted under a bilateral agreement with the Ottoman Empire.78 He received monthly reports from him on the mood of the population in southern Serbia, Serbian military troop movements, and national revolutionary organisations active in the Serbian–Bulgarian and Serbian–Bosnian border regions.79 Furthermore, the Hungarian State Police Department was able to employ its own agents from its operational budget to gather information relevant to Hungarian national interests, primarily to ascertain the political aspirations of the Serbs in southern Hungary, and to assess the situation in the Croatian–Slavonian border region, caught in the crossfire of the conflicts between the Hungarian government and the Joint Ministry of War. Before taking up his diplomatic post in Belgrade, Čučković discussed his current tasks verbally with Ráday, with whom he had long-standing social ties and a personal friendship.80 To help his agents’ movements and facilitate covert intelligence-gathering, Ráday gave him ten blank passports.

Shortly after his arrival in Belgrade, Kállay encountered individuals who, in return for financial compensation, offered their confidential services to the new consul-general. Of the Croatian and Slovenian candidates, Kállay chose Ferenc (Franz, Franc) Maury, a Catholic cleric from the County of Görz-Gradiska who, according to his letter of introduction, had completed his theological studies in Hungary at a diocesan seminary in Győr. He had also spent several years in the ecclesiastical service as secretary to the Catholic bishop of Shkodra in Albania, which was under the religious protectorate of the Habsburg Monarchy. Maury made no secret of the fact that, after settling in Belgrade in 1866, he had engaged in reconnaissance and propaganda among the Albanians on behalf of the Serbian Prime Minister, Ilija Garašanin, with the aim of liberating Balkan Christians from Ottoman rule through a Serbian alliance. When his secret mission was uncovered, however, the Serbian government withdrew its financial support. Since then, Maury had been living in great poverty in Belgrade and was seeking another confidential mission to finance his medical care.81

Maury’s decision to establish contact with the new Austro-Hungarian consul-general was fundamentally driven by—apart from financial necessity—the political changes that took place in the Habsburg Monarchy in 1867, the constitutional transformation of the German centralist state system into a dualist one, and the establishment of Hungary’s separate status under constitutional law. In his view, all this offered favorable opportunities for the development of the Slavic nations. Kállay reinforced this conviction during his meeting with Maury, drawing the latter’s attention to the significance in Slavic nationalistic terms of the imminent parliamentary adoption of the Hungarian Nationalities Act. At the same time, he confided in him that, under Hungarian influence, the dualist Monarchy would not seek to annex Bosnia, nor would it continue to insist on preserving the unviable Ottoman rule in the Balkans. By outlining this liberal Hungarian foreign policy, which favoured the emergence of independent nation-states in the Balkans, he made his future agent aware of the significance of the complex intelligence tasks he would have to perform within the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy. These tasks would be primarily conducted in the Croatian–Slavonian border region, the legal status of which was disputed, in defence of the newly established dualist constitutional arrangement.

Kállay planned a large-scale intelligence operation over several months, which primarily required Maury to keep a constant eye on the political climate in the Croatian–Slavonian border region, the evolving relationship between the local population and the German–Slavic officer corps, and to map out the influence of pro-Russian figures—primarily Greek Orthodox priests, teachers, clerks, and merchants—on public opinion, as well as their established network of Russian connections. He proposed to launch the operation as soon as possible, because he was concerned by news of discontent among the military peasantry in the border regions. These sentiments, fuelled by the subversive activities of Austrian centralist military and political circles opposed to dualism and Russo­phile agitation, could lead to an armed uprising that might jeopardize Hungary’s constitutional position achieved in 1867.82 As a test of his long-term assignment, Kállay first set Maury the task of ascertaining, on location, the veracity of an alarming report from the Hungarian State Police Department concerning the border region. Before taking up his post at the diplomatic mission in Belgrade, Gedeon Ráday had shared with him his suspicion that thousands of weapons were being stockpiled in the vicinity of Novi Sad and Karlóca—the political, economic and cultural centers of the Serbian community in Hungary—presumably financed with Russian money. He based his assumption on a letter intercepted by the postal service, which had been sent by the archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox monastery at Krušedol in Slavonia to Djordje Stratimirović, who was both the military leader of the 1848 Serbian uprising and a member of the Hungarian Diet since 1865.83

Maury carried out his three-week mission in the eastern corner of the border region, under the sphere of influence of prominent Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical institutions, and reported his findings to Kállay in a secret meeting at a restaurant in Pančevo, a small town on the left bank of the Danube under Hungarian administration. He found no evidence of secret arms purchases, but he did observe intense anti-Hungarian agitation aimed at the restoration of Serbian Vojvodina, as well as a steadfast pro-Russian sentiment on the part of the Greek Orthodox priests. He linked the latter phenomenon to the fact that the Russophile clergymen he had listed maintained long-standing ties with Mikhail Rayevsky, the chaplain at the Russian Embassy in Vienna.84 However, this intelligence finding was likely little more than a generalized conclusion drawn by an experienced agent. For a quarter of a century, Rayevsky had been channelling financial support from the Slavic Benevolent Society and pan-Slavic associations in Russia to the leading figures of Slavic national and cultural movements and the Greek Orthodox churches within the Habsburg Monarchy. The Foreign Affairs Informationbüro in Vienna had detailed information on all this; indeed, the press occasionally reported on it in order to discredit those associated with Rayevsky.85 Kállay’s interest was aroused primarily by those secular, active political figures whom Maury, based on his experiences in Serbia, had declared to be staunchly pro-Russian. Among these, he named the Bulgarian revolutionary Lyuben Karavelov, who had moved from Belgrade to Novi Sad due to his conflicts with the Serbian government;86 an influential Belgrade member of the cross-border Omladina movement (United Serb Youth); Milan Kujundžić (1842–1893), a literary figure;87 and Dragutin Tomaj Tuminski (–1871), a Croatian–Polish émigré who had been declared a Russian agent and who, as head of the Serbian government’s press office, advocated a grand South Slavic union that would also include the Bulgarians.88 Kállay relayed this information to Ráday as a resounding success. With his generous remuneration, his agent then began carrying out a reconnaissance operation in the Croatian-Slavonian border region to assess how Russian influence was being exerted, the development of relations with Hungary, and, in particular, the reception of Hungarian parliamentary deliberations on the autonomous status of the Greek Orthodox Church.89

However, Maury’s re-entry aroused the suspicion of the military ad­minist­ration in the border region, and the Semlin Area Command (Platzkommando Semlin, Zimony, Zemun) detained him as a former Serbian agent. During his interrogation, he revealed the relationship of trust he had established with Kállay and the assignment he had received from him. The authenticity of this information was personally verified by one of the command’s majors during an unannounced visit to the Consul-General’s office in Belgrade. As a result, Maury was released, and he too set off immediately for his client in Belgrade. Kállay severely reprimanded him for his careless breach of a fundamental rule of confidentiality, as the exposure of an operation initiated in an area falling exclusively within the remit of the military administration was an embarrassment. He therefore temporarily suspended further reconnaissance in the border region. While he did not rule out the prospect of calling upon his services at a later date, Kállay provided Maury with a small sum of money, recommending that he leave the region immediately and travel to Budapest for medical treatment, at least for a while.90

Maury refused to accept the suspension of his activities as an agent. Instead, he returned to the border region and, in accordance with the instructions he had received, redoubled his efforts to gather information to prove his competence and make up for the mistake he had made. A month and a half later—having avoided compromising the consul general again—he wrote a letter to his long-standing deputy, Svetozar Theodorović,91 announcing that he was working on a written summary of his valuable intelligence findings, and asking him to intercede on his behalf to have him reinstated as an agent and to provide him with the funds required to complete his mission in the border region.92 Through Theodorović’s mediation, Maury regained Kállay’s full trust. Kállay forwarded the financial support poste restante to Maury’s place of residence, the Croatian military fortress town of Eszék (Esseg, Osijek), and, in an encrypted letter, requested a secret personal meeting in Budapest.93 By early September, Maury had completed his reconnaissance of the border region and, following an operation at the Rókus Hospital in Budapest, sent his written report to Belgrade, which primarily contained information on the instigators of anti-Hungarian agitation in the region. His modest findings did not serve as a basis for further measures in the autumn of 1868, because of the Hungarian–Croatian Compromise then under negotiation. The latter included recognition of Croatia’s legal claims to the border region and created the legal possibility of abolishing its separate status and introducing an autonomous Croatian–Slavonian civil administration.94

Kállay drew on Maury’s wide-ranging experience of the Balkans to gain an understanding of the causes of the unrest in Bulgaria, which threatened future regional stability. In this respect, Kállay was seeking to assess the influence of propaganda from Russia and other external powers, and to monitor the activities of the Slavic Benevolent Society, a Russian-oriented organisation run by Bulgarian merchants in Bucharest. His interest in and activities regarding Bulgaria were spurred by a strictly confidential, French-language situation analysis received from the joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to this analysis, a Central Revolutionary Committee based in Bucharest had established an extensive network of local committees in Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia with the aim of overthrowing Ottoman rule, and had also planned joint action with similar Greek organizations. The alleged task of the centrally directed local committees was to prepare the psychological groundwork for a general uprising and to set up secret depots of arms and ammunition. The anonymous memorandum listed not only their places of operation, but also the names of their leaders.95 However, when Kállay made enquiries, neither the Austro-Hungarian consul general in Bosnia, Stephan Herzfeld, nor Maury could find any trace of the organization’s activities or its named leaders.96 In any case, Kállay included the investigation of the uncontrolled Bulgarian branches of the revolutionary organization and its Romanian headquarters among Maury’s future tasks as an agent. In mid-October, Kállay travelled to Budapest for his long-overdue personal briefing and to prepare for his next large-scale reconnaissance mission covering Old Serbia, Bulgaria, and Bucharest. On the evening of his arrival, he visited the National Casino, an important venue for Hungarian social life and political activity, where—perhaps not by chance—he met Prince Władysław Czartoryski (1828–1894), who had recently returned to the con­stitutional Habsburg Monarchy after decades in exile.

Czartoryski was the last head of the Hôtel Lambert, the Parisian diplomatic center for Polish émigrés that had coordinated the national liberation movements of Eastern Europe for decades. During a discussion on the situation in the Lower Danube region, much to Kállay’s surprise, Czartoryski confided in him that the Foreign Ministry in Vienna had received detailed information from him on the organization and plans of the secret revolutionary committees active in the region, which clearly amounted to the betrayal of sensitive intelligence gathered in the Paris centre regarding the Balkans.97 Disillusioned by the successive failures of the national uprisings, the converted revolutionary’s actions clearly demonstrated the shift in Polish nationalism towards Austro-Polonism, inspired by the model of the 1867 Austro-Hungarian Compromise. He also saw the liberal parliamentary system emerging within the Habsburg Monarchy as a means to realize Polish national aspirations and foreign policy interests. Czartoryski chose the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament as the arena for his political activity, partly because of his family’s status as Hungarian nobles, and partly because he regarded the Hungarians as Poland’s natural allies in laying the foundations for the Dual Monarchy’s anti-Russian foreign policy and in promoting Western-style civilization among the Balkan Slavs.98

Through his new acquaintance, Kállay learned of the diversity within the radical nationalist revolutionary movement. This confirmed to him the strategic importance of conducting reconnaissance over the entire Lower Danube region, a task which extended beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the consul general. To ensure the operation’s success, he took particular care to protect the reconnaissance operations from being compromised and to ensure that the information did not fall into the hands of unauthorised persons. For this reason, Maury’s briefing took place in complete secrecy at the home of Gusztáv Gyene (1844–1891),99 a long-standing loyal family friend and election aide, who was a clerk at the Ministry of the Interior. Kállay personally issued Maury’s new passport, bearing the code name “Fekete” (which he had used previously), and handed over the substantial allowance allocated by Ráday from the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior’s discretionary fund, covering his operations for several months. Postal communications were arranged in such a way that Maury’s reports arrived at Gyene’s official address in Buda and were then forwarded to Belgrade by courier or personal delivery.100 Kállay repeatedly extended Maury’s intelligence operations, which had begun in November 1868 with the aim of gauging the mood in Ottoman Old Serbia. Through a trusted intermediary, and using funds from the Hungarian contingency fund, he continuously financed these new tasks for at least eight months. This was because Kállay was not receiving any meaningful information from the Austro-Hungarian consuls in Sofia and Ruse (a Bulgarian port city on the Danube) regarding the revolutionary committees becoming active in the Danube Vilayet as well as the preparations for an uprising.101 The need for a special reconnaissance mission was underpinned by the experiences of the renowned cartographer and ethnographer Felix Kanitz, who, during his research trip to Bulgaria lasting several months, encountered both extremely strong Russophile agitation, and a passive response from the local Austrian consuls.102 Kállay also saw that the Belgrade government’s dismissal and exile of prominent pro-Russian figures such as Dragutin Tomaj Tuminski, head of the government press office, and the active revolutionary agitator Petar

Uzelac would indirectly contribute to radicalisation in Bulgaria. His expectations were ultimately fulfilled, for the two exiles left Serbia for the Danube Vilayet, which was in the throes of revolutionary unrest, where they hoped to find political and financial support from the Russian consul in Ruse.103

Maury’s first intelligence report to arrive—a brief overview of the situation in Old Serbia drawn up in early January 1869—confirmed Kállay’s assumption that the Serbian Council of Regents had, whilst preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, not made any preparations for an uprising to unite all ethnic Serbs.104 Based on his travels in Bulgaria and the information he had gathered in Ruse, Maury sent Kállay an informative and substantive analysis in early March on the trends emerging within the Bulgarian national movement. He pointed out that the Bucharest committees were no longer the only ones exerting an influence in Bulgaria: as a local organization following the ideas and practices of the Italian Mazzinian émigrés had also emerged in the Danube Vilayet. Furthermore, he predicted a likely resurgence of the activities of the Russophile, pan-Slavic-minded committee. According to Maury’s information, Petar Uzelac—expelled from Serbia and holding a significant network of Balkan contacts—had received substantial financial support from the Russian consulate in Ruse. Uzelac had then used these funds to relocate his operations to Bucharest and Wallachia in order to establish a committee among the Bulgarians living there that would meet the requirements of Russian diplomacy.105 To monitor the organizational structure of the Bulgarian émigré community in Bucharest, Kállay immediately dispatched Maury to Romania, but his mission—due to a relapse of his illness and an accident sustained during the gruelling reconnaissance trip—failed to yield any substantial information.106 Maury returned to Ruse, where a secret agent of the Serbian government recognised him despite his disguise and made him an offer to eliminate Svetozar Radovanović, the engineer and last surviving assassin of Prince Mihailo Obrenović. Maury refused to resume cooperation with the Serbs and, in order to complete his mission, asked Kállay for support so that he could restore his health at the elegant Băile Herculane (Herkulesfürdő) spa in nearby Mehadia (Mehádia).107

During his reconnaissance mission, Maury endeavoured to maintain complete secrecy and therefore deliberately avoided a personal meeting with Captain Čučković, who was conducting a military reconnaissance (Rekogniszierung) in the Danube Vilayet.108 During the spring of 1869, as part of a reshuffle of staff at the Austro-Hungarian missions in Bulgaria, Karl von Wolfarth was appointed to the post of consul general in Ruse. He had an effective network of informants, for he soon uncovered the true identity of Maury—who frequently stayed in or passed through Ruse—and his close relationship with the consul general in Belgrade. Wolfarth became aware of the surprising views Maury had voiced in social circles, namely that the Serbian government would, if necessary, provide support to the Bulgarian insurgents with Austria’s approval. Vice Consul Franz Bubenik may also have played a significant role in identifying him, as he had served as consular chancellor in Belgrade until 1868 and was therefore well acquainted with Maury’s checkered past and dealings.109 At the same time, however, Wolfarth had already personally observed that Captain Čučković, head of the Austro-Hungarian postal agency operating in Aleksinac, Serbia, held similar views. During a courtesy visit, Čučković had confided to Wolfarth his conviction that, in the event of an armed conflict between Serbia and Turkey—which was bound to occur sooner or later—the government of the Monarchy would tacitly consent to imperial and royal officers joining the Serbian army. This would promote its long-term aim to strengthen the principality’s independence and thus to cement Serbia’s lasting commitment to the alliance. There is no doubt that certain elements of Maury’s and Čučković’s individual opinions were in line with Kállay’s Hungarian liberal vision of foreign policy, i.e. with the national reorganisation of the Balkans under the Monarchy’s patronage, of which both had heard during their personal meetings with Kállay.110 In early July 1869, Wolfahrt’s summary report from Ruse on the organisation of Bulgarian volunteer units mentioned statements by Maury and Čučković, which implied Austro-Hungarian support channelled via Serbia. These statements caused utter consternation at the relevant embassy in Constantinople and at Ballhausplatz.111 Ambassador Anton von Prokesch-Osten and Imperial Chancellor Beust—both unconditional advocates of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire—concluded that, through his confidants, Kállay continued to promote the vassal Serbian principality’s territorial aspirations and his Balkan policy concept. Meanwhile, all of this was based on securing an anti-Russian alliance—a concept which both men had already criticised the previous year and declared to be incompatible with the interests of the Dual Monarchy.112

Initially, the Hungarian Béla Orczy, section chief at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, failed to grasp the motive behind and the extent of Kállay’s negative assessment of the Ballhausplatz affair; consequently, in a letter addressed to him, he merely suggested allaying Wolfarth’s exaggerated concerns regarding preparations for the Bulgarian uprising, in view of Serbia’s anticipated conduct.113 When Kállay received this information from his patron, Orczy in Vienna—who was also a close personal friend—he had already dispatched his reassuring letter to the consul general in Ruse; in it, he explained that while the Serbian government undoubtedly sympathized with Bulgarian aspirations for independence, it did not advocate an armed solution. The Serbian government had demonstrated this as recently as the previous year, when, following incursions by Bulgarian irregulars from Romanian territory, it had closed the Bulgarian border from the Serbian side and thwarted all armed incursions. In his reply, Kállay responded at length to the startling claim in Wolfarth’s letter—which had caused Kállay several days of concern—that, according to Serbs in Austria, Austria was encouraging the Belgrade government to instigate and support nationalist movements on the Balkan Peninsula.114 In Kállay’s view, this entirely baseless claim was being spread by Russophile figures expelled from Serbia and by activists of the Young Serbian Omladina movement in Hungary and the border regions. This was because the obvious absence of such cooperation could be used as an effective propaganda tool to discredit the pro-monarchy foreign policy stance of the Serbian Regency Council.115 Following the exchange of information, in early August Kállay learned with indignation that Wolfarth had attributed statements to Maury and Captain Čučković that were prejudicial to the Monarchy’s prestige and foreign policy objectives without consulting him as to their veracity.116 Kállay chose the

simplest possible method to refute these allegations. He acknowledged Maury’s employment as an agent the previous year, but categorically denied having had any subsequent confidential relationship with him. Captain Čučković, however, he vigorously defended on the basis of his service merits, and countered with a statement given on his word of honour as an officer to the effect that Wolfarth had either misunderstood or deliberately distorted his opinion regarding the Serbian army’s shortage of officers.117

Alongside independent reconnaissance operations, which yielded modest results, Kállay successfully contributed to the qualitative renewal of the Monarchy’s network of informants in the Balkans. Through his mediation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Hungarian government jointly undertook to fund the research expeditions of the renowned geographer Felix Kanitz to Bosnia and Bulgaria for several years, in return for regular reports on the political, economic, and ethnographic conditions in those regions. In this way, they employed an informant who met the requirements of a liberal constitutional state, whose work was based on professional expertise, and whose mission arrangements (with costs shared on an equal basis between the two monarchies) were in keeping with the dualist state system. Kanitz submitted his confidential reports under his own name to the joint Minister for Foreign Affairs, who in turn shared the information with the Hungarian Prime Minister. In addition, he would usually send his clients some chapters or excerpts of the book he was writing at the time. These bore on, for example, the Bulgarian National Church (then gaining its independence), the Crimean Tatars resettled in Bulgaria after the Crimean War, or the Islamised Bulgarian-speaking Pomaks. A few years later, during the Great Eastern Crisis, he published his book, a country guide entitled Donau-Bulgarien, which, owing to the political circumstances at the time, became a European academic bestseller. Thus, Felix Kanitz’s annual salary proved to be a worthwhile investment. At 6,000 forints, it essentially corresponded to the annual salary of a lower-ranking Austro-Hungarian consul (Kállay’s annual consular allowance was set at 7,000 forints in 1869),118 and according to the quota, this was divided between the Hungarian government and the joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a ratio of 30–70 per cent.119

The Hungarian government did not rely solely on information originating from the consulate in Belgrade: to monitor the Serbian national movement and conditions in the Lower Danube region, the Hungarian State Police established an independent intelligence network in 1868, for the operation of which Gedeon Ráday occasionally enlisted the logistical support of the consul general in Belgrade. The Hungarian activities in the region were initiated and surveilled by Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy, to which Joint Foreign Minister Beust gave his consent, in principle, through the equal division of the discretionary fund, just as it had happened in connection with the influencing of the Belgrade press. The expansion of the geographical scope of independent Hungarian intelligence operations was justified by the assassination of Serbian Prince Mihailo Obrenović in June 1868 and the subsequent measures taken to manage the resulting dynastic crisis, which, in any case, fell within the authority of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior.

The Monarchy’s governing circles assessed the consequences of the bloody events in Belgrade in different ways, leading to divergent views on the policy to be pursued. At the Ballhausplatz and within the diplomatic service, figures such as the Joint Foreign Minister Beust and Anton von Prokesch-Osten—the ambassador to Constantinople who significantly influenced Balkan policy—as well as several generals of South Slavic origin in the military leadership, saw a favorable opportunity to consolidate the Habsburg Monarchy’s influence in Serbia for long term. This influential group intended to advocate Alexander Karađorđević’s—a dynastic predecessor and rival of the House of Obrenović, and who had been stripped of his ruling authority at the St. Andrew’s National Assembly of 1858 (due in part to his pro-Austrian stance)—return to the vacant throne left by Prince Mihailo, who had died without heir. The Hungarian prime minister, however, rejected Karađorđević’s candidacy on the grounds of foreign and domestic policy considerations, arguing that his restoration would result in strengthening the Russian influence in Serbia, a strong support from Belgrade for the faction led by Svetozar Miletić, which advocated for an armed resolution of the Balkan national question among the Serbs in Hungary and a revision of the dualist system.120

The personal element played a significant role in Andrássy’s standpoint, as he based his concept of national transformation in the Balkans—which had been conceived in the spirit of the Hungarian–Serbian fraternization that unfolded in the 1860s— on the murdered Prince Mihailo; he had even visited the prince at his estate in Ivánka, near Pozsony (Pressburg, Bratislava), in August 1867. During the informal meeting, accompanied by Serbian Prime Minister Ilija Garašanin, they exchanged views on the new political opportunity arising from the Austro-Hungarian Compromise: that the Dual Monarchy—through the foreign policy influence of the Hungarian state, which had regained its autonomy—would in the future use diplomatic means to assist the principality’s development into a nation-state (while preserving the sultan’s sovereign rights), primarily promoting a Serbian takeover of administrative control in Bosnia and Herzegovina.121

Following the assassination, Defense Minister Milivoj Blaznavac, relying on the army, determined the course of events in Belgrade in the name of legitimacy. He proclaimed the succession of the murdered prince’s juvenile nephew, Milan Obrenović, who was studying in Paris. To strengthen the position of the Obrenović dynasty and his own base of power, Blaznavac simultaneously sent his special envoy to the Hungarian prime minister to express his willingness to cooperate. This was followed by Hungarian government measures to ensure that the change of prince in Serbia would proceed without disruption. 122 Andrássy first ordered police surveillance of Alexander Karađorđević, who was living in exile in Hungary, as intelligence reports from Paris suggested that he was involved in planning the assassination. 123

At the request of the Belgrade government, Serbian émigrés—mostly living in Novi Sad—who were considered political opponents of the murdered prince’s authoritarian regime, were arrested on charges of participating in the assassination. Among those placed in pretrial detention were Vladimir Jovanović, the theoretician of Serbian liberalism,124 and Ljuben Karavelov, a Bulgarian revolutionary (the future leader of the BRCC in Bucharest, after 1869) who had previously been in Serbian service and was accused of pan-Slavic sentiments (he was supported by Ivan S. Aksakov). The third politician of Serbian origin, Milovan Janković (1828–1899)—who just a few years earlier had been Kállay’s Serbian language teacher in Pest—escaped the investigation by fleeing to the Czech Lands.125 The Serbian government’s report also suggested that the mayor of Novi Sad, Svetozar Miletić, was involved in the assassination attempt against the prince; however, as a member of the Hungarian National Assembly, he avoided arrest due to his parliamentary immunity, though the appointed government com­missioner removed him from his position as mayor.126

During the dynastic crisis in Serbia, the Hungarian strategy agreed upon by Prime Minister Andrássy and Consul General Kállay was fundamentally aimed at thwarting the Karađorđević restoration and preserving the continuity of the Obrenović dynasty, the symbolic success of which was marked by Milan Obrenović’s ceremonial entry into Belgrade. His journey through Hungarian territory was arranged by Ferenc (Franciszek) Dobieczky (1821–1886), a Balkan expert who was likely the organization’s most experienced and perhaps best-qualified member within the newly formed and independent intelligence service in Hungary. The officer of Polish origin graduated at the Vienna Military Engineering Academy, but left the Imperial Austrian Army as a lieutenant after five years of active duty. He settled down in Hungary and, while employed by the Balaton Steamship Company—having interrupted his study tour of Western Europe—became a captain in the general staff of the Hungarian revolutionary army in 1849. Following the surrender of arms, a court-martial sentenced him to 12 years of imprisonment, but he was granted a pardon as early as 1850 and became an employee of a book publisher in the Hungarian capital.127 Based on his consultations with the consul general in Belgrade, it can be concluded that his intelligence activities were primarily aimed at thwarting the rapprochement and alliance between the Hungarian independence party—which rejected the Compromise—and the remnants of the Kossuth emigration, and the South Slavic revolutionary movements.128

It may have been a result of Dobieczky’s extensive network of Polish contacts that, beginning in the summer of 1868, Tomasz Kamedulski, a Polish émigré living in Vidin, sent several reports on the situation along the eastern border of the Ottoman Danube Vilayet to Gedeon Ráday, focusing primarily on the external supporters of the Bulgarian armed revolutionary groups infiltrating the region. The agent, who was trained as a pharmacist, had participated in the anti-Russian Polish uprising of 1863 and fled to Hungary to escape the threat of exile to Siberia. He opened a pharmacy in Orsova, a border town along the Lower Danube, and from there moved to the opposite bank of the river, to the Ottoman border and port city, which offered greater business opportunities.129 In early October, Ráday considered the regular, directed employment of his volunteer intelligence agent to monitor Bulgarian national and revolutionary movements. Ráday asked the consul in Belgrade, Kállay, to hand over his instructions in Polish to Kamedulski, to provide him with a stipend of 100 forints as compensation for two months of service, and to verify his reliability and assess his suitability for intelligence tasks during their personal meeting. 130

The negative result of the meeting was recorded only in Kállay’s laconic diary entry, which noted that Kamedulski’s knowledge was strikingly limited and that it was not worth spending money on him. Ráday later received no further explanation from him regarding this. Since Kállay was simultaneously preparing the intelligence mission to Bulgaria for his own agent, Ferenc Maury, his strongly biased opinion could be fueled by animosity toward his rival, and the competition for financial resources for the intelligence operation. His opinion, however, proved to be entirely unfounded, because Kamedulski was not only well acquainted with the various factions of the Bulgarian national movement, but in the spring of the following year, through the mediation of the Swiss Polish émigré association, he played an active role in establishing contacts between the Bulgarian Mazzinists, who had chosen a Western orientation, and the famous Italian revolutionary. 131

Ráday had complete confidence in the Balkan expertise of the consul general in Belgrade and, at the same time, he requested that Ferenc Dobieczky be briefed and prepared to carry out the intelligence operation in Romania, which was aimed at mapping the revolutionary organizations there and the Bulgarian committees. The personal consultation was made possible by the fact that, in early October, Dobieczky was in Semlin (Zimony, Zemun) overseeing the security of the former Serbian prince, Alexander Karađorđević, who, as the instigator of the assassination attempt against Prince Mihailo, had been kept there. Kállay gave the intelligence officer, who was preparing for his first trip to the Balkans, the practical advice not to travel to Romania from Semlin (Zimony, Zemun) through Belgrade, because he became well-known in revolutionary circles as wittnesses saw him around the fallen prince. In order to maintain his incognito Kállay recommended Dobieczky approaching the Romanian capital by departing from Pest and taking the railroad line through Temesvár (Timişoara) to the Banat region.132

Following the assassination attempt on Prince Mihailo Ráday employed two permanent agents to monitor the ties of Hungarian Serbs with the Serbian Principality and to influence their political allegiances. For this confidential mission, he recruited Károly Mayerffy—a descendant of a successful landowner family in Pest County whom he knew personally—and Károly’s son, Gyula. This Bavarian immigrant family, which had accumulated wealth through brewing and was elevated to the Hungarian nobility at the end of the 18th century, also owned and leased estates in Temes County; their geographical proximity to the Balkan target areas offered numerous intelligence opportunities. Károly Mayerffy was very familiar with the Lower Danube region, as he had settled in Bucharest after 1849 as a political émigré, where he established a distillery and even owned a house. Under pressure from Austrian diplomats, the Hungarian émigrés were forced to leave the Romanian principality in 1861. Mayerffy then moved to Vidin in the Ottoman Empire, from where he returned home around the time of the Compromise. 133

During the father’s emigration, his son—who was a student at the Piarist high school in Pest— had an adventurous life. As a young man, Gyula Mayerffy became an officer in the Imperial Army and, as a lieutenant in the Pest Volunteer Infantry Battalion, took part in the war of 1859 in Lombardy.134 After being held captive by the Italians, he joined the Hungarian Legion in Italy—organized to fight for national independence and freedom—while retaining his officer’s rank. After the legion was deployed not to pursue its original goals but to suppress banditry (brigantaggio) in southern Italy, the young Mayerffy and a few of his comrades deserted in April 1862, and joined the bandits to made their way to Naples, where he was captured by the Italian gendarmerie. By that, he luckily avoided the court-martial of the Hungarian Legion that would have resulted in a death sentence, as the Italian court-martial sentenced him „only” to im­prison­ment. Soon he was pardoned and released and was able to return home even before the Compromise of 1867. 135

In their division of intelligence duties, the older of the two Mayerffys, Károly, regularly traveled through the Croatian–Slavonian region and the Banat border district, and collected data regarding the mood in the region, the political views of the officers. On occasion, he also informed the consul general in Belgrade of these matters, either in person, by letter.136 According to Kállay’s diary, he carried out a cross-border reconnaissance operation on only one occasion, on November 4, 1870—which was also the date of the last report on the activities of Ráday’s agents. In a brief letter, Mayerffy indicated that he was preparing to travel to Bosnia on a secret mission, and that his task was so confidential that he could not even inform Kállay of his findings. Given the date, there could be no doubt as to the purpose of his trip: to assess the impact of the Franco-Prussian War and growing Russian influence, and to assess the prospects for an anti-Ottoman uprising in this province, which had been plagued by religious and national conflicts for decades. If Mayerffy received his assignment directly from Prime Minister Andrássy, it cannot be ruled out that his mission was connected to the major diplomatic transaction—the transfer of Bosnian administration to Serbia—which Kállay kept firmly on the agenda despite the realignment of power relations resulting from France’s defeat in the war. 137

From the very beginning of his work for the news service, the young Mayerffy resided permanently in Novi Sad, where he compiled his now-lost reports on the social movements, political trends, and key figures of the Serbian elite. Based on Kállay’s diary, his wide-ranging activities can be reconstructed for three-quarters of a year starting in September 1869, during which he regularly consulted with the consul general in Belgrade regarding measures against Svetozar Miletić, a leading political figure among the Serbian community in Hungary.

The radical political objectives of this liberal party founder and publicist—which included the federalization of the Hungarian dualist system, the extension of the rights of the Serbian National Assembly, the skupština, and his radical advocacy for a Serbian nation state to be established through revolution alarmed both the Hungarian government and the Serbian Regency Council, and a tacit agreement emerged between them to limit Miletić’s growing influence in Hungary and Serbia.138 The initiative was seized upon by Miletić’s longtime opponent, Milivoj Blaznavac, Minister of War and a member of the Serbian Regency Council, who had banished Miletić from Belgrade earlier, in 1867, and prevented his participation in the annual Omladina congress.139 Blaznavac was well aware that Miletić’s political support is based on this intellectual and literary movement of Serbs. In September 1869, Blaznavac therefore once again chose the movement’s congress to provoke a scandal and discredit Miletić’s authority. This time, the congress was held in Nagykikinda (Kikinda), a Serbian town in Hungary, so he also leaked his intention to Kállay, revealing that he would dispatch a four-member detachment from Belgrade to disrupt the event. 140 The Hungarian intelligence also learned of the planned operation, during which a Serbian government agent—Stevo Mirković, the owner of a Belgrade inn, and Gyula Mayerffy the Hungarian agent of the police department—came into contact with one another.141

Ráday, as usually, forwarded Mayerffy returning from Nagykikinda to the consul general in Belgrade with a letter of recommendation, asking for his opinion on how to make use of Mayerffy’s experiences at the congress. Kállay received with astonishment the suggestion that he should secure Blaznavac’s consent to the assassination of Miletić, to be carried out by Mirković’s commission.142 Kállay reacted tactfully. The following day, he visited the Serbian regent and asked him about the resolutions of the Kikinda Congress. In his assessment, Blaznavac particularly emphasized the success of his campaign against Miletić and the internal conflicts signaling the disintegration of the Omladina movement. From all this, Kállay concluded that Belgrade had no plans to take drastic measures against Miletić.143 At the end of September during Ráday’s visit at Kállay in Belgrad, it became clear that Hungarian government circles also had no intention of eliminating Miletić, and thus Mayerffy’s initiative could have been nothing more than the personal idea of an overzealous agent.144

However, later, in June 1870, Mayerffy began working with great energy to prepare for the political assassination of Miletić. With Kállay’s involvement, an informal meeting was held in Novi Sad, and at this meeting, Béla Kormos
—­a confidant of Gedeon Ráday—and Mayerffy informed Kállay about Miletić’s dangerous cross-border activities, and asked him to urge the Hungarian prime minister to take the necessary measures.145 Meanwhile, Gedeon Ráday, decided to focus on restoring public security in the Southern Great Plains, and resigned from his position as head of the police department. With the proposed assassination Mayerffy wanted to prove to the new police leadership that he was fit for further service and also to secure his assignment as an intelligence officer in Romania.146 After the meeting, he contacted Stevo Mirković, who agreed to organize the assassination with the involvement of three underworld figures. Mirković set the condition that his family be allowed to settle in Hungary and that his son, who was studying at the Russian Military Academy in St. Petersburg, be admitted into the Hungarian Army. Kállay promised to fulfill the request, even though he had no authority whatsoever to do so.147 The consul general also pre-financed the plot with 100 forints.148

To secure approval for the plot, Kállay visited Hungarian Prime Minister Andrássy in Buda. There, Kállay had the impression that the head of government was viewing Serbian and Croatian political developments with optimism, and therefore did not even raise the issue of the assassination of Miletić.149 Andrássy had recently rejected every initiative by Kállay aimed at preventing the Serbian and Croatian opposition and the reactionary military party from joining their forces against the new system of dualism. Upon returning to Belgrade, Kállay halted preparations for the assassination and confessed in his diary that political assassination solves nothing.150

This case clearly demonstrated that even in a liberal constitutional state, the secret services could quickly stray from the path of legality without hindrances, and that diplomats were also involved in their affairs easily if necessitated. After the resigning of Ráday, the activity of his agents cannot be documented from Kállay’s diary any more. A comprehensive overview of the geographic distribution of informants for the Hungarian State Police Department or of the individuals under surveillance cannot be obtained until 1872. Agents operated then almost exclusively in counties and cities inhabited by ethnic minorities, and their task was to monitor ethnic movements and the activities of associations. Beside the Serbian-populated centers of Novi Sad, Zombor, and Versec, in the northeastern Rusyn region, the areas of operation included Ungvár (Užhorod), Maramureş, and Upper Zemplén, while among the Slovaks, they included Zólyom and Szepes counties, as well as Túrócszentmárton (St. Martin). The number of individuals under police surveillance was five: two Serbs (Miletić and Stratimirović), one Rusyn (Adolf Dobrzansky),151 and two Slovaks (Viliam Pauliny-Tóth152 and Ján Francisci-Rimavsky153). Officials from the Slovak cultural association Matica and leaders of the Serbian youth movement Omladina were also subject to special police scrutiny.154

This documentation reveals another distinctive feature of the Hungarian State Police Department’s operations following the Compromise, namely, the Hungarian side provided virtually no information to the joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although the Joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs regularly sent political and police information concerning Hungary to the Hungarian government, steps to establish a bilateral exchange of information were not taken until 1874, after Andrássy’s appointment as Joint Minister of Foreign Affairs, even though the Hungarian State Police Department demonstrably had a “confidential police archive” earlier from 1870 on.155

Changes to the Intelligence Service of the Joint Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Start of Andrássy Era (1872–1873)

Upon taking office as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Andrássy fundamentally changed two areas of activity within the Presidential Department: relations with the press and the state police intelligence service. The reorganization of the press department’s core tasks was a logical consequence of the changed political landscape and the new minister’s parliamentary political background and personal disposition. In previous years, an active foreign press policy had been an integral complement to Beust’s diplomatic endeavors and had been pursued by subsidizing various German newspapers. This substantial financial outlay served to strengthen the appeal of the Habsburg Monarchy in German public opinion by promoting the achievements of Austrian liberal legislation and constitutional governance, thus presenting it as an alternative to Prussian hegemony. Furthermore, Beust spent a considerable sum domestically to win the favour of the press, thereby compensating for his lack of connections to party politics and support. In doing so, he utilised not only the two influential Viennese liberal newspapers, Die Presse and the Neue Freie Presse, (which was closely intertwined with the new financial aristocracy) to promote his persona and policies, but also regularly published articles in newspapers close to the Hungarian government:156 Pesti Napló and Pester Lloyd—to justify the correctness of his political line.157 Beust’s systematic manipulation of the press naturally did not remain a secret. German-Austrian liberal politicians regularly criticised the contingency fund used to finance these activities.158 Beust also came into conflict with the Hungarian Prime Minister when, at the instigation of the Foreign Office’s press department, an article on the German question appeared in Pesti Napló in November 1868. This caused a major international stir as it highlighted Hungarian interests in maintaining the border of the River Main and in preserving the independence of the South German states.159

Among Andrássy’s first measures was to significantly reduce the extensive funding of the foreign and domestic press, and to limit the press department’s remit essentially to keeping the minister informed. With the establishment of the German Empire, the aggressive German press propaganda had clearly lost its raison d’être. To further his foreign policy objectives regarding a united Germany, the cessation of subsidies to those anti-Prussian German newspapers—which had previously waged a veritable war against the papers funded by Berlin—proved to be a genuinely friendly gesture. He did not deem it necessary to use the press to justify his diplomatic moves, and generally took a completely different tack in relations with the domestic press. “The Emperor and the delegations are on my side; I have no need for the press,” he stated categorically. His negative attitude towards the prevailing practice of influencing the press greatly astonished Hoffman, who headed the Presidential Department and had previously, as Beust’s confidant, orchestrated the wide-ranging funding of newspapers and journalists. By keeping his distance from the press, Andrássy was complying with the monarch’s wishes. Where possible, he kept foreign policy out of the public eye and strictly forbade leaking information to the press about the monarch’s and his minister’s positions on foreign and domestic policy matters—a practice that had been common under his predecessor. He based his limited press relations not on a network of subsidized newspapers, but on a few newspapers that were sympathetic to his ideas and principles. Among the Viennese newspapers, he chose the Fremdenblatt—close to court circles—to represent his ministerial program, rather than the previously subsidized liberal newspapers.160 In Budapest, he used the young liberal nationalist publication Reform, edited by Jenő Rákosi, and, drawing on his long-standing personal connections, Andrássy occasionally provided Miksa Falk, editor in chief of the German-language Pester Lloyd (thus ensuring international reach), with the background information justifying his policies. However, even these mostly ad hoc assignments were handled not by Leopold Hoffman of the President’s Department—a man with extensive press contacts in Vienna, and so outspoken as to sometimes embarrass even his own minister—but by Sándor Okolicsányi, who had been transferred from the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office and who enjoyed the President’s unconditional trust.161 He also enabled Ludwig Przibram, a member of the press office, to continue his work as a Vienna correspondent for Pesti Napló, a role he had previously undertaken under Beust.162

Andrássy also considered the activities and information-gathering practices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Information Department to be a complete failure. In the early days of his tenure as minister, when he asked for the report of Lieutenant General Anton Mollinary, commander in chief in Zagreb, on the radicalization of the Serbian National Liberals led by Svetozar Miletić, Andrássy was shocked to discover that the Information Department had no reliable correspondent informant in the entire Novi Sad district. He expressly warned that the usual mouchard—that is, a police agent or mere informer—was out of the question for this task. He therefore instructed the head of the Foreign Affairs Information Department to ask the Hungarian Minister of the Interior to propose a candidate who was committed to both the ideals of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Kingdom of Hungary, and who was, if possible, an informant employed within the civil service. The Hungarian minister of the interior chose András Flatt, the district chief magistrate, whom he entrusted with this delicate and confidential task in return for a special fee of 250 forints.163 It soon became his primary official duty to rein in the opposition of the Serbian liberals, as he was first posted to Pančevo as a royal commissioner and then appointed lord-lieutenant of the city of Novi Sad. Consequently, Flatt’s reports thereafter passed through official channels into the records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Intelligence Service.

Another surprise for Andrássy at the start of his tenure as minister came when he first received the intelligence bureau’s briefing on the political situation in Cisleithania and Hungary, which was based chiefly on reports from police informants. With aristocratic simplicity, he dismissed the entire compilation as utter nonsense and, to the great astonishment of many, declared that in the future, he would no longer require information of this type and substance.164

A few months later during the preparation of the 1873 foreign affairs budget, Andrássy insisted on a complete overhaul of the Presidential Department’s press policy and political information activities, fundamentally reorganizing the priorities for the allocation of funds from the secret contingency fund and significantly reducing the amounts earmarked for influencing the press and for funding domestic state police surveillance. This budgetary restructuring marked a definitive break with the press policy practices introduced by Beust and brought an end to the continuity—both in terms of personnel and methodology—of state police intelligence-gathering inherited from the era of absolutism. He first set out his ideas in the Joint Council of Ministers, where the Cisleithanian prime minister expressed his full agreement with the decision whereby Andrássy “would not exert the same harmful influence as his predecessor” through the discretionary fund, but would instead use it to achieve genuine foreign policy objectives.165 Andrássy completed this turnaround by securing the almost unanimous support of the Cisleithanian delegates at the 1872 Budapest conference of the delegations for the reorganization of the news service. Previously, these delegates had regularly cut the budgetary allocations for the discretionary fund and had even questioned its necessity. With his highly influential foreign policy presentation delivered before the Cisleithanian Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee, he succeeded in changing the negative attitude of the liberal MPs. The Cisleithanian delegation, which had consistently voiced its principled reservations up to that point, voted by a large majority in favor of a nearly 100 per cent increase of the discretionary fund, bringing it up to 440,000 forints in 1873.166

No minutes were taken at the meeting of the delegations’ subcommittee on foreign affairs, thus the content of Andrássy’s presentation can only be reconstructed from the comments made by members of the plenary forum. It was clear from what was said at the public sitting that Andrássy, having travell­ed directly from the Three Emperors’ Meeting in Berlin in September 1872 to the delegation meetings in Pest, had successfully set out his foreign policy programme. This would be based on the security of the Monarchy via friendly relations with Germany, finding a modus vivendi with Russia, respecting Italian unity, and preparing for the brewing nationalistic upheavals in the Balkans. Andrássy used the latter threat to justify increasing the discretionary fund, but with great tactical acumen he emphasised that he did not regard the matter as a vote of confidence in foreign policy. His popularity with the delegates increased even further with his statement that the Austrian practice of “buying off” journalists and bribing the press was completely alien to him. The impact of his subcommittee presentation was evident when, at the first public sitting, a prominent politician from the Constitutional Party’s influential Styrian group, Sir Bartholomäeus Carneri (1821–1909),167 in a powerful speech, took a stand in favour of the necessity of having and increasing the size of a contingency fund in a liberal constitutional state, using arguments very similar to those put forward by Ferenc Deák in the Hungarian Parliament.

Hopefully, the time will come when everything that is called a contingency fund will become unnecessary. But that time is still far off, and as long as there are states that use secret weapons, it would be irresponsible for a minister who enjoys the nation’s trust to refuse to use these very same weapons.168

The part of his speech in which he praised Andrássy’s stand in favor of freedom of the press met with widespread approval.

That which the state gains by bribing the press is negligible compared to the damage it causes thereby, dealing a fatal blow to the credibility of the press. Consequently, it becomes impossible for honest and principled journalists to support a government without being suspected of having been bought off [...].169

The other prominent Styrian Liberal MP, Karl Rechbauer (1815–1889), also gave his full support to the increase in the discretionary fund.170 Finally, those liberals—such as Karl Giskra (1820–1879) from Lower Austria and Count Matthias Wickenburg (1797–1880), a member of the House of Lords—who had previously opposed increases to the discretionary fund within the sub-committee, reconsidered their position during the public sitting.171 Andrássy’s circle of supporters eventually spanned the entire German political spectrum, as he won the sympathy of the Vorarlberg Catholic conservative Anton Joseph Oelz (1812–1893) 172 by adopting a pragmatic approach that stood apart from the principles of doctrinaire liberalism. It worked in his favor that, despite his pro-German stance, he did not follow suit with Bismarck instigate a “culture war” within the monarchy. Andrássy particularly appreciated his statement that foreign policy could not be based on nationalism or the particular objectives of individual national communities, but that the guarantee of the monarchy’s survival lay in the success of a policy of peace that ensured the security and social advancement of the citizens of the state community.173 In the end, only the “old Slovenian” Josip Poklukar (1837–1891) rejected the increase in the discretionary fund, objecting to its alleged anti-Slavic use in the Balkans.174 Following the decision by the Cisleithanian delegation, naturally no questions or comments were raised regarding the discretionary fund in the Hungarian body, which was sitting at the same time.175 In the autumn of 1872, with a promise to respect the freedom of the press, Andrássy received the full confidence of both the Cisleithanian and Hungarian sides to establish a news service in line with the requirements of a civilized constitutional state.

With parliamentary authorization in hand, the previously cautious re­organization of the intelligence service gathered pace from the autumn of 1872 onwards. After the Compromise, the bulk of domestic intelligence consisted of daily reports from the police headquarters in Vienna and Prague, which were based chiefly on unverified reports from police agents operating undercover and on immigration data provided by hotels. From all this, the foreign minister was able to glean such intriguing information as how critics of his national minorities policy—such as the Croatian bishop of Bosnia and Syrmia in Đakovo, Josip Juraj Strossmayer,176 or the Serb Đorđe Stratimirović177—would flaunt their patriotism by staying at the hotel named after the King of Hungary whenever they travelled to Vienna, rather than at the Spörl, a hotel particularly favoured by Slavic politicians, or at one of the inns on Kärtner-Strasse.

Meanwhile, the Prague Police Headquarters reported that Slovak politicians from Hungary had been canvassing in Prague to gain support from the Czech opposition whilst preparing for the 1872 Hungarian elections. However, no significance was attached to this information whatsoever, as not even the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior had been informed of the Slovak politicians’ trip to Prague.178 According to information from Prague, the Hungarian government was only informed when a long-standing subject of the intelligence department’s surveillance—an 1848 Czech revolutionary and post-1867 returnee—travelled to Hungary via Galicia to forge an alliance between the Czech and Hungarian independence movements and, taking advantage of the leniency of the Hungarian press law, to launch a Czech newspaper in Pest Buda.179 His activities in Hungary were monitored throughout by the State Police Department, and Vilmos Tóth, minister of the interior, sent a detailed report on the negotiations held with Hungarian opposition fgures at Antal Baldácsy’s castle in Béla (Esztergom County).180

This system of domestic political intelligence, based on police sources, was entirely one-sided at the level of the entire monarchy, because the Hungarian State Police Department did not send regular reports to Vienna, and the number of correspondents in Hungary who provided information directly to the intelligence department was steadily declining. In any case, from the late 1860s onwards, information on Hungary was gradually drawn from other sources, primarily reports from the military authorities. The garrison command at Nagykanizsa, for example, reported on the course and outcome of the electoral contest between Antal Csengery, a supporter of Deák who was the focus of national attention, and Ede Horn, a proponent of independence.181 As for events in Pest and Buda affecting the security of the entire monarchy, reports were already being sent in 1870 by the commander in chief of Hungary, Ludwig Gablenz. Among other things, he deemed it necessary to inform the intelligence department about the funeral of Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány (executed in 1849), the public celebration of the recapture of Buda Castle by the national army in 1849, and the organization of the Hungarian working class.182

Following Andrássy’s appointment, the domestic intelligence activities of the military high command were institutionalized, and the high-priority task of gathering information on the South Slavic national movements fell to General Anton Mollinary, commander in chief in Zagreb. The territorial scope of these intelligence activities was not limited to the interior of the country, but also extended to Serbia and Bosnia, the two neighboring provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Even from the severely reduced budget of 1872, Andrássy had already allocated funds to the commander in chief in Zagreb for domestic and foreign intelligence tasks, which amount rose steadily over the following years. It was in the case of the Zagreb Military Command that a direct official link between a military body and a diplomatic mission was first established, thus resulting in cooperation between diplomatic and military intelligence centres. In February 1873, Mollinary was ordered to also send his intelligence reports on Serbia directly to the Consulate General in Belgrade.183 This process of integration soon extended to the civilian sphere as well. From early 1873 onwards, András Flatt, the information bureau’s correspondent in southern Hungary and lord-lieutenant of Novi Sad, as well as Béni Kállay, the consul-general in Belgrade, were each given a separate cipher key to enable direct communication between them.184 All this was merely a prelude to the full-scale cooperation between the civilian and military intelligence services.

Another significant change introduced by Andrássy in the field of political intelligence was that he personally selected the individuals whom he paid from the discretionary fund to further his most confidential foreign and domestic policy objectives. In the course of our research, we came across two such individuals who, from the very first year of Andrássy’s tenure as foreign minister, carried out political assignments received directly from him. These were the Hungarian György Klapka185 and the Pole Wladislav Golemberski. The friendship between Klapka and Andrássy is fairly well known, and we also know that during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877, Klapka was stationed in the Ottoman Empire as a military adviser. While there are only speculations regarding the coordination of his mission with the joint minister for foreign affairs,186 we were completely unaware that, from the autumn of 1872, Klapka had been engaged in some form of political activity in Italy on Andrássy’s behalf. To cover his expenses, in November 1872 he received 5,000 forints (the annual salary of a vice-consul) in Brindisi, which Andrássy advanced to him from the increased discretionary fund already approved for the year 1873. The payment took place in August 1873, with the assistance of Gábor Vavrik, the Hungarian trusted contact of the minister for foreign affairs,187 in a coded document whose subject heading does not include Klapka’s name, and which therefore cannot be traced using the archive index.188 Payments to the Pole Golemberski were also arranged in a similar confidential manner: through Gábor Vavrik, he received 6,000 forints in 1872 and a total of 11,500 forints in 1873–1874.189 Despite the large sums involved, there is no written record of any instructions issued to those concerned or of any written reports from them. This was clearly linked to the fact that Andrássy did not like either writing or reading lengthy reports. He preferred verbal briefings, where he could comment on and ask questions about the information presented and draw the necessary conclusions. Our conjecture in this respect is supported by the fact that Felix Kanitz, the Balkan expert whom Andrássy had inherited from his predecessor—and who had previously enthusiastically sent voluminous reports from Bulgaria—gave only oral briefings at Ballhausplatz or the Modena Palace during Andrássy’s term as minister. The only reason there is any written record of his oral reports is that the President of the Hungarian Government, Menyhért Lónyay, began to notice the absence of Kanitz’s 1872 reports, as his research in the Balkans had been jointly funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Hungarian Government in proportion to their respective quotas. To reassure his official successor, Andrássy stated that Kanitz’s oral report was sufficient for him, and thus the Hungarian government could pay its share.190 On the other hand, Andrássy had every reason to ensure that, despite his substantial remuneration, no written record remained of either his Hungarian or his Polish agents’ activities. In Klapka’s case, it can be taken as certain that the foreign minister wished to use the political connections he had established during his time in exile to sound out the political climate and normalize relations with Italy. This was an extremely delicate task, as within the highest military leadership and court circles there were influential advocates of an Italian war of revenge or a pre-emptive military strike.191 Ultimately, Klapka’s mission to Italy may also have played a part in Franz Joseph’s decision to symbolically make it known to the public, during his visit to Venice in April 1875 that he had accepted Italian unification and was far from harboring any intentions of Italian revanchism.

Given his background, the Pole Wladislav Golemberski would have had ample responsibilities in both foreign and domestic policy, which included maintaining, on one hand, informal contacts with the Hotel Lambert in Paris and the influential Polish émigré community in France; and on the other, winning over the Poles of Galicia to support Andrássy’s foreign policy of seeking a modus vivendi with Russia.192 Following the Polish uprising of 1863, Golemberski also spent several years in exile. After the Compromise, Andrássy, whilst still Hungarian prime minister, may have taken notice of him on the basis of his articles on the Eastern Question published in Pester Lloyd. Andrássy’s Polish aide was effectively able to carry out similar duties to those performed by the former Polish émigré brought into the press department by Beust. This role was filled by Julian Klaczko, whose appointment once caused a huge uproar in the other two capitals concerned with the Polish question, Berlin and Saint Petersburg.193 Golemberski’s relationship with the Foreign Office, however, was kept secret so successfully that even Polish historians only were able to ascertain that he had entered Andrássy’s service much later, in 1875, in the wake of the Great Eastern Crisis.194

The employment of these two highly-valued confidential contacts, however, forced the intelligence department to make cutbacks in other areas. Consequently, at the end of 1873, they parted ways with nine other agents, each of whom had been paid a monthly fee between eighty and one hundred forints.195 Among them were two Hungarians recruited before the Compromise, Ferenc Gyra and Márk Békessy.196 Békessy, who was based in Nagyszeben, found it particularly difficult to accept his dismissal due to the shift towards gathering foreign policy intelligence. To prove his competence for the post, he even wrote a lengthy report on the impact of the Szlávy government’s crisis on the Transylvanian Saxons.197 In the end, however, they parted ways with him, whilst Gyra agreed to continue his work as an agent even without remuneration.198

The increased allocation from the operational fund also provided ample resources for further organizational adjustments. An important milestone in the integration of intelligence services was the establishment in 1874 of an institutional link between the Vienna Information Office and the Hungarian State Police Department. This cooperation was clearly initiated and carried out with Andrássy’s knowledge, as the funds required—4,000 forints per annum—were personally handed over by Gábor Vavrik, a departmental councillor and long-standing personal confidant, to Lajos Jekelfalussy, head of the State Police Department in Budapest.199 This sum was undoubtedly intended to encourage the Hungarian State Police Department’s intelligence-gathering activities abroad, primarily in the Balkans. This is indicated by the fact that a report on the Romanian political situation, compiled by the Hungarian State Police Department’s informant in Bucharest, was soon sent to Vienna. What is interesting about this report is not so much its content as its implications for the history of the organization. The very fact that the report was produced clearly demonstrates the continuity of Hungarian intelligence-gathering abroad, as it indicates that the State Police Department still had—or had once again acquired—a permanent correspondent in Bucharest. Furthermore, the file references of the report point to the existence of a confidential police archive and its organizational independence.200

The Balkan focus of the use of the discretionary fund was also evident in other areas, and was primarily aimed at winning the sympathy of the Christian population living in the Ottoman Empire. From 1873 onwards, regular aid was provided to the ecclesiastical leaders of the Albanian Catholic communities201—whilst in Bosnia, both the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Churches gave financial support to build schools and churches. At the same time, the annual budget allocated to the eight Balkan consulates for gathering intelligence was almost doubled. The annual budget of the Belgrade Consulate General, for example, rose to five hundred forints from 1873, half of which Kállay spent on remuneration for his long-standing informant, Mihajlo Rosen, who headed the Serbian government’s press office.202 A new expense arose following the death in February 1873 of Emil Čučković, a former border guard captain, whose reports on southern Serbia were replaced with ad hoc informants,203 besides the costs of hiring correspondents to report on the sessions of the skupština204 and of purchasing the data required for the military report ordered by the military registration office (Evidenzbüro).205 Before Kállay’s marriage in 1873, such information did not always cost him money, as he usually paid in kind for the news he heard from the bored and lonely wives of officers on duty in the area and of politicians who were speakers in the skupština.206

Despite a significant increase in the discretionary fund in 1873, the issue of financing military intelligence remained unresolved. The joint minister of defence, Field Marshal Franz von Kuhn, was considered an advocate of liberalism and constitutionalism;207 nevertheless, he did not receive the same advance trust from the Cisleithanian liberals as Andrássy did. During his tenure as minister, the annual sum of 20,000 forints earmarked for military reconnaissance—concealed under the heading of “special expenses”—was consistently voted out of the Joint Ministry of Defence’s budget by the Cisleithanian delegation. This was eventually resolved by transferring the necessary amount to the army from the foreign minister’s discretionary fund.208 Resolving this problem was a key issue for Andrássy, as he had accepted the post of minister for foreign affairs on the principle that he wished to conduct foreign policy in harmony with military interests.209 To this end, he needed not only the ability to influence military policy, but also reliable information on potential allies and adversaries. One of his primary objectives was to double the number and resources of military attachés in the three neighboring states of strategic importance to the Monarchy: Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany.210 However, his ambitious plans were hampered by budgetary constraints. He managed to secure a pay rise only by reclassifying the military attachés currently in post as plenipotentiary re­present­atives. As well, it was only with great difficulty that was he was able to delegate a second military officer to Russia, which was regarded as the most important target country. Colonel Anton Bechtolsheim, the Austro-Hungarian military representative in Saint Petersburg, performed excellently in diplomatic and social circles thanks to his fluent French, but his lack of knowledge of Russian severely limited his scope of action. Keeping abreast of the ongoing reform of the Russian armed forces, the introduction of universal conscription, and the development of transport and telecommunications infrastructure for the western campaign was completely beyond his abilities.211 To support him, they managed to delegate Eduard Klepsch in February 1874, after two years of preparation. Klepsch was a General Staff officer who spoke Russian, and they were only able to hire him by cutting costs within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.212 Incidentally, the annual salary of this highly competent military officer fell into one of the lowest diplomatic pay categories (6,000 forints).

To make up for the limited budget allocated to military reconnaissance, Kuhn drew up a detailed program for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide support to the military intelligence service.213 The essence of this plan was that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’s consulates in Warsaw, Odessa, and the forthcoming consulate in Kyiv, on Russia’s western border, were to, on the one hand, carry out specific military intelligence tasks, and, on the other hand, to provide logistical support to Austro-Hungarian officers travelling covertly into the area for reconnaissance purposes. It is worth noting that even before Andrássy took office, in early November 1871, the joint minister of war had already issued instructions to Stephan von Herzfeld, the consul general in Moscow travelling to his post, setting out his future military reconnaissance tasks. These instructions issued by Kuhn remained in force for a long time. Even Anton von Le Bidart, who succeeded Herzfeld in Moscow in 1875, was sent these same instructions without any alterations.214 The intelligence activities of the consulates in Warsaw and Odessa can be traced back to 1874, when reconnaissance missions began in the Russian provinces along the western border, primarily to map out the military telegraph lines (behufs militär-telegrafischer Recogniscierungen nach West-Russland).215 Passports bearing aliases and indicating civilian occupations were issued to the officers involved in the operation with the assistance of the Foreign Office’s Informationsbüro.216

The system reached its peak in August 1875, at the first climax of the Great Eastern Crisis, when guns were already thundering in the mountains of Herzegovina. Military intelligence on Russia, which was of great importance to the Foreign Office leadership, was conveyed to Ballhausplatz with the utmost discretion through the cooperation of diplomatic missions and civilian authorities. A good example of this is a summary report by the consul in Odessa on troop movements in southern Russia, which was forwarded to the intelligence department via the governor’s official post from a border post in Galicia.217 Captain Kálmán Bolla of the General Staff, who was conducting reconnaissance in Russian-controlled Poland, had his shorthand notes and sketch maps—amounting to more than two hundred pages—delivered to the Warsaw Consulate via diplomatic post.218 When Consul General Herzfeld returned from his post in Moscow, however, he personally delivered—amongst other things—a description and blueprints of the Brest-Litovsk military railway station, which was under construction at the time.219

In summary, we can conclude that by the mid-1870s, the successor organization to the Imperial Ministry of Police had evolved into a specialist department that supported foreign policy decision-making with both political and military intelligence. The proportion of reports from police sources and external informants in its archives had become negligible. As a result of rationalization, the department’s annual caseload, which had exceeded two thousand, fell to eight hundred in 1874. The vast majority of the information was provided by diplomatic, administrative, and regional military bodies, supplemented by the summarization and evaluation of reports from military attachés.220 Upon taking up his post in Vienna, Andrássy—who was extremely dissatisfied with the department’s activities—continued to request the periodic situation analyses produced there, known as the gewöhnliches Revue, even when he was away from the imperial capital.221

Archival Sources

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára, Budapest (MNL OL)

Miniszterelnökségi levéltár [Prime Minister’s Office Archives]

K 26 Központilag iktatott és irattározott iratok [Centrally registered and archived documents]

Családok, testületek és intézmények levéltárai [Archives of families, organizations, and institutions]

P 4, Andrássy Papers

P 344, Benjamin Kállay Papers including the Diary

Országos Széchényi Könyvtár Kézirattára, Budapest [National Széchényi Library Manuscript Collection] (OSZK Kt.)

Fol. Hung. 1733. Kállay–Andrássy correspondence

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna (ÖStA)

Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA)

Kabinettsarchiv (KA)

Ministerium des Äußern (MdÄ)

Politisches Archiv (PA)

Informationsbüro (IB)

Presseleitung (PL)

Kriegsarchiv (KA)

Militärkanzlei Seiner Majestät des Kaisers, Sonderreihe (MKSM SR)

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Wertheimer, Ede. Andrássy Gyula élete és kora. Vol. 1–3. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1910–1913.

Zdrada, Jerzy. “Polish diplomacy in the years 1860–1914.” In The history of Polish diplomacy X–XX c, edited by Gerard Labuda and Waldemar Michowicz, 397–455. Warsaw: Sejm Publishing Office, 2005.

Živković, Dragiša. “Laza Kostić (1891–1910).” In JKL, 377–79.

Zobel, Olga. “Irányi Dániel.” In BLGS, vol. 2, 236–37.

Сарова, Крумка. “Българското революционно движение и европейският революционен процес” [The Bulgarian revolutionary movement and the European revolutionary process]. In Втори международен конгрес по българистика, том 7, България през XV-XIX век, червено Христо Христов, 406–18. София: БАН, 1989.

Чуркина, Искра Васильевна. “Протоиерей Михаил Федорович Раевский” [Archpriest Mikhail Fedorovich Raevsky]. In Межконфессиональные, культурные и общественные связи России с зарубежными славянами. К 200-летию со дня рождения М. Ф. Раевского. Под ред. Константин Васильевич Никифоров, 9–23. Москва: РАН, 2013.

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1. 1 Rumpler, “Rahmenbedingungen,” 31–34; Somogyi, Der gemeinsame Ministerrat, 26–35.

2. 2 Hubatschke, “Geheime Briefüberwachung,” 390–401.

3. 3 Kazbunda, “Archiv nejvyššího policejního úřadu.” The value of this study lies in the fact that in the early 1920s, as the Czechoslovak archival delegate, Kazbunda was the first and only person to study the archives of the Ministry of Police from the era of neo-absolutism, which had remained intact until then but suffered significant damages in the 1927 fire at the Palace of Justice in Vienna.

4. 4 Deák “Egy régi politikai rendszerváltás,” 352–53.

5. 5 Hubatscke, “Geheime Briefüberwachung,” 403.

6. 6 Deák, “Egy régi politikai rendszerváltás,” 358–65.

7. 7 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Administrative Registratur (AR) F 4-273-4 Personalia Joseph Prottmann von Ostenegg. For more on Mária Balogh, see Splényi emlékiratai, vol. 2, 193–94.

8. 8 Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, “Kempen von Fichtenstamm, Johann Franz Frh. (1793–1863),” vol. 3, 293.

9. 9 Przibram, Erinnerungen, 196.

10. 10 Deák, “ Egy régi politikai rendszerváltás,” 242–43.

11. 11 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Informationsbüro (IB), 1868-911, 918.

12. 12 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1868-556. 569; Gottas, “Tisza, Kálmán.”

13. 13 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1868-2147; Csáky, “Jókai, Mór.”

14. 14 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1868-1287; Zobel, “Irányi, Dániel.”

15. 15 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1868-930.

16. 16 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1870-1066, 1203, 1219, 1300.

17. 17 ÖStA HHStA KA KK, Vorträge 1871-2224; Deusch, Die effektiven Konsuln, 696–97.

18. 18 Stropp, “Die Akten,” 395–96. Despite Stropp’s new finding, the widely accepted view in the literature that the Informationsbüro was founded in 1877 can be traced back to the fact that the introduction to the well-known Gesamtinventar on the history of foreign affairs only took into account the organizational structure of 1877. Mayr, “Staatskanzlei (Ministerium des Äußern),” 461–65; Matsch, Auswärtiger Dienst, 96–99; Rumpler, “Rahmenbedingungen,” 31–34.

19. 19 Przibram, Erinnerungen, 196–97.

20. 20 Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, “Hofmann, Leopold Frh. von (1822–1885),” vol. 2, 383–84.

21. 21 Przibram, Erinnerungen, 198.

22. 22 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Presseleitung (PL) 1873-207. Alongside the file, there is a contemporary advertisement for the book Geheimnisse der österreichinschen Diplomatie und der Wiener Staatspolizei. 1862 bis 1873. Aufzeichnungen eines Geheimagenten, but we have found no trace of its publication in libraries.

23. 23 Deák, “Egy régi politikai rendszerváltás,” 353–55, 366.

24. 24 Révész T., A sajtószabadság érvényesülése, 79–84.

25. 25 Székely, “M. kir. Miniszterelnökség,” 18–19.

26. 26 MNL OL, K 26 Prime Minister’s Office, 1869-913. Vezér eszmék a sajtóosztály felhasználásához [Guiding principles for utilizing the press office]. Deák and Tamás, Sziszifuszok küzdelme, 114–30.

27. 27 Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, “Gans-Ludassy, Moritz von (1829–1885),” vol. 1, 402.

28. 28 Németh G., “Toldy István (1844–1879),” 483–92.

29. 29 Csikay, “Halász Imre (1841–1918),” 752.

30. 30 Halász, Egy letűnt nemzedék, 102–5.

31. 31 The diaries of Béni Kállay from 1868–1875 and his semi-official consular documents from Belgrade contain particularly valuable information about the operation of the press office. MNL OL, P 344 Kállay Béni iratai, 4 and 31–34 units. For this study, the original Hungarian manuscript of the diary was used. The diary was published in Serbian by Radenić, Dnevnik Benjamina Kalaja: 1868–1875.

32. 32 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Presseleitung, 1869-628.

33. 33 Delegation des Reichsrathes, Zweite Session. August 10, 1869, 45–53.

34. 34 MNL OL, K 26 Miniszterelnökség, 1870–34.

35. 35 Képviselőházi napló 1869–1872, vol. 4, January 20, 1870, 282.

36. 36 Bődy, “Pulszky Ferenc,” 496–98.

37. 37 Képviselőházi Napló 1869–1872, vol. 4, January 20, 1870, 294. The newspaper Völkerbund was published three times a week in Vienna from May 30 to August 2, 1848 with a subsidy provided by Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány. It served as a forum with which to raise awareness of Hungary’s changed constitutional status and to make public the aspirations of its new representative government. Kosáry and Németh, A magyar sajtó, 261.

38. 38 Révész L., “Deák, Ferenc,” 381–84.

39. 39 Hamza, “Schvarcz Gyula (1839–1900).”

40. 40 Képviselőházi Napló 1869–1872, vol. 4, January 20, 1870, 291–93.

41. 41 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Presseleitung, 1870-152.

42. 42 Delegation des Reichsrathes. Dritte Session. January 18, 1871, 257–68.

43. 43 Képviselőházi Napló 1869–187, vol. 5, January 26, 1871, 181.

44. 44 MNL OL, K 26 Miniszterelnökség, 1873-244; Cieger, “A kormányzati politika rejtett működése,” 575–77.

45. 45 Ress, “Kállay Béni,” 91–98, 112–23; Armour, Apple of Discord, 55–57.

46. 46 Militar, “Miloš Popović (1820–1879),” 649. Popović completed his studies at the Greek Orthodox Gymnasium in Novi Sad. In 1843, he moved to Belgrade, where he edited the official newspaper of the princely government, Srpske Novine until 1860. In 1861, he founded the newspaper Vidov Dan, which was considered semi-official until the assassination of Prince Mihailo in June 1868 and ceased publication in 1876.

47. 47 Popovich, A nemzetiségi kérdés Magyarországon, 107–45.

48. 48 Benjámin Kállay, “Glas o pitanju narodnosti iz Ugarske” [A voice on the question of nationality from Hungary], August 4, 1865. MNL OL, P 344, 44 cs, 1–2.

49. 49 Benjamin Kállay to Gyula Andrássy, Belgrade, May 20, 1868. OSZK Kt. Fol.Hung. 1733, no. 4, 4.

50. 50 Ress, “Kállay Béni,” 127–28; Armour, Apple of Discord, 77–81.

51. 51 MNL OL, P 344, 16. Belgrádi Napló, July 16 and December 18, 1868.

52. 52 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, August 18–19 and October 21, 1868.

53. 53 Kállay to Andrássy, Belgrade, March 22, 1872. OSZK Kt. Fol. Hung. 1733, no. 3.

54. 54 Cieger, “A kormányzati politika rejtett működése,” 588; MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, January 30, 1873.

55. 55 Mór Ludasi to Benjámin Kállay, June 17, 1868. Buda. MNL OL, P 344, 4. cs. no 45; Belgrádi Napló, December 2, 1868; Armour, “Hungarian Government Involvement,” 10–11.

56. 56 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, June 24, 1871 and July 1, 1871.

57. 57 Halász, Egy letűnt nemzedék, 116–18.

58. 58 Egyed, “Berzenczey László (1820–1884),” 104–7.

59. 59 Képviselőházi Napló 1869–1872, vol. 4, January 20, 1870, 283.

60. 60 MNL OL, K 26 Miniszterelnökség, 1868–77.

61. 61 Deusch, Die effektiven Konsuln, 712–13.

62. 62 MNL OL, K 26 Miniszterelnökség, 1869-461.

63. 63 Póth, “A szlavisztikai oktatás kezdetei,” 60–62.

64. 64 MNL OL, K 26 Miniszterelnökség, 1868-1588.

65. 65 Deák and Tamás, Sziszifuszok küzdelme 325, 381–82.

66. 66 Eötvös József Andrássy Gyulának, Buda, May 7, 1868. MNL OL, K 26 Miniszterelnökség, 1868-608. “Benedek Károly miniszterelnökségi fogalmazó és román fordító temetése” [Funeral of Károly Benedek, drafter of the Prime Minister’s Offican and Romanian translator]. Ellenőr, October 28, 1877, 23.

67. 67 Szokolovics, József. “Tököly Szabbasz névnapjának megünneplése Pesten” [Celebration of Thököly Szabbasz’s Name Day in Pest]. A Hon, January 29, 1864, 2.

68. 68 Milisavac, “Jovan Jovanović Zmaj (1833–1904)”, 290–92.

69. 69 Živković, “Laza Kostić (1891–1910),” 377–79.

70. 70 Szokolovits, József. “… ki szép sikerrel ültetett át több csinos szerb elbeszélést” […who successfully translated several charming Serbian short stories]. Magyarország és a Nagyvilág, January 11, 1868, 23.

71. 71 ÖStA HHStA, MdÄ, Presseleitung, 1872-7.

72. 72 Székely, “M. Kir. Belügyminisztérium,” 33–37, 84.

73. 73 Csapó, Ráday Gedeon, 45–48.

74. 74 Deák, “Egy régi politikai rendszerváltás,” 353–56.

75. 75 Csapó, Ráday Gedeon, 43–44.

76. 76 The organization and practice of this can be reconstructed mainly from Benjamin Kállay’s aforementioned Belgrade diary, the letters preserved in his estate, and scattered references in documents from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of the Interior.

77. 77 Kállay’s correspondence with Andrássy and Ráday, OSZK Kt., Fol. Hung. 1733 (1868–1873), MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, vol. 4 (1868–1869).

78. 78 Agstner, Von Kaisern, Konsuln, vol. 2, 223; “Pensionierungen,” Milititär-Zeitung, September 3, 1859, 585.

79. 79 MNL OL, P 344, vol. 4; Belgrádi Napló, May 15, 1868; Armour, “Hungarian Government Involvement,” 6–7.

80. 80 The intimacy of their friendship is illustrated by the fact that Ráday’s first letter to Kállay, who had left for his diplomatic post in Belgrade, ended with a remark poking fun at his romantic escapades: “All the beautiful girls are mourning your departure; I hope the beautiful black-eyed Serbian maidens are all the more delighted by their mourning.” Ráday to Kállay, Buda, June 30, 1868. MNL OL, P 344, vol. 4.

81. 81 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló April 30 and May 1, 1868; Jakšić and Vučković, Spoljna politika Srbije, 241–44. Hering, “Garašanin Ilija,” in BLGS, vol. 2, 10–13. Kállay decided to employ Maury as an agent, despite his suspicious past, on the advice of Svetozar Theodorović, the vice-consul who had been serving at the Belgrade legation for ten years.

82. 82 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, May 3, 1868 and October 31, 1868; Armour, “Hungarian Government Involvement,” 6–7.

83. 83 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, May 3, 1868; Grolshammer, “Stratimirović, Djordje von,” 212.

84. 84 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, May 22, 1868.

85. 85 Чуркина, “Протоиерей,” 9–23; Шварц, “Донесения австрийских агентов,” 48–59.

86. 86 Statkov, “Karavelov Ljuben,” 348–49.

87. 87 Milisavac, “Milan Kujundžić-Aberdar (1842–1893),” 408.

88. 88 Ignjatović, “Dragutin Tomaj Tuminski,” 230–44.

89. 89 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, May 22 and May 31, 1868.

90. 90 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, June 1, 1868.

91. 91 Deusch, Die effektiven Konsuln, 696–97.

92. 92 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, July 16, 1868.

93. 93 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, July 30, 1868.

94. 94 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, September 9, 1868; Valentić, Vojna Krajina, 149–51.

95. 95 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1868–1603, Organisation des Comités et des Souscomités insurrectionnells en Turquie et en Gréce.

96. 96 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, August 24 and October 7, 1868. Deusch, Die effektiven Konsuln, 335.

97. 97 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, October 15, 1868.

98. 98 Zdrada, “Polish diplomacy,” 438–39; Tefner, Az Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia, 116–20, 179, 193. For the Hungarian reception of the landmark Czartoryski speech delivered in London on the anniversary of the 1791 Polish Constitution, see the following articles: “Czartoryski herczeg beszéde” [The speech of Prince Czartoryski], Budapesti Közlöny [Budapest Gazette], May 8, 1868, 1334–35, “Orosz–lengyel ügyek” [Russian–Polish cases], Budapesti Közlöny [Budapest Gazette], May 16, 1427–28; “Lengyelország és hazánk” [Poland and our country], Magyar Polgár [Hungarian Bourgeois], May 10, 1868, 1; “Hírlapi okoskodások Lengyelországról” [Newspaper reports on Poland], Politikai Ujdonságok [Political Novelties], May 20, 1868, 249–50.

99. 99 Szinnyei, Magyar írók, vol. 4, 31–32.

100. 100 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, October 16, 1868.

101. 101 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, October 20–21, 1868, January 19, 1869.

102. 102 Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, “Kanitz, Felix Philipp (1829–1904),” vol. 2, 15–16; MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, December 1, 1868.

103. 103 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, December 4, 6 and 21 1868. ÖStA HHStA, Kállay to Beust, December 30, 1868.

104. 104 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, January 19, 1869.

105. 105 ÖStA HHStA, Kállay to Beust, March 6, 1869.

106. 106 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, March 5, 1869.

107. 107 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, June 27, 1869.

108. 108 Armour, “Hungarian Government Involvement,” 14.

109. 109 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, May 5 and August 24, 1868. Deusch, Die effektiven Konsuln, 216.

110. 110 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, May 3 and August 30, 1868.

111. 111 ÖStA HHStA, PA XII: Türkei 94. Wohlfahrt to Prokesch-Osten, Rustschuk, July 3, 1869.

112. 112 Ress, “Kállay Béni,” 189–97.

113. 113 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, July 13, 1869.

114. 114 OeStA HHStA PA XXXVIII 183–5. Wolfarth to Kállay, Rustschuk, July 3, 1868; MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, July 10, 1869.

115. 115 ÖStA HHStA, PA XXXVIII 183–5. Kállay to Wolfarth, Belgrade, July 12, 1869.

116. 116 ÖStA HHStA, PA XXXVIII 183–5. Beust to Kállay, Vienna, August 3, 1869; MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, August 6, 1869.

117. 117 ÖStA HHStA, PA XXXVIII 183–5. Kállay to Beust, August 22, 1869.

118. 118 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, March 6, 1869.

119. 119 Ress, “Felix Kanitz: Ansichten,” 28–36.

120. 120 Ress, “Kállay Béni,” 130–36.

121. 121 Jakšić and Vučković, Spoljna politika, 396–402; Ress, “Kállay Béni,” 91–94.

122. 122 Jovanović, Druga vlada, 261–71; Ress, “Kállay Béni,” 138–42; Moritsch, “Blaznavac (Petrović) Milivoje,” 212.

123. 123 Ress, “Kállay Béni,” 132.

124. 124 OSZK Fol. Hung. 1733. Kállay to Andrássy, Belgrade, June 25, 1868; MNL OL, P 344, no. 4. Ráday to Kállay. Buda, June 30, 1868.; MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, June 13, 1868.

125. 125 MNL OL, P 344, Belgrádi Napló, June 13,

126. 126 Mikavica, Politička ideologija, 75.

127. 127 Bona, Kossuth Lajos kapitányai, 175.

128. 128 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, June 13, 1868.

129. 129 Klejn, Polskie ślady, 241.

130. 130 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, October 5, 1868.

131. 131 Сарова, Българското революционно движение, 412.

132. 132 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, October 10 and 11, 1868.

133. 133 Nagy, Magyarország családai, vol. 7, 246; Lendvai, Temes vármegye, vol. 3, 105.

134. 134 Berkó, “Magyar önkéntes csapatok,” 68.

135. 135 Lukács, “Egy év az olaszországi magyar légió történetéből, 196–98; Pete, “A magyar légió,” 839–40.

136. 136 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, November 11, 1868 and June 11, 1870; Károly Mayerffy to Kállay, Zemun. July 17, 1870,. MNL OL, P 344, 4. cs.

137. 137 MNL OL, P 344. November 4, 1870; Ress, “Kállay Béni,” 256–63.

138. 138 Mikavica, Politička ideologija, 76–78.

139. 139 Ibid., 74.

140. 140 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, August 14, and September 2, 1869.

141. 141 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, September 2 and 8, 1869.

142. 142 Armour, Apple of Discord, 169; MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, September 13, 1869.

143. 143 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, September 14, 1869.

144. 144 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, September 30,1869.

145. 145 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, June 16, 1869.

146. 146 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, June 19, 1869.

147. 147 Armour, Apple of Discord 169; MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, June 20, 1870.

148. 148 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, June 25, 1870.

149. 149 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, June 28, 1870.

150. 150 MNL OL, P 344. Belgrádi Napló, July 1 and 10, 1870.

151. 151 Rebet, “Dobrjanskyj, Adolf Ritter von.”

152. 152 Kružliak, “Pauliny-Tóth, Viliam.”

153. 153 Lackó, “Francisci, Ján.”

154. 154 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Informationsbüro, l871-855 (12/1872). Wilhelm Tóth to Andrássy. Budapest, January 4, 1872.

155. 155 MNL OL, K 26, 1870 and 1872-262.

156. 156 Kammerhofer, “Diplomatie und Pressepolitik,” 470–47.

157. 157 Przibram, Erinnerungen, vol. 1, 324; Kammerhofer, “Diplomatie und Pressepolitik,” 475.

158. 158 Przibram, Erinnerungen, vol. 1, 289; Kammerhofer, “Diplomatie und Pressepolitik,” 476.

159. 159 Diószegi, Bismarck és Andrássy, 48–49.

160. 160 Przibram, Erinnerungen, vol. 1, 324.

161. 161 Orczy to Andrássy. Vienna, July 25, 1872. MNL OL, P 4, Andrássy family archive, series 1, no. 75. For Okolicsányi, see Somogyi, Hagyomány és átalakulás, 191.

162. 162 Przibram, Erinnerungen, vol. 1, 324.

163. 163 Petrović, Svetozar Miletić i Narodna stranka, vol. 2, 262–64, 281–83, 295–98.

164. 164 Przibram, Erinnerungen, vol. 1, 325.

165. 165 Gemeinsamer Ministerrat, July 5, 1872. RMRZ 133. ÖStA HHStA Politisches Archiv (PA) XL, Kt. 287.

166. 166 Stenographische Sitzungs-Protokolle 1872, 27.

167. 167 Adlgasser, Österreichische Zentralparlamente, vol. 1, 135–36.

168. 168 Stenographische Sitzungs-Protokolle 1872, 16–17.

169. 169 Ibid., 16–17.

170. 170 Ibid., 22–23. Adlgasser, Österreichische Zentralparlamente, vol. 2, 997.

171. 171 Ibid., 23–25. Adlgasser, Österreichische Zentralparlamente, vol. 1, 340–41, vol. 2, 1393–94.

172. 172 Adlgasser, Österreichische Zentralparlamente, vol. 2, 865.

173. 173 Stenographische Sitzungs-Protokolle 1872, 17–19.

174. 174 Ibid., 25–26. Adlgasser, Österreichische Zentralparlamente, vol. 2, 942–43.

175. 175 A közös ügyek tárgyalására … összehívott bizottság naplója, 1872, 36 (October 1, 1872, 4th session).

176. 176 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1872-28, (836/1872) October 13, 1872. Džaja, “Josip Juraj Strossmayer.”

177. 177 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1872-28, (836/1872) March 25, 1872.

178. 178 Ibid.

179. 179 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1872-28, (836/1872), January 24, 1872. Pražák, “Kossuth Lajos Cseh­országban,” 334.

180. 180 Ibid. Szinnyei, Magyar írók, vol. 1, 412–13.

181. 181 ÖStA KA Militärkanzlei Sr. Majestät des Kaisers (MKSM) SR, Kt. 65.

182. 182 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1870-20, (951/1870) February 24, 1872. Révész L., “Batthyány, Lajos Graf.”

183. 183 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1873-64.

184. 184 ÖStA HHStA, MdÄ, Informationsbüro, 1873-284.

185. 185 Farkas, “Klapka, György.”

186. 186 Wertheimer, Gróf Andrássy Gyula élete és kora, vol. 1, 428–30, vol. 3, 20.

187. 187 For more on his life, see Somogyi, Der gemeinsame Ministerrat, 41, 100, 103.

188. 188 ÖStA HHStA, MdÄ, IB, 1873-25 (510/1873).

189. 189 ÖStA HHStA, MdÄ, IB, 1873-5 (723/1873).

190. 190 Ress, “Felix Kanitz: Ansichten zur Balkanpolitik,” 34.

191. 191 Heiszler, Az osztrák katonai vezetés, 114–17.

192. 192 Diószegi, Die Außenpolitik, 226–28.

193. 193 Tefner, Az Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia lengyelpolitikája, 201–9.

194. 194 Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol. 8/2, 247–48.

195. 195 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1872-676 (689/1873).

196. 196 For further information on them, see Deák, “Egy régi politikai rendszerváltás,” 361.

197. 197 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1872-676 (703/1873).

198. 198 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-87.

199. 199 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-58.

200. 200 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-98. Szapáry to Andrássy. Budapest, 2 March 1874. Within the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, the designations “praes.” (for president) and “biz.” (meaning confidential) were used in parallel. On letters from the minister of the interior sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the reference number was always accompanied by “praes.”; on the informant’s reports forwarded to that department, however, “biz.” always appeared next to the reference number, which again shows that there was a separate confidential police archive.

201. 201 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1873-21 (107/1873, 241/1873, 426/1873, 624/1873).

202. 202 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-2 (3/1874, 147/1874, 306/1874, 477/1874).

203. 203 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-2 (477/1874).

204. 204 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-2 (3/1874).

205. 205 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-2 (306/1874).

206. 206 Kövér, “A magánélet titkai és a napló,” 91–92.

207. 207 Srbik, “Reichskriegsminister Freiherr von Kuhn,” 142–43.

208. 208 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Informationsbüro, 1872:5 (40/1872, 948/1872). Kuhn to Andrássy. Vienna, 16 January 1872 and 6 December 1872.

209. 209 ÖStA HHStA KA MKSM SR Kt. 54. Also Lutz, “Politik und militärische Planung,” 23–44. Protokoll der unter dem Allerhöchsten Vorsitze am 17. Februar 1872 abgehaltenen Conferenz.

210. 210 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Presseleitung, XL, Kt. 287. Gemeinsamer Ministerrat, May 28, 1872. RMRZ 124.

211. 211 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-30. Alexander Benedek to Andrássy. Vienna, December 25, 1873.

212. 212 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-30 (71/1874). For more on him, see Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, “Klepsch von Roden Eduard, (1835–1909),” vol. 3, 397.

213. 213 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1872:47. Kuhn to Andrássy. Vienna, 4 January 1872. (Exposé über den militärischen Informationsdienst und die Unterstützung desselben durch das Ministerium des Äußern / Exposé on the military intelligence service and its support by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

214. 214 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1875-51–52. Deusch, Die effektiven Konsuln, 419–20.

215. 215 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-109 (125/1874, 164/1874, 209/1874). Cf. Reifberger. “Die Entwicklung des militärischen Nachrichtenwesens,” 214.

216. 216 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1874-109 (125/1874, 164/1874, 209/1874).

217. 217 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1875-51 (925/1875).

218. 218 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1875-51 (769/1875 and 951/1875). Theodor Neumann to Andrássy. Warsaw, August 19 and September 11, 1875.

219. 219 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, IB, 1875-51 (281/1875). Herzfeld to Andrássy. Vienna, March 15, 1875.

220. 220 Ibid.

221. 221 ÖStA HHStA MdÄ, Informationsbüro, 1874-190. Telegram from Hoffmann to Wolfarth. Ofen, May 6, 1874.

* The present study is a result of the project STARTING 150326 “Geopolitical Tendencies and Balkan Strategy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Individual Sources and Foreign Policy Actors (1878–1918).” Project no. 150326 has been implemented with the support provided by the Ministry of Culture and Innovation of Hungary from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, financed under the STARTING 24 funding scheme