In the 1920s and 1930s, Mrs. Márta Nemes had a unique role in Hungarian education. The Hungarian educator married young, observed the development of her children in a systematic way, and spent many of her first adult years abroad, founding a school in Brussels. At the start of the First World War she returned home and established another school in a villa at Budapest in 1915. The name of this school was Családi Iskola (Family School), with a reference to the school being independent from state regulation. The disastrous experiences of the war years led her to confirm her principles of education on liberty and principles of the community work (mainly, responsibility for the community). These principles and her personal relations to the key figures participating in post-war international movements, such as Beatrice Ensor or Adolphe Ferrière, connected her closely to the New Educational Fellowship (NEF). She soon became the NEF’s ‘ambassador’ to Hungary and, with Mária Baloghy, she founded and edited the journal A jövő útjain (The ways of the Future) between 1926 and 1939. This journal reviewed the international events and trends of the field, whilst also focusing on the Hungarian landscape of education. Mrs. Nemes acted as an intermediary between the representatives of New Education across Europe and those among Hungarian educators who had an affinity towards progressivism. My presentation (on the basis of the articles of The ways of the future, and unexplored and unpublished material of archives and media) focuses on the work of Nemesné M. Márta and her intention to force changes in the field of education in Hungary both theoretically and practically.

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