A Vitézi Rend és a földkérdés: Szeged környéki példákon keresztül

In our study, we examine the practice of land donation and other land grants that benefited the Order of Vitéz. The members of the Order of Vitéz, established in 1920, were veterans of the First and Second World War who had earned certain commendations due to their personal bravery. Membership in the order was hereditary. From the very beginning, the purpose of the order was to ensure that the interwar political system had stable support from a social stratum loyal to the government even during possible rebellions. To ensure this, the initial plan was to give all members, especially the ones with a background in agriculture, plots of land. Originally, there were only two types of such plots. Free ones, which were donated by the head of state, and the self-founded one, when a Vitéz created a plot from his own property. Later, eight more types of Vitéz plots were established: in most cases, these plots were either acquired at a discounted price, with loans paid for decades, or they could be rented cheaply. The claimants also received Vitéz plots from land holdings in the territories reannexed to Hungary between 1938 and 1941, as well as from the ones confiscated from 1939 due to the Jewish laws. Although the Order of Vitéz acquired a significant amount of territory, it could not give plots to all its members even as late as 1944.