Budapest, February 7 (MTI) – Plans are to erect by the end of November an obelisk in memory of political prisoners deported to the Soviet Union. The site will be Oktober 6 Street in Budapest’s fifth district, the daily Magyar Idők reported on Tuesday.
Ruling Fidesz lawmaker Erzsébet Menczer told the paper that stylistic elements of the 14-metre-high granite monument will recall barbed wire and contain inscriptions in Hungarian, English, German and Russian “In memory of the victims of Soviet occupation”. Besides commemorating 800,000 people who were deported to the gulag, the memorial will also be dedicated to the Hungarian victims of the Soviet dictatorship both within and beyond the country’s borders.
Leading up to the unveiling of the monument costing 451 million forints (EUR 1.45m) will be roundtable discussions with historians, public figures, artists and church representatives taking part. She said in the course of debates, the majority agreed that setting up the monument was an indispensable act.
Musician, singer, songwriter Máté Péter memorial plaque was unveiled on the wall of the building where he had lived and worked on Krisztina boulevard in the first district, MTI reports.
Máté Péter’s songs are among the most popular ones in Hungary even today. He died in a young age on February 4, 1984. He would be 70 years old today.
Máté Péter’s widow. Memorial plaque commemorating to Musician, Singer, Songwriter Máté Péter has been unveiled, photo: MTI
The unveiling ceremony has been attended by the singer’s family members and his musician friends among them singer, songwriter Soltész Rezső and member of the Omega Rock Band László Benkő.
Memorial plaque commemorating to Musician, Singer, Songwriter Máté Péter has been unveiled, photo: MTI
Memorial plaque commemorating to Musician, Singer, Songwriter Máté Péter has been unveiled, photo: MTI
Budapest, January 25 (MTI) – A statue of philosopher and Communist politician György Lukács will be removed from Szent István Park in Budapest’s 13th district and replaced by a statue of Saint Stephen, the founder of the Hungarian state, the Metropolitan Council decided on Wednesday.
The proposal submitted by Jobbik councillor Marcell Tokody was approved with 19 votes in support, 3 against and one abstention.
In addition to his activities as a philosopher and writer, Lukács played an active role in maintaining the Communist regime in three periods of time, Tokody said in the proposal. During the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, he gave orders in his capacity as people’s commissar of the Red Army for the execution of eight people. After 1945, he used his fame to legitimise communism in western Europe and after 1956, he played a key role in the cultural policy of the Kádár regime, he said.
The new statue, of the first king of Hungary from 1000 until his death in 1038, is planned to be inaugurated on August 20, 2019.
Esztergom (MTI) – Two memorials commemorating WWI and WWII victims were unveiled at the site of a former cemetery in Esztergom, in northern Hungary, on Friday.
The WWI memorial, a statue depicting the Angel of Peace, is dedicated to the about 3,500 Italian, Romanian, Russian and Serbian prisoners of war who died in a camp set up just outside the city between 1914 and 1918.
Mikhail Lavrenenko, president of the Russian foundation for peace that donated the statue to Esztergom, said that the memorial would be instrumental “in saying no in today’s world to any military conflict no matter of its size”.
The other memorial, reconstructed by the municipality and a local cultural organisation, commemorates Soviet troops who died during WWII in battles in and around Esztergom.
Addressing the unveiling ceremony, Russian Ambassador Vladimir Sergeev read a letter by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said that “real security can only exist on equal grounds, without any discrimination, on the basis of international law and the UN Charter. This is what Russia’s foreign policy will continue to be based on.”
The Russian ambassador as well as representatives of the Azerbaijani, Belarusian and Kazakh embassies, and Hungary’s defence ministry laid wreaths at the memorial.
Only a French sculpture beat the Holocaust monument on the bank of the Danube on the list of Architectural Digest, reports szeretlekmagyaroszag.hu.
Architectural Digest architectural magazine ranked the 13 most important sculptures in public places in the world.
Shoes on the Danube Bank sculpture got to the distinguished second place of this list.
The sculptures were examined all over the world, from Vancouver to New York, from Marseille to Melbourne, so it is a great recognition that our little capital city performed so well.
The sculpture was created by Can Togay, film director, in collaboration with Gyula Pauer, sculptor, recipient of the Kossuth State Award, who died in 2012. The composition – which honours people who were killed, shot into the river, by Arrow Cross militiamen – was inaugurated on Holocaust Memorial Day, in 2005.
60 pairs of authentic shoes were created by the sculptor; they were made out of iron and attached to the rubbles of the bank.
Budakeszi, January 7 (MTI) – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán attended the inauguration of a monument to Hungarian poet Gáspár Nagy, in Budakeszi, outside Budapest, on Saturday.
The late poet’s “political and intellectual legacy is alive; it is a compass, a guiding star, a leading direction for our government,” Orbán said in praise of Nagy, who died on January 4 ten years ago.
Referring to political correctness in his address, Orbán said that Nagy had considered it as “the main characteristics of false prophets”.
Budapest (MTI) – The Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro will be lit up on Friday, displaying Hungary’s national colours, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
The gesture aims at acknowledging Hungary’s role in protecting Christianity as well as the contributions of the Hungarian community in Brazil to the country’s development.
“This project greatly advances the strengthening of our country’s image and it increases our visibility,” the ministry said in a statement.
Dom Orani Tempesta, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, had offered to carry out the lighting project on the occasion of a Hungarian national holiday each year, when he met Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén in October. This year, the occasion chosen is to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the crowning of the last Hungarian king, the beatified Charles IV. In 2017, the proposed Hungarian national day to be commemorated this way is August 20th, St Stephen’s Day and the Day of Statehood, the statement added.
A series of programs entitled ‘The Spirit of Hungaricum” invites visitors to Gerbeaud House during the Christmas Fair at Vörösmarty tér, which was chosen the most beautiful Christmas Fair in Europe.
Designed to attract both Hungarians and foreigners, the program is jointly organized by the Estrade Theatre, the Icon Production Society, the Herendi Porcelain Manufactory and Gerbeaud House, in order to introduce the creative philosophy behind Hungaricums. Accompanied by a number of daily cultural activities, such as concerts and family programs, a china exhibition with hundreds of Herend Porcelain artifacts will be on display every day between 10.00 AM and10.00 PM. This exhibit presents a unique collection called ‘Best of Herend’ that the public has never seen before. It includes rarities such as perfect porcelain replicas of the Holy Crown of Hungary and a statue of St. Stephen, the first king of Hungary.
Kossuth-prize winner Imre Schrammel’s one-meter-tall porcelain statues from his Carnival series are also on display, as well as two highly innovative china pieces – a dragon and a prancing horse – that are covered in platinum and look like as if they are made of metal. Visitors may learn about platinum ornaments and traditional Herend patterns such as the Apponyi, Victoria and Vienna Rose during a number of presentations held on a regular basis at Gerbaud House. For a complete experience, music and dance performances will be staged at the Hungaricum Podium every night between 6.00 PM and 10.00 PM. The colorful repertoire includes jazz by Béla Szakcsi Lakatos, Mihály Borbély, Mihály Dresch and Miklós Lukács, in addition to opera pieces and classical music concerts. The “Jávor Pál” National Gipsy Band will also perform as well as Zsuzsa Kalocsai, Károly Peller and Szilvi Szendi from the Budapest Operetta Theatre.
Budapest, December 6 (MTI) – A memorial for Hungarian naval officers is set to be erected in the naval cemetery of Pula, in western Croatia, in time for the inaugural memorial day for those killed in action, a Christian Democrat MP said on Tuesday.
The Pula local council has already approved the location of the memorial and the permit and construction works are also set to get under way soon, György Rubovszky told a press conference. The costs of the memorial are being covered in full by the human resources ministry, he said.
Rubovszky said the memorial was likely to be ready by June 10 next year, the inaugural memorial day for Hungarian sailors.
The Christian Democrats chose this day as the memorial day because it was on June 10, 1918 that the Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent István was sunk by Italian torpedo boats.
Budapest (MTI) – Friends and admirers of former President Árpád Göncz have started collecting donations for a bust to be erected in Budapest in his honour, the Göncz Árpád Foundation said on Wednesday.
Göncz’s funeral was held one year ago and the initiative calls for donations from private individuals, companies and civil organisations that want his memory to be preserved, head of the foundation’s board András Gulyas said.
The bust is planned to be placed in a park in Budapest’s third district near where Göncz used to live and where a tree was planted in his memory earlier this year, he said. The projected costs total 4.5 million forints (EUR 14,500) and the plan is to erect the bust on the second anniversary of his death, he added.
Göncz was the first president of Hungary after the change of the political system, between 1990 and 2000. He died at age 93 last October.
The foundation requested that donations from abroad be sent to the following account: HU53-11705008-21371866-00000000.
Budapest, October 20 (MTI) – Busts dedicated to German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt and Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert were inaugurated in Budapest’s 15th district on Thursday as part of the October 23 anniversary memorial events.
Local mayor László Hajdu, of the opposition Democratic Coalition party, said that the anti-Soviet revolution of 1956 drew attention to Hungary from all over the world, which also made it an event of historic importance for the country.
The statue park in Széchenyi Square dedicated to 1956 was opened two years ago and the first statue put on display was of French philosopher and author Albert Camus.
US Ambassador Colleen Bell told the inauguration ceremony that the writings and ideas of Arendt and Herbert are still the subject of discourse. She cited a letter written by Arendt about the 1956 revolution, in which she said
“In any case, Hungary is the best thing that has happened for a long time”. Commenting on Herbert, she said the Communist regime silenced him several times but he was still fighting against repression with his poems. They both used their knowledge to educate and inspire young people, Bell added.
Germany’s First Counsellor in Hungary, Claudia Walpuski, said the events of 1956 showed that people could stand up for democracy in many different ways: some by going out on to the streets and others by using pen and paper.
Poland’s charge d’affaires ad interim Michal Andrukonis said that 1956 was a very important event in Hungarian-Polish friendship, showing that freedom is the foundation of the two nations’ firm friendship.
According to index.hu, Gábor Miklós Szőke, the creator of the Fradi eagle in front of Groupama Stadium, was looked up on the internet by NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, who requested a bird statue for their new and gigantic stadium. It will be assembled twice, shipped across the ocean, and the whole team will fit under it.
Atlanta Falcons’ new, one and a half billion dollar stadium will be inaugurated in 2017, which is where one of the biggest sport events, the Super Bowl, will be held a few years later. The biggest bird statue at the stadium is designed by the Hungarian Gábor Miklós Szőke, who – among others – created the Fradi eagle.
Due to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium’s unique design, the arena will be quite spectacular in NFL: it will have an opening-closing roof structure that will look like the spreading and closing wings of a bird. At least they’re going for this illusion.
A huge stadium needs a monumental statue, which introduces the symbol and the eponym of the team, the falcon. Georgia State’s Savannah College of Art and Design was entrusted with the task to find the most suitable artist for this task. This is how Szőke came into the picture.
“The Savannah College of Art and Design looked me up about a year ago and asked me if I wanted to design a statue in front of the main entrance of the new Mercedes-Benz stadium. They asked this via email, because they heard and read about my work before. They visited us in a few weeks’ time and I showed them some of my works like the Fradi eagle and my horse statue standing in front of a huge Slovakian sport complex” said the artist.
His new work of art will be the world’s biggest bird statue, but the making of a statue this big is a complex job of a building industry scale.
“Its height passes 12,5 metres, its wing-spread passes 20 metres. After we received the visual plans, I started thinking about the concept. I was inspired by the plasticity of the stadium’s futuristically opening glass-metal roof structure, so I started experimenting with triangular and trapezoid sheets cut in a sharp angle. This is how the idea of a falcon holding an NFL ball in its claws came to life. The material of the falcon is stainless steel, the ball is bronze, under which I designed an oval, four-staged concrete podium, where the whole team can fit on.”
Due to the sizes, the execution will be tough work. The designing started a year ago, while the works one month ago. They are currently welding the stainless steel base and shaping the ball, which will go into the bronze foundry. After the framework is done, the laser tailoring and structuring of the feathers will be the next step, followed by the creation of the statue plasticity.
“We will assemble the statue twice. First in my own studio, to be then dissembled and packaged by pieces for the transatlantic delivery to Atlanta next January. We’ll have two months there with my team of 30 to finish the statue.”
The big show starts next September, because Atlanta Falcons will move in, and NFL’s season opening match between Alabama Crimson Tide and Florida State Seminoles is going to be held here. Not to mention that 2019’s Super Bowl will be held in the stadium, as well.
Budapest, September 13 (MTI) – House Speaker László Kövér inaugurated a mounted statue of Count Gyula Andrássy, Hungary’s prime minister between 1867 and 1871, in front of Parliament in Kossuth Square on Tuesday.
The reconstructed Andrássy statue will return to its original place in its former glory, Kövér said, noting that its inauguration completes the process of restoring the pre-1944 look of Kossuth Square.
Andrassy saw politics as the art of seizable opportunities, Kövér said, adding that the emotion that motivated his policies was patriotism.
In 1866, Andrássy was elected president of a parliamentary subcommittee tasked with drawing up the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. After his four-year term as prime minister, he served as the foreign minister of Austria-Hungary until 1879.
Budapest Mayor István Tarlós said the inauguration of the statue gives Andrássy the recognition he deserves.
Parliament approved a decree on reconstructing Kossuth Square in 2011. The project began in 2013 and involved, among other things, building an underground car park, a visitor centre and a museum.
Count Gyula Andrassy’s statue inaugurated in Kossuth Square
Count Gyula Andrassy’s statue inaugurated in Kossuth Square
Count Gyula Andrassy’s statue inaugurated in Kossuth Square
Count Gyula Andrassy’s statue inaugurated in Kossuth Square
Count Gyula Andrassy’s statue inaugurated in Kossuth Square
Count Gyula Andrassy’s statue inaugurated in Kossuth Square
Count Gyula Andrassy’s statue inaugurated in Kossuth Square
Budapest, July 31 (MTI) – The speaker of parliament inaugurated a statue of Ferenc Mádl, Hungary’s president between 2000 and 2005, in the politician’s home town of Band in western Hungary on Sunday.
Addressing the ceremony, László Kövér said that as a lawyer, Mádl’s creed had been that a community can only survive if it holds onto its roots, preserves its national self-identity and avoids “falling victim” to the popular trends of a given time.
Mádl was someone who strongly believed in Europe’s unity even before Hungary’s regime change, Kövér said. The former president believed that there was only one place for Hungary and its people and that is Europe, Kövér added.
There will always be a need to follow the model of a politician such as Ferenc Mádl who professed such principle values as human dignity, freedom, solidarity, morals and care, the house speaker said.
[box type=”info”] Ferenc Mádl (1931-2011) Ferenc Mádl was a professor and politician. He served as the second President of the third Republic of Hungary. Prior to that he had been minister without portfolio between 1990 and 1993 then Minister of Education between 1993 and 1994 in the conservative cabinets of József Antall and Péter Boross. In 2000 he was elected President as the candidate of the governing conservative coalition. Mádl’s duty extended to 5 years. His term as President ended in 2005 because Mádl did not want to run again for the office. Ferenc Mádl died aged 80 on 29 May 2011. He was buried in a Catholic ritual with military honours at the Fiumei Street National Cemetery on 7 June 2011.[/box]
Csíkszereda, Romania, May 15 (MTI) – The statue of Áron Márton, the ethnic Hungarian bishop of Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár) from 1939 to 1980, was inaugurated on the main square of Miercurea Ciuc (Csíkszereda), in central Romania’s Szekler Land region, on Sunday.
Addressing the unveiling ceremony, Hungary’s President János Áder praised the one-time bishop for his brave stance against all oppressive powers, including his protest against the deportation of Jews from northern Transylvania, then a part of Hungary, during WWII.
Citing the bishop, the president said that “working for the nation is not a separate profession but a duty inseparable from any profession.” Márton led his congregation, church, community and nation as a general and served them as a servant, Áder said.
Áron Márton (1896-1980) was a prominent representative of Hungarian public life in Transylvania. In 1944, he condemned the planned deportation of Hungarian and Romanian Jews. For his activities during this period, he was awarded the title “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem institute in Jerusalem in 1999.
A committed advocate of religious freedom and human rights, Márton became an outspoken opponent of Romania’s dictatorial communist regime. He was arrested in 1949 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1951. Upon international pressure, he was ultimately released in 1955 but was not allowed to leave the bishopric building from 1956 to 1967.
The Statue of Liberty is one of Budapest’s symbols; we all know it very well. Szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu writes that it is one of those sights that most tourists visit, since the lady standing on the Gellért Mountain with the palm-branch in her hands inevitably attracts your glance.
But have you ever wondered the identity of the proud lady after whom Budapest’s iconic statue was modelled? Get to know Erzsébet Thuránszkyné Gaál, who was simply referred to as ‘the statue’ until her death.
The Statue of Liberty was originally constructed at Soviet order in honour of the soldiers who were killed in war. Master sculptor Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl chose an unknown girl, who just moved to Pest from the countryside at the time, as the model for the statue. He met Erzsébet Thuránszkyné Gaál (her posterior name) accidentally during one of his walks.
Their encounter was inevitable. The girl was waiting for the tram on Thököly Road when the sculptor saw her. He later said that “I’ve never felt such a pure blazing in anyone before as I’ve felt in this countryside girl”.
The girl was quite afraid at first, because she thought that the man staring at her was a satyr. But she instantly felt reassured when he gave her a business card. “Uncle Zsiga assailed me on the corner of Dózsa György Road and Thököly Road. He told me that he recognised his marble statue from 20 metres and then introduced himself. He also told me that he had to form the lady, for whose better life heroes fought” wrote Erzsébet in her memorial.
According to szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu, Erzsébet’s girlfriend convinced her to accept the offer. But posing was not an easy task at all. First, the girl had to cut her hair off, since it was too long for the plans. Then. she had to stand in the same posture for weeks. She held the palm-branch in the wind of a fan for 20 minutes on each occasion since, according to the plans, “the statue’s hair and dress were blown by the Danube wind”.
And Erzsébet wasn’t paid for all this. She modelled for free, as social work, driven by the ‘piety of a female compatriot’. However, she was treated unworthily after her job was over. She didn’t even get invited for the inauguration of the statue.
Nevertheless, Erzsébet Thuránszkyné Gaál became a symbol, as her figure towers on the peak of the Gellért Mountain. It’s no surprise that she was simply referred to as ‘the statue’ until her death.
Budapest, January 28 (MTI) – Pressure exerted by the US administration over the Homan statue hindered rather than helped settlement of the issue, the Prime Minister’s Press Office said in a statement on Thursday.
US President Barack Obama’s speech on Thursday to mark international Holocaust Memorial Day included remarks about plans in Hungary to erect a statue in honour of Bálint Hóman, the drafter of WW2-era anti-Jewish laws.
Obama said: “[W]hen a statue of an anti-Semitic leader from World War Two was planned in Hungary, we led the charge to convince their government to reverse course … This was not a side note to our relations with Hungary, this was central to maintaining a good relationship with the United States, and we let them know”, Obama told a gathering at the Israeli embassy in Washington.
Press chief Bertalan Havasi said in a statement in response that “there was pressure put on Hungary concerning the Homan statue but Prime Minister Viktor Orbán firmly rejected this … Generally speaking, foreign pressure only obstructs getting matters resolved. The Hungarian prime minister’s position is that the American government would have done better staying out of this.”
Plans for the Homan monument elicited sharp protest both in Hungary and abroad, including Jewish organisations, US congressmen and diplomats. After Orbán said the plans were incompatible with Hungary’s constitution in December last year the Hóman Foundation withdrew plans to erect the statue in Székesfehérvár, in western Hungary.
The opposition Socialists said they would submit a complaint to the media authority over the Hungarian News Agency MTI omitting from its initial report of the Obama speech the part referring to Hungary. The Socialists said MTI’s “continual censorship” was unacceptable and called on the news agency to stop this “unacceptable and senseless practice”.
MTVA, the media asset management company which provides MTI’s resources, issued a statement noting that MTI’s Washington correspondent sent in an article about the Obama speech based on a detailed report in The Washington Post which was based on the reporting of an AP correspondent from the site. Neither The Washington Post report nor AP’s report included Obama’s reference to Hungary. Once MTI found the reference to Hungary when the entire speech was made available by the White House on its website, the news agency covered this in an update. It is untrue that the public media tried to suppress Obama’s reference to Hungary, the statement said.
Budapest, December 18 (MTI) – The Homan Balint Foundation has dropped plans to erect a statue to its namesake, the Horthy-era politician, in Szekesfehervar, central Hungary.
The foundation notified the mayor of the city, Andras Cser-Palkovics, in a letter. In response the mayor motioned to withdraw support of 2 million forints (EUR 6,300) approved for the statue by the local council in June this year. The assembly voted to approve the motion on Friday.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban earlier said he did not support plans for the Homan statue. Gabor Kovats, the Homan foundation’s head, insisted earlier that Homan’s “contributions to the nation and the city” justified a statue in his honour.
Plans for the Homan monument have elicited sharp protest both in Hungary and abroad. Jewish organisations, US congressmen and diplomats have also voiced protest. The Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz) said “in a democratic country there is no place for a statue for an anti-Semite”.
Mazsihisz on Friday welcomed the Szekesfehervar assembly’s decision in a statement. The federation “hopes that with this move the idea to rehabilitate the politician with a bad past in public life can be off the agenda for good,” it said.
Homan, a historian, took part in the drafting and implementation of anti-Jewish legislation in the late 1930s. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the People’s Court in 1946 for voting to declare war on the Soviet Union in 1941, which the court said was a war crime. He died in prison in 1951. Last year, the Budapest Court ordered a retrial in his case, and earlier this year, Homan was acquitted of the charge.
The leftist opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) welcomed the decision but insisted that Szekesfehevar council had only withdrawn its funding after the Homan foundation’s decision to scrap its plan. More importantly, however, the collapse of the project means no public space will given over to anti-Semitism, it added.
Radical nationalist Jobbik lawmaker Dora Duro said in a statement Szekesfehervar council had rightly supported erecting the statue and the justice ministry had donated 15 million forints. Since Fidesz politicians had not learnt anything new about Homan in the meantime, it could only be assumed that they had caved in to pressure by the US, Israel and Germany, she added.
Their encounter was inevitable. The girl was waiting for the tram on Thököly Road when the sculptor saw her. He later said that “I’ve never felt such a pure blazing in anyone before as I’ve felt in this countryside girl”.