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19. The money lies on the street
In the memories of the eyewitnesses, the image often appears that during the revolution they could be seen in the streets full of money, with the inscription that they await donations for the families of the victims.
No one touched the collected bills,
not even when, in the 1950s, society as a whole was practically destitute and living in extremely difficult conditions. All of this demonstrated the purity of the revolution, say the recallists, while the propaganda of the communist regime weighed on the fact that the uprising was the work of adventurers and criminals who sought to restore the old fascist regime.
Few people know that the placement of the collection containers was not a spontaneous popular initiative, but the work of a prominent artist, Miklós Erdély. He gave the action the title of Unguarded Money and said that the beginning of his artistic work derived from this event. History of art
considers this performance to be the first and one of the most important events in Hungarian conceptual art,
but it is also probably one of the first in the world. Miklós Erdély later said that he took the idea from the sight of the goods that remained intact in the shop windows that were broken at the beginning of the revolution.
Miklós Erdély is a prominent creator of the Hungarian avant-garde. He made a film and dealt with fiction, for example, one of the most important volumes of 20th century Hungarian poetry, The Collapse Doctor, is associated with his name. (published by the Hungarian Workshop in Paris in 1974), and his theoretical work is also significant. Perhaps the most famous of his many works of art is the huge mosaic in which the model of Ági Pataki can be seen as the advertising character for Fabulon. The work was carried out on the firebreak of a house in Kálvin tér in 1982, unfortunately the building has since been demolished due to the construction of a new office building.
18. Christmas Message from New York
News of the 1956 uprising struck Sándor Márai in exile. The writer of bourgeois descent left the country in 1948 after years of ordering because his worldview was incompatible with communism. He had lived in New York since 1952 and was attentive to the news of the revolution that had broken out in his native land. He regularly shared his thoughts on Radio Free Europe and, after the defeat of the War of Independence, recited his poem The Angel from Heaven, in which he commemorates the heroes of the 1956 revolution.
17. The author of Indifference did not remain indifferent
After the defeat of the revolution, Western intellectuals also spoke out against Soviet aggression. The French writer and thinker Jean-Paul Sartre also spoke out in favor of the freedom of the Hungarians and condemned the intervention of the Soviet Union. Although they did not agree with the judgment of communism, and because of this he differed from his old friend and colleague, Albert Camus, in the early 1950s, in 1956 he also joined the Hungarian party. The author of Indifference and Plague has written a study entitled The Blood of the Hungarians, in which he states:
There is a real Europe that is united to oppose tyranny in the name of truth and freedom. Thousands of Hungarian freedom fighters are dying for Europe today.
Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. In special circumstances, he was involved in a car accident in January 1960 that resulted in his death. The vehicle was driven by its editor, Michel Gallimard, who survived the collision for a few days. According to a biographer, the sports car veered off a long, straight and wide stretch of road where there was little traffic. Another author suspects that the writer was the victim of an assassination attempt by the Soviet secret service.
16. A new genre is born in the years of silence.
After the war, István Örkény returned home from Soviet captivity and, based on what he lived there, wrote his book The People of Camps. Even then and later, problems accumulated with communist cultural policy. At the time of the 1956 revolution, he was a member of the board of the Hungarian Writers Association. He spoke with Zoltán Brády In 1974 on Hungarian radio, and so he remembered what happened after:
When Free Radio started, I was invited to Parliament (because then the show was broadcast from there) and the new Radio director asked me to write an introduction to the opening broadcast. I said I was happy. I wrote there. It began, “We lie at night, we lie during the day, we lie on every wavelength.”
He also spoke in a radio interview that he could not publish until five years after the defeat of the revolution and did not receive any literary works. He got his old degree in chemical engineering and went to work in a factory. About this period, he said:
It was then that I began to find myself because all control, pressure, persuasion from friends, or harsh language over me had ceased. It was then that I started writing one-minute stories.
The much-quoted phrase was uttered on Hungarian radio on October 30, 1956. In 1989, Endre Gömöri published the exact text in 168 hours:
Radio has been a tool of lies for many years. He executed orders. He lied at night, he lied during the day, he lied on every wavelength.
Interesting that
the famous phrase still lives on in the public consciousness, as the writer later recalled
– as it turned out later, inaccurately.
By the way, the writer also gave an interview to Tamás Vitray in 1974, in which he also talks about the events of 1956 and earlier:
We lied in the morning and at night.
Terribly similar words, and even more terrifying, already spoken by a Hungarian prime minister in office half a century after the revolution.
Winner of the 2006 parliamentary elections, the MSZP held a faction meeting in Balatonőszöd in May, where the political tasks for the next cycle were reviewed. In the end, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány spoke, but his words to the narrow public of the party were not left behind closed doors. A country raised its head on September 17 when it heard the well-known voice on the radio and, as a man, resented what it heard.
Outrage sparked street protests and events escalated to such an extent that on the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution, on October 23, the police acted with relentless brutality against both protesters and participants in the Fidesz ceremonial assembly.
15. Revolution in the concert hall
Composer László Lajtha has already collected folk music with Bartók and Kodály, for which he received the Kossuth Prize in 1951 for his work. At first he did not want to accept the recognition, finally
He distributed the money he received to his fellow musicians living in more modest circumstances.
After the Revolution, in 1957, he composed his Seventh Symphony, originally titled The Mourner of the Martyrs and then The Harmless Autumn, and only later did he earn the adjective Revolution.
After the revolution, so many musicians left Hungary that they were able to form a complete symphony orchestra. In 1957, the ensemble of emigrant musicians took the name Philharmonia Hungarica. They performed regularly and produced several albums, they were the first in the world to record the 104 symphonies of Joseph Haydn. Nor was there much talk of its existence in Hungary.
14. The Hungarian superhero takes revenge
On the occasion of the 1956 Memorial Year, the comic by the famous artist Attila Futaki and the writer Gábor Tallai, The Angel of Budapest, was published. The sophisticated publication hides a simple plot (although parallel in two planes of time): the protagonist, János Angyal, participates in the Budapest revolution, but after the Soviet invasion, he flees to the United States, where he has a spectacular career. But the past does not let him rest, and when he learns that his main enemy, the cruel Soviet officer, is going to Hungary, he too seeks revenge.
He launches into the fight like a true action hero,
so that then the truth prevails, that is, freedom over tyranny.
It’s an unusual choice of genre and genre, as it’s not often that a historical event like the 1956 revolution is covered in an action-packed adventure novel in addition to a comic.
13. The tanks are coming
On October 29, the famous native of Kiskunhalas, the architect István Nagy Szeder, joined the events of the 1956 revolution. The President of the Council invited him to participate in the leadership work, on the condition that
dissolve the revolutionary commission and the national guard and call immediate elections.
Voting took place on November 1, and the Small Producers Party won with 76 percent.
After the defeat of the revolution, he was arrested in February 1957 and sentenced to prison in 1958. During his captivity, he headed the Engineering Office of the National Prison in Budapest and was released in early 1959.
Many of his works remained in manuscripts, the story of his life was elaborated by Miklós Zelei in his book The Halasi Norm.
Memories of the events of 1956 are mostly preserved in the memory of Budapest or of the big cities, and we know relatively little about how people in the villages lived what happened at that time. Miklós Zelei
the world of southeastern Hungary in the 1950s and 1960s comes to life, that is, the period that immediately preceded and immediately followed the revolution. And with the melody of a flash, the tragic ending also emerges:
It is worth fifty six. When Soviet tank divisions in Timisoara arrive by road to Arad. The armored war posts. And they hit the heart of the country.
The events of 1956 also appear regularly in other works by Miklós Zelei. For example, in the drama Hubertus, about reprisals after the defeat of the revolution and the human hunt after the freedom fighters. Its protagonist, a baker from Újpest, is surrounded as a shepherd by an agent of the system to deceive his beloved love, a working boy from Csepel who escaped from the authorities to the West. And the persecution continues until the regime changes.
(In the next part of our memoir series, sports will play an important role. We recall how the history of excellence for the Gold Team continued after 1956, the conditions in which the water polo team played the final at the Olympic Games in Melbourne and the role of the first live broadcast of Hungarian Television in 1957. about the life of a sports reporter on May 1).
(Top image: Unguarded fundraising chest as part of a street fundraising campaign organized by the Hungarian Writers Association in Budapest in 1956. Photo: Gyula Nagy / Fortepan)
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