Playing With the Fictitious "I": Early Forms of Educational Role-Playing in Hungary, 1938-1978

Eszter Leveleki's Bánk, a Hungarian children's summer camp that operated from 1938 to 1978 under successive repressive regimes, is the subject of this study, which argues that the camp developed forms of play remarkably close to modern educational live-action role-play (edu-larp). Drawing on memoirs, diaries, archival records, and interviews, the analysis uses contingency theory to frame Bánk as a quasi-organization, with a democratic-style strategy and a hierarchical structure. Its central claim is that the camp's practices, including ritualized games, invented language known as "traditage," and the fictional kingdom of Pipecland, prefigured the larp movement and that its descendants evolved into full edu-larps by the late 1980s.

The core findings center on the camp's "Grand Play," an elaborate, competitive, and culturally embedded form of play that went well beyond ordinary childhood games. Through qualitative thematic analysis of diary entries and later recollections, the authors identify a commitment to seriousness of play, rituals, language, the arts, and a fictional setting that together produced an experience deliberately blurring the boundary between in-game and out-of-game worlds. Participants engaged through "Fictitious I" alter egos, presenting themselves as citizens of Bánk.

The study is candid about its limitations. The sources are subjective, retrospective, and incomplete, and diaries from the middle period (1949–56) remain unprocessed. The authors conclude that the tradition arose organically over four decades without formal self-definition, and they note that the lasting impact on children is difficult to establish from memoirs alone. Future research is recommended in the form of full diary transcription, interviews with former participants, and a managerial analysis of Leveleki's leadership.