Galileo Circle

[4] The Sonntagskreis is often considered as a smaller successor organisation of Galileo Circle in Germany, but its membership required at least a finished university degree.

The churches, however, did not let go of their monopoly over the humanities, and began to organise religious students into communities to counter what they called "modern anti-Christian philosophical and moral views" in the state-financed public universities.

The focal point of the unrest was Gyula Pikler, a distinguished professor of philosophy of law at the university and the esteemed leader of the radical Social Science Society at that time.

In direct contradiction to the prevailing notions of natural law during that era, Pikler advocated a perspective founded on an evolutionary-historical materialist framework.

Consequently, he posited that the structure of governance and legal systems ought to be molded in accordance with the economic and societal requirements and interests of the period, rather than adhering rigidly to tradition.

In alignment with this evolutionary logic, Pikler predicted that a time would come in the future when nations would be superseded by larger units and organizational structures, ultimately leading to the establishment of a global state—a long-awaited harbinger of enduring peace.

The paper was self-described as "a popular scientific journal for freethinkers, atheists, materialists, monists, socialists, and labour movement activists".

[14] From 1906 onwards, the Society for Social Sciences became more and more concerned with the topics of current actual political dialogue instead of their earlier theoretical centered questions, therefore they founded the Civic Radical Party in 1914.

[15] The Galileo Circle was founded around and under the influence of Gyula Pikler, atheist-evolutionist full professor of philosophy of law, in Budapest on November 22, 1908, and was joined by intellectuals, mainly of the extreme left-wing persuasion.

[19] From the student groups of the "progressive" left-wing university youth, organised in defence of the jurist professor,[20] the Galilei Circle grew and was founded, with the support of the Hungarian Association of Free Thinkers, on 22 November 1908.

"The Galilei Circle, the League of Electoral Rights, the Reform Club, etc., are all creations of the radical Freemasonry, which already play a significant role in our difficult work of redefining Hungarian social perception.

In 1910, the students bought an apartment on the second floor of the building at Anker köz 2-4 for the purpose of organising discussion clubs, reading evenings and self-study circles in European and Hungarian legal history, philosophy, sociology and political science, and psychology.

Ervin Szabó was convinced that a profound transformation of the Hungarian social order could not be achieved through the traditional parliamentary elections due to the limited suffrage.

[27] At the association's celebrations, the famous poet Endre Ady would sometimes speak, recite and praised the "fierce but never ordinary, spiritual but militant solidarity" between the members of the circle.

A member and popular lecturer of the Galilei Circle was Oszkár Faber, who was the chairman of the National Religious Liquidation Committee during the Hungarian Soviet Republic after the World War.

They were no longer content to talk only about the horrors and economic effects of war, but also encouraged military rebellion against the governments of the Central Powers.

From September 1917, Szabó arranged regular meetings with members of the Galileo Circle and Ilona Duczyńska, during which they decided on the publication of a manifesto based on the line of the Zimmerwald movement and organized a street demonstration against the war, which led many more activists to join the group.

[31] Pamphlets in German, Hungarian, Slovak, and Croatian languages had already reached military units fighting on the Russian and Italian fronts.

[32] The Revolutionary Socialists included Ilona Duczyńska, Tivadar Sugár, Miklós Sisa, Árpád Haász and others, initially led by Jolán Kelen, who in the autumn of 1917, under the intellectual leadership of Ervin Szabó, the library director, reproduced and distributed anti-war leaflets.

In 1917, incited by Ervin Szabó, Ilona Duczyńska volunteered to shoot the Hungarian prime minister István Tisza with a pistol.

[35][36] János Lékai poet and the leftist circles saw the number one war criminal in the person of Prime Minister István Tisza[37] who was shot on 16 October 1918 by the fanatic and lung-cancer-stricken (and therefore even determined to die) 23-year-old Lékai, a member of the Galilei Circle and Ottó Korvin's anti-militarist movement, but his gun jammed and Tisza escaped.

Although he died on 30 September 1918,[44] his colleagues, László Dienes, Béla Kőhalmi, Blanka Pikler bibliographer, Róbert Braun sociologist, József Madzsar physician and natural scientist continued his work until his downfall.

[44] In January 1919, a member of the Galileo Circle stood guard of honour next to the coffin of the poet Endre Ady, which was buried in the central hall of the National Museum.

In the tram one heard passionate outbursts against the war, the authorities and the propertied classes.The ideological tensions within the groups of Galilei Circle intensified even further when the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Budapest.

[46] Meanwhile, those groups in the Galilei Circle who remained steadfast in their commitment to liberal and democratic values, immediately fled to Austria, thus expressing their dissent against the existence of the communist regime based on one-party system and dictatorship.