Athletics and Diverse Peoples
Athletics and Diverse Peoples

Summary/Abstract: During the latter half of the 19th century, as part of the slow rise of the middle-classes, efforts were made to import into Hungary sports that were accessible to the broader masses. In 1874, the wide adoption of athletics was urged in a series of newspaper articles by Count Miksa Esterházy, who had become acquainted, on diplomatic postings to Britain and America, with “pedestrianism”. One year later, Lajos Molnár, a law student, put together a book entitled Athletika, which drew on the tenets of a Darwinist social philosophy to argue for popular interest in athletics. Molnár considered that the English offered the model that was most applicable to sporting excellence and was distinctly unimpressed with the other great nations of Europe. He thought that Hungarians were physically and intellectually cut out for sport and should adopt the British educational system, with its provisions for methodical physical exercise—along with athletics in the broad sense of the word.

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