The death of Moses Sofer in 1839 left his followers without a leader. This vacuum allowed the quick rise to prominence of Hildesheimer in the 1850s. The traditional Hungarian rabbis did not share his zeal for secular studies and modernization, albeit in conservative spirit, but he seemed to have the sole answer for the threat posed by the progressives. The Oberlander Jews of northwestern Hungary - modern Burgenland and Slovakia west of the Tatra Mountains, descended of immigrants from Moravia and Austria - were mostly Orthodox, though thoroughly modernized. Many embraced Hildesheimer's views. The Unterlander Jews of the northeast - modern eastern Slovakia, Zakarpattia Oblast and Northern Transylvania - came from Galicia. They resided in the country's most backward regions, barely influenced by the government's modernization efforts, and almost all clung to the old ways. The authorities ordered the creation of Jewish public schools within the communities in 1850: in 1858, while there was a school for every 650 Jews in Oberland, the ratio in Unterland was 1:14,200. The latter was the only part of Hungary in which Hasidism, though frowned upon by many rabbis and laypeople for the changes it introduced, gained influence. It became the base of support for the more radical Orthodox rabbis.