The historical development of girls' secondary education in Hungary: The case of the Maria Theresa State Girls' Gymnasium (1875–1970)

Abstract This article examines the development of girls’ secondary education in Hungary through a case study of the Maria Theresa Girls’ Gymnasium in Budapest, the first state-run secondary school for girls, founded by Aladár Molnár in 1875 and closed in 1970. It explores how successive political regimes, educational reforms, and changing conceptions of womanhood shaped the school’s mission, curriculum, everyday life, and women’s access to formal schooling. Drawing on the school’s yearbooks (értesítők), complemented by archival records, the founder’s writings, and relevant scholarship, the analysis focuses on three dimensions: structural reforms, curricular change, and evolving ideals of femininity. Joan W. Scott’s concept of gender as a signifier of power relations provides the interpretative framework, while selected examples from American, German, and Russian girls’ schools offer an international perspective. The findings show that girls’ secondary education developed neither linearly nor uniformly. In the late nineteenth century, schooling was justified through women’s roles as mothers and transmitters of national culture. The school’s transformation into a gymnasium (1898–1905) introduced the matriculation examination and widened opportunities for further education. During the interwar period, expanding opportunities coexisted with a conservative Christian-national ideal of family and gender roles. After 1948, the curriculum and institutional culture were reshaped by Marxist-Leninist principles and the socialist ideal of the working woman, which nonetheless perpetuated a “double burden” of paid employment and domestic responsibilities. By tracing the history of a single institution across changing political systems, the article highlights the enduring relationship between gender, education, and state power in modern Hungary.