PHOTOS: Danube Day organised in the picturesque heart of Transylvania

Culture and Innovation Minister János Csák attended the opening ceremony of this year’s Danube Day in Rimetea (Torockó), in central Romania, on Saturday.

In his address, the minister noted that 2023 saw the bicentennial of three events: it was in 1823 that poet Ferenc Kölcsey finalised the text that later became Hungary’s national anthem, while poet and revolutionary Sándor Petőfi and playwright Imre Madách were born in the same year. “They are the roots of Hungarian culture … a tight weave, and when we talk about cohesion … it is taking care of that fabric … our shared treasure,” the minister said in Torockó.

“We must preserve our mother tongue, and not just the spoken language, but the language of dance and music … that unparallelled cultural treasure that we have in our hands,” Csák said. “Culture gives us an identity; without culture we would be like dust blowing in the wind. Preserving our culture and our identity will make us strong,” he added.

Anita Altorjai, the head of public media provider Duna Médiaszolgáltató, noted it was the ninth Danube Day organised by the Hungarian public media, “opening the doors of the Danube House wide open”. She added that the exhibitions, concerts and literary events this year all focused on Petőfi’s figure.

She also noted that preserving the spiritual heritage of ethnic Hungarian communities, presenting their historical and cultural values and presenting them to other communities in the Carpathian Basin and in the Hungarian diaspora was one of the most important tasks of the public media.