Hédi Sztano
Museum Educator and Teacher Gyöngyi Balázs-Bécsi
At the time, Zoltán Kallós could not have chosen a better successor to the presidency of the Kallós Foundation than Gyöngyi Balázs-Bécsi. Her personality is a combination of gentleness, determination, and warm-heartedness. Her expressive, beautiful, and demanding Hungarian is an example of how a mother tongue can be preserved in a foreign, often hostile linguistic environment if one consciously strives to do so. This awareness is not only characteristic of her use and cultivation of the Hungarian language but also a decisive factor in her pedagogical work. Zoltán Kallós entrusted her with a difficult, lifelong task: nothing less than educating Hungarian or half-Hungarian children living in the diaspora – and forced to assimilate – using the tools of Hungarian traditional culture. Of course, she is not alone; she has colleagues and coworkers, but she was the chosen one. Today, she has risen to the task and represents and manages the Kallós Foundation in Válaszút (Răscruci) in a manner worthy of Zoltán Kallós’ intellectual and material heritage.
Getting started, motivation
Gyöngyi Balázs-Bécsi was born in Ceaușescu’s Romania, and this defined and strengthened her Hungarian identity for life. The communist dictator’s policy of village-ruining also affected her parents, who were forced to move from the village of Feketelak (Lacu to Gherla) to Szamosújvár (Gherla). However, the small-town atmosphere and the relative proximity of Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) did not prevent the family of three children from maintaining contact with the village community and their extensive kinship. The defining memories and experiences of hard but uplifting work done together in the bee and of holidays spent together are important to Gyöngyi: “All family members used to gather hay, hoe, and pick corn in bees. The highlights of the year were church feasts, when we celebrated with everyone, visited each other, and chanted.”
For her, the village way of life is not an alien world known from ethnographic studies, but an experienced reality, and manual labour is a natural part of an ambitious, hard-working life.
“...In the family, I never heard anyone say ‘I am tired’. I have heard that there is a time and an order for everything, and that it has to be done whether you feel like doing it or not.”
Influences in youth
Between 1980 and 1984, she attended the Petru Maior Vocational Lyceum in Szamosújvár (Gherla), and as a teenager, she went to the dance house in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) whenever she could. Along the way, she would always see the abandoned building of the former Kallós Mansion, which stood on the former estate of the family of Gyöngyi’s distant relative, folk music researcher Zoltán Kallós. “...Every time we passed through Válaszút (Lacu), by train or bus, my parents would show me the Kallós estate and tell me about it. In my mind’s eye, I imagined the mansion, the well-tended garden around it, as Aunt Vilma (Zoltán Kallós’ mother) had told me about it.”
Teaching career and ethnographic collecting
After her marriage, she – as all young teachers of the time – was (also) subject to the so-called ‘secondment’ under the Ceaușescu-era educational regulations, whereby they were obliged to start their profession at a distance from their place of birth or residence. This is how many young Transylvanian Hungarians starting their careers ended up in Moldavia, including Gyöngyi’s husband, who was followed by his young wife. “...After finishing our studies, my husband and I moved to Western Moldavia, because he had been assigned to teach there. During our time in Western Moldavia, we kept in touch with Zoltán Kallós, because it was under his guidance that we found the people who helped us to survive.”
After the fall of the dictatorship, the small family moved back to Szamosújvár (Gherla), and Gyöngyi could finally practice her profession: in Szék (Sic) for six years, in Ördöngösfüzes (Fizeșu Gherlii) for two years, in Szamosújvár (Gherla) for one year, and in Válaszút (Lacu) for nine years. Following the example of her uncle Zoli Kallós, she tried to forge a community wherever she was, through folk song, folk dance, and folk games. In addition to teaching, she tried to collect local folk songs, customs, and traditions in the villages with the advice and encouragement of Zoltán Kallós.
Establishment of the Téka Foundation, folk song, folk dance teaching, and community organisation
Together with her husband, they organised a serious community life among Hungarian youth in Szamosújvár (Gherla). They taught folk songs and folk dances and established the Téka Foundation, which not only taught folk traditions but also founded the Kaláka dance group, which was financially and professionally supported by Zoltán Kallós. When, after the ‘changes’ of 1989, Uncle Zoltán Kallós got back the ruined mansion in Lacu, the young people of the Téka Foundation, led by Gyöngyi, helped to restore the building and to organise the programmes of the camps.
The Zoltán Kallós Foundation
In 1992, Zoltán Kallós established a foundation in his name to create a museum for his private collection. Another aim of the Foundation was to provide a suitable venue for summer camp programmes, music and dance classes, craft classes, and family camps. To do this, Uncle Zoli gathered around him young intellectuals whom he saw as strong, able, committed, and willing to work. “... he picked the team around him. He gave his assets to the institution and entrusted his life’s work to the team. He showed the way, he set the bar high, so for us, for me, there was no choice, we had to rise to the task, to him,” wrote Gyöngyi, who has been involved in the activities of the Kallós Foundation since 1994.
She organised folk art camps, mother tongue and local history camps for children in grades 1–4 living in diaspora areas; youth instrumental folk music and folk dance camps; international folk music and folk dance camps, craft workshops, and folk art camps for large families.
In 2007, Zoltán Kallós appointed Gyöngyi Balázs-Bécsi as the President of the Foundation.
“...After the surprise, fear took over. My fear came from doubting myself. Am I really the right person?... But he reassured me that it would be all right. He would help me. ‘I was a teacher, you are a teacher. That’s enough,’ he said, and I felt that beyond our love of folk culture, we had another link, that of being teachers, which is not a job, but a vocation.”
Establishment of the Diaspora College in Lacu
In 1999, with Gyöngyi’s perseverance and Zoltán Kallós’s help, mother-tongue education was resumed at the primary school level in Válaszút (Lacu) after a 25-year hiatus. After visiting and persuading the Hungarian people living in the surrounding villages, Gyöngyi started the school with the smallest number of students still allowed by law.
Now, not only have new buildings been added to the school, but the number of pupils is well over a hundred.
In 1999, adult education for teachers, young people, and farmers was also launched, and that same year, with the support of ethnographer Jolán Borbély, Gyöngyi launched a playhouse management course in Válaszút (Lacu), which ran for 10 years.
In 2013, the Kallós Zoltán Folk Music School in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) started teaching instrumental folk music and folk songs. This year, another important event took place, namely the launch of the Nagysármás Diaspora College. The year 2014 was not uneventful either, with the launch of vocational agricultural education in Lacu, culminating in the establishment of a demonstration farm in Felsőtök (Tiocu de Sus).
“Rising to the challenge”
In addition to all this, alongside these events and developments that required incredible organisational work,Gyöngyi Balázs-Bécsi completed a degree in ethnography–anthropology–museology of the Hungarian Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology at the Babeș–Bolyai University in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca); in Budapest, she completed the 120-hour course of the House of Traditions in Budapest, which included a professional practice as a playhouse activity leader. Believing that the staff of the Kallós Foundation in Lacu can only be credible if they themselves are versatile in the various fields of folk art, Gyöngyi also continued her training in the 60-hour theoretical and practical training course in embroidery of her area of origin, the Transylvanian Plain region, which was held at the Transylvania Plain Handicraft Workshop in Válaszút (Lacu). She is convinced that not only the education of children, but also the education of adults, the so-called adult education, is extremely important in the development and preservation of the Hungarian consciousness experienced in minority existence. The rich legacy of Zoltán Kallós is promoted through travelling exhibitions and museum educational activities. The knowledge is ‘taken out’ to schools and summer camps, and the valuable knowledge accumulated in Hungarian folk culture is made known to different age groups in camps for the dispersed and in further training courses for teachers.
Gyöngyi Balázs-Bécsi is a true educator whose vocation and the Zoltán Kallós Foundation, connected to it, give meaning to her life. She is a humble, gentle worker for the nation, who works for the survival of the Hungarian people living in the Diaspora and for the preservation of their valuable traditional knowledge. Since she is convinced that Zoltán Kallós’ words are inexorably true for Hungarians living in a minority fate, that “...We will be Hungarians as long as we sing and dance in Hungarian”.
[2022]