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Béla H. Bánáthy
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Béla Heinrich Bánáthy (December 1, 1919 – September 4, 2003), was a linguist, systems scientist and a professor at San José State University and UC Berkeley. Bánáthy was the founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program whose leadership model was adopted across the United States; founder of the International Systems Institute; and its innovative "conversation"-oriented conference structure; co-founder of the General Evolutionary Research Group an influential professor of systems theory; and a widely-read and respected author.
Bánáthy was born in 1919 in Gyula, Hungary.
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Béla Heinrich Bánáthy (December 1, 1919 – September 4, 2003), was a linguist, systems scientist and a professor at San José State University and UC Berkeley. Bánáthy was the founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program whose leadership model was adopted across the United States; founder of the International Systems Institute; and its innovative "conversation"-oriented conference structure; co-founder of the General Evolutionary Research Group an influential professor of systems theory; and a widely-read and respected author.
Biography
Béla Bánáthy was born in 1919 in Gyula, Hungary. The oldest of four sons, his father Peter was a minister of the Reformed Church in Hungary and his mother Hildegard Pallmann was a teacher. Peter Bánáthy had earned the honorary title Vitéz for his service during World War I, and Béla, as his oldest son, would inherit the title.
Youth spent in Hungary
When Bánáthy was about six years old, their family informally adopted Tamas Feri. Tamas was about 13 years old and from a poor gardener family. Tamas took Bánáthy on his first overnight camp out with his patrol to a small forest near Gyula. Bánáthy's father then became the Scoutmaster of the "small scouts" troop (similar to American Cub Scouts).
When Bánáthy was nine years old, he became the troop leader and during one national holiday, led the troop in a parade. About that time, the entire troop spent two weeks camping at a church camp at Leányfalu, north of Budapest. The church groups lived in wooden barracks, but Bánáthy's troop stayed in tents, "as Scouts are supposed to do."
The family moved about from Banathy's birthplace of Gyula, to Mako, Hungary, about southeast of Budapest. He joined the regular scout program of the Hungarian Scout Association and "Csanad Vezer" Troop 92. The troop had over 50 Scouts and 30 "small scouts" during the 1930s. They held their monthly troop meetings on Sunday in a large gimnazium (secondary school) and met weekly every Saturday as a patrol. Béla reported, "Our weekly patrol meetings focused on scoutcraft and Scout spirit and guiding us to move through the various stages of advancement in rank."
The Hungarian Scout program had four stages. During the first three years, Bánáthy advanced three stages. The last stage required Bánáthy to earn 25 merit badges. This last stage was called Turul, after the mythical bird of Hungary. From spring to fall, as weather permitted, the patrol had many outings. Every summer the troop went on a two- to three-week long summer camp.
Members of Bánáthy's troop attended the 4th World Scout Jamboree in 1933, where he would make a life-changing decision. Up to this time, Bánáthy had decided to follow his father into the ministry. Bánáthy wrote,
While at the Jamboree, he briefly met Joseph Szentkiralyi, another Scout from Hungary. Hungarian Sea Scout Paul Ferenc Sujan and American Maurice Tripp also attended, and all three men would more than 20 years later play a key role in helping Bánáthy build a leadership program for youth in the United States.
Also in 1933, Bánáthy attended the regional patrol leader training week. Later in 1934, Bánáthy and six other members of his troop traveled to the National Jamboree in Poland. They camped in a large pine forest and visited Krakow and Warsaw. The Polish government hosted a banquet for all of the Scouts in the Presidential Palace. In 1934, he was awarded the best notebook prize of the national spring leadership camp and in 1935, he was invited to serve on the junior staff of the same camp at Harshegy, Budapest.
In 1935, the troop traveled to the Bükk Mountains in northeastern Hungary for their summer camp. As a Senior Patrol leader, Bánáthy and two others took a bicycle tour in advance of the summer camp to preview the camping site.
Military service during World War II
The two military men that Bánáthy had met, and from whom he developed a desire to serve in the military, soon played roles on the national stage that would affect Bánáthy.
In 1940 Bánáthy entered the Ludovika Akadémia (officer training school) at age 21 for four years of training, as was the custom for young men aspiring to military careers. General Farkas, the commanding officer of the Academy, sought a volunteer to teach junior leader training at the academy. Bánáthy, who had met Farkas at the 1933 Jamboree, volunteered. Farkas also asked Bánáthy to organize a Scout Troop for the young men, 19 years and older, which was a common practice within the Hungarian Scout Association at the time. Bánáthy found a passion in training the young men in officer's leadership skills and became the voluntary national director for youth leadership development and a member of the National Council of the Hungarian Scout Association. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the armored infantry later that year and met his future wife Eva Balazs during this time.
Hungary was generally an unwilling member of the Axis, and Germany continually pressured it to play a greater role. Pál Teleki, whom Bánáthy had met at the 4th World Scout Jamboree in 1933, was Prime Minister of Hungary. He and Regent Miklós Horthy tried to keep Hungary out of the war, though their national pride prompted them to seek a reversal of the geographic injustice of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. This Germany promised them. Through the Munich Agreement of 1938 they gained part of Czechoslovakia, and via the Vienna Awards they gained additional territory.
In Yugoslavia, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr. Lazar Markovic secretly traveled to Vienna and signed the Tripartite Pact. On his return, the military, who had not supported joining with Germany, were led by Air Force General Richard Simovic in a bloodless coup d'état. Simovic immediately refuted his country's signature on the alliance. This threatened Germany's planned invasion of Russia, potentially exposing its southern flank. Germany responded with a plan to invade and compel Belgrade's support for the Axis and suggested that Hungary should also attack. Teleki refused, and the Germans asked permission to transport their troops across Hungary.
The British, with whom Teleki had had a long relationship, sent word via the Hungarian Minister in London that they would declare war if he assented. Teleki heard soon afterwards that Regent Horthy and Chief of Staff of the Hungarian Army, General Henrik Werth, had permitted the Germans to cross Hungary's borders. On 3 April 1941, he took his own life. Winston Churchill later wrote, "His suicide was a sacrifice to absolve himself and his people from the guilt in the German attack on Yugoslavia…" Parts of Yugoslavia were annexed to Hungary, in response, the United Kingdom broke off diplomatic relations on December 1 that year. General Farkas was soon named by Regent Horthy as the country's new Chief Scout.
Bánáthy served two tours on the Russian front in World War II as an armored infantry officer. In 1941, Bánáthy's unit advanced during a severe November ice storm within of Moscow. Wounded, he returned from the front to Budapest and married his fiancé, Eva Balazs, with his arm in a sling. In 1942, he returned to the Russian front with the Hungarian Second Army (Second Magyar Honved). Having grown the peace-time Hungarian Army very quickly from an initial force of 80,000, the rank-and-file of the Hungarian Army had undergone only eight weeks of training.
They were charged with protecting the 8th Italian Army's's northern flank between the Novaya Pokrovka on the Don River to Rossosh, part of the larger force defending the drive by the German 6th Army against Soviet General Vasily Chuikov's 62nd Army, which was defending Stalingrad.
On 13 January 1943, the Russian forces, an overwhelming force in numbers and equipment, began the Voronezh-Kharkov Strategic Offensive Operation on the Bryansk, Voronezh, and Southwestern Fronts. They rapidly destroyed the Hungarian Second Army near Svoboda on the Don River. During its 12 months of activity on the Russian front, the Second Hungarian Army's losses were enormous. With an initial force of about 200,000 Hungarian soldiers and 50,000 Jewish forced laborers, about 100,000 were dead, 35,000 wounded, and 60,000 taken prisoners of war. Only about 40,000 returned to Hungary, scapegoated by Hitler for the catastrophic Axis defeat. "No nation lost as much blood during World War II in such a short period of time." Among them, Béla was seriously wounded and returned to Budapest, where he was to spend seven months recuperating from his wounds. After recuperating, he became a junior officer of the Royal Hungarian Army and served on the faculty of the Ludovika Akademia under Commandant General Farkas.
In July 1944 Bánáthy's mentor Colonel-General (Hungarian: Vezérezredes) Kisbarnaki Ferenc Farkas was Commander of the Hungarian VI Army Corps which had been garrisoned at Debrecen. He replaced General Beregfy, loyal to the Arrow Cross Party. During that month, Farkas' VI Army Corp was instrumental in beating back a Red Army attack across the Carpathian mountains. In early October 1944, the Red Army advance into Budapest was slowed by the Battle of Debrecen in eastern Hungary. On 15 October 1944, Farkas was named commander of the Pest bridgehead and then Government Commissioner for Evacuation. In early November 1944, the first Russian units appeared on the southeastern edge of Budapest. As an Hungarian officer, Bánáthy knew he would likely be executed if captured. He was able to get his wife Eva, one year old son Béla and two-week old son László out of Budapest. Bánáthy's family, along with other officers and their families, found shelter at first in farmhouses, and later in bunkers, caves, and trenches.
Unable to replace the equipment and personnel lost in the Battle of Debrecen, the Hungarian Second Army was disbanded on 1 December 1944. The remaining units of the Second Army, including the unit in which Bánáthy served, were transferred to the Hungarian Third Army. The Siege of Budapest began when the city was first encircled on 29 December 1944 by the Red Army. Bánáthy continued to fight with the remainder of his unit against the Russians after Budapest fell on 13 February 1945. The Axis was striving to protect the last oil fields they controlled in western Hungary around Lake Balaton. However, by late March 1945, most of what was left of the Hungarian Third Army was surrounded and destroyed about to the west of Budapest in an advance by the Soviet 46th Army towards Vienna. The remaining shattered units fought on as they retreated progressively westward through the Transdanubian Mountains towards Austria.
Bánáthy's family with the other family members of the remainder of his military unit made their way west, along with tens of thousands of other refugees, about into Austria, trying to stay ahead of Russian advances. Temperatures through the time of their flight remained near .
Life in displaced persons camp
Bánáthy reunited with his family in Austria, and as the war ended and Austria was occupied in April 1945 by the Austrian, British, Soviet and US governments, they were placed in an Allied displaced persons camp. They were housed in a single room in a wooden barrack which served as their bedroom, kitchen, living room and firewood storage area. Food was extremely scarce and they subsisted on around 600 calories per person per day for five years. They were among 1.4 million displaced persons in Austria at the time while there was a world-wide food shortage. Bánáthy later traded for milk to give two-year-old Béla and one-year-old László enough protein. With extremely little food available in the camps, in early 1947 Eva's twin sister came from Hungary and took the two older sons back to live with her older sister. The Pallendal family was well-educated and relatively wealthy, so they had access to more food than what was available in the camps, and they intended to return the boys after a year. Beginning in early 1948, when the Cold War ensued, it became virtually impossible for refugees or displaced persons to cross from the border of one country into another, or even from one Occupation Zone to another. The two boys were trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
Shortly after their third son Tibor was born, the family was moved to another camp, near a Marshall Plan warehouse, where Bánáthy began unloading sacks of wheat from railroad cars. In 1948 their fourth son Robert was born. Bánáthy soon found work as a technical draftsman in the statistical office of a U.S. Army warehouse. He was ordained by the World Council of Churches and became minister for youth among Hungarian refugees. He contacted the World Scouting Movement for assistance and was successful in organizing Scouting in the camps. He served as director of religious education of the Protestant Refugee Service of Austria, was editor of a religious youth service and of a Scout publication.
In 1949, with help from a Swiss foundation, Bánáthy assisted in establishing and was selected as the President of the Collegium Hungaricum, a boarding school for refugees, at Zell am See near Saalfelden, Austria. In the same year, the Communist government in Hungary seized the businesses belonging to the Pallendal family, Bánáthy's in-laws. Because they were members of the social elite, they were seen by the Communist government as a political threat as was common in that time.
In 1951, in what was a common practice during this time, the Police arrived at dawn to seize the Pallendal family home with orders to deport the family. Those at home were arrested and immediately deported. Seven year old Béla and six year old László, along with their grandmother and two aunts, were put aboard a freight train and sent towards Russia. As was the practice, the train stopped occasionally and a few hundred people were forced off. The Pallendal family was ejected in eastern Hungary, and an uncle was able to locate them and hide them from authorities in a small village in eastern Hungary.
Emigrates to the United States
In January, 1951, the student body of the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago sponsored Béla, Eva, Tibor and Robert as immigrants to the United States. Bánáthy's family lived in the Seminary, and Bánáthy labored nights 60 hours a week in the cellar of the Seminary, shoveling coal to fire the furnace, while studying English from a book. He occasionally preached at nearby Hungarian churches. Eva found work in a paper factory and Tibor, their third son, entered American public school.
Begins teaching Hungarian language
Unknown to Bánáthy, his former commanding officer General Vitéz Kisbarnaki Ferenc Farkas visited the United States and his former adversaries, the United States Army, during early 1951. He recommended Bánáthy as a Hungarian language instructor, and Bánáthy was invited to teach at the U.S. government's Army Language School in Monterey, California. Bánáthy accepted the job at the Army Language School, moving to Monterey in June 1951. There he learned that the founder of the Hungarian Department, Joseph Szentkiralyi (Americanized as St. Clair), was the same man he had met at age 14 in 1933 at the 4th World Scout Jamboree. Coincidentally, Bánáthy's and St. Clair's wives, who had been friends in grammar school in Budapest, were reunited. Eva had managed a family restaurant in Budapest before it was confiscated by the communist government, and she found work as a waitress in a restaurant on the Monterey Peninsula. Bánáthy resumed his interest in Scouting and community service. Banathy served as President of his local Parent-Teacher Association and on the board of the local Red Cross. In the same year, Paul Ferenc Sujan joined the language school faculty, and Bánáthy learned that Sujan had attended the 1933 World Jamboree as a Sea Scout.
On February 28, 1956, Bánáthy become a United States citizen. After nine years of separation, and repeated failures to get his sons repatriated from behind the Iron Curtain, Bánáthy obtained help from Dr. Eugene Blake, President of the National Council of Churches; Representative Charles M. Teague; Ernest Nagy, Vice Consul in the U.S. Legation in Budapest; Hulda Neiburh of the McCormick Theological Seminary; and Howard Pyle, deputy assistant to President Eisenhower. He was finally able to bring 13 year old Béla and 11 year old László to the United States from behind the Iron Curtain. The two boys greeting their mother was featured in a picture in Life Magazine.
The boys were greeted by their parents at San Francisco International Airport at 1:10 a.m. The boys' release marked the first time since the Cold War that anyone under 65 years old had been allowed to leave Hungary to be reunited with family.
Professional life
Along with a life-long interest in Scouting, Bánáthy was an educator, a systems and design scientist, and an author. At the Army Language School, he taught in the Hungarian language department, later becoming its chairman.
White Stag Leadership Development Program
Following on his interest in leadership development for youth that he had nurtured in Hungary, in 1957 Bánáthy began experimenting with a concept for a leadership development program. As Council Training Chairman in the Monterey Bay Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, he proposed the idea to the Council Executive and Board and received broad support. He was assisted by fellow Hungarians Joe Szentkiralyi (later Anglicized as St. Clair) and Paul Sujan; Fran Peterson (a member of the National Council and a Scoutmaster from Chular, California); and Maury Tripp (also a member of the National Council and a research scientist). Bánáthy, St. Clair, Sujan and Tripp had all attended the 4th World Scout Jamboree in Hungary, where Bánáthy and St. Clair had briefly met. "Lord Baden-Powell was my personal idol and I long felt a commitment to give back to Scouting what I had received," Béla said.
As part of his master's degree program in counseling psychology at San José State University, he wrote a thesis titled "A Design for Leadership Development in Scouting". This book described the founding principles of the White Stag program, which was later adapted by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Prior to Bánáthy's work, the adult Wood Badge and the junior leader training programs had focused on teaching Scoutcraft skills. His research and findings on teaching principles and competencies of leadership had a huge impact on these two programs, shifting their focus to leadership skills. The leadership competencies he articulated became the de facto method for Scout adult and junior leader training. (In 2008, the White Stag program celebrated its 50th anniversary.)
In the 1970s, Bánáthy was appointed to the Interamerican Scout Committee and participated in three Interamerican Train the Trainer events in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. He guided their national training teams in designing leadership development by design programs. Béla also taught in Sunday School and was on the Board of the United Methodist Church of the Wayfarer in Carmel, California.
Systems science
In the 1960s Bánáthy began teaching courses in applied linguistics and systems science at San José State University. In 1962 he was named Dean and Chairman of the East Europe and Middle East Division at the Army Language School, overseeing ten language departments. In 1963 he completed his master degree in psychology at San Jose State University, and in 1966 he received a doctorate in education for a trans-disciplinary program in education, systems theory, and linguistics from the University of California in Berkeley. During the mid-1960s Bánáthy was named Chair of Western Division of the Society for General Systems Research. He published his first book, Instructional Systems, in 1968.
Large complex systems
During the 1960s and 1970s, Bánáthy was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and continued teaching San Jose State University. In 1969, he left the re-named Defense Language Institute and became a Program Director, and later Senior Research Director and Associate Laboratory Director, at the Far West Laboratory for Research and Development (now WestEd) in Berkeley (later moved to San Francisco). He "directed over fifty research and development programs, designed many curriculum projects and several large scale complex systems, including the design and implementation of a Ph.D. program in educational research and development for UC Berkeley." Due to the success of his leadership development program, the Scout programs of Mexico, Costa Rica, and Venezuela invited him to introduce it to their countries.
In the 1970s and 1980s, he focused his research on the application of systems and design theories and methodologies in social, social service, educational, and human development systems. In the 1980s he developed and guided a Ph.D. curriculum in humanistic systems inquiry and social systems design for the Saybrook Graduate School.
International Systems Institute
In 1981, he founded the International Systems Institute (ISI), a non-profit, public benefit scientific and educational corporation in Carmel, California, USA. He organized its first meeting at Fuschl am See, Austria in 1982.
What was truly revolutionary about the International Systems Institute was Banathy's method for organizing conferences. Banathy observed that in traditional conferences, a few usually well-respected or prestigious individuals would apply to present "pre-packaged new ideas" to others. In typical conferences, presenting almost always carries more prestige than listening; the few present and share their wisdom with the many. This one-to-many or "hierarchical knowledge distribution system" slowed the sharing and spreading of ideas about which many people cared deeply if not passionately, as there was always limited opportunity for interchange among participants. This interaction was usually wedged into the interstices of the formal schedule in the form of informal, spontaneous gatherings for which no record existed.
The notion that presenting is more important than listening aroused life-long antipathy in Bánáthy. When he formulated the leadership competencies of the White Stag Leadership Development Program in the 1960s, he described the passing of knowledge from one to another as "Manager of Learning." He wrote extensively about how the focus should be on the learner, not the teacher.
Bánáthy advanced a different vision for conferences, one that would allow everyone to fully engage. He proposed that everyone be given the opportunity to prepare and distribute papers to all participants in advance of the conference. And instead of listening to speeches, conference attendees took part in extended, non-hierarchical conversations about the conference papers. The conference proceedings were the result of these conversations. Bánáthy felt strongly that systems scholars from all over the world should be given ongoing opportunities to engage in extended conversations so they might put their expertise "actively into the service of humanity worldwide."
Bánáthy wrote, "We aspire to reap the 'reflecting and creating power' of groups that emerge in the course of disciplined and focused conversations on issues that are important to us and to our society." Participants at International Systems Institute gatherings have since the original meeting organized by Bánáthy in 1982 organized them around this principle and referred to them as "conversations."
General Evolutionary Research Group
In 1984, he was co-founder with general evolution theorist Ervin László and others of the initially secret General Evolutionary Research Group A member of the Society of General Systems Research since the 1960s, he was Managing Director of the Society in the early 1980s, and in 1985 he became its president. He then served on its Board of Trustees. During the 1980s, he served on the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Systems Research. In 1989, he retired from Far West Labs and returned to live on the Monterey Peninsula. He continued to serve as Professor Emeritus for the Saybrook Graduate School, counseling Ph.D. students. He also continued his work with the annual International Systems Institute international systems design conversations, and authored a number of articles and books about systems, design, and evolutionary research. He served two terms as president of the International Federation of Systems Research during 1994-98.
He coordinated over twenty international systems research conferences held in eight countries, including the 1994 Conversation on Systems Design conversation held at Fuschl Am See, Austria, sponsored by the International Federation of Systems Research. He was also honorary editor of three international systems journals: Systems Research and Behavioral Science, the Journal of Applied Systems Studies, and Systems. He was on the Board of Editors of World Futures, and served as a contributing editor of Educational Technology.
Final years
Bela spent considerable time during the last few years of his life caring for his wife Eva in their home in Carmel, California. She had been in poor health for a number of years after a stroke. In the summer of 2003 Bela and his wife moved to live with their son Tibor in Chico, California. After a brief and unexpected illness, Bela passed away on September 4, 2003. He and Eva had been married 64 years at the time of his death.
See also
Publications
Bánáthy authored several books and hundreds of articles. A selection:
- 1963, A Design for Leadership Development in Scouting, Monterey Bay Area Council, Monterey, California.
- 1964, Report on a Leadership Development Experiment, Monterey Bay Area Council, Monterey, California.
- 1968, Instructional Systems, Fearon Publishers. ISBN 978-0822439301
- 1969, Leadership Development — World Scouting Reference Papers, No. 1, Boy Scouts World Bureau, Geneva, Switzerland.
- 1972, A Design for Foreign Language Curriculum, D.C. Heath. ISBN 978-0669820737
- 1973, Developing a Systems View: The Systems Models Approach, Lear Siegler Fearon Publishers. ISBN 978-0822467007
- 1985, with Kenneth D. Bailey et al. (ed.), Systems Inquiring: Applications, Volume II of the Proceedings of the Society for General Systems Research International Conference. Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications.
- 1991, Systems Design of Education, A Journey to Create the Future, Educational Technology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. ISBN 978-0877782292
- 1992, A Systems View of Education: Concepts and Principles for Effective Practice, Educational Technology, Englewood Cliffs, CA. ISBN 0-87778-245-8
- 1992, Comprehensive systems design in education: building a design culture, in: Education. Educational Technology, 22(3) 33–35.
- 1996, Designing Social Systems in a Changing World, Plenum, NY. ISBN 0-306-45251-0
- 1998, Evolution Guided by Design: A Systems Perspective, in Systems Research, Vol. 15.
- 1997, , The Primer Project, 2007.
- 2000, Guided Evolution of Society: A Systems View, Springer ISBN 978-0306463822
- 2000, The Development of the AgoraWebsite: Personal Communication to Agora Stewards, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
- 2000, Agora Structure, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
- 2000, Bio: Personal Communication to Agora Stewards, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
- 2000, Story: Personal Communication to Agora Stewards, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
- 2000, Reflections: The Circle of Agora Stewards, International Systems Institute, Asilomar Networked Democracy Group, Pacific Grove, CA.
- 2000, Guided Evolution of Society: A Systems View, Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.
- 2002, with Patrick M. Jenlink, The Agora Project: the New Agoras of the twenty-first century, Systems Research and Behavioral Science
- 2005, with Patrick M. Jenlink, et al. (ed.), Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication (Educational Linguistics), Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. ISBN 978-0306486890
- 2007, with Patrick M. Jenlink, et al. (ed.), Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication (Volume 2), Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. ISBN 978-0387758428
About Banathy
- Béla H. Banathy in: International Federation for Systems Research, Newsletter No. 33, July 1994,
- Gordon Dyer, , in: Res-Systemica, Vol. 2, 2002.
- Jenlink, Patrick M. A Biography of Béla H. Banathy: A Systems Scholar, Systemic Practice and Action Research 17 (4): 253–263. August 2004.
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