A civic Hungary was born 175 years ago today

15 March “is once and for all the universal celebration of Hungarian freedom”, Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, said at a ceremony handing over state awards on the occasion of Hungary’s national holiday on Tuesday.

Gulyás said at the event held in the Varkert Bazaar that March 15 rightly filled all Hungarians with pride. It is the commemoration of Hungarians able to shape the nation and demonstrate “their instinctive wish for freedom and national unity”, he added.

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The revolution 175 years ago marked the birth of civic Hungary, he said. In March 1848, the people’s revolution was victorious in Budapest, as bourgeois Hungary supplanted “creaking feudalism”, he said, adding it was at this time that the Hungarian nation and a civic Hungary were born.

Also, 15 March marks the day when decades of reform era that flourished in the Hungarian national consciousness was fulfilled. The fight for freedom gave Hungarians a capacity for hope, and the knowledge that freedom “is not given free of charge, but we have always had to fight for it,” he said.

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Source: MTI