History of Budapest
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UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
---|---|
Location | Budapest, Central Hungary, Hungary |
Criteria | Cultural: (ii)(iv) |
Reference | 400bis |
Inscription | 1987 (11th Session) |
Extensions | 2002 |
Area | 473.3 ha (1,170 acres) |
Buffer zone | 493.8 ha (1,220 acres) |
Coordinates | 47°28′56.712″N 19°4′14.412″E / 47.48242000°N 19.07067000°E |
The city of Budapest was officially created on 17 November 1873 from a merger of the three neighboring cities of Pest, Buda and Óbuda. Smaller towns on the outskirts of the original city were amalgamated into Greater Budapest in 1950. The origins of Budapest can be traced to Celts who occupied the plains of Hungary in the 4th century BC. The area was later conquered by the Roman Empire, which established the fortress and town of Aquincum on the site of today's Budapest around AD 100. The Romans were expelled in the 5th century by the Huns, who were challenged by various tribes during the next several centuries. The Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin started at the end of the 9th century, and the Kingdom of Hungary was established at the end of the 11th century.
From around 1300 to the incorporation of 1873, Buda was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary for five periods of less than a century each.
Prehistory and Roman era
The first town, built by
Middle Ages
The Romans pulled out of the Hungarian plains in the 5th century AD to be succeeded by the Huns after fierce warfare. Upon the fragmentation of the Huns that resulted from the death of
From 829, Pannonia became part of
After the
Renaissance
During the 14th century, the
Hungary's catastrophic defeat in the
18th century
During the 18th century, under the rule of
19th century
In the first decades of the following century, Pest became the center of the Reform movement led by Count
The
The
By the end of the 19th century, Budapest had become one of the cultural centers of Europe.[7] It also became one of the most important centres of the Aromanian diaspora during the 19th century along with Vienna, with the Aromanian population of both cities being one of the first ones to develop a strictly Aromanian identity.[8]
20th century
At the beginning of the 20th century the cultural efflorescence and sparkling energy of abundance and well-being of Budapest rivaled that of Vienna[citation needed] and its café society that of Paris[citation needed], a belle époque extinguished by World War I. In the
Anticipating and knowing about Horthy's communication with the Allies and possible defection from the Axis alliance in 1944, the Nazis staged “Operation Panzerfaust”, a coup against Horthy, and installed an Arrow Cross government under Ferenc Szálasi to make allowance for the unobstructed massacre of the Jews of Budapest.
Before World War II, approximately 200,000 Jews lived in Budapest, making it the center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life.
In October 1944, Germany orchestrated a coup and installed a new Hungarian government dominated by the fascist Arrow Cross Party under Ferenc Szálasi. The remaining Jews of Budapest were again in grave danger. The Arrow Cross instituted a reign of terror in Budapest and hundreds of Jews were shot. Jews were also drafted for brutal forced labor. On November 8, 1944, the Arrow Cross militia concentrated more than 70,000 Jews—men, women, and children—in the Ujlaki brickyards in Obuda, and from there forced them to march on foot to camps in Austria. Thousands were shot and thousands more died as a result of starvation or exposure to the bitter cold. The prisoners who survived the death march reached Austria in late December 1944. There, the Germans took them to various concentration camps, especially Dachau in southern Germany and Mauthausen in northern Austria, and to Vienna, where they were employed in the construction of fortifications around the city. In November 1944, the Arrow Cross ordered the remaining Jews in Budapest into a closed ghetto. Jews who did not have protective papers issued by a neutral power were to move to the ghetto by early December. Between December 1944 and the end of January 1945, the Arrow Cross took Jews from the ghetto in nightly razzias, as well as deserters from the Hungarian army or political enemies, shot them along the banks of the Danube and threw their bodies into the river. Soviet forces captured Budapest on February 13, 1945. More than 100,000 Jews remained in the city at time of capture.[9]
Upon retreating, the Germans also blew up all the Danube bridges as a way of hampering the progress of the Communist Red Army of the Soviets. A two-month-long siege of Budapest reduced the entire city, but mostly the Castle District to rubble, as it was assigned to the mostly Hungarian army with German leadership to defend and to "hold back". Most roofs in Budapest were blown in by Soviet bombs, walls blown in by Soviet tanks. The occupants sought shelter in cellars and ate dead horsemeat found in the streets just to survive.[citation needed]
After 1945 free elections were held, in which many parties (among them the Smallholders, the Social Democrats, and the Communists) were voted into Parliament. Due to Soviet pressure the government coalition, led by the Social Democrats, accepted the small Communist Party into the coalition.[citation needed] By the next election, most of the former government MEPs were entered into the Communist Party. In the election of 1949, the party, with Soviet backup resources, used the flaw in the so-called 'blue-ticket' election system, from which this election got its name, to have its voters transported in trucks to all voting offices, where with reproduced and collected blue tickets they could vote away from their home address district.[citation needed]
The Communists gained power while the Soviet Army propped up the Hungarian state. Under their auspices, the former Arrow Cross torture chambers in the prisons filled up with their opponents.[citation needed] Arrests, beatings or summary executions were used as a standard tool by the Secret Police, who employed an extensive net of informants.[citation needed] Random arrests without charge were commonly initiated by regime informants, some of these abductees were never heard from again.[citation needed] By this time the administration was composed predominantly of hardline communists or careerists, who made up the Soviet-accepted controllers of wealth and power.[citation needed] Materials were routinely confiscated from the Hungarian populace and taken to the USSR for "War Repairs".[citation needed] These administrators' actions were rewarded with position and favour.[citation needed] In Budapest this administrative approach was paired with aggressive industrialisation, militarisation, collectivisation and politicisation of the economy.[citation needed] Factories, chimneys, bridges, and railways were rapidly constructed. Workers during rest time were often subjected to Soviet propaganda and had to practice self-criticism in public meetings, negatively appraising their own performance.[citation needed] Rákosi's government was one of the most dictatorial and most exploitative of the Warsaw Pact countries.[citation needed]
The political situation was centred on advancing the interest of those informal factions, which had their primary focus on well-being.[
The Soviets were eventually defeated and all surviving units were ordered to return to army bases in the countryside. Imre Nagy declared Hungary neutral, stated he was working to cooperate with all willing countries, and declared free elections, parties were founded or reopened in the city. The USA declared that the neutrality of the small country did not affect the World Powers.[citation needed] The Soviet Union, which feared NATO deployment, took this as a permission to invade Hungary.[citation needed] In reality the USA wanted to ensure Hungary was not invaded by retaining its neutral position.[citation needed] Soviet units were ordered to invade, along with the militaries of the surrounding nationalities of the Warsaw Pact, with which Hungary already had a strained history.[citation needed] On November 4, the Warsaw Pact forces launched their attack. Imre Nagy fled to the Yugoslavian Embassy, and refused to take responsibility for ordering resistance. He was promised free passage to the border by the next leader, but was arrested by Soviet troops and later put on trial in secret.[10]
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was suppressed, the Soviets, rather than appointing a Hungarian hardliner or a Soviet general, gave a chance to János Kádár, a former kidnapped minister of the revolution.[citation needed] He defeated the remaining rebel forces, then embarked on cautious reforms to create a "Goulash Communism"[citation needed] that differentiated Hungary from its Warsaw Pact neighbors. Due to the co-operative efforts of Kádár and huge loans taken from the West to offset the failing economy, Hungary became the favorite Communist state of the West by the late 1970s.[citation needed] A decade later, the city was the center of opposition activity, rallies, printing and selling of unauthorized material and secret-service surveillance. In addition the talks between opposition and government representatives (dubbed the "Round Table Consultations") were held there.[citation needed] Finally, the majority of the multi-sided regime decided to step over Gorbachev's line and open the borders (the first official break of the Iron Curtain), declared Hungary a Republic on October 23, 1989 then issued free elections.[citation needed] While communism was toppled in Berlin and Prague, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party was simply voted out of power in Hungary, initiating a peaceful transition from one political system to another.[citation needed] Hungarians simply refer to all that has happened since then as "after the System-change".
After 1989
The
The local government law legislated after the transition provided new rights or licenses for the districts of Budapest, like the right to own and finance the community public services should they want and decide the density and micro-layout of area types that are defined by the Metropolitan Government. Local minority governments had also sprang forth, active mainly on cultural fields.
In October 2019, opposition candidate Gergely Karácsony won the Budapest mayoral election, meaning the first electoral blow for Hungary’s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán since coming to power in 2010.[11]
Timeline of the history of Budapest
Images
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The tomb of the Turkish dervish Gül Baba in Budapest
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The Recapture of Buda Castle (1686)
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Buda and Pest (ca. 1850)
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Andrássy Avenue (1896)
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Budapest, City Park (1939)
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Buda Castle Daytime
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Gerbeaud Confectionery
References
- ^ "Roman Monuments in Budapest". Aquincum Museum. Archived from the original on 2008-02-12. Retrieved 2008-02-07.
- ^ B. Dimitrov, Bulgarians- Civilizers of the slavs, p.48
- ^ "Budapest". Encarta. Archived from the original on 2009-10-29. Retrieved 2008-04-06.
- ISBN 0-87580-337-7.
- ^ "Budapest". Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
- ^ "Buda-Pesth". 1907 Nuttall Encyclopædia of General Knowledge. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
- ISBN 9781422374436.
- ^ Kahl, Thede (2003). "Aromanians in Greece: Minority or Vlach-speaking Greeks?" (PDF). Jahrbücher für Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas. 5: 205–219.
- ^ a b "Budapest". Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
- Radio Free Europe, 20 June 2006
- ^ "Blow for Hungary PM Orbán as opposition wins Budapest mayoral race". The Guardian. Agence France-Presse. 14 October 2019.
Further reading
- Published in the 19th century
- John Paget (1855), "Carnival in Pest", Hungary and Transylvania (New ed.), London: John Murray
- "Pest", Southern Germany and Austria (2nd ed.), Coblenz: Karl Baedeker, 1871, OCLC 4090237
- D. Appleton and Company.
- David Kay (1880), "Principal Towns: Buda-Pesth", Austria-Hungary, Foreign Countries and British Colonies, London:
- Budapest, Illustrated Europe, Zurich: Orell Füssli & Co., c. 1889
- OCLC 8395555
- Published in the 20th century
- "Budapest", Türkei, Rumänien, Serbien, Bulgarien [Turkey, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria],
- F. Berkeley Smith (c. 1903). City of the Magyars. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
- "Budapest", Austria-Hungary, Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1905, OCLC 344268
- Briliant, Oscar (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). pp. 734–737. .
- "Hungary: Budapest", Eastern and Central Europe (17th ed.), Fodor's, 1996, OL 7697674M
- "Budapest", Hungary, Lonely Planet, 1997 (fulltext via Open Library)
- Published in the 21st century
- Sebestyen, Victor (2022). Budapest: Between East and West (Hardcover). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 9781474609999.
- Ungváry, K. Battle for Budapest: 100 Days in World War II (2003).
External links
- Europeana. Items related to Budapest, various dates.