Hungarian Conservative

‘For us Hungarians it is easy to empathize with Americans over their national tragedy, 9/11, given Hungary’s centuries-long history of tragic events. In many ways, 9/11 is similar to Trianon—the greatest national tragedy of the country. The most significant parallel is that, like Trianon, the memory of 9/11 unites the nation often divided in everyday life, regardless of how deep the divisions may be.’

‘Klebelsberg believed that “today it is not the sword but culture that can keep the Hungarian homeland alive and make it great again”, and he considered it important not only to educate the Hungarian elite but also to develop the education of the people. Legislation published in 1926 provided for the construction of 3,500 new classrooms and 1,750 teachers’ dwellings, in the following order: first, in isolated rural districts without schools, then in villages without schools, and finally in overcrowded urban schools.’

An in-depth interview with Eva Kazella, a prominent member of the Hungarian American community, about the deportation of her family from Communist Slovakia, the vicissitudes before starting a new life in the United States, her family, and the vibrant community life of Hungarian Americans.

Gergely Kovács, the newly elected Budapest 12th district mayor of the Two-Tailed Dog Party, has vowed to remove the statue of the mythical turul bird located in the vicinity of the mayor’s office. He cited the monument’s connection to Nazism as his reason—however, not many other people see that connection.

The documentary will be premiered to the public on 14 June at the MOZ.GO Hungarian Film Festival, and is also expected to be available on streaming platforms.

‘Today, we must achieve what Prime Minister István Tisza could not: prevent Hungary from being drawn into another European war,’ Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stressed in his speech on the Day of National Unity. 4 June marks one of the darkest days in Hungarian history: signed on this day in 1920, the Treaty of Trianon caused Hungary to lose about two-thirds of its territory and one-third of its population.

Now that it is almost summertime when a cool beer can come in handy, we invite our readers to a brief journey through time to discover some fun facts about the past and present of beer brewing in Hungary.

‘Since 1990, we have had to find new ways of explaining the issues. The communist dictatorships have collapsed, everything seems to be going fine, nice-sounding laws are being passed, but these are not being enforced, and in some cases the situation is deteriorating. The countries have European Union membership, and many border issues have disappeared thanks to the Schengen agreement, but problems remain.’

Refugee groups started trickling in after the catastrophic defeat of the Austro–Hungarian empire in the First World War and the dismembering of the historical Hungarian Kingdom, resulting in the loss of many ethnically Hungarian territories for Hungary. The destruction of the war and the discriminative policies of the new states prompted many Hungarians to seek a better life beyond the sea. Latin America soon became an important emigration target, as the United States started to severely restrict immigration from Eastern Europe in the 1920s.

Vilmos Apor is known as the Bishop of the Poor, and as the martyred prelate who was fatally wounded defending the girls and women under his protection from Soviet soldiers on the Good Friday of 1945.

During the regime change following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Hungarian National Bank gradually sold almost all of the country’s gold reserve, which by 1992 fell to around three tonnes, with the proceeds from the sale of gold invested in foreign government bonds deemed safe and high-yielding. However, the promised returns were not realized.

‘Europe’s most powerful nation is now led, without exaggeration, by political extremists. The heads of the other large nations, France and Britain, are all cynical, complacent, and indifferent to the problems of their citizens to a degree not seen here since the French Revolution.

It is an interesting situation for us. So far, we have been the ones always divided up: by the Ottomans, Habsburgs, Germans, and French. Now they are the ones being sliced up and bid on by the hungry peoples of the Third World and the coldly calculating networks of people smugglers.’

In essence, Europe needs Poland and Hungary, Polish MEP Ryszard Czarnecki argues. An interview about double standards, rule of law concerns about the Tusk administration, and the key role of conservative journalists and experts in the conservative European realignment.

How should we Hungarians relate to our heroic dead who perished in the two world wars? Some thoughts and proposals by our Sopron-based contributor Botond Szabó.

Pál Teleki, prime minister of Hungary in the interwar era, was probably one of the most tragic figures of twentieth century Hungarian history. He was torn between his conscience and geopolitical reality, a tension he could only resolve by ending his own life as a shocking act of protest.

The work of Gombos, both as a writer and a literary historian, is still undeservedly understudied. As one of his admirers quite aptly wrote of him: ‘His place in the hierarchy of “populist” thinkers and writers is not in the second, but in the first rank, in the company of those whose intellectual and creative achievements can be considered particularly valuable and significant.’

Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya, former Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, died in exile in Portugal in 1957 and was buried there. One of his last wishes, however, was for his ashes to be brought home once his beloved country was liberated from Soviet occupation.

Although it is perfectly legitimate to suggest that the noise pollution caused by the huge number of vehicles passing through his town needs to be addressed, the solution is not to penalise those who cross the border. Possible, more constructive solutions may include the improvement of the community transport infrastructure at local level or the opening of new crossing points so that those wishing to enter Austria are distributed more proportionately.

With their fearless undertaking on 15–16 July in 1931, György Endresz and Sándor Magyar forever etched their names into the annals of Hungarian and global aviation.

‘Nations are creations of God, borders are drawn by people. Supporting the homeland is important, and it has become a constitutional obligation. However, the Hungarian people have survived even when the leaders of the Hungarian state…forgot, gave up, or betrayed national unity, as it happened during the four decades of communism or during the periods of left-wing governments,’ the Chief of the Prime Minister’s Office stated on 4 June.

Losing the World War and the experience of the Treaty of Trianon triggered a discourse in Hungarian public life that was not without precedent, but had never been so vehement before. Perhaps the opinion of many was reflected by the renowned writer Ferenc Herczeg, who declared that ‘Europe, free press, liberalism—all these are slogans that have deceived us.’

The following are poems by cross-border Hungarian poets translated into English that originally appeared in a 2019 anthology published by Hungarian Review.

For over a thousand years, Hungarians and Rusyns have lived peacefully together. This shared history offers important lesson of cooperation and mutual respect.

Rastislav Káčer made the controversial statements on the same TV programme where Speaker of the National Council Boris Kollár expressed similar views last April.

A line-up of expert historians presented the story of how the many different nations living by the River Danube had collaborated with each other over the tides of history and of the ambitions to create a confederation of independent Danubian nations.

Paradoxically, Communist Béla Kun and the contemporary nationalist racists had more in common in terms of their views than the Communist leader had with the social-democratic and the left-leaning bourgeois émigrés.

In a referendum on 14 December 1921, the town of Sopron voted to remain part of Hungary, for which it has been celebrated as the town of loyalty and freedom ever since.

The majority of the refugees were intellectuals, mostly from Transylvania, followed by those from what is Slovakia, Serbia and Austria today, but there were also some who fled to Hungary from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

‘We try and keep the illusion awake in ourselves that we can cross to Nagyvárad or drop by to Nagyszalonta and then run from Makó to Arad, as it used to be—so natural, so self-evident. And then all of a sudden, we realise it is no longer possible.’

As a consequence of the treaty, four million Hungarians became overnight the citizens of foreign countries, some of them newly formed.