The Beginnings of Anti-Jewish Legislation - M. M. Kovacs

Explore a critical piece of interwar European history with this academic study on the 1920 Numerus Clausus Law in Hungary. While the Nazi 1933 Civil Service Law and the 1935 Nuremberg Laws are frequently cited as the starting points for antisemitic decrees, Maria M. Kovacs provides a compelling argument that Hungary's 1920 law was actually the first of its kind in interwar Europe. This book examines how the introduction of a Jewish quota at Hungarian institutions of higher learning fundamentally changed the legal landscape. By defining and discriminating against Jews as a separate racial or national group, the law ended the principle of equal rights and caused an abrupt reversal of Jewish emancipation in Hungary. This work is an essential resource for students and historians studying the legal and social shifts that preceded the later, more widely known antisemitic legislation in Europe.