Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Such contradictions impelled the Reform movement led by Count István Széchenyi . His
vision of progress was embodied in the construction of the Lánchíd (Chain Bridge) between
Buda and Pest, which proved an enormous spur to the development of the two districts. The
National Museum, the Academy of Sciences and many other institutions were founded at this
time, while the coffee houses of Pest became a hotbed of radical politics. Széchenyi's arch-
rival was Lajos Kossuth , small-town lawyer turned member of parliament and editor of the
radical Pesti Hirlap , which scandalized and delighted citizens. Kossuth detested the Habs-
burgs, revered “universal liberty”, and demanded an end to serfdom and censorship. Magyar
chauvinism was his blind spot, however, and the law of 1840, his greatest pre-revolutionary
achievement, inflamed dormant nationalist feelings among Croats, Slovaks and Romanians
by making Hungarian the sole official language.
When the empire was shaken by revolutions that broke out across Europe in March 1848 ,
local radicals seized the moment. Kossuth dominated Parliament, while Sándor Petőfi mo-
bilized crowds on the streets of Pest. A second war of independence followed, which again
ended in defeat and Habsburg repression, epitomized by the execution of Prime Minister Bat-
thyány in 1849, and the construction of the Citadella atop Gellért-hegy, built to intimidate
citizens with its guns.
Budapest's Belle Époque
Gradually, brute force was replaced by a policyofcompromise , by which Hungary was eco-
nomically integrated with Austria and, as Austrian power waned, given a major sharehold-
ing in the Habsburg empire, henceforth known as the “Dual Monarchy”. The compromise
( Ausgleich ) of 1867, engineered by FerencDeák , brought Hungary prosperity and status, but
tied the country inextricably to the empire's fortunes. Buda and Pest underwent rapid expan-
sion and formally merged. Pest was extensively remodelled, acquiring the Nagykörút (Great
Boulevard) and Andrássy út, a grand approach to the Városliget, where Hungary's millennial
anniversary celebrations were staged in 1896, marking a thousand years since the arrival of
the Hungarian tribes in the Carpathian Basin. (In fact they arrived in 895 but preparations
were late, so the official date was adjusted to 896.) New suburbs were created to house the
burgeoning population, which was by now predominantly Magyar, though there were still
large German and Jewish communities. Both elegance and squalor abounded, café society
reached its apogee, and Budapest experienced a cultural efflorescence in the early years of
the twentieth century to rival that of Vienna. Today, the most tangible reminders are the re-
markable buildings by Ödön Lechner, Béla Lajta and other masters of Art Nouveau and Na-
tional Romanticism - the styles that characterized the era.
The Horthy years
Dragged into World War I by its allegiance to Austria and Germany, Hungary was facing
defeat by the autumn of 1918. The Western or Entente powers decided to dismantle the Habs-
Search WWH ::




Custom Search