Jaw-dropping stories from the reform era Buda and Pest
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Have you ever wondered how would cities look like if you were to travel back in time a couple of decades or centuries? How would people behave or in what way everyday life would be different from what is considered the norm today?
Thanks to Index, you can now get a fascinating insight into the everyday life of the residents of Budapest, some 180 years ago. You will be surprised how different things were back then.
Budapest, as we know it today, used to refer to two individual cities Buda and Pest lying on each side of the river Danube.
During the era of the Reform Age and the Széchenyi Family, many noblemen started to build their palaces and mansions here. The new look of the city was very attractive to people in the countryside. By the end of the 1830s, the two cities became the most important hub in Hungary.
Population
While one might say that the Hungarian capital is somewhat of a metropolis with many ethnicities living in and around Budapest, it is not as multicultural as some other big cities in the West are.
However, according to Index, this was not always the case; around 180 years ago Budapest and Hungary used to belong to the Habsburg Empire. The Hungarian capital had a population of less than 100,000 before the middle of the 19th century, and it was more colourful compared to the now “teeming” city with around 2 million inhabitants, of which about 90% are Hungarian.
Hungarians made up 39% of Budapest’s population back then while another 37% consisted of people from over the Leitha (the right tributary of the Danube in Austria and Hungary).
The third-largest ethnic group involved Jews from Moravia (a historical region in the Eastern Czech Republic) and Galicia (a historical and geographic region spanning over two regions that are now known as Southeastern Poland and Western Ukraine). The other 14% of ethnicities in the capital listed Slovakians, Serbians, Romanians, Italians, Poles, Greeks and Gypsies, Index reports.
During that time, many Jews formed language studios to assimilate into the Hungarian culture. One such group was located at the Fogazó kacsa (Toothy Duck), an infamous brothel. The name of the establishment was a reference to a certain type of service the prostitutes provided, to put it mildly. Brothels were popular in this period in the Hungarian capital.