Search results: german occupation

Go, Visit Budapest, They Said — It Will Be Fun, They Said

‘The [Budapest Retro Interactive] museum demonstrates the triumph over communism through humour and satire. Far from making light of the oppressive regime or downplaying its existence, it derides it in displays that paint it as a farce when compared to the true freedom and prosperity Hungary has experienced since communism’s demise.’

German assault artillery troops getting to know the sights of Budapest in 1944.

Weight on the Streets of Budapest: Breathing History

‘There was something about the past that could only be conveyed by being where it took place. Although I had already studied the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War, being in the actual face of such evil, in the literal place of it, shook me to my core.’

Portrait of Ferenc Rákóczi II by Ádám Mányoki (1712)

Kuruc or Labanc? Hungary’s Eternal Fault Line — Part I

Hungary’s place among the nations, and especially in Europe, is one of the most debated issues in Hungarian political thinking. Analysing the so called ‘kuruc–labanc’ dichotomy helps to better understand the present-day disputes between Brussels and Budapest.

Margit Slachta, a Christian Feminist Nun and the First Woman in the Hungarian Parliament

In contemporary Catholic social teaching, like Slachta’s reasoning, women are essentially other than men, and this otherness is articulated in the papal encyclicals in relation to women’s role in the family. In contrast, the Catholic nun’s view of the female otherness goes beyond this approach. Although she also emphasises the dignity of the female gender, for her, feminine otherness is the underlying motif of her thinking.

Hungarian Lt General Antal Annus (L) shakes hands with Lt General Viktor Shilov before the Soviet Commander of Southern Group of Forces leaves Hungary on 19 June 1991.

Day of Independence: The Final Days in Hungary of Lieutenant General Viktor Shilov

The presence of Soviet troops in Hungary was of course illegal. The Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, which ended the war, required them to be withdrawn from our country, and although the treaty allowed for the necessary number of soldiers to remain here to ‘maintain the lines of supply’, there were obviously many more than that. The ‘legalisation’ of the presence of the Soviet forces that crushed the 1956 revolution was carried out by the new, collaborationist Kádár government in 1957.

Diminished But Unbroken — The Fate of Hungarians Living along the River Garam

What does the lower reach of the River Garam mean to Hungarians? For some, it is just a region of the Uplands, for others, a beautiful, wide, flat, and fertile valley surrounded by hills, while many people do not even know where to look on the map when they hear its name. For ethnic Hungarian local historian Gábor Juhász, it represents his homeland, a place where his ancestors had lived for hundreds of years.

Hungary, the ‘Bulwark of Christendom’

The concept of the ‘Bulwark of Christendom’ appeared in all border areas where two civilisations and religions came into contact. However, the conscious and regular use of the term is linked to the Italian humanists of the 15th-century Renaissance, who greatly contributed to the formation of the modern image of Europe.