ZD, the Chatam Sofer wrote that in response to the Neolog (Reform) who were “more Hungarian than the Hungarians”. In fact, the story goes that Franz Josef favored the Orthodox because after he was forced to compromise with the Hungarians he had to agree to speak in Hungarian whenever he went there. Hungarian is an extremely difficult language and in the end he simply rattled off scripts that we written for him,. The head of the Neolog spoken literary Hungarian, which very much annoyed FJ. However, the Chief Rabbi (Koppel Weiss) interrupted his script and said in German (in Pressburg they earned external baccalaureates in exchange for draft exemptions as theological students) that he did not understand Hungarian. FJ was overjoyed, patted him on the back and said “We are two old gentlemen. We will never learn this language”).
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