Attila Hromada BISLA Summer School Photo Essay the 20Th Century On
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Attila Hromada BISLA Summer School Photo essay The 20th Century on the Streets of Central Europe The 20th century on the streets of Central Europe Introduction The 20th century was a particularly long century in Central Europe. Imagine that you were born in the beginning of that century. During your lifetime, you experienced two raging wars, at least two types of dictatorships, genocides, collapses of three empires, changing borders and the emergence of a number of nation states. In this photo essay I will explore how these events of the 20th century manifest themselves on the streets of Central Europe namely through the destinations we visited during these two weeks. These events changed the life of the people living here and they still prevail today in the everyday life. When we remembering to these historical events which sometimes even nowadays transfer deep emotions, it is profoundly important that the agressors admit their wrongdoings. The reconcilliation is only possibe when we bring closer to each other the different narratives. Viennese Hofburg Gate I have chosen this picture of the Viennese Hofburg Gate because this picture depicts perfectly the multinationality of the former Monarchy. This symbolises the beginning of the 20th century, when a dozen of nationalities (far more what you can read from the picture) lived in one empire. Those peoples in the beginning of the new century had no idea how tragic and bellicose the new century will be. On the other side, the celebrating and decadent Vienna was only a little part of the vast empire. As Timorthy Snyder put it, the monarchy had complex challenges which can be solved only by complex solutions( this fact is ominously similar to the EU today). The problem was that the old king of the Monarchy, Franz Joseph was reluctant to make big reforms because he was afraid that any kind of big change would destroy the status quo of the Monarchy. On the other side, both of his successors were inclined to reform the Monarchy into a federalist state( firstly the poor Rudolf who had an untimely death; and eventually the assassinated Franz Ferdinand). In other words we can say that the reform of the monarchy was on the way of realisation. But the war came and the dissolution of the Monarchy became inevitable due to the hunger, inter-ethnic differences, strikes, but most importantly the elimination of the officers class in the prolonged warfare. Kapuzinergruft The Imperial Crypt, where the members of the Habsburg family are buried is situated near to the Hofburg Palace in the basement of the Capuchin Church in Vienna. It is the worlds biggest collection of royal mummies. It has a scary atmosphere and it was one of the most depressive places I have ever seen. There is poor lightning and you can only hear the whispers of the numerous tourist groups in the family tomb. There were a lot of people but in a funny way there was a relative silence. The Imperial Crypt implies the strong faith of the Habsburgs in the Catholic Church and the obsession with the cult of death which would make envious even an Egyptian pharaoh. Once you are here you can really understand the incredible power and wealth the Habsburg dynasty represented in Europe for more than 800 years. Prince Otto was also buried here in 2011. The last Habsburg prince was exceptionally popular, especially in the post-communist countries because of his humanitarian work here. In the picture you can see the famous Sissi’s grave who is besides her husband, Franz Jospeh and their son Rudolf. Devin Castle I call Devin the Jerusalem of Central Europe because it is considered to be an important place for both Slovaks and Hungarians. Since the 19th century, Devin has inspired several Slovak poets during romanticism, like Ludovit Stur. It was the time of the so called Slovak Renaissance, when Slovaks started to search for their roots and for the first time, revealing their demands for self-determination. For Hungarians it is the symbol of the modernisation, Westernisation of Hungary. My favourite poet, Ady Endre who criticized the old-fashioned and medieval thinking of the Hungarian society in the beginning of the 20th century, wrote a poem about Devin, Am I free to break through at Dévény, With modern songs fit for modern days? When it comes to Devin, historical amnesia prevails in both sides, especially the ‘who-was- the-first’-question. The concept of primordial nations, that every nation is unchangeable and have the same character from the ancient times, are hindering the reconcilliation even nowadays between Slovaks and Hungarians. Vienna In Vienna you can see a mysterius abbreviation basically everywhere, from buildings to cutlery. This enigma consists of all the vowels of the latin alphabet: ‘AEIOU‘ This mystery has occupied generations of historians. You can find this abbreviation since the Middle Ages throughout Austria, but nobody knows what it actually means. The most popular alternative is: Austria Erit In Orbe Ultima, or in English Austria will exist forever(no wonder why Austrian patriotism is the strongest in the word). It is a great example, how the nations are considered themselves as primordial entities. It is more interesting and even funny how the ‘Austria is eternal‘ concept evolved recently. In the 50’s when everyone was shocked by the tragic events in the last 50 years, an Austrian historian proposed an alternative meaning: Am End Ist Ollas Umasunst (Austrian dialect for "At the end, everything is pointless"). Jewish memorial in Vienna The extermination of Jewish people was probably the biggest disaster of Central Europe. They were the adhesive power in the intellectual and cultural life of Central Europe. Illustrates the loss of the society that the population share of Jewish people was the biggest in the world in the Central European region. Paradoxically the anti-semitism is also the highest there whithin Europe (especially in Poland and Hungary) and in many cases the Jewish presence has been ignored if we are talking about the culture, the identity and history of that region. Ondrejsky cintorin - Historic cemetery in Bratislava This picture is from Ondrejsky, the oldest cemetery of Bratislava. Till the end of the Second world war, it was a city where 3 main languages were spoken: German, Slovak and Hungarian. In the cemetery we can find the most visible remnants of the multilingual legacy of Bratislava. Here we can see here two names, the first one with a German family name but she choose to have her grave inscription in Hungarian in 1941. Finally, the genteman who died in 1991 had a Hungarian name but he rather preferred the Slovak language. The majority of people living here in the past indeed had a mixed identity, not necessarily connected to a nation but rather to their city. Július Satinský memorial This memorial is situated in the Danube street just beside of our Grössling Street. Július Satinský was a famous Slovak author and humorist. In the picture you can read 3 sentences in the 3 languages of the ol Bratislava, which was also spoken by Julius Satinsky. Not necessarily because he learned it, probably only because multilingualism was inevitable for the daily life at that time. Mr Satinsky wrote about how Bratislava became a prey of the communist ideologists for instance the Bratislava synagogue which survived even the Nazi era. The communists decided to destroy every remnants of this old Bratislava because for them uniformity and ‘sameness’ was the principle. In this picture you can read a simple but very powerful quote from him in three languages of the old Bratislava, which means ‘In our street there is freedom.‘ Soviet memorial in Vienna It is not widely known that Austria, just like Germany was also divided into 4 parts among the Allied powers. Vienna the capital city initially also had 4 sectors. The Soviet memorial, of course, is in the former Soviet sector, near to the Belvedere, in the Eastern part of the city. Eventually in 1955 Austria became free. ( we can say without any exaggeration that this neutrality was the best thing what could happen to Austria in the 20th century.) The most interesting for me was that the Austrians even spared the communist symbols and the Russian signs in the memorial(in Budapest, for example, the Liberty- statue was ‘mutilated’ in the day after the Soviet soldiers leaved in 1992). I guess Austria was ‚Finlandized’ by the Soviet Union to some extent during the Cold War. Petőfi memorial in Bratislava Petőfi got everything to be called the best known poet in the Hungarian literature: talent, history and fate - he was the romantic hero of the 1848/49 revolution who died in the battle of Segesvár in the age of 26, fighting for a free Hungary. The Petőfi statue in Bratislava has a stormy, but an interesting past. It was erected in 1911 by public donations from the locals, but after a few years later it was removed by the new Czechoslovak government. It could have been worse, for example what happened to the Maria Theresia statue, which was completely destroyed. Petőfi had the merit of not being a monarch, which was downright an advantage in the later communist times, so in the spirit of ‘international proletarism’ the ‘poet of the people’ was restored in 1951. Though it seemed that nationalism proved to be a stronger factor than international proletarism so the statue was graually replaced many times, eventually to the outskirts of the city, becoming a victim of vandalic attacks. Seemingly it was not an extenuating circumstance for the Slovak nationalists that Petőfi was not even Hungarian: his mother was Slovak, and his father had Serb origin.