The connection between the next US president, Joe Biden, and the Holy Crown of Hungary

43 years ago, then-Senator Joe Biden promised János Kádár, Secretary-General of the People’s Republic of Hungary, to give the Holy Crown of Hungary back to its owner. What did Joe Biden have to do with it and what change did it bring to US-Hungarian relations?

As we wrote in November, the next US president spent his honeymoon at Lake Balaton back in 1977, and at the same time, he made an official visit to the Soviet country. His stay had special importance from the country’s point of view but, according to documents about the trip, Biden himself took it quite seriously as well. Apart from the then-Czechoslovakia, he only made a visit to Hungary and made sure to be as politically prepared about the country as possible. On several occasions, he asked specific information from the CIA and wrote a senate report on his experience gained during the visit, which was so positive that even the American press wrote about it. 

In the 1970s, Kádár-led Hungary was already considered the “good guy” among Socialist countries, which was not a very hard task, considering the Secretary-General had to compete with Tito and Ceausescu for the title. Biden was one of the youngest Senators at the time, but he had already made a name for himself in international affairs.

He paid special attention to relations between the East and the West, to the consolidation, and to questions concerning European security.

His trip in 1977 was his first one to the Eastern European Communist countries. The American-Hungarian relations entered into a new phase, says Telex.

The Hungarian leadership was especially happy about the turn of events since they saw an opportunity to smooth out problematic questions. On the one hand, the world’s leading power wanted to set up Cooperation in Culture, Education, Science, and Technology. For the small Eastern European country, one of the issues was the position of the Most Favoured Nation that Hungary was particularly keen on acquiring but the States was still reluctant to give. And the Holy Crown of Hungary, of course, that had been sitting in the military base of Fort Knox ever since soldiers of the American Seventh Army dug it up in May 1945 next to an Austrian village together with the sceptre and the orb.