Hungarian History Research Articles

Personal Network of the Neapolitan Angevins and Hungary (1290–1304)

The paper tries to uncover the Angevin – Hungarian relations during a chaotic period in the Hungarian history. The main goal of the study is to examine the personal network built by the Sicilian King Charles II in order to ensure the succession of his descendants on the Hun-garian throne. The Hungarian nobles and prelates put the son of the Bohemian King up against them. Both parties used all means that were at their disposal to ensure the loyalty of the barons: donation of land and title was the most common way to do so. However the Bohemian Prince fled the country and it seems that the House Anjou could utilize its per-sonal relations better. The paper tries to answer the forthcoming question: could the per-sonal acquaintances of Angevins have a role in this?

A Hungarian-Croatian Aristocrat from a new Perspective

Peter Zrinyi’s (†1671) name became inséparable from his participation in the conspiracy led by palatine Ferenc Wesselényi (also known as Zrinsko-Frankopan plot) which is the most examined period of his lifetime. The Croatian historiography has been focusing on his role in the movement, still considering him an early representative of the thought of independence. Peter Zrinyi’s literary activities have been researched relating to the political ones too. His military career, however, is practically unexamined; not even its major stages are known. Hungarian historians having national sympathies could also be blamed for this backlog due to the fact that they totally neglected his person pushing Nicholas Zrinyi forward in his stead. The present paper aims to outliné Peter Zrinyi’s advancement from a new perspective, namely in interaction with that of Nicholas Zrinyi. As we will see, the first decade spent together in Mura-köz had playéd an important rolé that Peter oriented himself towards Croatian territories.

Redevelopment of Brownfields for Cultural Use from ERDF Fund—The Case of Hungary between 2014 and 2020

In the current research we aim to analyse the public redevelopment projects financed in Hungary from the Territorial and Settlement Development OP between 2014 and 2020, with special focus on cultural use. Brownfield redevelopment is a major topic in an urban development context from an urban sustainability, circularity, and creative urban/regional development point of view. Within the examined period, 39% of the brownfield redevelopment projects have cultural ties. A detailed introduction of the cases highlights the importance of landscape-oriented spatial strategies, temporary use, and mixed land use options in redevelopment for long-term viability. The original function of redevelopment projects encompasses a wide range. We could find industrial brownfields from the 19th century to agro-food facilities from the soviet era, which proves that the allocation of ERDF funds for brownfield redevelopments helped the rehabilitation of those sites which are important in showcasing Hungarian history.

The “Re-Tuning” of János Arany's Life and Work in the Popular Education of the 1950s

Abstract In 1948, in the year it came to power, the Hungarian Communist Party began building its legitimacy, using the occasion of the centenary, by appropriating the legacy of the Revolution of 1848. The need for a revolutionary transformation of culture heralded the advent of the scientific materialist worldview. The popular education system, created as a channel of the cultural revolution, conveyed the findings of the various branches of science and arts, combined with the rhetoric of political propaganda, to the “working people.” Revolutionism, which the Marxist view of history elevated to prominence, soon gained ground in the interpretation of Hungarian literary history via the compilation of “progressive literary traditions.” Public educators' literary presentations in villages and cities, as well as articles and cheap publications produced in large quantities all served to promote this central principle. The author examines the representation and interpretation of János Arany's life and work in various textual and visual popular education products. Certain junctures and directions in Arany's life, used as guidelines of the presentations, were highlighted in the image of Arany mediated by filmstrips and newspaper articles to make him one of the “poets of freedom.” Publications intended for the cultural and political education of “working people” set out the way in which to relate to the poet and the framework for interpreting his writings. Through the Arany poems that popular educators employed in scientific education, the author points out the way in which textual and visual representations became carriers of added content in a given context and a possible means of the “rural class struggle.”

Az etnokoreológiának áldozott élet

The scholarly discipline of ethnochoreology or, as Hungarians would say, dance folkloristics, has had a profound and developed history in Hungary. From the very beginning of its establishing in early 1950s, various intense research activities have focused on the collection, documentation and systematization of traditional dances throughout the country, but also on developing particular theories about their historical and regional stratification. Along with dance notation (Labanotation), one of the main methods of collecting and documenting traditional dances has been their planned filming during pre-arranged sessions, financially and organizationally supported by the state institutions. Among early dance researchers, Labanotators and ethnochoreologists the most significant figure whose influence will far exceed the historical timing and national boundaries of his scholarly work certainly is György Martin (1932-1983). Thanks to the fertile environment of early traditional dance investigation in Hungary coupled with his academic education in folkloristics and ethnomusicology, but also, on the other hand, his huge passion for field research and cabinetwork equally, Martin has left a monumental academic foundation in all of his numerous writings, among which some were published after his early death. The book Selected papers of György Martin, edited by prominent dance researchers from Hungary (Fügedi, Szőnyi and Varga) and Ireland (Quigley), consists of the most significant Martin’s articles from various periods of his career. Besides Martin’s essays translated or re-edited in English, there are also dozens of papers by dance scholars mostly from Hungary. They critically reinterpret Martin’s achievements and reposition them not only within Hungarian but also within international scopes, pointing to their great importance for developing ethnochoreology as an academic scholarly discipline in general and to the continuation of their actuality in the second and third decades of the 21st century. Thanks to the fact that this capital publication is printed in English, Martin’s most significant papers and their scholarly interpretations will be available to a wider readership around the world, which will enable further theoretical, methodological and intellectual considerations about (traditional/folk) dance.

Az etnokoreológiának áldozott élet : Recenzió a Foundations of the Hungarian Ethnochoreology: Selected Papers of György Martin című kötetről

The scholarly discipline of ethnochoreology or, as Hungarians would say, dance folkloristics, has had a profound and developed history in Hungary. From the very beginning of its establishing in early 1950s, various intense research activities have focused on the collection, documentation and systematization of traditional dances throughout the country, but also on developing particular theories about their historical and regional stratification. Along with dance notation (Labanotation), one of the main methods of collecting and documenting traditional dances has been their planned filming during pre-arranged sessions, financially and organizationally supported by the state institutions. Among early dance researchers, Labanotators and ethnochoreologists the most significant figure whose influence will far exceed the historical timing and national boundaries of his scholarly work certainly is György Martin (1932-1983). Thanks to the fertile environment of early traditional dance investigation in Hungary coupled with his academic education in folkloristics and ethnomusicology, but also, on the other hand, his huge passion for field research and cabinetwork equally, Martin has left a monumental academic foundation in all of his numerous writings, among which some were published after his early death. The book Selected papers of György Martin, edited by prominent dance researchers from Hungary (Fügedi, Szőnyi and Varga) and Ireland (Quigley), consists of the most significant Martin’s articles from various periods of his career. Besides Martin’s essays translated or re-edited in English, there are also dozens of papers by dance scholars mostly from Hungary. They critically reinterpret Martin’s achievements and reposition them not only within Hungarian but also within international scopes, pointing to their great importance for developing ethnochoreology as an academic scholarly discipline in general and to the continuation of their actuality in the second and third decades of the 21st century. Thanks to the fact that this capital publication is printed in English, Martin’s most significant papers and their scholarly interpretations will be available to a wider readership around the world, which will enable further theoretical, methodological and intellectual considerations about (traditional/folk) dance.

Neapolitan Cardinal in Early Renaissance Hungary •

Neapolitan Cardinal in Early Renaissance Hungary •

Hungary and the Arabian Peninsula in the 1960s

Abstract In this article, the author discusses a particular episode in the history of Hungary’s foreign policy when the Hungarian Communist leadership attempted to expand its system of foreign policy relations within the Arab world in the 1960s. Regarding the latter, the analysis focuses on the Arabian Peninsula. The study is divided into four main parts. Accordingly, it presents the fundamental shift in attitudes toward socialist globalization following Stalin’s death in the first unit. The following chapters describe the relationship between Hungary and the two Yemens, as well as Kuwait in chronological order until the 1970s. The main objective of the article is to detail the role of that foreign policy, which had already tried to give preference to pragmatic, economic aspects, regardless of the political-ideological system of the given state.

Bortnyik und die „Műhely“ •

Bortnyik and the “Workshop”. The graphic design work of Sándor Bortnyik (1893–1976) and the “Hungarian Bauhaus”. In the Hungarian and international art history literature, Sándor Bortnyik is primarily known as an avantgarde artist attached to the circle of the MA (Today/Hungarian Art) periodical established by Lajos Kassák. Less well known is his role in the emergence of modernism in Hungary after 1925. From the very start, his painting and printmaking developed in parallel with and in interaction with his graphic design work. Having spent time in the milieu of the Bauhaus in Weimar between 1922 and 1924, upon his return to Hungary he continued to work not only in painting and printmaking, but also in book art and advertising, as well as photography, toy and furniture design, theatre work, and animation. The transcendence of the boundaries between genres, and even between branches of the arts, and the mutual influence between traditional art problems and processes and new media, are among the characteristic and still influential aspects of the modern culture of objects and visuality that were brought about by the twentieth-century avantgarde movements, and which continued in their wake. The work produced by Bortnyik, who believed that art played a role in shaping society, evolved in this spirit. His private graphic design school, the “Workshop” (in Hungarian: Műhely), was the representative in Hungarian visual culture of the Bauhaus concept of practice-based art training and functionalism, which fed off the ideas of Constructivism. The study provides a brief overview of the later development of his career, and his turn away from the genre of graphic design towards the direct communication of social, and later ideological content in painting and in printmaking.

Giovanni d’Aragona (1456‒1485) szerepe Mátyás király mecénásságában

Giovanni d’Aragona (1456‒1485) szerepe Mátyás király mecénásságában

Redescription of Neocypridella fossulata (Daday, 1910) (Crustacea: Ostracoda) and description of a new subfamily.

Neocypridella fossulata (Daday, 1910) is redescribed based on type material from the Daday collection (Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest). The major diagnostic characters of the genus are the ovate shape of the carapace in lateral view, with the left valve overlapping the right valve, the absence of marginal septa on the valve margins, the right valve anterior selvage not inwardly displaced, the presence of a Wouters organ on the first antenna, the divided penultimate segment of the second antenna, the markedly large -seta on the mandibular palp, the subquadrate terminal segment of the maxillula palp, the divided penultimate segment of the second thoracopod with setae d1 and d2 both long, the slender caudal ramus and the slender caudal ramus attachment with thin dorsal and ventral branches. Neocypridella fossulata can be further characterized by the oblique carapace in frontal view, the two smooth bristles on the maxillula third endite and the thin and long Ga claw of the caudal ramus, which is c. 3/5 of the length of the ramus. The morphology of Neocypridella is compared with related taxa and the taxonomic position of the genus is discussed. This revealed that Neocypridella cannot be assigned to any of the extant subfamilies in the Cyprididae. Therefore, a new subfamily, Neocypridellinae subfam. nov., is erected.

“World Theatre in Szolnok” During the 1970s : Gábor Székely: The Drake’s Head, 1973

Gábor Székely’s stagings of Örkény, Chekhov, Molière and Shakespeare in Szolnok during the 1970s overshadow his mise-en-scène of Gácsérfej (The Drake’s Head), whose significance is almost made imperceptible by the unfamiliarity of the play (and its author), and the complete absence of its stage history in Hungary. However, the 1973 performance of George Ciprian’s play illustrates the far-reaching boldness of the effort that “we want to create world theatre here in Szolnok”, which could be the motto of the Székely Era in this small Hungarian town. The essay outlines how The Drake’s Head developed into the essence of this ambition, and how free from orthodoxy Székely handled “committed political theatre”, even against the expectations of the authorities.

DEPICTIONS OF THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT HUNGARIAN CEMETERY OF TISZACSOMA IN SCIENTIFIC AND JOURNALISTIC WORKS OF TRANSCARPATHIA

For thousands of years, the territory of modern Transcarpathia was a highway and a place of settlement for nomads who sought their homeland. In this article, the strategic role, which the Upper Tysa region, the northeastern natural geographical gateway to the Carpathian Basin surrounded by mountain meadows, played in the resettlement of the equestrian nomadic people from the east, i.e. the Hungarians, is analyzed. It is well-known, that medieval written sources reporting on the Hungarian conquest, the «Gesta Hungarorum» (Hungarian deeds) in particular, are intertwined with legends and myths, and describe the events of their time (at the turn of the XII–XIII centuries) against the background events that occurred three centuries earlier. Due to some fictional elements and inaccuracies in the chronicles, researchers of the later era questioned the real, historical facts described in these sources as well. For example, Slavic and Hungarian historians have disputed the settlement of Hungarians, the relationship between Slavic natives and settled Hungarians, and the region's affiliation. The study aims to get one step closer to resolving this discussion based on the analysis of the sources, especially the Transcarpathian literature. The article summarizes the results of the archaeological excavations from the XIX century till now that prove that the Hungarians gained their homeland and settled in this area from the end of the IX century. Some of the Hungarian findings in Transcarpathia, mostly from burials, can be considered the oldest artifacts of Hungarian origin found in the Carpathian Basin. Today, not only unique burial sites have been excavated in this region, but also entire cemeteries (Berehove – Mala Hora, Tiszacsoma – Szipahát, from the name of the stream Szipa, near which burials were discovered), most of which can be dated to the end of IX – the first half of the X century. Ancient Hungarian archeological monuments of Transcarpathia form a single unit with a similar group of finds in the Upper Tysa region. Archaeologists have found several elite burials in the Upper Tysa region, including Transcarpathia, suggesting that the Hungarian political center was located in the eastern Carpathian Basin until the middle of the X century, rather than in the Transdanubia region. Ancient Hungarian archeological finds of Transcarpathia, in particular the necropolis of the village of Tiszacsoma, which is in the focus of this article, receive more and more attention in Hungarian and Ukrainian historiography. Archaeologists and historians representing different schools and areas have now come to a common denominator on several important issues, but there is no doubt that further local research is needed to answer the questions that arise.

Wass Albert – Vidnyánszky Attila: Tizenhárom almafa, 2020.

The study examines the theatrical adaptation of a defining event in Hungarian history from the point of view of theatre aesthetics and the politics of memory and identity. In the 2019/20 season a theatrical representation of the Treaty of Trianon was not only made necessary by the centenary, but also by the ideological and cultural-political position of the National Theatre under the directorship of Attila Vidnyánszky. A commitment to national heroes, symbols, and mythologies, a desire to build rather than deconstruct national consciousness has shaped the theatre’s repertoire in visible ways. The central figure of Thirteen Apple Trees, written by Albert Wass, is meant to represent a specific and defined mentality, the “Székely”, who does not ever change, even if the borders of the country are drawn across his own land. The focus of the performance on Trianon makes the question of identification somewhat confusing: in the first part, the Székely identity is offered as a model, and this viewpoint is in tension with the clearly Hungarian-centred interpretation of Trianon in the second part, which idealises the historical role of Hungarians.

Settlement Names Referring to Eastern Slavic Settlers in Medieval Hungary

Hungarians arrived at the Carpathian Basin at around 895–900 and after a long journey from the east they occupied the interior plains, mostly the river valleys (in Hungarian history, this event is referred to as the Conquest). The previous tribal alliance had slowly disintegrated by the time of king Stephen I (1001–1038) when pagan beliefs were replaced by Christianity. The peripheral areas of the Kingdom of Hungary, however, were typically uninhabited until the 12th century when the ethnic landscape started changing with the arrival of Saxon settlers, Slavs, Romanians, and Pechenegs. We have no Hungarian written sources from the time preceding the Conquest. The early Latin (less frequently Greek) written sources contain Hungarian words and expressions only sporadically and they are mostly proper names designating places. However, due to their early appearance and low number, these have proved to be truly valuable for linguistics and historical studies exploring the early history of Hungarians and the ethnic and population history of the contemporary Carpathian Basin. In this respect, the settlement names rooted in ethnonyms have a key role as they also shed light on relations between Hungarians and other peoples. This paper studies settlement names that may refer to Eastern Slavic settlers designated by the ethnonym orosz in the medieval Hungarian language. The ethnic groups designated by this name were first registered in the 11th–12th century, however, groups of Slavs could have joined the Hungarian populace before the Conquest. The study shows that the highest proportion of settlement names derived from this ethnonym are found in the northeastern, northern, as well as eastern regions of early medieval Hungary, mostly along the border of the country. The author describes the most frequent name formation patterns that can also be used for relative dating of oikonyms, and discusses the extension to which these data may be useful for the reconstruction of the ethnic landscape of medieval Hungary.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SOVIET SYSTEM IN THE TERRITORY OF TRANSCARPATHIA (1944–1946)

As noted, Transcarpathia is an administrative-territorial unit created in historical Hungary in 1919, consisting of Uzhan, Berez, Ugochan, and Maramoros counties. In the first half of the 20th century, it was part of several states: in 1919, it became part of Czechoslovakia; in 1938–1939, it returned to Hungary, and in the fall of 1944, after the Soviet occupation, it was incorporated by the Soviet Union. The authors investigated that frequent changes of power due to the peripherality of the region took place without considering the local population's opinion – as a result of the political decisions of the great states, so Transcarpathians always had to adapt to new political systems. Among the historical twists of fate for the residents, joining the Soviet Union had the most tragic consequences: until 1944, the region was a part of Central Europe, in particular the Carpathian Basin, in the social, economic, and cultural sense, but after, it became part of a dictatorial empire based on a class approach and social injustice. It was analyzed and concluded that the incorporation of Transcarpathia, with a total area of 20,000 km2, was of geostrategic importance for the Soviet authorities since, due to its geographical location, it bordered several states that were part of the Soviet bloc, and railway routes ran through it, which simplified the logistics of the USSR with them. The incorporation of the region by the Soviet Union was not legitimate at all, but the almighty Soviet leader Stalin, who influenced the politics of states in this part of Europe, made sure to maintain the appearance of legitimacy during the occupation and subsequent annexation. As a result of the political regime change, a new administrative system was implemented, the names of settlements were revised, and the ethnic composition of the region also changed. As an undoubted fact stated that for various ethnic groups living in Transcarpathia, the Soviet annexation brought a series of individual and mass tragedies, as the change of power meant not only the onset of lawlessness but also ethnic cleansing and physical destruction for tens of thousands of people.

Magyarországról származó utazók a 19. századi Indiában

For centuries, India has been of special importance to Hungarians due to its accessibility and cultural richness. As early as before the twentieth century, many Hungarians or travellers of other nationalities from historical Hungary visited the subcontinent. In this study, along with drawing attention to some lesser-known travellers, I will examine the social backgrounds, the motives and interests of all the people who we know at present reached India before the twentieth century.

Programul unei vieți: rolul lui Lajos Pákei în înființarea Muzeului Industrial și a Școlii Industriale din Cluj

"One Life’s Mission: Lajos Pákei’s Role in Establishing the Industrial Museum and the Industrial School in Cluj. The development of museums and schools of industry took place in some important industrial cities of the Dual-Monarchy, a part of the capitals in Salzburg, Graz, Prague, Brno, Czernowitz starting from the 1870-1880s. In the last quarter of the 19th century several school and some museum buildings of industry were erected in Hungary. Some of these new edifices were capable of performing dual, educational and museum tasks due to their special spaces: their list includes Ödön Lechner’s Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, Alajos Hauszmann’s Technologic Museum of Industry in Budapest and Lajos Pákei’s Museum of Industry in Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca). It is exactly in this period that Lajos Pákei graduated from Theophil Hansen’s studio in Vienna, and soon after, in 1880 he became chief architect of the city of Kolozsvár. In his new position the young architect played a prominent role in the infrastructural and institutional modernization of the city. One of the biggest investments of the city focused on the reshaping of the industrial institutional structure – this process was articulated around the foundation of the Museum and School of Industry of the city. Acting also as the director and professor of architectural disciplines in the school of industry of the city he had a significant impact on the development of a master builder, stone and wood carving classes and moreover in the curriculum of the educational profile of the institution. Lajos Pákei followed the architectural principles of Camillo Sitte in terms of urban city planning in Kolozsvár under the influence of the Austrian architects work published in 1889 entitled Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen. Kolozsvár, the par excellence renaissance town of historic Hungary. The town was the birthplace of the last great medieval king of Hungary, the earliest renaissance ruler over the Alps, King Mathias (1443-1490) whose political and cultural legacy as national king and the town’s long goldsmith and woodcarving activity have become a points of reference the late 19th century discourse on the modernization of Kolozsvár. Lajos Pákei was one of the members of the first generation of architects having accomplished their studies in the new political circumstances related to the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Lajos Pákei in Kolozsvár has completed diverse missions simultaneously such as did Camillo Sitte in Vienna or Joseph Leitzner in Czernowitz: he actively reshaped the urban spaces of his city, made architectural plans for the industrial museum and school, as director he influenced the educational profile of the school of industry and the acquisition policy of the museum of industry. Lajos Pákei prepared several plans for this building of dual function through almost first fifteen years. After a number of design changes the museum-school building was finally built between 1896 and 1898. Due to the rapidly growing collection, the shift in the acquisition policy from technological profile to applied arts objects, the growing number of students soon it became too small, and the construction of a purely museum building has become necessary. The building of the museum of industry has been erected in 1903–1904 opposite the previous one, according to the plans of Lajos Pákei. The first, museum-school building followed the construction principles of Hungarian secondary school architecture of its time, including a centrally positioned external wing for the technological collection. The second one – planned purely for museum purposes – followed the latest example of applied art museum buildings, the one of Joseph Schulz in Prague built in 1897–1901. The history of two buildings of Lajos Pákei in Kolozsvár reflect the specialization of educational and museum spaces, the characteristics of the changing models in industrial education and presentation of the changing profile of the collection as “ideal of a modern museum” as an attempt to develop. The study interprets the foundation and the management of the museum and school of industry as the lifetime project of Lajos Pákei in the context of architectural modernization (both in education and practice) in the Dual Monarchy and in the theoretical framework of urban planning. Keywords: urban planning, museum of industry, vocational education, decorative arts, museum of decorative arts "

Polish and Hungarian Historical Tradition in the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle

The aim of the article is to present two written traditions which are discernible in the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle. One of them is of the Hungarian and the other one of the Polish origin. The Le-genda sancti Stephani regis by Bishop Hartvich is one of them. It is also the simplest one to analyse. The text comparison shows that it could be regarded as the shorter text variant which served as the story basis for the chronicler, similarly to the text from the Seitz manuscript dated back to the second half of the 14th century. One of the variants of the now lost Gesta Ungarorum could be a source of information on the ancient history of Hungarians. One can observe traces of using a written source of the Polish origin as well. It could be a narrative form dating back to the beginning of the 13th century, in which the remnants of another, older text – possibly from the time of Bolesław II Large (the second half of the 11th century) – could be found.

Ego-network of István Bocskai in the Light of His Correspondence (1576–1598)

István Bocskai (1557–1606) was an outstanding person of the Hungarian history at the turn of the 16th and 17th century, who is one of the greatest letter-writer in the early modern age. The total exchange of letters (about 500 pieces) has been scattered over 30 various source-publications and source-books, while the unpublished letters can be found in different Hungarian and foreign archives. In my paper I focus on the social network of István Bocskai in two less-known periods, using a special approach (ego-network). My research is based on the correspondence of István Bocskai, that is one group of ego documents. My aim is to present, by 134 records (letters and testimonies) clean-cut, main tendencies.