Hungary [antikvár]

"Who are the Hungarians?"—this is one of the questions which automatically flaslies through the reader's mind when he picks up the book carrying the country's name as its title. Who are the people who have been living for over a thousand years in the heart of the Continent in Central-Eastern Europe? Although on the basis of their origin they do not belong to the Slavic, the Germanic or the Latin peoples, they are nonetheless integral members of the family of European peoples, connected by the common ties of history and culture both to their immediate and more distant neighbours. And perhaps the next question that comes to mind might be this : How do the Hungarians see themselves ? Their centuries of history have presented a variety of images to the world. Hungary has been regarded as a force that created a civilization, adopted, established, and added Hungarian character to Romanesque and Gothic art, and enjoyed a Renaissance culture which produced numerous masterpieces. It had to struggle against Ottoman expansion, reaching the verge of annihilation in the process ; it is a country whose poets and intellectuals raised, both then and later—when Hungary came under Habsburg rule and was subjected to oppression and a pohcy of assimilation—^the image of the nation's death. It is a country that was drawn against its own interests into the turmoil of two world wars and was ravaged in consequence. Amidst such vicissitudes, how did it manage to maintain its national identity? How did it succeed in eliminating the feudal remnants of its own past, to begin a new social system, to develop, to modernize? Hungary is a very small country. It is situated in the middle of the Carpathian Basin, along the course of the Danube and the Tisza rivers, and occupies an area of ninety-three thousand square kilometres. She has a population of only ten and a half million. Yet she has an impressive cultural heritage hallmarked by famous names ranging from Liszt to Bartók and Kodály, from Sándor Petőfi to Attila József and Gyula Illyés, from Ignác Semmelweis to Loránd Eötvös and Albert Szent-Györgyi. Her geography is characterized by a measure of diversity which one hardly finds elsewhere. This book introduces the reader first to Hungary's past; the first chapters deal with the nation's history. Thereupon an imaginary voyage through the country follows : from Budapest to the Danube Bend through Transdanubia and the Great Plain to Northern Hungary. We hope that at the end of the journey, most of the questions raised above will have been answered.