Unburied Bodies — Hungarian National Identity 1989‐2020

Abstract

The erection of historical monuments is always an extension of national dentity — imagined by the ruling power. The current rehabilitation of Kossuth Square around the Budapest Parliament is intended to recreate its appearance as it was in 1944. The re‐configuration of urban space includes removal and exchange of current monuments and statues, as well as the erection of new ones. I will analyze the case of three statues and monuments that represent distinct events in Hungarian collective memory. The construction of the Memorial of National Unity and the erection of the Memorial for the Victims of the German Occupation are both seemingly attempts to cope with separate and intertwined national traumas, that are still haunting the collective memory. The removal of the Statue of Imre Nagy is also a telling example of the transformation of national identity, and an indication of how the 1956 revolution's status has changed within the nation's collective memory since 1989. These three monuments illustrate the transformation of Hungarian national identity after the system change, and point to possible further changes in the future.