Budapest Before the Great War

A few picture postcards from the World Of Yesterday, including some of the oldest specimens I've yet found in Erich Sonntag's collection

I was re-reading Stefan Zweig’s amazing The World of Yesterday (Cassell & Comp., 1943) recently, which had these beautiful lines about Budapest, Hungary, and how it was before the carnage of the Second World War (the below lines are on p. 193):

The hospital train in which I was returning arrived in Budapest in the early morning hours. I drove at once to a hotel to get some sleep; my only seat in the train had been my bag. Tired as I was, I slept until about eleven and then quickly got up to get my breakfast. I had gone only a few paces when I had to rub my eyes to make sure that I was not dreaming. It was one of those brilliant summer days that are spring in the morning and summer at noon, and Budapest was as beautiful and carefree as ever before. Women in white dresses walked arm-in-arm with officers, who suddenly appeared to me to be officers of quite a different army from that which I had seen only yesterday and the day before yesterday.

And in line with Zweig’s observations about that particular place—that, let’s be frank, no longer exists (although I understand Budapest to still exist, but not the same moment in time)—here are some colourful pre-1918 picture postcards from the banks of the Danube on the Hungarian Plains.

We’ll start with the Royal Palace, today known as Buda Castle (Wikipedia):

First completed in 1265, the Baroque palace that occupies most of the site today was built between 1749 and 1769, severely damaged during the Siege of Budapest in World War II, and rebuilt in a simplified Baroque style during the state communist era. Presently, it houses the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest Historical Museum, and the National Széchényi Library.

The palace complex sits on the southern tip of Castle Hill (Hungarian: Várhegy). Its defensive walls extend to surround the entire Castle Quarter (Várnegyed) neighborhood to its north, which is well known for its medieval, Baroque, and neoclassical houses, churches, and other monuments.

Yet, those who’ve ever been to Budapest—my last sojourn dates to December 2017—also know that the city has so much more to offer, including a stroll across

The postcard above shows the Elisabeth Ring-Road (Hungarian: Erzsébet körút), specifically,

the First National Savings Bank of Pest (PHET) (Hungarian: Pesti Hazai Első Takarékpénztár), sometimes translated as First Domestic Savings Bank or referred to simply as First Savings Bank, was a major Hungarian bank that was established in 1839–1840 and was eventually nationalized in 1948, together with its universal banking affiliate Hazai Bank, established in 1895.

It has since been re-designed and I’ll spare us all the sight of that one (but if you’d click on the above link in the quoted paragraph, you can admire it in all its glory…).

Speaking of Budapest’s architectural glory, here’s a postcard showing the Royal Hungarian Opera, today known as the State Opera:

All three postcards were mailed in the 1910s before the end of the Great War.

Believe it or not, they are not the oldest postcards in the Erich Sonntag Postcard Collection, to which we now turn.

Greetings from Budapest, 1890s Style

Below, I am reproducing two of the oldest postcards I have yet found among the tens of thousands of specimens collected by Erich Sonntag:

The City Park (Hungarian: Városliget…German: Stadtwäldchen) is a public park close to the centre of Budapest, Hungary. It is a 0.9-by-0.6-mile (1,400 by 970 m) rectangle, with an area of 302 acres (1.2 km²),^[1][2] located in District XIV of Budapest, between Hungária körút, Ajtósi Dürer sor, Vágány utca and Dózsa György út. Its main entrance is at Heroes’ Square (Hősök tere), one of Hungary's World Heritage sites.

The dedicated entry further explains what is seen on the above postcard, which was mailed on 27 September 1896 (which makes it the oldest postcard I’ve yet found):

Vajdahunyad Castle (Hungarian: Vajdahunyad vára) is a castle in the City Park…It is an eclectic collage of multiple landmark buildings from different parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, especially the Hunyad Castle in Hunedoara, Romania. As the castle contains parts of buildings from various time periods, it displays different architectural styles: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque.

The statue by Miklós Ligeti of the chronicler Anonymus is displayed in the castle court. Anonymus lived in the 12th century. His true identity is unknown, but he was a notary of Béla III of Hungary, and he wrote the chronicle Gesta Hungarorum (Deeds of the Hungarians). The external wall of the castle contains a bust of Béla Lugosi, a Hungarian-American actor famous for portraying Count Dracula in the original 1931 film.

The castle was designed by Ignác Alpár and built in 1896^[1] as part of the Millennial Exhibition, which celebrated the 1,000 years of Hungary since the Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895. Originally, it was made from cardboard and wood, but it became so popular that it was rebuilt from stone and brick between 1904 and 1908. Today, the castle houses the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture, the biggest agricultural museum in Europe.^[2]

Also, isn’t that postcard a beauty?

To wrap up this posting, here is another one from 1897, showing a public procession on the occasion of St Stephen’s Day—and King Stephen I of Hungary (Hungarian: Szent István király; 975-1038) is both the country’s patron-saint and the ruler who brought the Hungarians into the fold of the Catholic Church around the turn of the first millennium:

In said procession, Stephen’s intact dexter, or right hand (Hungarian: Szent Jobb) was (is) carried through the streets of Budapest. Here’s a bit more from Wikipedia, but note that the procession was—apparently—carried out well before the date indicated:

The Holy Dexter was kept for centuries in the Szentjobb Abbey, except during the Mongol invasion of 1241 and 1242, when it was transferred to Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia).^[189] The relic was then taken to Székesfehérvár around 1420.^[189] Following the Ottoman occupation of the central territories of the Kingdom of Hungary in the mid-16th century, it was guarded in many places, including Bosnia, Ragusa and Vienna.^[192] It was returned to Hungary in 1771, when Queen Maria Theresa donated it to the cloister of the Sisters of Loreto in Buda.^[192] It was kept in Buda Castle’s St. Sigismund Chapel between around 1900 and 1944, in a cave near Salzburg in 1944 and 1945, and again by the Sisters of Loreto in Buda, between 1945 and 1950. Finally, since 1950, the Holy Dexter has been in St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest.^[192] An annual procession celebrating the relic was instituted in 1938, and continued until 1950, when the procession was forbidden by the Communist government. It was resumed in 1988.^[192]

And with this image, our pre-Great war sojourn to Budapest, Hungary, comes to a close. Stay tuned for “more” images from that part of the Central Europe in the next dedicated posting.