HUNGARIAN STUDIES 18. No. 2. Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai Társaság. Akadémiai Kiadó Budapest [2004]

Norbert Varga: The Framing of the First Hungarian Citizenship Law (Act 50 of 1879) and the Acquisition of Citizenship

THE FRAMING OF THE FIRST HUNGARIAN CITIZENSHIP LAW (ACT 50 OF 1879) AND THE ACQUISITION OF CITIZENSHIP NORBERT VARGA University of Debrecen, Faculty of Political and Law Sciences, Debrecen Hungary In 1879, Hungarian legislators deemed it was time to settle the issue of citizenship once and for all. The moment was not chosen by mere accident, because the previous years had witnessed an upsurge of legislative acts striving to legally settle the ques­tion of who should belong to the states of Europe. The bill was discussed and opined by the Naturalization Committee of the Parliament. The most important problems were the naturalization and the absence. The first regulation of Hungarian citizen­ship according to the contemporary constitutional reforms and legal practice only took place in 1879. It is a major milestone in Hungarian citizenship law, since it also incorporated in its system the cases of acquisition and loss of citizenship. The law contains detailed provisions on how the legal relationship between the citizen and the state could be established and terminated. The objective of the law was to make the system of citizenship clear and transparent. Keywords: legal history, constitutional law, citizenship, naturalization, loss of citi­zenship, acquisition, multiple citizenship, Naturalization Committee, parliamentary debate, absence, marriage, national status, dual monarchy The antecedents of the first Hungarian citizenship law date back to the period of the Revolution and War of Independence of 1848. The bill submitted to the Par­liament of 1847/48 already contained the conditions for the acquisition and loss of citizenship.1 Due to the importance of the bourgeois transformation, however, the detailed debate of the proposal was subsequently taken off the agenda. Boldizsár Horváth, Minister of Justice, submitted another proposal in 1868, but this did not become law either, as it was not even debated by the Parliament. Only after settling the most important issues of the age of dualism did the legis­lators consider the time as appropriate for the legal regulation of the question of citizenship. Hungarian Studies 18/2 (2004) 0236-6568/2004/S20.00 © 2004 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

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