Hungarian Conservative

On Christmas Eve in 1944 the Soviet troops encircled Budapest, and the siege commenced a few days later, on 30 December. The fighting that went on for months caused enormous suffering and destruction, and became part of Hungary’s collective memory forever.

In the Hungarian memory, the Rákos assemblies have become a symbol of the freedom of the Hungarian nobility. The diets in Rákos, as well as the assemblies held in Pressburg (today’s Bratislava, Slovakia) after 1540, played no small role in ensuring that the unity of the country did not disappear after the Turkish rule and that the occupied parts of the country did not entirely break away from the Kingdom either.

As part of the series titled ‘Advent in Buda,’ visitors can expect a vibrant array of activities, including stage performances, handcraft workshops, folk art nativity scenes, exquisite Hungarian culinary delights, candle lighting, and a festive atmosphere.

As Budapest commemorates its 150th birthday this year, a grand celebration awaits all who join in the festivities.

Today’s Budapest was created on 17 November 1873 by the merger of Pest on the left bank of the Danube and Buda and Óbuda on the right bank. The rich and tumultuous history of these settlements has been documented since the 11th century.

For generations, the heroic deeds of the defenders of the Eger Castle have given the Hungarian people strength and fortitude. Although the area under Ottoman occupation expanded and, in the following years, the Sultan managed to reassuringly stabilize his presence in the Carpathian Basin, our predecessors could draw strength from the example of Dobó and his army in later years.

As all the Danube bridges were destroyed by the retreating Germans, tram service could start again between the two sides of the city over Liberty Bridge only on 20 August 1946.

Surprisingly, the earliest royal secular knightly order in Europe was founded in 1326 in Hungary, a country just emerging from civil war, by King Charles I, in honour of St George, the patron saint of knights since the crusades.

The Hungarian doctor was the first to introduce hand sanitation standards in a medical institution, which led to childbed mortality rate decreasing from 18 per cent to just two per cent at his Vienna obstetrical clinic. However, his ideas were tragically never accepted by his peers which led to his death in a mental ward.

The year 1473 seems incredibly early for printing in several respects, as north of the Nuremberg–Augsburg–Venice line and east of the Rhine–Main line, book printing was not yet feasible at the time. In addition, it was no less rare for a nation’s history to be printed either—the Buda Chronicle, the first printed book in Hungary by 15th-century printer Andreas Hess, can be considered the second of its kind in the whole world.

In the spring of 1848, there were a series of revolutionary movements aimed to overthrow or reform monarchical government systems and create new nation states throughout the whole of Europe, which partly contributed to the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution in Pest on 15 March 1848.