The People

About 96 per cent of the people are Hungarians, or Magyars. Gypsies are the largest minority group. Other minorities include Slovaks, Germans, Serbs and Croats, and Romanians.

In 2000 the population of Hungary was 10,043,224. The density was about 279 persons per square mile (108 per km2). About 60 per cent of the people live in cities; the rest reside mainly in farm villages and towns.

Magyar, a Finno-Ugric tongue, is spoken by the vast majority of the people. It is related to Finnish, Estonian, and Lapp but not to any other European tongue. Magyar is written in Latin characters and contains numerous Turkish, Slavic, French, Latin, and German words.

Roman Catholics make up about two-thirds of the population. Most of the rest who profess a religion are Calvinists, Lutherans, Jews, or members of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

is free and compulsory for children 6 to 16 years of age. Most continue their education beyond 16. Nearly all the people are literate. Although some institutions of higher education provide a general liberal arts or technical program, most specialize. There are universities or colleges for medicine, horticulture, forestry, heavy industry, chemical engineering, finance, and foreign trade.

Hungary has produced a number of major figures in the arts. Hungarian musical tradition, one of the richest in the world, includes the work of composers Franz Liszt, Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernö Dohnányi, and Franz Lehár. Budapest is home to the Hungarian National Philharmonia, the Budapest Philharmonia, and the Budapest Academy of Music, the internationally acclaimed musical school founded by Liszt. Sir Georg Sold won fame as an orchestral conductor.

Notable Hungarian authors include Sándor Petöfi, József Katona, Ferenc Molnár, and Maurus Jókai. The Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery, both in Budapest, house two of Europe's great art collections. Among the Hungarian painters exhibited at these museums are Mihály von Munkácsy and László Moholy-Nagy.