Hungary

Dictionary: Hun·ga·ry (hŭng'gə-rē)

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Hungary

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A country of central Europe. The area was successively under Roman, Hunnish, Gothic, and Slavic rule before being conquered by Magyars in the late ninth century. Saint Stephen converted them to Christianity and subsequently established the first Hungarian state c. 997. Ruled by the Ottoman Turks after 1526, it later passed to Hapsburg control, under which it became part of Austria-Hungary in 1867. In 1918 it achieved independence again. A Communist regime was established in 1949 and was replaced in 1989 by a democratic republic. Budapest is the capital and the largest city. Population: 9,960,000.

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5min Related Video: Hungary

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Investment Dictionary: HUF

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In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the Hungarian Forint.

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The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion.

Holocaust: Hungary

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Country in central Europe. After Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, the Hungarian government became interested in making an alliance with Nazi Germany. The Hungarians felt that such an alliance would be good for them in that the two governments had similar authoritarian ideologies, and because the Germans could help them regain land they had lost in World War I. Over the next five years Hungary moved ever closer to Germany. The Munich Conference of September 1938 allowed Germany to annex the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. In November Germany carved a piece off of Czechoslovakia---a part that had formerly belonged to Hungary---and handed it back to Hungary to cement relations between the two nations. In August 1940 Germany also gave Hungary possession of northern Transylvania. In October 1940 Hungary joined Germany, Italy, and Japan in the Axis alliance. Hungary was awarded even more land in March 1941 when, despite its alliance with the Yugoslav government, Hungary joined its new ally, Germany, in invading and splitting up Yugoslavia. By that time, with all its new territories, the Jewish population in Greater Hungary had reached 725,007, not including about 100,000 Jews who had converted to Christianity but were racially considered to be Jews.

Hungary began issuing Anti-Jewish Legislation soon after the Anschluss---the annexing of Austria by Germany in March 1938. Hungary passed a law whereby Jewish participation in the economy and the professions was cut by 80 percent. In May 1939 the Hungarian government further limited the Jews in the economic realm and distinguished Jews as a "racial," rather than religious group. In 1939 Hungary created a new type of labor service draft, which Jewish men of military age were forced to join (see also Hungarian Labor Service System). Later, many Jewish men would die within its framework. In 1941 the Hungarian government passed a racial law, similar to the Nuremberg Laws, which officially defined who was to be considered Jewish.

Despite the hardships caused by these anti-Jewish laws, most of the Jews of Hungary lived in relative safety for much of the war. However, one group of Hungarian Jews was subject to tragedy in the summer of 1941: some 18,000 Jews randomly designated by the Hungarian authorities as "Jewish foreign nationals" were kicked out of their homes and deported to Kamenets-Podolski in the Ukraine, where most were murdered in cold blood. Another 1,000 Jews in the section of Hungary newly-acquired from Yugoslavia were murdered in early 1942 by Hungarian soldiers and police in their "pursuit of Partisans."

At the same time as they were passing anti-Jewish laws, the Hungarian authorities were getting more and more entrenched in their alliance with Germany. In June 1941 Hungary decided to join Germany in its war against the Soviet Union. Finally, in December 1941, Hungary joined the axis in declaring war against the United States, completely cutting itself off from any relationship with the West. But after Germany's defeat at Stalingrad and other battles in which Hungary lost tens of thousands of its soldiers, the Regent of Hungary, Miklos Horthy, began trying to back out of the alliance with Germany.

This move was not acceptable to Hitler, and in March 1944 German troops invaded Hungary in order to keep the country loyal by force. Hitler immediately set up a new government that he thought would be faithful, with Dome Sztojay, Hungary's former ambassador to Germany, as prime minister. Accompanying the occupation forces was a Sonderkommando unit headed by Adolf Eichmann, whose job was to begin implementing the "final solution" within Hungary. Anti-Jewish decrees were passed at lightning speed. judenraete were set up throughout Hungary with a central Judenrat called the Zsido Tanacs established in budapest under Samu stern. The Germans isolated the Jews from the outside world by restricting their movement and confiscating their telephones and radios. The Jews were forced to don the Jewish badge for easy identification (see also badge, jewish). Jewish property and businesses were seized, and from mid to late April the Jews of Hungary were forced into ghettos. These ghettos were short-lived. After two to six weeks the Jews of each ghetto were put on trains and deported. Between May 15 and July 9, about 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported, mainly to auschwitz, where half were gassed on arrival. In early July Horthy halted the deportations, still intent on cutting Hungary's ties with Germany. By that time, all of Hungary was "Jew-free," except for the capital, Budapest. During spring of 1944 Israel kasztner, Joel brand, and other members of the relief and rescue committee of budapest began negotiating with the ss to save lives. Many Jews (perhaps up to 8,000) fled from Hungary, most to romania, many with the help of Zionist youth movement members.

From July to October, the Jews of Budapest lived in relative safety. However, on October 15 Horthy announced publicly that he was done with Hungary's alliance with Germany, and was going to make peace with the Allies. The Germans blocked this move, and then simply toppled Horthy's government, giving power to Ferenc szalasi and his fascist, violently antisemitic arrow cross party.

The Arrow Cross immediately introduced a reign of terror in Budapest. Nearly 80,000 Jews were killed in Budapest itself, shot on the banks of the Danube River and then thrown in. Thousands of others were forced on death marches to the Austrian border. In December, during the Soviet siege of the city, 70,000 Jews were forced into a ghetto, thousands dying of cold, disease, and starvation.

Tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest were saved during the Arrow Cross reign by members of the Relief and Rescue Committee and other Jewish activists, especially Zionist youth movement members, who forged identity documents and provided them with food. These Jews worked together with foreign diplomats such as the Swedish Raoul wallenberg, the Swiss Carl lutz, and others who provided many Jews with international protection.

Hungary was liberated by the Soviet army by April 1945. Up to 568,000 Hungarian Jews had perished during the holocaust.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Hungary

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Country, central Europe. Area: 35,919 sq mi (93,030 sq km). Population (2005 est.): 10,078,000. Capital: Budapest. The people are an amalgam of Magyars and various Slavic, Turkish, and Germanic peoples. Language: Hungarian (Magyar; official). Religion: Christianity (mostly Roman Catholic; also Protestant). Currency: forint. The Great Alfold (Great Hungarian Plain), with fertile agriculture land, occupies nearly half of the country. Hungary's two most important rivers are the Danube and the Tisza. Lake Balaton, in the Transdanubian highlands, is the largest lake in central Europe. Forests cover nearly one-fifth of the land. Hungary is one of the more prosperous countries of eastern Europe and a major world producer of bauxite. A conversion from a socialist to a free-market economy was begun in the late 1980s. Hungary is a multiparty republic with one legislative house; the chief of state is the president, and the head of government is the prime minister. The western part of the country was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 14 BC. The Magyars, a nomadic people, settled in the Great Alfold in the late 9th century. Stephen I, crowned in 1000, Christianized the country and organized it into a strong and independent state. Invasions by the Mongols in the 13th century and by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century devastated the country, and by 1568 the territory of modern Hungary was divided into three parts: Royal Hungary had fallen to the Habsburgs; Transylvania had gained autonomy in 1566 under the Ottoman Turks; and the central plain remained under Ottoman control until the late 17th century, when the Austrian Habsburgs took over. Hungary declared its independence from Austria in 1849, and in 1867 the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was established. Its defeat in World War I (1914 – 18) resulted in the dismemberment of Hungary, leaving it only those areas in which Magyars predominated. In an attempt to regain some of this lost territory, Hungary cooperated with the Germans against the Soviet Union during World War II (1939 – 45). After the war a pro-Soviet provisional government was established, and in 1949 the Hungarian People's Republic was formed. Opposition to this Stalinist regime broke out in 1956 but was suppressed (see Hungarian Revolution). Nevertheless, from 1956 to 1988 communist Hungary grew to become the most tolerant of the Soviet-bloc nations of Europe. It gained its independence in 1989 and soon attracted the largest amount of direct foreign investment in eastern and central Europe. It joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.

For more information on Hungary, visit Britannica.com.

Photography Encyclopedia: Hungary

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The news of Daguerre's invention was announced in Hungary as early as 2 February 1839, in the publication Hasznosm Mulatságok (Useful Inventions), and a translation of Daguerre's manual appeared in the spring of 1840. That year, the Hungarian mathematician Josef Petzval designed an anastigmatic lens with sixteen times greater luminosity than Daguerre's, dramatically shortening exposures, and his design was commercially exploited by Voigtländer. In June 1841 the painter Jacopo Marastoni opened the first photographic studio in Pest. At the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition Antal Simonyi won an award for an ‘instant’ photography process.

The period until 1900 saw the rise of commercial portraiture and the application of photography to landscape (Balázs Orbán, Károly Divald), ethnography (József Plohn), and astronomy (Jenö Gothard, Miklós Konkoly Thege). After 1890 pictorialist ‘art photography’ established itself with the formation of the Circle of Friends of Photography (1894), the Budapest Photo Club (1899) and the National Association of Hungarian Amateur Photographers (1905), whose journal A fény (The Light) was edited by Mano Mai, the court photographer. Notable portraitists in the pre-1914 period included two women, Olga Máté and Ilka Réva, and József Pécsi (1889-1956), who founded and headed (1913-20) the photography department at Budapest School of Industrial Drawing. In 1930 Pécsi published a seminal book on advertising, Photo und Publizität.

Hungarian newspapers were being increasingly illustrated with photographs from the mid-1890s onwards. The Budapest-based János Müllner started freelance press reportage in 1904, covering female labour and other social issues in the capital. Reportage by Müllner and other photojournalists continued through the First World War and its turbulent aftermath, including, in the summer of 1919, the short-lived Socialist Republic headed by the Communist Béla Kun. During the subsequent period of reaction under Admiral Miklos Horthy, many photographers left Hungary, moving to Germany and France, then to Britain and the USA. They included Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Brassaï (Gyula Halasz), Robert Capa (Endre Erno Friedman), Cornell Capa, Martin Munkácsi, Nicholas Muray, and György Kepes. Other influential émigrés were Stefan Lorant and Andor Kraszna-Krausz, and the later inventor of holography, Dennis Gabor.

The pictorialists who stayed behind developed a ‘Hungarian’ style, including Pécsi, Rudolf Balogh, Károly Escher (1890-1966), Ernó Vadas, and Zajky Zoltán. Balogh, regarded as the father of Hungarian photojournalism, was an artist-photographer and journalist on the progressive Est newspaper. He recruited Escher, who photographed political events, the arts, and social conditions for 30 years. Documentary photographers also stayed, including the press photographers Klára Langer and Kata Sugár (1910-43), and the left-wing photographers centred on Munka (Work) magazine, whose 1932 exhibition Our Life was closed by the police. Also notable were the teacher Iván Hevesy, his pupil/partner Kata Kálmán, whose Tiborc Album was an outstanding study of Hungarian village life, and Angelo (Pál Funk; 1894-1974), a successful society portraitist.

The post-1945 communist regime permitted little innovative or challenging work. The Association of Hungarian Photographers (AHP), formed in 1956, remained the leading photography organization, publishing Photo Art magazine. Street fighting in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was documented by photographers, particularly Tibor Szentpétery, József Vas, Károly Kiss, Dezsõ Széki, and Bojár Sándor. Ata Kandó (b. 1913) photographed refugees fleeing across the Austrian border, but although published in the West, she was unacknowledged in Hungary. In the 1960s and 1970s photographers took fine-art or traditional directions to avoid problems with the authorities and Mari Mahr, originally a photojournalist, left for England. Others, such as Demeter Balla (b. 1931), Peter Korniss (b. 1937; a World Press Photo winner and judge), Imre Benko (Eugene Smith Award winner), and György Tóth (b. 1950) produced more challenging conceptual and documentary work into the 1980s.

The liberal atmosphere of the 1990s encouraged all types of photography and new initiatives to preserve historical material. In 1990 the Budapest Photographers' Cooperative and the AHP created the Hungarian Photographic Foundation, to establish a Museum of Hungarian Photography (HMP) in Kecskemét. Started with 75, 000 items collected by the AHP since 1958, the collection has since expanded threefold. In 1998 the Foundation established the Hungarian House of Photography at the restored Mai Manó House, Budapest, for contemporary and historical events. The HMP has also organized many shows of local, historical, and émigré photographers, particularly the 1998 exhibition Photographers Made in Hungary: Some Went Away/Some Stayed Behind, which toured thirteen countries.

— Robert Ashby

Bibliography

Ford, C., The Hungarian Connection (1987).
Kincses, K., Photographers Made in Hungary: Some Went Away/Some Stayed Behind (2000).
Biro, A., Photographies hongroises: des romantismes aux avant-gardes (2001).
Hungarian Photography Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow (CD-ROM, 2002)

Dictionary of Dance: Hungary

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Ballet was first performed in Hungary in the mid-18th century at the court of Prince Esterházy but the popularity it gained after visits by Noverre's Vienna dancers in 1772 and by Viganò in the 1790s was eclipsed during the early 19th century by pantomimes, Harlequinades, etc. During this period, however, Hungarian folk dance societies toured Europe with much success. In 1837 the National Theatre was opened in Pest, presenting its first ballet production, La Fille mal gardée (chor. János Kolosánszky, mus. Ferenc Kaczér), in 1839. In 1846 Cerrito and Saint-Léon danced Ondine, Giselle was staged in 1847, and Grahn and Taglioni were among the ballerinas who danced there during the 1850s. The first and greatest Hungarian prima ballerina of the 19th century was Emilia Aranyváry (active 1852-9), but otherwise local ballet activity was mediocre, the resident company being headed by the lacklustre choreographer Frigyes Campilli who mounted versions of romantic ballets (incl. Esmeralda, 1856) between 1846 and 1886.

In 1884 the State Opera House was opened in Budapest with its own ballet company attached. This became the national ballet ensemble (see below) and as such dominated dance activity in Hungary. During the 20th century, though, other companies emerged. In 1946 the first professional provincial company was established in Szegad, performing a repertory largely borrowed from Budapest. During the 1950s it was directed by Zoltán Imre who choreographed much of the repertory and after Imre left Hungary it closed down. In 1986 it re-opened under the direction of impresario R. Bokor, who commissioned works from various guests (including Imre) and also staged older works such as Jooss's The Green Table. Imre returned as director in 1991 but left two years later due to financial constraints.

In 1960 Imre Eck founded the Ballet Sopianae at the National Theatre at Pécs, creating a repertory of youth-oriented political ballets. His was one of the first attempts at a modern style of choreography in Hungary, created largely without access to Western ideas. One of the company's young dancers, Sándor Tóth, emerged as a choreographic talent in What is under your hat? (mus. Jószef Kinczes, 1964), among others, and took over direction of the company in 1968 with Eck as artistic director. Their experimental approach was very popular and the company toured widely in Hungary as well as in Europe and America. It is now known as the Pécs Ballet and since 1992 has been directed by István Herczog.

The Györ Ballet, founded in 1979, is Hungary's only classical company to be financially independent of a theatre, though it performs extensively at the Kisafuldy. It was founded by Iván Markó, and its repertoire was dominated by his own full-length narrative works. Since Markó's departure it stages a diverse repertory of Hungarian and foreign work.

Though financial problems have hindered the development of a large independent modern dance scene there has been sufficient activity to justify the Hungarian Contemporary Dance Festival (founded in 1992). Among the best-known modern groups to emerge is Artus, which was founded by Gábor Goda in 1985 and which performs mixed-media works fusing poetry, dance and acrobatics, TranzDanz, founded by Péter Gerzson-Kovács in 1991, which combines jazz, folk dance, and text, and the Sarbo Company, founded in 1990, which is strongly influenced by de Keersmaeker and the Bozsik company led by Yvette Bozsik whose works, such as The Miraculous Mandarin (1995), draw on folk dance and the styles of Wigman and Bausch.

The Hungarian State Folk Ensemble was founded in 1949 under the direction of Miklós Rábai, as a combined choir, orchestra, and dance troupe. Originally it presented elaborate Soviet-style stagings of folk music and dance numbers, but from the 1980s, under the direction of Sándor Tímár, it began to present more authentic and more intimate stagings of folk material, drawing on older traditions. It has toured world-wide.

Columbia Encyclopedia: Hungary

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Hungary, Hung. Magyarország, officially Republic of Hungary, republic (2005 est. pop. 10,007,000), 35,919 sq mi (93,030 sq km), central Europe. Hungary borders on Slovakia in the north, on Ukraine in the northeast, on Romania in the east, on Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia in the south, and on Austria in the west. The Danube River forms the Slovak-Hungarian border from a point near Bratislava to another near Esztergom, then turns sharply south and bisects the country. Budapest is Hungary's capital and its largest city.

Land and People

To the east of the Danube, the Great Hungarian Plain (Hung. Alföld) extends beyond the Hungarian boundaries to the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps. The Dráva and Tisza rivers are also important waterways. To the west of the Danube is the Little Alföld and the Transdanubian region, which are separated by the Bakony and Vértes mts. The Mátra Mts. in the north reach a height of 3,330 ft (1,015 m) at Kékes, the highest peak in Hungary. Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Hungary and in central Europe, is a leading resort area. Hungary has cold winters and hot summers; springs and autumns are short.

Situated on a plain near the geographic center of Europe, Hungary has been the meeting place and battleground of many peoples, and its heterogeneous population was often the cause of social upheaval before 1919. However, as a result of the separation of non-Hungarian territories after World War I, the great slaughter of the Jews in World War II, and the exchange after the war of Slavic and Romanian minorities for their Magyar counterparts, Hungary is today essentially homogeneous. The Magyars constitute more than 90% of the population. There are small minorities of Gypsies, Germans, Serbs, and other groups. Hungarian is spoken by most people. Over half of the people are Roman Catholic, but there is a large Calvinist minority. Hungary still has the largest Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe (100,000-120,000).

Economy

Hungary has long been an agricultural country, but since World War II it has become heavily industrialized. Through the 1980s, industry was largely nationally owned and two thirds of agricultural output came from collective and state farms. Hungary's economy underwent difficult readjustment in the 1990s, as it moved from producing goods chiefly for export to the USSR to developing a market-based economy and finding new trading partners. By the end of 1995, almost all retail trade had been privatized and less than half of all economic output originated from state-owned enterprises. Economic reforms also brought high unemployment and rising inflation, but today Hungary's economy is one of the most prosperous in Eastern Europe.

About half of Hungary's land is arable. With highly diversified crop and livestock production, the country is self-sufficient in food. Wheat, corn, sunflower seeds, potatoes, sugar beets, and grapes are the major crops. Pigs, cattle, sheep, and poultry are raised.

Hungary has been an important producer of bauxite, and deposits of coal, copper, natural gas, oil, and uranium have been exploited as well. Mining was curtailed in the 1990s as the country moved to a market economy and found it was not cost-effective to exploit the country's minerals at world prices. There has also been a decline in gas and oil production due to the exhaustion of reserves. However, mining and metallurgy are still important, as is food processing and the manufacture of construction materials, textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, steel, and motor vehicles. About one third of Hungarian industry is located in or near Budapest. Other industrial centers are Győr, Miskolc, Pécs, Debrecen, Szeged, and Dunapentele. The tourism industry is also an important source of foreign capital. Machinery, equipment, and food products are the most important exports; machinery and equipment, manufactured goods, fuels, and electricity are imported. Germany is the country's largest trading partner by far, followed by Austria, Italy, and France.

Government

Hungary is governed under the constitution of 1949 as amended. The president, who is the head of state, is elected by the legislature for a five-year term and is eligible for a second term. The government is headed by the prime minister, who is nominated by the president and elected by the legislature. The unicameral legislature, the National Assembly, has 386 members who are elected by popular vote to four-year terms. Administratively the country is divided into 19 counties, 22 urban counties, and the capital district.

History

Growth of a State

The Roman provinces of Pannonia and Dacia, conquered under Tiberius and Trajan (1st cent. A.D.), embraced part of what was to become Hungary. The Huns and later the Ostrogoths and the Avars settled there for brief periods. In the late 9th cent. the Magyars, a Finno-Ugric people from beyond the Urals, conquered all or most of Hungary and Transylvania. The semilegendary leader, Arpad, founded their first dynasty. The Magyars apparently merged with the earlier settlers, but they also continued to press westward until defeated by King (later Holy Roman Emperor) Otto I, at the Lechfeld (955).

Halted in its expansion, the Hungarian state began to solidify. Its first king, St. Stephen (reigned 1001-38), completed the Christianization of the Magyars and built the authority of his crown-which has remained the symbol of national existence-on the strength of the Roman Catholic Church. Under Bela III (reigned 1172-1196), Hungary came into close contact with Western European, particularly French, culture. Through the favor of succeeding kings, a few very powerful nobles-the magnates-won ever-widening privileges at the expense of the lesser nobles, the peasants, and the towns. In 1222 the lesser nobles forced the extravagant Andrew II to grant the Golden Bull (the "Magna Carta of Hungary"), which limited the king's power to alienate his authority to the magnates and established the beginnings of a parliament.

Under Andrew's son, Bela IV, the kingdom barely escaped annihilation: Mongol invaders, defeating Bela at Muhi (1241), occupied the country for a year, and Ottocar II of Bohemia also defeated Bela, who was further threatened by his own rebellious son Stephen V. Under Stephen's son, Ladislaus IV, Hungary fell into anarchy, and when the royal line of Arpad died out (1301) with Andrew III, the magnates seized the opportunity to increase their authority.

In 1308, Charles Robert of Anjou was elected king of Hungary as Charles I, the first of the Angevin line. His autocratic rule checked the magnates somewhat and furthered the growth of the towns. Under his son, Louis I (Louis the Great), Hungary reached its greatest territorial extension, with power extending into Dalmatia, the Balkans, and Poland.

Foreign Domination

After the death of Louis I, a series of foreign rulers succeeded: Sigismund (later Holy Roman Emperor), son-in-law of Louis; Albert II of Austria, son-in-law of Sigismund; and Ladislaus III of Poland (Uladislaus I of Hungary). During their reigns the Turks began to advance through the Balkans, defeating the Hungarians and their allies at Kosovo Field (1389), Nikopol (1396), and Varna (1444). John Hunyadi, acting after 1444 as regent for Albert II's son, Ladislaus V, gave Hungary a brief respite through his victory at Belgrade (1456).

The reign of Hunyadi's son, Matthias Corvinus, elected king in 1458, was a glorious period in Hungarian history. Matthias maintained a splendid court at Buda, kept the magnates subject to royal authority, and improved the central administration. But under his successors Uladislaus II and Louis II, the nobles regained their power. Transylvania became virtually independent under the Zapolya family. The peasants, rising in revolt, were crushed (1514) by John Zapolya. Louis II was defeated and killed by the Turks under Sulayman the Magnificent in the battle of Mohács in 1526. The date is commonly taken to mark the beginning of Ottoman domination over Hungary. Ferdinand of Austria (later Emperor Ferdinand I), as brother-in-law of Louis II, claimed the Hungarian throne and was elected king by a faction of nobles, while another faction chose Zapolya as John I.

In the long wars that followed, Hungary was split into three parts: the western section, where Ferdinand and his successor, Rudolf II, maintained a precarious rule, challenged by such Hungarian leaders as Stephen Bocskay and Gabriel Bethlen; the central plains, which were completely under Turkish domination; and Transylvania, ruled by noble families (see Báthory and Rákóczy).

The Protestant Reformation, supported by the nobles and well-established in Transylvania, nearly succeeded throughout Hungary. Cardinal Pázmány was a leader of the Counter Reformation in Hungary. In 1557 religious freedom was proclaimed by the diet of Transylvania, and the principle of toleration was generally maintained throughout the following centuries.

Hungarian opposition to Austrian domination included such extreme efforts as the assistance Thököly gave to the Turks during the siege of Vienna (1683). Emperor Leopold I, however, through his able generals Prince Eugene of Savoy and Duke Charles V of Lorraine, soon regained his lost ground. Budapest was liberated from the Turks in 1686. In 1687, Hungarian nobles recognized the Hapsburg claim to the Hungarian throne. By the Peace of Kalowitz (1699), Turkey ceded to Austria most of Hungary proper and Transylvania. Transylvania continued to fight the Hapsburgs, but in 1711, with the defeat of Francis II Rákóczy (see under Rákóczy, family), Austrian control was definitely established. In 1718 the Austrians took the Banat from Turkey.

Hungary and Austria

The Austrians brought in Germans and Slavs to settle the newly freed territory, destroying Hungary's ethnic homogeneity. Hapsburg rule was uneasy. The Hungarians were loyal to Maria Theresa in her wars, but many of the unpopular centralizing reforms of Joseph II, who had wanted to make German the sole language of administration and to abolish the Hungarian counties, had to be withdrawn.

In the second quarter of the 19th cent. a movement that combined Hungarian nationalism with constitutional liberalism gained strength. Among its leaders were Count Szechenyi, Louis Kossuth, Baron Eötvös, Sándor Petőfi, and Francis Deak. Inspired by the French Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian diet passed the March Laws (1848), which established a liberal constitutional monarchy for Hungary under the Hapsburgs. But the reforms did not deal with the national minorities problem. Several minority groups revolted, and, after Francis Joseph replaced Ferdinand VII as emperor, the Austrians waged war against Hungary (Dec., 1848).

In Apr., 1849, Kossuth declared Hungary an independent republic. Russian troops came to the aid of the emperor, and the republic collapsed. The Hungarian surrender at Vilagos (Aug., 1849) was followed by ruthless reprisals. But after its defeat in the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Austria was obliged to compromise with Magyar national aspirations. The Ausgleich of 1867 (largely the work of Francis Deak) set up the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in which Austria and Hungary were nearly equal partners. Emperor Francis Joseph was crowned (1867) king of Hungary, which at that time also included Transylvania, Slovakia, Ruthenia, Croatia and Slovenia, and the Banat. The minorities problem persisted, the Serbs, Croats, and Romanians being particularly restive under Hungarian rule.

During this period industrialization began in Hungary, while the condition of the peasantry deteriorated to the profit of landowners. By a law of 1874 only about 6% of the population could vote. Until World War I, when republican and socialist agitation began to threaten the established order, Hungary was one of the most aristocratic countries in Europe. As the military position of Austria-Hungary in World War I deteriorated, the situation in Hungary grew more unstable. Hungarian nationalists wanted independence and withdrawal from the war; the political left was inspired by the 1917 revolutions in Russia; and the minorities were receptive to the Allies' promises of self-determination.

In Oct., 1918, Emperor Charles I (King of Hungary as Charles IV) appointed Count Michael Károlyi premier. Károlyi advocated independence and peace and was prepared to negotiate with the minorities. His cabinet included socialists and radicals. In November the emperor abdicated, and the Dual Monarchy collapsed.

Independence

Károlyi proclaimed Hungary an independent republic. However, the minorities would not deal with him, and the Allies forced upon him very unfavorable armistice terms. The government resigned, and the Communists under Béla Kun seized power (Mar., 1919). The subsequent Red terror was followed by a Romanian invasion and the defeat (July, 1919) of Kun's forces. After the Romanians withdrew, Admiral Horthy de Nagybanya established a government and in 1920 was made regent, since there was no king. Reactionaries, known as White terrorists, conducted a brutal campaign of terror against the Communists and anyone associated with Károlyi or Kun.

The Treaty of Trianon (see Trianon, Treaty of), signed in 1920, reduced the size and population of Hungary by about two thirds, depriving Hungary of valuable natural resources and removing virtually all non-Magyar areas, although Budapest retained a large German-speaking population. The next twenty-five years saw continual attempts by the Magyar government to recover the lost territories. Early endeavors were frustrated by the Little Entente and France, and Hungary turned to a friendship with Fascist Italy and, ultimately, to an alliance (1941) with Nazi Germany. The authoritarian domestic policies of the premiers Stephen Bethlen and Julius Gombos and their successors safeguarded the power of the upper classes, ignored the demand for meaningful land reform, and encouraged anti-Semitism.

Between 1938 and 1944, Hungary regained, with the aid of Germany and Italy, territories from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania. It declared war on the USSR (June, 1941) and on the United States (Dec., 1941). When the Hungarian government took steps to withdraw from the war and protect its Jewish population, German troops occupied the country (Mar., 1944). The Germans were driven out by Soviet forces (Oct., 1944-Apr., 1945). The Soviet campaign caused much devastation.

National elections were held in 1945 (in which the Communist party received less than one fifth of the vote), and a republican constitution was adopted in 1946. The peace treaty signed at Paris in 1947 restored the bulk of the Trianon boundaries and required Hungary to pay $300 million in reparations to the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. A new coalition regime instituted long-needed land reforms.

Communist Rule

Early in 1948 the Communist party, through its control of the ministry of the interior, arrested leading politicians, forced the resignation of Premier Ferenc Nagy, and gained full control of the state. Hungary was proclaimed a People's Republic in 1949, after parliamentary elections in which there was only a single slate of candidates. Radical purges in the national Communist party made it thoroughly subservient to that of the USSR. Industry was nationalized and land was collectivized. The trial of Cardinal Mindszenty aroused protest throughout the Western world.

By 1953 continuous purges of Communist leaders, constant economic difficulties, and peasant resentment of collectivization had led to profound crisis in Hungary. Premier Mátyás Rákosi, the Stalinist in control since 1948, was removed in July, 1953, and Imre Nagy became premier. He slowed down collectivization and emphasized production of consumer goods, but he was removed in 1955, and the emphasis on farm collectivization was restored. In 1955, Hungary joined the Warsaw Treaty Organization and was admitted to the United Nations.

On Oct. 23, 1956, a popular anti-Communist revolution, centered in Budapest, broke out in Hungary. A new coalition government under Imre Nagy declared Hungary neutral, withdrew it from the Warsaw Treaty, and appealed to the United Nations for aid. However, János Kádár, one of Nagy's ministers, formed a counter-government and asked the USSR for military support. Some 500,000 Soviet troops were sent to Hungary, and in severe and brutal fighting they suppressed the revolution. Nagy and some of his ministers were abducted and were later executed, and thousands of other Hungarians, many of them teenagers, were imprisoned or executed. In addition, about 190,000 refugees fled the country. Kádár became premier and sought to win popular support for Communist rule and to improve Hungary's relations with Yugoslavia and other countries. He carried out a drastic purge (1962) of former Stalinists (including Mátyás Rákosi), accusing them of the harsh policies responsible for the 1956 revolt. Collectivization, which had been stopped after 1956, was again resumed in 1958-59.

Kádár's regime gained a degree of popularity as it brought increasing liberalization to Hungarian political, cultural, and economic life. Economic reforms introduced in 1968 brought a measure of decentralization to the economy and allowed for supply and demand factors; Hungary achieved substantial improvements in its standard of living. Hungary aided the USSR in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The departure (1971) of Cardinal Mindszenty from Budapest after 15 years of asylum in the U.S. legation and his removal (1974) from the position of primate of Hungary improved relations with the Catholic church. Due to Soviet criticism, many of the economic reforms were subverted during the mid-1970s only to be reinstituted at the end of the decade.

During the 1980s, Hungary began to increasingly turn to the West for trade and assistance in the modernization of its economic system. The economy continued to decline and the high foreign debt became unpayable. Premier Károly Grósz gave up the premiership in 1988, and in 1989 the Communist party congress voted to dissolve itself. That same year Hungary opened its borders with Austria, allowing thousands of East Germans to cross to the West.

A Democratic Hungary

By 1990, a multiparty political system with free elections had been established; legislation was passed granting new political and economic reforms such as a free press, freedom of assembly, and the right to own a private business. The new premier, József Antall, a member of the conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum who was elected in 1990, vowed to continue the drive toward a free-market economy. The Soviet military presence in Hungary ended in the summer of 1991 with the departure of the final Soviet troops. Meanwhile, the government embarked on the privatization of Hungary's state enterprises.

Antall died in 1993 and was succeeded as prime minister by Péter Boross. Parliamentary elections in 1994 returned the Socialists (former Communists) to power. They formed a coalition government with the liberal Free Democrats, and Socialist leader Gyula Horn became prime minister. Árpád Göncz was elected president of Hungary in 1990 and reelected in 1995.

In 1998, Viktor Orbán of the conservative Hungarian Civic party became prime minister as head of a coalition government. Hungary became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999. Ference Mádl succeeded Göncz as president in Aug., 2000. A 2001 law giving ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries (but not worldwide) social and economic rights in Hungary was criticized by Romania and Slovakia as an unacceptable extraterritorial exercise of power. The following year, negotiations with Romania extended the rights to all Romanian citizens, and in 2003 the benefits under the law were reduced. The 2002 elections brought the Socialists and the allies, the Free Democrats, back into power; former finance minister Péter Medgyessy became prime minister.

In August, 2004, Medgyssey fired several cabinet members, angering the Free Democrats and leading the Socialists to replace him. The following month Ferenc Gyurcsány, the sports minister, became prime minister. Hungary became a member of the European Union earlier in the year. A Dec., 2004, referendum on granting citizenship to ethnic Hungarians in other countries passed, but it was not legally binding because less than 25% of the Hungarian electorate voted for it. László Sólyom was elected president of Hungary in June, 2005. In Apr., 2006, Gyurcsány's Socialist-led coalition won a majority of seats in the parliamentary elections, marking the first time a government had won a second consecutive term in office since the establishment of free elections in 1990.

In September, however, the prime minister suffered a setback when a recording of a May, 2006, Socialist party meeting was leaked and he was heard criticizing the government's past performance and saying that the party had lied to win the 2006 election. The tape sparked opposition demonstrations and riots, which were encouraged by the opposition Civic party, and led to calls for the government to resign. Gyurcsány apologized for not having campaigned honestly, and the coalition was trounced in local elections in early October, but he retained the support of his parliamentary coalition and the government remained in power.

In Apr., 2008, the Alliance of Free Democrats left the governing coalition, and the Socialists formed a minority government. The 2008 global financial crisis led to a sharp drop in the value of the Hungarian currency in October, forcing Hungary to seek a €20 billion rescue package. Economic woes forced the increasingly unpopular prime minister to resign, and Gordon Bajnai, the economy minister, succeeded Gyurcsány in Apr., 2009.

Bibliography

See P. Teleki, The Evolution of Hungary (1923); D. G. Kosary, A History of Hungary (1941, repr. 1971); C. A. McCartney, A History of Hungary, 1929-1945 (1957, repr. 1962); F. A. Vali, Rift and Revolt in Hungary (1961); N. M. Nagy-Talavera, The Green Shirts and Others (1970); H. G. Heinrich, Hungary (1986); C. M. Hann, ed., Market Economy and Civil Society in Hungary (1990); P. F. Sugar, A History of Hungary (1991); C. Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (2006); V. Sebestyen, Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (2006). See also bibliography under Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

Psychoanalysis: Hungary

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Hungary, a country that was primarily agricultural until the mid-nineteenth century, entered the modern era in 1867 with the creation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. At the start of the twentieth century, in Budapest, which had become a center of cultural life, a group of radical intellectuals demanded the democratization of a country that had remained semi-feudal. Unable to compete in the political sphere, they created institutions like the Free School of Social Science, reviews like Huszadik Szàzad (Twentieth Century) and Nyugat (Occident), to achieve their goal by means of education. For psychoanalysis the Hungarian intelligentsia was fertile terrain, for it held that the liberation of the individual and the liberation of society went hand in hand.

Psychoanalysis was introduced to Hungary by Sándor Ferenczi, who was its leading exponent. A young neurologist, Ferenczi encountered Freudian theory through Carl Gustav Jung's word association test and through the literature of analysis. After his first visit to Freud in February 1908, he quickly became an integral part of the Vienna group and assumed the responsibility of bringing psychoanalysis to Hungary. His efforts were well received in literary and artistic circles, as shown in the writings of Géza Csáth, Dezsö Kosztolànyi, Mihály Babits, and Frigyes Karinthy, while most physicians remained reticent.

The Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association was founded by Ferenczi in 1913. In addition to Ferenczi, its members included the psychiatrist István Hollós, the physician Lajos Lévy, the medical student Sándor Radó, and the journalist and writer Hugó Ignotus (Hugó Veigelsberg), the editor-in-chief of Nyugat.

During World War I, Ferenczi, who had been mobilized, cared for soldiers who had suffered trauma during combat. The psychoanalytic treatment of war neuroses drew the attention of Hungarian officials, with the result that the Fifth Congress of Psychoanalysis, organized in Budapest on September 28 and 29, 1918, was held at the Academy of Sciences in the presence of government representatives. During the congress, Antal (Anton) von Freund, who ran a large beer hall, but also had a PhD in philosophy, a patient and friend of Freud, provided funding for the creation of a psychoanalytic clinic and publishing house. Ferenczi was elected president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, but the political upheavals that shook the country, especially Hungary's independence from Austria, the democratic revolution, the Bolshevik revolution in Budapest in 1919 and its brutal repression, forced him to yield the presidency to the Briton, Ernest Jones.

During the democratic government of Mihály Károlyi, students and progressives demanded that psychoanalysis be officially recognized. Their demand reached the Commune and Ferenczi was appointed professor of psychoanalysis at the university, the first in the world. When the right-wing government of Miklós Horthy came to power, the position was eliminated and, in 1920, Ferenczi was excluded from the Hungarian medical association.

The 1920s turned out to be a phase of expansion for psychoanalysis in Hungary. At the end of the war, Géza Róheim, Imre Hermann, Zsigmond Pfeifer, and other leading figures joined the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association. Cut off from playing a role in Hungarian public life, psychoanalysts consulted, taught, and published. Róheim developed the notion of psychoanalytic anthropology, Hermann worked on the psychology of creativity, Pfeifer on children's games. This was also the period of the first wave of emigration. Sándor Radó and Jenö Hárnik moved to Berlin and participated in the creation of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training. During the twenties, József Eisler, Sándor Feldmann, Erzsébet Révész, Béla Felszeghy, Vilma Kovács, and Alice and Mihály Bálint joined the association.

Efforts were made to organize the teaching of psychoanalysis. Seminars on theory were established in 1919, and in 1925 a training method specific to Hungary was developed by Ferenczi and Vilma Kovács.

In 1925, István Hollós was fired from his position as head physician at the psychiatric hospital of Lipótmezö because of his Jewish background. Two years later he published My Farewell from the Yellow House, in which he investigated psychosis from a new and innovative point of view.

In 1928, Géza Róheim traveled to central Australia, Normanby Island, and America. During his research, financed by Marie Bonaparte, he combined anthropological research with psychoanalytic theory.

In 1930, a psychoanalytic clinic for children was created under the direction of Margit Dubowitz. That same year Lilian Rotter and Fanny Hann joined the association. In 1931, in spite of several administrative problems, a polyclinic was opened at 12 Mészáros Street, with Ferenczi as director. The building and funding were provided by Vilma Kovács and her family; analysts from the association provided free consultations.

Ferenczi's students prepared Psychoanalytic Studies for his sixtieth birthday, but the book wasn't published until after his death in 1933. István Hollós then became president of the association and Mihály Bálint director of the polyclinic.

In 1935 and 1937 two meetings, known as the Four Nations, were organized by the psychoanalytic associations of Vienna, Prague, Italy, and Hungary, the first in Vienna, the second in Budapest, and devoted to the problems of psychoanalytic training. At the second meeting, Vilma Kovács detailed the characteristics of the Hungarian method and Anna Freud read a paper by Helene Deutsch criticizing the method.

Hungarian analysts also began a program to develop public awareness of psychoanalysis. Kata Lévy organized seminars with teachers, Alice Bálint with mothers, and Mihály Bálint held discussion groups with general practitioners. In 1933, Lilly Hajdu, a psychiatrist, joined the association.

During the late thirties, threatened by the rise of anti-Semitism and fascism, a number of analysts decided to emigrate. Among them were the Bálints, Géza Róheim, Sándor Feldmann, and Edit Gyömröi. The association continued to function under police surveillance and under the direction of its non-Jewish members, Endre Almássy and Tibor Rajka. In 1944, when German troops invaded Hungary and put Hungarian Nazis in power, several analysts, including Zsigmond Pfeifer, Géza Dukes, László Révész, Miklós Gimes, and József Eisler, became victims of persecution. Imre Hermann and István Hollós barely escaped with their lives.

After 1945, psychoanalysts in Hungary resumed their activities. They participated in the creation of a mental health institute and worked in dispensaries. But the Stalinist government, which came to power in 1948, forced the association to dissolve. From then on psychoanalysis survived in a semi-clandestine fashion, primarily through the help of Imre Hermann, who trained the new generation of analysts: György Vikár, Livia Nemes, Agnes Binét, Teréz Virág. The dark years after 1956 were marked by the suicide of Lilly Hajdu, whose husband was murdered by the Nazis and whose son, a friend of Imre Nagy, had been executed along with the prime minister. During the sixties, the Kádar government became more tolerant of psychoanalysis. István Székács, a member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association since 1939, also began to train psychoanalysts, although not initially a member of Hermann's group.

During the seventies, Hungarian analysts still did not have an officially recognized association, but some public manifestations of recognition took place. In 1969, for example, Imre Hermann was decorated on his eightieth birthday and, in 1974, a commemorative celebration was organized for the Ferenczi centenary. In 1987 an international congress of psychoanalysis was held in Budapest.

After democracy was restored in 1989, the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association was reconstituted and affiliated itself with the International Psychoanalytic Association. A new generation of analysts was able to practice, teach, and publish openly.

The Ferenczi Society, a broad-based group of people interested in psychoanalysis, began to publish the review Thalassa. While the first generation of analysts trained by Imre Hermann was affected primarily by his ideas, contemporary psychoanalysts were reevaluating the ideas of Ferenczi, which they were forced to read in foreign editions since his complete works had not yet been published in Hungarian because of a lack of funding. They also served as an inspiration for Otto Kernberg.

Hungarian psychoanalysts of the 1930s developed a number of specific ideas that justify referring to them collectively as the Budapest School. These include the importance of trauma in the etiology of mental pathology, the attention given to object relations, consideration of dyadic relations and regression, and insistence on the importance of experience in therapy. Hungarian training methods differed from other methods in that the candidate's first control analysis was undertaken by his own analyst to further an understanding of the counter-transference and better understand his own transference to the analyst.

Ferenczi's students demonstrated considerable creativity. Imre Hermann developed the theory of clinging, Géza Róheim the ontogenetic theory of culture, and Mihály Bálint the theory of primal love (and several others after his emigration). Lilian Rotter developed a body of original work on female sexuality and Alice Bálint on the mother-child relationship. István Hollós and Lilly Hajdu examined psychoses from a psychoanalytic point of view.

Bibliography

Bálint, Michael. (1968). The basic fault: Therapeutic aspects of regression. London: Tavistock Publications.

Brabant-Gerö,Éva. (1993). Ferenczi et L'école hongroise de psychanalyse. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Ferenczi, Sandor. (1955). Selected Papers of Sandor Ferenczi. (Vol. 3, Michael Bálint, Ed.). New York: Basic Books.

Haynal, André. (1988). The technique at issue: Controversies in psychoanalysis from Freud and Ferenczi to Michael Bálint. (Elizabeth Holder, Trans.). London: Karnac. (Original work published 1986)

Hermann, Imre. (1972). L'instinct filial. (G. Kassai, Trans.). Paris: Denoël.

Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association. (1933).Lélekelemzési Tanulmànyok (Psychoanalytic Studies). Budapest: Somló.

—ÉVA BRABANT-GERÖ

History 1450-1789: Hungary

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Hungary's history from 1450 through 1790 can be divided into three periods. The century from 1450 was the last phase of the independent Hungarian Kingdom, whose major political concern was the Ottoman advance. Hungary lost her long struggle at the battle of Mohács in 1526 and was divided into three parts by the mid-sixteenth century. The second period (1541–1699) is often labeled as the era of the tripartite division of the country. Royal Hungary in the west was under Habsburg rule and Ottoman Hungary in the middle was ruled, at least partly, from Constantinople (Istanbul), whereas the Principality of Transylvania in the east, although an Ottoman satellite state, had considerable autonomy, especially in its domestic affairs. While hostilities and rivalries often divided the Hungarian political elite, with regard to socioeconomic, religious, cultural, and even political developments, the three parts were connected on many levels. The next era can be described as the integration of Hungary into the Habsburg Monarchy that reconquered the country from the Ottomans by the end of the 17th century. This period witnessed a new political compromise between Vienna and the Hungarian estates, as well as visible economic and demographic growth and cultural flourishing.

In the mid-fifteenth century, the Kingdom of Hungary was a regional power in Central Europe. It had an estimated territory of 300,000 square kilometers, a population of 3.1–3.5 million, and annual revenues of 500,000 gold florins under King Matthias (Mátyás) Corvinus of the Hunyadi family (1458–1490). Protected by the natural boundaries of the Carpathian Mountains in the north and in the east, Hungary was bordered by Poland in the north, Bohemia in the northwest, and Habsburg Austria in the west. In the south, the Danube and Sava Rivers—and the southern border defense system built along those rivers—separated the country from the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman threat fostered military reforms and centralization in Hungary. Relying on the towns and the lesser nobility, a reformed tax system, a secular bureaucracy, and a mercenary army of thirty thousand strong, King Matthias curtailed the influence of the aristocracy. Although the king strengthened and reorganized the country's southern defenses, vast resources were spent on his wars against Austria and Bohemia in pursuit of a Danubian monarchy, as well as on the king's lavish court and patronage of the arts and sciences.

During the rules of King Matthias's Jagiello successors (1490–1526), the power-hungry nobility strengthened its position vis-à-vis both the crown and the rest of the society. An influential compilation of Hungarian customary law, called the Tripartitum (1514), codified the rights and privileges of the nobility, including the right to resist the king. The book perceived the nobility, whose members supposedly enjoyed equal rights (una et aedem nobilitas), as "the mystical body" of the "holy crown" that is, the sole representatives of the "political nation." Following the rebellion of 1514, the nobility subjected the peasants to "eternal servitude." Although the Tripartitum was never promulgated and the decrees of the Diet of 1514 were often suspended, they provided the nobility with a legal framework until 1848 and were largely responsible for Hungary's unhealthy social structure.

The annihilation of the Hungarian army at the battle of Mohács (1526) not only meant the end of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary but also marked the beginning of Habsburg-Ottoman military confrontation in Central Europe. Following the Ottomans' withdrawal from Hungary in 1526, competing factions of the nobility elected two kings, János Szapolyai (John Zapolya, 1526–1540), the royal Hungarian governor (or vajda) of Transylvania, and Ferdinand of Habsburg (1526–1564). With Ottoman military assistance, Szapolyai controlled the eastern parts of the country, while Ferdinand ruled the northern and western parts of Hungary. When the death of Szapolyai (1540) upset the military equilibrium between the Habsburgs and Ottomans, Sultan Suleiman I annexed central Hungary to his empire (1541). Hungary's strategically less significant eastern territories were left in the hands of Szapolyai's widow and were soon to become the Principality of Transylvania, an Ottoman vassal state. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Habsburgs, who remained on the Hungarian throne until 1918, had to content themselves with northern and western Hungary, known as Royal Hungary.

Although the Ottomans launched multiple campaigns against Hungary and the Habsburgs (1529, 1532, 1541, 1543, 1551–1552, 1566, 1663–1564) and the two empires waged two exhausting wars in Hungary (1593–1606 and 1683–1699), the buffer-zone-turned-country saved Habsburg central Europe from Ottoman conquest. Successive peace treaties (1547, 1568, 1606, and 1664) maintained the tripartite division of the country, which ended only in 1699, when, in the treaty of Karlowitz, the Ottomans ceded most of Hungary and Transylvania to the Habsburgs. The country's unity was only partially restored, however, for Vienna administered Transylvania as a separate imperial territory until 1848.

The price of being the "bastion of Christendom" was the dismemberment of the country and constant warfare along the Muslim-Christian divide with severe economic and social consequences. However, the endurance of Hungarian society and its economy proved to be much stronger than expected. Despite continuous skirmishes and protracted wars, famine, and epidemics, Hungary's population had increased from 3.1 million in the 1490s to 4 million by the early 1680s. In spite of double taxation (Hungarian and Ottoman), many towns in the Great Plain (Alföld) under Ottoman rule profited from the Hungaro-Ottoman condominium and succeeded in strengthening their privileges and self-government. The sixteenth century was the golden age of manorial agriculture and cattle trade. From the 1570s, Hungary exported some eighty thousand to one hundred thousand head of cattle annually to Vienna and to the German and Italian cities through an elaborate chain of cattle keepers and merchants. While defending the border was a major burden on the society, many profited from feeding and supplying imperial armies and Ottoman and Hungarian garrisons.

The tripartite division of the country and the limits of Habsburg authority also fostered the spread of Protestant Reformation. In Transylvania, Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism were declared accepted denominations (recepta religio) in 1568. In the 1580s, half of Hungary's population was Calvinist, another quarter followed the Augsburg Confession, and the remaining 25 percent belonged to the Unitarian, Catholic, and Orthodox churches.

Angered by Vienna's lukewarm Turkish policy and aggressive Counter-Reformation, Protestant Magyar nobles rebelled repeatedly against the Catholic Habsburgs in the seventeenth century. They were aided by the princes of Transylvania, which, under the able rule of Gábor Bethlen (1613–1629) and György Rákóczi I (1630–1648) flourished economically and culturally. Allied with the Protestant states in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the princes launched several campaigns against the Habsburgs and extended the principality's territories at the expense of Royal Hungary. When the Habsburgs conceded further Hungarian territories to the Ottomans in the treaty of Vasvár in 1664 in spite of the former's victory at St. Gotthard, even the loyal Catholic magnates of Royal Hungary were outraged and many joined the anti-Austrian "magnate conspiracy" of 1670–1671. The severe punishment of the members of the plot and Emperor Leopold's "confessional absolutism" triggered new waves of anti-Habsburg rebellions, of which the most serious was the revolt of Imre Thököly's kurucs (a group of Hungarian "national crusaders" or insurgents) in 1681–1683. Thököly's war led to the creation of yet another pro-Ottoman vassal state in Upper Hungary at a critical moment when the Ottomans' failed siege of Vienna (1683) set off an international counteroffensive, which, by the end of the century, had reconquered most of Hungary from the Ottomans.

After 1699, the Habsburgs treated Hungary as a conquered and subjugated province, thus provoking another revolt of the Magyars. The peace treaty of Szatmár (1711), which ended Ferenc Rákóczi's defeated War of Independence (1703–1711), was a wise compromise for both parties. It altered initial Habsburg designs regarding Hungary's incorporation into the monarchy, leaving the county-level administration and jurisdiction in the hands of the Hungarian nobility, which also retained many of its former privileges including tax exemption. On the other hand, Charles VI (Charles III as king of Hungary, 1711–1740) restored Habsburg rule over Hungary, whose Estates recognized his daughter's succession (the Pragmatic Sanction) in the Diet of 1722/23, making Hungary a hereditary Habsburg kingdom.

Within two generations, the population of the country (including Croatia and Transylvania) had doubled, reaching nine million by the late 1780s. This was partly due to voluntary immigration and state-organized settlement policy through which hundreds of thousands of Romanians, Croatians, Slovaks, and Germans arrived in Hungary. This significantly changed the ethnic composition of the country, where the Hungarians lost their absolute majority and comprised less than 40 percent of the inhabitants in the end of the century.

Led by ideas reflecting the Enlightenment and by absolutistic and physiocratic principles, Maria Theresa (ruled 1740–1780) and Joseph II (ruled 1780–1790) initiated important administrative, economic, legal, and cultural reforms, issued as royal patents and carried out by royal commissioners to avoid their blocking by the Estates in the Diet. Many of these reforms were beneficial for Hungary. The Urbarial Patent of 1767 regulated the size of peasant holdings and obligations in order to eliminate inequalities and overtaxation, whereas the Ratio educationis of 1777 reformed the educational system. Joseph II's Edict of Tolerance (1781) permitted the "free practice" of religion for all denominations, enabling their members to become guild masters, earn university diplomas in Hungary, and serve in state offices. However, Maria Theresa's discriminatory tariff regulations (1754), which separated Hungary from the rest of the monarchy and its traditional German and Italian markets, negatively affected Hungary, reinforcing the country's agrarian supplier status and hindering the development of domestic industries. Joseph II's decision to replace Latin with German as the official language of administration was perceived as "Germanization" and, along with his patents that abolished Hungary's old administrative structure, infuriated the Estates. By the end of Joseph II's rule, the country, which was feeling overwhelmed by the severe burden of a new Turkish war (1787–1790), was again on the brink of an insurrection. Facing possible armed rebellion in Hungary, growing Prussian pressure, a changing international order because of the French Revolution, and military defeat in his Turkish war, Joseph II decided to appease his Magyar nobility. In January 1790, the emperor revoked all his reforms, except for his Edict of Toleration and his decrees that benefited the peasantry and parishes.

After the compromise in 1711, loyal Hungarian magnates and the Catholic hierarchy were among the richest people in the monarchy. They were also instrumental in the cultural life of the country. The palaces built by the Esterházy, Károlyi, Pálffy, and Festetics families at Fertõd, Erdõd, Királyfalva, and Keszthely respectively are, along with magnificent churches, the best examples of Hungarian baroque. Many of the magnates were not only patrons of the arts and of literature, but were themselves active writers spreading the ideas of Enlightenment, the most radical of which were discussed in the twenty-some lodges of the Freemasons. While the eighteenth century saw spectacular population growth, solid, though uneven, economic development, and cultural revival, it also witnessed the preservation of the country's medieval and anachronistic "constitution" and social structure. All this, along with the radically changed ethnic composition of Hungary, would considerably complicate the country's history in the nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Balázs, Éva H. Hungary and the Habsburgs, 1765–1800. Budapest, 1997.

Ingrao, Charles. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815. Cambridge, 1994.

Köpeczi, Béla, ed. History of Transylvania. Budapest, 1994.

Lendvai, Paul. The Hungarians. Princeton, 2003.

Sugar, Peter F., et al., eds. A History of Hungary. Bloomington, Ind., 1994.

—GÁBOR ÁGOSTON

Geography: Hungary

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Republic in central Europe, bordered by the former Czechoslovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and south, Yugoslavia and Croatia to the south, and Slovenia and Austria to the west. Its capital and largest city is Budapest.

Hungary is a former Eastern Bloc country.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire, in which Austria and Hungary were equal partners, was established in 1867 and collapsed in World War I.
Soviet troops invaded Hungary in 1956 to put down a revolution against the communist government.
Hungary held multiparty free elections in October 1990, ending forty-two years of communist rule. In 1999, it joined NATO.

Dialing Code: Hungary

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The international dialing code for Hungary is: 36

Maps: Hungary

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Local Time: Hungary

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It is 5:54 AM, November 8, in Hungary.

Currency: Hungary

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Hungarian Forint

Statistics: Hungary

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Background:

Hungary became a Christian kingdom in A.D. 1000 and for many centuries served as a bulwark against Ottoman Turkish expansion in Europe. The kingdom eventually became part of the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed during World War I. The country fell under Communist rule following World War II. In 1956, a revolt and an announced withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact were met with a massive military intervention by Moscow. Under the leadership of Janos KADAR in 1968, Hungary began liberalizing its economy, introducing so-called "Goulash Communism." Hungary held its first multiparty elections in 1990 and initiated a free market economy. It joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004.

Location:	Central Europe, northwest of Romania
Geographic coordinates:	47 00 N, 20 00 E
Map references:	Europe
Area:	total: 93,030 sq km land: 92,340 sq km water: 690 sq km
Area - comparative:	slightly smaller than Indiana
Land boundaries:	total: 2,185 km border countries: Austria 366 km, Croatia 329 km, Romania 443 km, Serbia 166 km, Slovakia 676 km, Slovenia 102 km, Ukraine 103 km
Coastline:	0 km (landlocked)
Maritime claims:	none (landlocked)
Climate:	temperate; cold, cloudy, humid winters; warm summers
Terrain:	mostly flat to rolling plains; hills and low mountains on the Slovakian border
Elevation extremes:	lowest point: Tisza River 78 m highest point: Kekes 1,014 m
Natural resources:	bauxite, coal, natural gas, fertile soils, arable land
Land use:	arable land: 49.58% permanent crops: 2.06% other: 48.36% (2005)
Irrigated land:	2,300 sq km (2003)
Total renewable water resources:	120 cu km (2005)
Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural):	total: 21.03 cu km/yr (9%/59%/32%) per capita: 2,082 cu m/yr (2001)
Environment - current issues:	the upgrading of Hungary's standards in waste management, energy efficiency, and air, soil, and water pollution to meet EU requirements will require large investments
Environment - international agreements:	party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Sulfur 85, Air Pollution-Sulfur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands, Whaling signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements
Geography - note:	landlocked; strategic location astride main land routes between Western Europe and Balkan Peninsula as well as between Ukraine and Mediterranean basin; the north-south flowing Duna (Danube) and Tisza Rivers divide the country into three large regions

Population:	9,905,596 (July 2009 est.)
Age structure:	0-14 years: 15% (male 763,553/female 720,112) 15-64 years: 69.3% (male 3,384,961/female 3,475,135) 65 years and over: 15.8% (male 566,067/female 995,768) (2009 est.)
Median age:	total: 39.4 years male: 37.1 years female: 42 years (2009 est.)
Population growth rate:	-0.257% (2009 est.)
Birth rate:	9.51 births/1,000 population (2009 est.)
Death rate:	12.99 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Net migration rate:	0.87 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2009 est.)
Urbanization:	urban population: 68% of total population (2008) rate of urbanization: 0.3% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.)
Sex ratio:	at birth: 1.06 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.06 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 0.97 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.57 male(s)/female total population: 0.91 male(s)/female (2009 est.)
Infant mortality rate:	total: 7.86 deaths/1,000 live births male: 8.57 deaths/1,000 live births female: 7.12 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)
Life expectancy at birth:	total population: 73.44 years male: 69.27 years female: 77.87 years (2009 est.)
Total fertility rate:	1.35 children born/woman (2009 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:	0.1% (2007 est.)
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:	3,300 (2007 est.)
HIV/AIDS - deaths:	fewer than 100 (2001 est.)
Major infectious diseases:	degree of risk: intermediate food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea and hepatitis A vectorborne diseases: tickborne encephalitis (2009)
Nationality:	noun: Hungarian(s) adjective: Hungarian
Ethnic groups:	Hungarian 92.3%, Roma 1.9%, other or unknown 5.8% (2001 census)
Religions:	Roman Catholic 51.9%, Calvinist 15.9%, Lutheran 3%, Greek Catholic 2.6%, other Christian 1%, other or unspecified 11.1%, unaffiliated 14.5% (2001 census)
Languages:	Hungarian 93.6%, other or unspecified 6.4% (2001 census)
Literacy:	definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 99.4% male: 99.5% female: 99.3% (2003 est.)
School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education):	total: 15 years male: 15 years female: 16 years (2006)
Education expenditures:	5.5% of GDP (2005)

Country name:	conventional long form: Republic of Hungary conventional short form: Hungary local long form: Magyar Koztarsasag local short form: Magyarorszag
Government type:	parliamentary democracy
Capital:	name: Budapest geographic coordinates: 47 30 N, 19 05 E time difference: UTC+1 (6 hours ahead of Washington, DC during Standard Time) daylight saving time: +1hr, begins last Sunday in March; ends last Sunday in October
Administrative divisions:	19 counties (megyek, singular - megye), 23 urban counties (singular - megyei varos), and 1 capital city (fovaros) counties: Bacs-Kiskun, Baranya, Bekes, Borsod-Abauj-Zemplen, Csongrad, Fejer, Gyor-Moson-Sopron, Hajdu-Bihar, Heves, Jasz-Nagykun-Szolnok, Komarom-Esztergom, Nograd, Pest, Somogy, Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg, Tolna, Vas, Veszprem, Zala urban counties: Bekescsaba, Debrecen, Dunaujvaros, Eger, Erd, Gyor, Hodmezovasarhely, Kaposvar, Kecskemet, Miskolc, Nagykanizsa, Nyiregyhaza, Pecs, Salgotarjan, Sopron, Szeged, Szekesfehervar, Szekszard, Szolnok, Szombathely, Tatabanya, Veszprem, Zalaegerszeg capital city: Budapest
Independence:	25 December 1000 (crowning of King STEPHEN I, traditional founding date)
National holiday:	Saint Stephen's Day, 20 August
Constitution:	18 August 1949, effective 20 August 1949; revised 19 April 1972; 18 October 1989; and 1997 note: 18 October 1989 revision ensured legal rights for individuals and constitutional checks on the authority of the prime minister and also established the principle of parliamentary oversight; 1997 amendment streamlined the judicial system
Legal system:	based on the German-Austrian legal system; accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction with reservations
Suffrage:	18 years of age; universal
Executive branch:	chief of state: President Laszlo SOLYOM (since 5 August 2005) head of government: Prime Minister Gordon BAJNAI (since 14 April 2009) cabinet: Council of Ministers prime minister elected by the National Assembly on the recommendation of the president; other ministers proposed by the prime minister and appointed and relieved of their duties by the president elections: president elected by the National Assembly for a five-year term (eligible for a second term); election last held 6-7 June 2005 (next to be held by June 2010); prime minister elected by the National Assembly on the recommendation of the president; election last held 14 April 2009 election results: Laszlo SOLYOM elected president by a simple majority in the third round of voting, 185 to 182; Gordon BAJNAI elected prime minister; result of legislative vote - 204 to 0 note: to be elected, the president must win two-thirds of legislative vote in the first two rounds or a simple majority in the third round
Legislative branch:	unicameral National Assembly or Orszaggyules (386 seats; members are elected by popular vote under a system of proportional and direct representation to serve four-year terms) elections: last held 9 and 23 April 2006 (next to be held in April 2010) election results: percent of vote by party (5% or more of the vote required for parliamentary representation in the first round) - MSzP 43.2%, Fidesz-KDNP 42%, SzDSz 6.5%, MDF 5%, other 3.3%; seats by party - MSzP 190, Fidesz-KDNP 164, SzDSz 20, MDF 11, independent 1; seats by party as of January 2009 - MSzP 190, Fidesz-KDNP 161, SzDSz 19, MDF 10, independent 5, vacant 1
Judicial branch:	Constitutional Court (judges are elected by the National Assembly for nine-year terms)
Political parties and leaders:	Alliance of Free Democrats or SzDSz [Gabor FODOR]; Christian Democratic People's Party or KDNP [Zsolt SEMJEN]; Hungarian Civic Alliance or Fidesz [Viktor ORBAN, chairman]; Hungarian Democratic Forum or MDF [Ibolya DAVID]; Hungarian Socialist Party or MSzP [Ferenc GYURCSANY]
Political pressure groups and leaders:	Air Work Group (works to reduce air pollution in towns and cities); Company For Freedom Rights (Tarsasag a Szabadsagjogokert) or TASZ (personal data protection); Danube Circle (protests the building of the Gabchikovo-Nagymaros dam); Green Future (protests the impact of lead contamination of local factory on health of the people); environmentalists: Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society (Magyar Madartani Egyesulet)or MME; Green Alternative (Zold Alternativa)
International organization participation:	Australia Group, BIS, CE, CEI, CERN, EAPC, EBRD, EIB, ESA (cooperating state), EU, FAO, G-9, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICCt, ICRM, IDA, IEA, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, IMSO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, IPU, ISO, ITSO, ITU, ITUC, MIGA, MINURSO, NAM (guest), NATO, NEA, NSG, OAS (observer), OECD, OIF (observer), OPCW, OSCE, PCA, Schengen Convention, SECI, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNFICYP, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNIFIL, UNOMIG, UNWTO, UPU, WCL, WCO, WEU (associate), WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO, ZC
Diplomatic representation in the US:	chief of mission: Ambassador Ferenc SOMOGYI chancery: 3910 Shoemaker Street NW, Washington, DC 20008 telephone: [1] (202) 362-6730 FAX: [1] (202) 966-8135 consulate(s) general: Chicago, Los Angeles, New York
Diplomatic representation from the US:	chief of mission: Ambassador April H. FOLEY embassy: Szabadsag ter 12, H-1054 Budapest mailing address: pouch: American Embassy Budapest, 5270 Budapest Place, US Department of State, Washington, DC 20521-5270 telephone: [36] (1) 475-4400 FAX: [36] (1) 475-4764
Flag description:	three equal horizontal bands of red (top), white, and green

Economy - overview:	Hungary has made the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy, with a per capita income nearly two-thirds that of the EU-25 average. The private sector accounts for more than 80% of GDP. Foreign ownership of and investment in Hungarian firms are widespread, with cumulative foreign direct investment totaling more than $60 billion since 1989. The government's IMF-mandated austerity measures, imposed since late 2006, have reduced the budget deficit from over 9% of GDP in 2006 to 3.3% in 2008. Hungary's impending inability to service its short-term debt - brought on by the global credit crunch in late 2008 - led Budapest to seek and receive an IMF-arranged financial assistance package worth over $25 billion. The global financial crisis, declining exports, and low domestic consumption and fixed asset accumulation, dampened by government austerity measures, will result in a negative growth rate of about -1.5% to -2.5% in 2009.
GDP (purchasing power parity):	$205.7 billion (2008 est.) $208.9 billion (2007) $193.2 billion (2006) note: data are in 2008 US dollars
GDP (official exchange rate):	$131.4 billion (2008 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:	-1.5% (2008 est.) 1.3% (2007 est.) 3.9% (2006 est.)
GDP - per capita (PPP):	$19,800 (2008 est.) $19,700 (2007 est.) $19,400 (2006 est.) note: data are in 2008 US dollars
GDP - composition by sector:	agriculture: 3.2% industry: 31.9% services: 65% (2008 est.)
Labor force:	4.2 million (2008 est.)
Labor force - by occupation:	agriculture: 5% industry: 32.4% services: 62.6% (2005)
Unemployment rate:	8% (2008 est.)
Population below poverty line:	8.6% (1993 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:	lowest 10%: 4% highest 10%: 22.2% (2002)
Distribution of family income - Gini index:	28 (2005)
Investment (gross fixed):	15.2% of GDP (January - September 2008)
Budget:	revenues: $76.2 billion expenditures: $81.5 billion (2008 est.)
Fiscal year:	calendar year
Public debt:	73.8% of GDP (2008 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices):	6.1% (2008 est.)
Central bank discount rate:	9.5% (1 January 2009)
Commercial bank prime lending rate:	9.48% (26 January 2009)
Stock of money:	$36.78 billion (31 December 2007)
Stock of quasi money:	$43.07 billion (31 December 2007)
Stock of domestic credit:	$109.5 billion (31 December 2007)
Market value of publicly traded shares:	$21.9 billion (31 December 2008)
Agriculture - products:	wheat, corn, sunflower seed, potatoes, sugar beets; pigs, cattle, poultry, dairy products
Industries:	mining, metallurgy, construction materials, processed foods, textiles, chemicals (especially pharmaceuticals), motor vehicles
Industrial production growth rate:	0.4% (2008 est.)
Electricity - production:	37.66 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - consumption:	37.11 billion kWh (2006 est.)
Electricity - exports:	10.69 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - imports:	14.68 billion kWh (2007 est.)
Electricity - production by source:	fossil fuel: 60.1% hydro: 0.5% nuclear: 39% other: 0.3% (2001)
Oil - production:	32,580 bbl/day (2007 est.)
Oil - consumption:	162,800 bbl/day (2007 est.)
Oil - exports:	66,660 bbl/day (2005)
Oil - imports:	178,400 bbl/day (2005)
Oil - proved reserves:	20.18 million bbl (1 January 2008 est.)
Natural gas - production:	2.545 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - consumption:	13.36 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - exports:	138 million cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - imports:	10.45 billion cu m (2007 est.)
Natural gas - proved reserves:	8.098 billion cu m (1 January 2008 est.)
Current account balance:	-$6.89 billion (2008 est.)
Exports:	$109.3 billion f.o.b. (2008 est.)
Exports - commodities:	machinery and equipment 61.1%, other manufactures 28.7%, food products 6.5%, raw materials 2%, fuels and electricity 1.6% (2003)
Exports - partners:	Germany 28.1%, Italy 5.6%, France 4.7%, Austria 4.6%, Romania 4.5%, UK 4.5%, Slovakia 4.2%, Poland 4.2% (2007)
Imports:	$107.5 billion f.o.b. (2008 est.)
Imports - commodities:	machinery and equipment 51.6%, other manufactures 35.7%, fuels and electricity 7.7%, food products 3.1%, raw materials 2.0% (2003)
Imports - partners:	Germany 26.6%, China 7.8%, Russia 6.9%, Austria 6.1%, Italy 4.5%, France 4.3%, Netherlands 4.3% (2007)
Reserves of foreign exchange and gold:	$30.95 billion (31 December 2008)
Debt - external:	$144.2 billion (31 December 2008 est.)
Stock of direct foreign investment - at home:	$152.4 billion (2008 est.)
Stock of direct foreign investment - abroad:	$79.56 billion (2008 est.)
Currency (code):	forint (HUF)
Currency code:	HUF
Exchange rates:	forints (HUF) per US dollar - 171.8 (2008), 183.83 (2007), 210.39 (2006), 199.58 (2005), 202.75 (2004)

Telephones - main lines in use:	3.251 million (2007)
Telephones - mobile cellular:	11.03 million (2007)
Telephone system:	general assessment: the telephone system has been modernized and is capable of satisfying all requests for telecommunication service domestic: the system is digitalized and highly automated; trunk services are carried by fiber-optic cable and digital microwave radio relay; a program for fiber-optic subscriber connections was initiated in 1996; competition among mobile-cellular service providers has led to a sharp increase in the use of mobile cellular phones since 2000 and a decrease in the number of fixed-line connections international: country code - 36; Hungary has fiber-optic cable connections with all neighboring countries; the international switch is in Budapest; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean regions), 1 Inmarsat, 1 very small aperture terminal (VSAT) system of ground terminals
Radio broadcast stations:	AM 5, FM 90, shortwave 1 (2008)
Radios:	7.01 million (1997)
Television broadcast stations:	95 (2008)
Televisions:	4.42 million (1997)
Internet country code:	.hu
Internet hosts:	1.879 million (2008)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs):	16 (2000)
Internet users:	4.2 million (2007)

Airports:	46 (2008)
Airports - with paved runways:	total: 20 over 3,047 m: 2 2,438 to 3,047 m: 8 1,524 to 2,437 m: 4 914 to 1,523 m: 4 under 914 m: 2 (2008)
Airports - with unpaved runways:	total: 26 2,438 to 3,047 m: 2 1,524 to 2,437 m: 3 914 to 1,523 m: 11 under 914 m: 10 (2008)
Heliports:	5 (2007)
Pipelines:	gas 4,407 km; oil 987 km; refined products 335 km (2008)
Railways:	total: 8,057 km broad gauge: 36 km 1.524-m gauge standard gauge: 7,802 km 1.435-m gauge (2,628 km electrified) narrow gauge: 219 km 0.760-m gauge (2006)
Roadways:	total: 159,568 km paved: 70,050 km (30,874 km of interurban roads including 626 km of expressways) unpaved: 89,518 km (2005)
Waterways:	1,622 km (most on Danube River) (2008)
Ports and terminals:	Budapest, Dunaujvaros, Gyor-Gonyu, Csepel, Baja, Mohacs (2003)

Military branches:	Ground Forces, Hungarian Air Force (Magyar Legiero, ML) (2009)
Military service age and obligation:	18 years of age for voluntary military service; conscription abolished in June 2004; 6-month service obligation (2008)
Manpower available for military service:	males age 16-49: 2,391,400 females age 16-49: 2,337,240 (2008 est.)
Manpower fit for military service:	males age 16-49: 1,887,755 females age 16-49: 1,934,019 (2009 est.)
Manpower reaching militarily significant age annually:	male: 60,248 female: 57,280 (2009 est.)
Military expenditures:	1.75% of GDP (2005 est.)

Disputes - international:	bilateral government, legal, technical and economic working group negotiations continue in 2006 with Slovakia over Hungary's failure to complete its portion of the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros hydroelectric dam project along the Danube; as a member state that forms part of the EU's external border, Hungary has implemented the strict Schengen border rules
Illicit drugs:	transshipment point for Southwest Asian heroin and cannabis and for South American cocaine destined for Western Europe; limited producer of precursor chemicals, particularly for amphetamine and methamphetamine; efforts to counter money laundering, related to organized crime and drug trafficking, are improving, but remain vulnerable; significant consumer of ecstasy

Local Cuisine: Hungary

Top

Sunday Dinner Menu

Hard-boiled eggs and cold vegetable appetizer
Chicken vegetable soup
Paprika chicken with dumplings
Cucumber salad
Strudel
Coffee

Recipes

Pörkölt (National Hungarian Stew)
Gulyás (Hungarian Goulash)
Paprika Chicken
Stuffed Green Peppers
Pork Cutlets with Potatoes
Hungarian Butter Cookies
Almond Kisses
Hungarian Cold Plate
Small Dumplings
Noodle Pudding
Summer Cucumber Soup

Geographic Setting and Environment

Hungary is a landlocked country in the middle of Europe. It is a little smaller than Indiana, and is a land with fertile soil. Hungarian farmers grow enough wheat, corn, rye, potatoes, and some fruits, to feed its population. Even though many Hungarian farmers raise livestock, the quality of the animals they raise (and the meat they produce) is below the standard of Hungary's neighbors, mostly because there is not enough quality animal food available.

One of the largest challenges facing Hungary is the preservation of its environment. Hungary has huge problems with air and water pollution, but the government does not have enough money or technology to minimize pollution from factories.

Hungary's principal rivers are the Danube and Tisza, and the largest lake is Balaton. All three provide good fishing areas for Hungary's sport and commercial fishers.

History and Food

The first people to live in present-day Hungary were nomads called the Magyars, who arrived in around A.D. 800. Hungary's national dish, a meat stew called goulash, can be traced to the Magyars' eating habits. They traveled with dried cubes of meat cooked with onions, and water could be added to make a stew.

The reign of King Matthias (1458–90) was a high point in Hungarian history, for both culture and food. Through his Italian wife, Queen Beatrice, King Matthias brought Italian cooking to Hungary. During this period, cooking was raised to a fine art.

When the Turks invaded Hungary in the sixteenth century, they brought their cooking customs with them. These included the use of the spice paprika and a thin, flaky pastry called filo (or phyllo) dough. They also taught the Hungarians how to cook stuffed peppers and eggplants. The Turks introduced coffee to Hungary.

Austria's Hapsburg monarchy gained control over Hungary from the seventeenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Under Austrian rule, German and Austrian cooking styles influenced Hungarian eating habits. During this period, Hungary became famous for its cakes and pastries.

Foods of the Hungarians

The best-known ingredient in Hungarian food is the red-powdered spice called paprika. It is used to flavor many dishes. Other staples of Hungarian cooking include onions, cabbage, potatoes, noodles, and caraway seeds. Both cream and sour cream are used heavily in Hungarian food. Dumplings (dough wrapped around different kinds of fillings) are very popular as are cabbages or green peppers stuffed with meat and rice. Another favorite is the pancake called a palacsinta. It is often rolled or wrapped around different kinds of fillings.

Hungarians eat a lot of meat, mostly pork or beef. Many meat dishes are dipped in bread and then baked or fried. Hungarians also prepare many different kinds of sausages. The Hungarian national dish is meat stew. People outside Hungary call it "goulash," but the Hungarians have several different names for it, including pörkölt and tokány. The dish they call goulash, or gulyás, is actually a soup made with meat and paprika. Paprika is also a key ingredient in another national dish; a fish soup called halaszle.

The Hungarians are known throughout the world for their elegant pastries and cakes. The flaky pastry dough called filo or phyllo was brought to Hungary by the Turks in the seventeenth century. Instead of the honey and nuts used in Turkish pastry, the Hungarians filled phyllo dough with their own ingredients to make a dessert known as strudel. Strudel fillings include apples, cherries, and poppy seeds. Hungary is known for its wines, especially the sweet wines of the Tokay region.

See Pörkölt (National Hungarian Stew) recipe.

See Gulyás (Hungarian Goulash) recipe.

See Paprika Chicken recipe.

See Stuffed Green Peppers recipe.

See Pork Cutlets with Potatoes recipe.

Food for Religious and Holiday Celebrations

Christmas and New Year's are often celebrated with a roasted stuffed turkey or roasted pig. The turkey is usually stuffed with chestnut dressing. Eating roast pig on New Year's Day is supposed to bring good luck. On New Year's Eve, a spicy punch called Krambambuli is served. It is made from chopped fruit, candied orange peel, walnuts, sugar, rum, and brandy, to which even more ingredients are added.

See Hungarian Butter Cookies recipe.

See Almond Kisses recipe.

Mealtime Customs

Most people who live in the country eat a big breakfast. It may consist of eggs, ham or sausage, cheese, green peppers and tomatoes, and rolls and butter. Adults drink tea or coffee; children drink milk or cocoa. In the city, some people eat a lighter breakfast consisting of a beverage and rolls with honey or jam.

Lunch, eaten between noon and 2:30 P.M., is the main meal of the day. Soup, vegetables, and dessert usually accompany a main meat dish. A light supper is eaten in the evening, between 5:30 and 8:00 P.M. Usually this is a one-course meal, consisting of soup, a vegetable dish, or a "Hungarian cold plate." This is a plate of cold meats, cheeses, vegetables, and hard-boiled eggs. It can be eaten for supper, as a snack, or even for breakfast. Hungarians eat salad as a side dish with the main part of the meal, not before or after. Most Hungarian meals end with something sweet, such as sweet noodles, pancakes, dumplings, or a dessert like strudel or cake. In addition to cold meat, popular snacks include dumplings, noodle dishes, and baked goods such as lángos, or fried dough.

Before each meal, Hungarians wish their friends or relatives a good appetite, saying Jó étvágyat kivánok (YO ATE-vah-dyat KEE-vah-nok). At the end of a meal, they express thanks to their host or hostess, saying Köszönöm (KOH-soh-nohm). The host responds, Váljék kedves egészségére (VAH-lyake KEHD-vesh EH-gase-shay-reh). This means "I wish you good health." Music is commonly played in Hungarian restaurants.

See Hungarian Cold Plate recipe.

See Small Dumplings recipe.

See Noodle Pudding recipe.

See Summer Cucumber Soup recipe.

Politics, Economics, and Nutrition

Almost all Hungarians receive adequate nutrition. There is little scarcity of food, and, except for occasional years when there is not enough rainfall, Hungarian farms produce enough food to feed the people.

Further Study

Books

Albyn, Carole Lisa, and Lois Webb. The Multicultural Cookbook for Students. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1993.

Biro, Charlotte Slovak. Flavors of Hungary. San Ramon, Calif.: Ortho Information Services, 1989.

Chamberlain, Lesley. The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe. New York: Penguin, 1989.

Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Derecskey, Susan. The Hungarian Cookbook. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

Halvorsen, Francine. Eating Around the World in Your Neighborhood. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

Hargittai, Magdolna. Cooking the Hungarian Way. Minneapolis: Lerner, 1986.

Segal, Ulrike, and Heinz Vestner. Insight Guides: Hungary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

Webb, Lois Sinaiko. Holidays of the World Cookbook for Students. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1995.

Web Sites

Epicurious. [Online] Available http://epicurious.com (accessed February 7, 2001).

SOAR (online recipe archive). [Online] Available http://soar.Berkeley.edu (accessed February 7, 2001).

Wine Lover's Companion: Hungary

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Hungary produces a wide variety of wines from an equally wide assortment of grapes-some familiar, others a specialty of this eastern European country. Some of the more well-known varieties are cabernet sauvignon, gewürztraminer, Médoc Noir (merlot), Szürkebarát (pinot gris), pinot noir and sylvaner. However, the most popular varieties in Hungary are the red kadarka and the white Olasz Riesling (welschriesling). Other white grapes include Ezerjo, furmint, hárslevelü, kéknyelü and leányka. The popular red Kékfrankos is the same as the blaufränkisch grown in Austria, although not related to gamay, as some believe. Hungary has two famous wines-tokay, a highly regarded dessert wine, and egri bikavér, the red "bull's blood" wine. Hungary's growing regions include the Great Plain in the south central part of the country, which produces over half the total production (most of it very ordinary); the Lake Balaton area in the western part of the country, which includes the higher-quality-wine districts of Mount Badacsony (see badacsonyi), Balaton, Balatonfüred-Csopak, Mór, and Somoló; Eger and Tokay, northeast of Budapest, where Egri Bikavér and Tokay are made; and Sopron in the northwestern corner. The labels of Hungarian wines include the name of the producing areas to which an i is added, making it a possessive form, as in Soproni Kékfrankos-a wine made in the Sopron area from the Kékfrankos variety-or Badacsonyi Szürkebarát-from the Mount Badacsony area and made with Szürkebarát grapes.

National Anthem: National Anthem of: Hungary

Top

A magyar nép zivataros századaiból

Isten, áldd meg a magyart
Jó kedvvel, bõséggel,
Nyújts feléje védõ kart,
Ha küzd ellenséggel;
Bal sors akit régen tép,
Hozz rá víg esztendõt,
Megbünhödte már e nép
A multat s jövendõt!

Õseinket felhozád
Kárpát szent bércére,
Általad nyert szép hazát
Bendegúznak vére.
S merre zúgnak habjai
Tiszának, Dunának,
Árpád hõs magzatjai
Felvirágozának.

Értünk Kunság mezein
Ért kalászt lengettél,
Tokaj szõlõvesszein
Nektárt csepegtettél.
Zászlónk gyakran plántálád
Vad török sáncára,
S nyögte Mátyás bús hadát
Bécsnek büszke vára.

Hajh, de bûneink miatt
Gyúlt harag kebledben,
S elsújtád villámidat
Dörgõ fellegedben,
Most rabló mongol nyilát
Zúgattad felettünk,
Majd töröktõl rabigát
Vállainkra vettünk.

Hányszor zengett ajkain
Ozman vad népének
Vert hadunk csonthalmain
Gyõzedelmi ének!
Hányszor támadt tenfiad,
Szép hazám, kebledre,
S lettél magzatod miatt
Magzatod hamvvedre!

Bújt az üldözött s felé
Kard nyúl barlangjában,
Szerte nézett, s nem lelé
Honját a hazában.
Bércre hág, és völgybe száll,
Bú s kétség mellette,
Vérözön lábainál,
S lángtenger felette.

Vár állott, most kõhalom;
Kedv s öröm röpkedtek,
Halálhörgés, siralom
Zajlik már helyettek.
S ah, szabadság nem virúl
A holtnak vérébõl,
Kínzó rabság könnye hull
Árvánk hõ szemébõl!

Szánd meg, isten, a magyart,
Kit vészek hányának,
Nyújts feléje védõ kart
Tengerén kínjának.
Bal sors akit régen tép,
Hozz rá víg esztendõt,
Megbünhödte már e nép
A multat s jövendõt!

Hungarian Anthem in English:

O, my God, the Magyar bless
With Thy plenty and good cheer!
With Thine aid his just cause press,
Where his foes to fight appear.
Fate, who for so long did'st frown,
Bring him happy times and ways;
Atoning sorrow hath weighed down
Sins of past and future days.

By Thy help our fathers gained
Kárpát's proud and sacred height;
Here by Thee a home obtained
Heirs of Bendegúz, the knight.
Where'er Danube's waters flow
And the streams of Tisza swell
Árpád's children, Thou dost know,
Flourished and did prosper well.

For us let the golden grain
Grow upon the fields of Kún,
And let Nectar's silver rain
Ripen grapes of Tokay soon.
Thou our flags hast planted o'er
Forts where once wild Turks held sway;
Proud Vienna suffered sore
From King Mátyás' dark array.

But, alas! for our misdeed,
Anger rose within Thy breast,
And Thy lightnings Thou did'st speed
From Thy thundering sky with zest.
Now the Mongol arrow flew
Over our devoted heads;
Or the Turkish yoke we knew,
Which a free-born nation dreads.

O, how often has the voice
Sounded of wild Osman's hordes,
When in songs they did rejoice
O'er our heroes' captured swords!
Yea, how often rose Thy sons,
My fair land, upon Thy sod,
And Thou gavest to these sons,
Tombs within the breast they trod!

Though in caves pursued he lie,
Even then he fears attacks.
Coming forth the land to spy,
Even a home he finds he lacks.
Mountain, vale - go where he would,
Grief and sorrow all the same -
Underneath a sea of blood,
While above a sea of flame.

'Neath the fort, a ruin now,
Joy and pleasure erst were found,
Only groans and sighs, I trow,
In its limits now abound.
But no freedom's flowers return
From the spilt blood of the dead,
And the tears of slavery burn,
Which the eyes of orphans shed.

Pity, God, the Magyar, then,
Long by waves of danger tossed;
Help him by Thy strong hand when
He on grief's sea may be lost.
Fate, who for so long did'st frown,
Bring him happy times and ways;
Atoning sorrow hath weighed down
All the sins of all his days.

Wikipedia: Hungary

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This article is about the European country. For other uses, see Hungary (disambiguation).

Republic of Hungary

Magyar Köztársaság


Flag	Coat of arms

Motto: none
Historically Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate (Latin, With the help of God for Homeland and Freedom) or Regnum Mariae Patronae Hungariae (Latin, Kingdom of Mary, the Patron of Hungary)^[1]

Anthem: Himnusz ("Isten, áldd meg a magyart")
"Hymn" or "Anthem" ("God, bless the Hungarians")

Location of Hungary (dark green)

– on the European continent (light green & light grey)
– in the European Union (light green) — [Legend]

Capital
(and largest city)

Budapest
47°26′N 19°15′E / 47.433°N 19.25°E

Official languages Hungarian (Magyar)

Ethnic groups 95% Magyar, 2% Roma, 3% other minority groups

Demonym

Hungarian

Government

Parliamentary republic

- President László Sólyom

- Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai

- Speaker of the National Assembly Béla Katona

Foundation

- Foundation of Hungary 896

- Recognized as Kingdom - First king: Stephen I of Hungary December 1000

- Currently 3rd Republic October 23, 1989

EU accession May 1, 2004

Area

- Total 93,030 km² (109th)
35,919 sq mi

- Water (%) 0.74%

Population

- 2009 July estimate 10,020,000^[2] (79th)

- 2001 census 10,198,315

- Density 107.7/km² (94th)
279.0/sq mi

GDP (PPP) 2008 estimate

- Total $196.417 billion^[3]

- Per capita $19,553^[3]

GDP (nominal) 2008 estimate

- Total $155.930 billion.^[3]

- Per capita $15,522^[3]

Gini (2008) 24.96 (low) (3rd)

HDI (2007) ▲ 0.879 (high) (43rd)

Currency Forint (HUF)

Time zone CET (UTC+1)

- Summer (DST) CEST (UTC+2)

Date formats yyyy.mm.dd,
yyyy.mm.dd (CE)

Drives on the right

Internet TLD .hu¹

Calling code 36

¹ Also .eu as part of the European Union.

Hungary /ˈhʌŋɡəri/ (help·info) (Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ] ( listen)), in English officially the Republic of Hungary (Magyar Köztársaság listen (help·info), literally Magyar (Hungarian) Republic), is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, which is part of the Finno-Ugric family, thus one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not of Indo-European origin^{[note 1]}

Following a Celtic (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (9 AD – c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian ruler Árpád, whose great-grandson Stephen I of Hungary was crowned with a crown sent from Rome by the pope in 1000. After being recognized as a kingdom, Hungary remained a monarchy for 946 years,^[4] and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world. A significant power until the end of World War I, Hungary lost over 70% of its territory, along with 3.3 million people of Hungarian ethnicity,^[5] under the Treaty of Trianon,^[6] the terms of which have been considered humiliating by Hungarians.^[7] Hungary lost 8 of its 10 biggest Hungarian cities too. The kingdom was succeeded by a Communist era (1947–1989) during which Hungary gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the seminal move of opening its border with Austria in 1989, thus accelerating the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The present form of government is a parliamentary republic (since 1989). Today, Hungary is a high-income economy,^[8] and a regional leader regarding certain markers.^[9]^[10]^[11] Its current goal is to become a developed country by IMF standards.^[12]

In the past decade, Hungary was listed as one of the 15 most popular tourist destinations in the world.^[13]^[14] The country is home to the largest thermal water cave system^[15] and the second largest thermal lake in the world (Lake Hévíz), the largest lake in Central Europe (Lake Balaton), and the largest natural grasslands in Europe (Hortobágy).

1 History
2 Science
- 2.1 Most famous Hungarian inventions
  - 2.1.1 Old times
  - 2.1.2 Modern times
3 Politics
4 Regions, counties, and subregions
- 4.1 Counties (County Capital)
- 4.2 Regions
5 Economy
- 5.1 History of the Hungarian Economy
- 5.2 2008–2009 Financial Crisis
6 Geography
- 6.1 Landscape
- 6.2 Climate
7 Military
8 Demographics
- 8.1 Germans
- 8.2 Religion in Hungary
  - 8.2.1 Religious history
  - 8.2.2 Jewish Hungarians
9 Culture
10 Hungarian public holidays and special events
11 Sport
12 Miscellaneous
13 Transport
14 See also
15 Footnotes
16 References
17 External links

History

Before 895 AD

The treasure of Nagyszentmiklós illustrating the Álmos legend from the Hungarian mythology: Emese's dream of the Turul bird

From 9 BC to the end of the 4th century, Pannonia was part of the Roman Empire on a part of later Hungary's area. In the final stages of the expansion of the Roman empire, the Carpathian Basin fell for a while into the sphere of the Mediterranean, yet Greco-Roman civilization, its town centers, paved roads, and written sources were all part of the advances which the Migration of Peoples ended.

Among the first to arrive were the Huns, who built up a powerful empire under Attila the Hun. Attila was regarded as an ancestral ruler of the Hungarians, however, this claim is rejected today by the most scholars. After Hunnish rule faded away, the Germanic Ostrogoths and then the Lombards came to Pannonia, and the Gepids had a presence in the eastern part of the Carpathian Basin for about 100 years. In the 560s the Avars founded the Avar Khaganate,^[16] a state which maintained supremacy in the region for more than two centuries and had the military power to launch attacks against all its neighbours. The Avar Khaganate was weakened by constant wars and outside pressure and finally the Avars' 250 year rule ended when the Khaganate was conquered by the Franks under Charlemagne in the West and the Bulgarians under Krum in the East. Neither of these two nor others were able to create a lasting state in the region, and in the late 9th century the land was inhabited only by a sparse population of Slavs^[17]

During the 5th and 6th century the land was populated by the migrating Slavs.^[18] In the 9th century they formed several polities, of which the most important was the Great Moravia. It succeeded in making its language the fourth liturgical language, however, it did not survive the invasions of the seminomadic Magyar tribes, inner struggles and conflicts with the Franks and ceased to exist between 898-906. ^[19]

The freshly unified Magyars^[20] led by Árpád settled in the Carpathian Basin starting in 895.^[21]^[17] They are thought to have originated in an ancient Finno-Ugric population that originally inhabited the forested area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains.^[22] The force lead by Árpád is estimated at about 400,000 people, in seven Magyar, one Kabar, and other smaller tribes.^[17] However physical anthropologists and geneticists have never supported the Ural origin of Hungarians.

Medieval Hungary (895–1526)

Hungarian raids in the 10th century. Most European nations were praying for mercy: "Sagittis hungarorum libera nos Domine" - "Lord save us from the arrows of Hungarians"

The arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, 895, as viewed by the Hungarian National Romanticism painter Arpád Feszty.

Main articles: History of Hungary, Pannonian basin before Hungary, Hungarian prehistory, and Pannonia

First Hungarian coin, by Duke Géza circa the end of 970s.

The Old Hungarian script, the so-called "Rovás alphabet"

Main articles: Árpád dynasty, Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages, and History of the Székely people

Hungary is one of the oldest countries in Europe. It emerged in 896, before France and Germany became separate entities, and before the unification of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Medieval Hungary controlled more territory than medieval France, and the population of medieval Hungary was the third largest of any country in Europe. Árpád was the Magyar leader whom sources name as the single leader who unified the Magyar tribes via the "Covenant of Blood" (Hungarian: vérszerződés) forged one nation, thereafter known as the Hungarian nation^[23] and led the new nation to the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century.^[23] After an early seminomad Hungarian state, the Principality of Hungary was formed in this territory, the nation's military power allowed the Hungarians to conduct successful fierce campaigns and raids as far as today's Spain.^[24] A later defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 signaled an end to most campaigns on foreign territories. The ruling prince (Hungarian: fejedelem) Géza of the Árpád dynasty, who was the ruler of only some of the united territory, but the nominal overlord of all seven Magyar tribes, intended to integrate Hungary into Christian Western Europe.^[25] He established a dynasty by naming his son Vajk (the later King Stephen I of Hungary) as his successor. This was contrary to the then-dominant tradition of the succession of the eldest surviving member of the ruling family. (See: agnatic seniority) By ancestral right prince Koppány, - as the oldest member of the dynasty - should have claimed the throne, but Géza chose his first-born son to be his successor. The fight in the chief prince's family started after Géza's death, in 997. Duke Koppány took up arms, and many people in Transdanubia joined him. The rebels represented the old faith and order, tribal independence and pagan belief. Stephen won a decisive victory over his uncle Koppány, and had him executed, thus firming Christian fate and ensuring survival and prosperity of Hungary.

The Patrimonial Kingdom

The Holy Crown of Hungary, the key symbol of Hungary

Hungary in the 11th century

Romanesque church of Pécs

Gothic Church of Our Lady in Buda

King Stephen I of Hungary, patron saint of Kings (from the Chronicon Hungariae Pictum)

Reliquary, Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary (c.1040–1095)

King Béla's III tomb

Golden Bull of 1222

Early renaissance Castle of Diósgyőr, which was one of the favourite rural hunting castles of Angevin kings

Main articles: Stephen I of Hungary, Comitatus (Kingdom of Hungary), and Doctrine of the Holy Crown

Hungary was recognized as a Catholic Apostolic Kingdom under Saint Stephen I, the son of Géza^[26] and thus a descendant of Árpád.

Applying to Pope Sylvester II, Stephen received the insignia of royalty (including the Holy Crown of Hungary, currently kept in the Hungarian Parliament) from the papacy. He was crowned in December 1000, in the capital, Esztergom. The papacy conferred on him the right to have the cross carried before him, with full administrative authority over bishoprics and churches. By 1006, Stephen had consolidated his power, eliminating all rivals who either wanted to follow the old pagan traditions or wanted an alliance with the Eastern Christian Byzantine Empire. Then he started sweeping reforms to convert Hungary into a western feudal state, it has been asserted that the Christianisation was forced.^[27] Stephen established a network of 10 episcopal and 2 archiepiscopal sees, and ordered the building of monasteries, churches and cathedrals. The country switched to using the Latin language and alphabet under Stephen, and until as late as 1844, Latin remained the official language of Hungary. Previously Hungarian had been written with the Old Hungarian script, a runic script. Stephen followed the Frankish administrative model: The country was divided into counties (Hungarian: megye), each under a royal official called an ispán or count (Latin: comes) — later főispán (lord lieutenant or prefect) (Latin: supremus comes). This official represented the king’s authority, administered its population, and collected the taxes that formed the national revenue. Each ispán maintained at his fortified headquarters (castrum or vár) an armed force of freemen.

What emerged was a strong kingdom^[28] that withstood attacks from German kings and Emperors, and nomadic tribes following the Hungarians from the East, integrating some of the latter into the population (along with Germans invited to Transylvania and the northern part of the kingdom, especially after the 13th century Battle of Mohi), and conquering Croatia in 1091.^[29]^[30]^[31]

After the Great Schism (The East-West Schism /formally in 1054/, between Western Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.) Hungary determined itself as the Easternmost bastion of Western civilization.

Important members of the Árpád dynasty

King Coloman, the "Book-lover" (1095–1116)

One of Coloman's most famous laws was half a millennium ahead of its time: De strigis vero quae non sunt, nulla amplius quaestio fiat (As for witches, they really do not exist; no further investigations or trials are to be held).

Béla III (1172–1192)

Béla III was the most powerful and wealthiest member of the dynasty: Béla disposed of the equivalent of 23 tonnes of pure silver per year. This exceeded the income of the French king (estimated at 17 tonnes) and was double the receipts of the English Crown.^[32] He forced back the Byzantine domain in the Balkan region.

Andrew II of Hungary (1205–1235)

In 1211 Andrew II of Hungary granted the Burzenland (in Transylvania) to the Teutonic Knights. In 1225, Andrew II expelled the Teutonic Knights from Transylvania, and they had to transfer to the Baltic Sea. In 1224, Andrew issued the Diploma Andreanum which unified and secured the special privileges of the Transylvanian Saxons. It is considered the first Autonomy law in the world.^[33]

He led the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land in 1217. He set up the largest royal army in the history of Crusades (20,000 knights and 12,000 castle-garrisons). The Golden Bull of 1222 was the first constitution in Continental Europe. It limited the king's power. The Golden Bull — the Hungarian equivalent of England’s Magna Carta — to which every Hungarian king thereafter had to swear, had a twofold purpose: to reaffirm the rights of the lesser nobles of the old and new classes of royal servants (servientes regis) against both the crown and the magnates, and to defend the rights of the whole nation against the crown by restricting certain powers of the crown and legalizing refusal to obey its unlawful/unconstitutional commands (the ius resistendi). The lesser nobles also began to present Andrew with grievances, a practice that evolved into the institution of the parliament, or Diet. Hungary became the first country where the parliament had supremacy over the crown. The most important legal ideology and guideline was the Doctrine of the Holy Crown.

Important points of the Doctrine: The sovereignty belongs to the noble nation (the Holy Crown). The members of the Holy Crown are the citizens of the Crown's lands. None can reach full power in the kingdom. The nation shares political power with the ruler. "Politically minority opinions cannot rule over majority". (Which meant: The Doctrine was opposed to tyranny and oligarchy).

Mongol attacks

Main article: Mongol invasion of Europe

In 1241–1242, the kingdom received a major blow with the Mongol (Tatar) Invasion: after the defeat of the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohi,^[34] Béla IV of Hungary fled, and a large part of the population died^[35] in the ensuing destruction (Hungarian: tatárjárás) leading later to the invitation of settlers, largely from Germany. Historians estimate that up to half of Hungary's then population of 2,000,000 were victims of the Mongol invasion.^[36] Only castles, strongly fortified cities and abbeys could withstand the assault.

During the Russian campaign, the Mongols drove some 40,000 Cumans, a nomadic tribe of pagan Kipchaks, west of the Carpathian Mountains.^[37] There, the Cumans appealed to King Béla IV of Hungary for protection.^[38] The Iranian Jassic people came to Hungary together with the Cumans after they were defeated by the Mongols. Over the centuries they were fully assimilated into the Hungarian population, and their language disappeared, but they preserved their identity and their regional autonomy until 1876.^[39]

As a consequence, after the Mongols retreated, King Béla ordered the construction of hundreds of stone castles and fortifications, to defend against a possible second Mongol invasion. The Mongols returned to Hungary in 1286, but the new built stone-castle systems and new tactics (using a higher proportion of heavily armed knights) stopped them. The invading Mongol force was defeated near Pest by the royal army of Ladislaus IV of Hungary. These castles proved to be very important later in the long struggle with the Ottoman Empire in the following centuries (from the late 14th century onwards until the 18th century). However the cost of building them indebted the King to the major feudal landlords again, so the royal power reclaimed by Béla IV after his father Andrew II weakened it (leading to the Golden Bull of 1222) was lost again.

Age of elected Kings

King Charles' last battle against the oligarchy, Rozgony (1312)

King Louis the Great.

Sigismund King of Hungary (1387–1437)

“The Hungarian Cannon,named after the Hungarian engineer Orban who cast the gun for the Ottoman besiegers of Constantinople.It was the world's biggest cannon until the second half of the 19th century.These types of cannons appeared in Siege of (Belgrade) too

Count John Hunyadi - One of the greatest warlords in Hungarian history, Matthias Corvinus's father

Gothic-renaissance Hunyad Castle in Transylvania.

Main articles: Ottoman–Hungarian Wars, Louis I of Hungary, and John Hunyadi

Árpád's direct descendants in the male line ruled the country until 1301. During the reigns of the Árpád dynasty, the Kingdom of Hungary reached its greatest extent, yet royal power was weakened as the major landlords (the Barons) greatly increased their influence. The most powerful landlords started to use royal prerogatives (coinage, customs, their own independent diplomacy, declaration of wars against foreign monarchs). After the destructive period of interregnum (1301–1308), the first Angevin king, Charles I of Hungary (reigned 1308–1342) - a descendant of the Árpád dynasty in the female line - successfully restored royal power, and defeated oligarch rivals, the so called "little kings" (Hungarian: kiskirályok). His new fiscal, customs and monetary policies proved successful during his reign. One of the primary sources of his power was the wealth derived from the gold mines of eastern and northern Hungary. Eventually production reached the remarkable figure of 3,000 lb. (1350 kg) of gold annually - one third of the total production of the world as then known, and five times as much as that of any other European state.^[40]^[41] Charles also sealed an alliance with the Polish king Casimir. After Italy, Hungary was the first European country where the renaissance appeared.^[42]

The second Hungarian king in the Angevin line, Louis the Great (reigned 1342–1382) extended his rule as far as the Adriatic Sea, and occupied the Kingdom of Naples several times. During his reign lived the most famous epic hero of Hungarian literature and warfare, the king's Champion: Nicolas Toldi. Louis had become popular in Poland due to his campaign against the Tatars and pagan Lithuanians. Two successful wars (1357–1358, 1378–1381) against Venice annexed Dalmatia and Ragusa and more territories on the Adriatic Sea. Venice also had to raise the Angevin flag in St. Mark's Square on holy days. Balkan states (Vallachia Moldova Serbia Bulgaria Bosnia) became his vassals. Louis I established a university in Pécs in 1367 (by papal accordance). The Ottoman Turks confronted the Balkan vassal states ever more often. In 1366 and 1377, Louis led successful campaigns against the Ottomans (Battle of Nicapoli in 1366). From the death of Casimir III of Poland in 1370, he was also king of Poland. He retained his strong influence in the political life of Italian Peninsula for the rest of his life.

King Louis died without a male heir, and after years of anarchy the country was stabilized only when Sigismund (reigned 1387–1437), a prince of the Luxembourg line, succeeded to the throne by marrying the daughter of Louis the Great, Queen Mary. It was not for entirely selfless reasons that one of the leagues of barons helped him to power: Sigismund had to pay for the support of the lords by transferring a sizeable part of the royal properties. For some years, the baron's council governed the country in the name of the Holy Crown; the king was imprisoned for a short time. The restoration of the authority of the central administration took decades. In 1404 Zsigmond introduced the Placetum Regnum. According to this decree, Papal bulls and messages could not be pronounced in Hungary without the consent of the king. Zsigmond summoned the Council of Constance (1414–1418) to abolish the Avignon Papacy and the Papal Schism of the Catholic Church, which was resolved by the election of a new pope. In 1433 he even became Holy Roman Emperor. During his long reign the Royal castle of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages. The first Hungarian Bible translation was completed in 1439. For a half year in 1437, there was an antifeudal and anticlerical peasant revolt in Transylvania which was strongly influenced by Hussite ideas. (See: Budai Nagy Antal Revolt)

From a small noble family in Transylvania, John Hunyadi grew to become one of the country's most powerful lords, thanks to his outstanding capabilities as a commander. In 1446, the parliament elected the great general János Hunyadi governor (1446–1453), then regent (1453–1456). He was a successful crusader against the Ottoman Turks, one of his greatest victories being the Siege of Belgrade in 1456. Hunyadi defended the city against the onslaught of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. During the siege, Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of every European church to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for the defenders of the city. However, in many countries, (like England and Spanish kingdoms), the news of the victory arrived before the order, and the ringing of the church bells at noon was transformed into a commemoration of the victory. The Popes didn't withdraw the order, and Catholic (and the older Protestant) churches still ring the noon bell in the Christian world to this day.^[43]

Age of early absolutism

Matthias Corvinus, the Renaissance king

Western conquests of Matthias Corvinus

Main article: Matthias Corvinus

The last strong king was the Renaissance king Matthias Corvinus (king 1458–1490). Matthias was the son of John Hunyadi. András Hess set up a printing press in Buda in 1472, which was very unique at that time in Europe. This was the first time in the history of the Hungarian kingdom that a member of the nobility, without dynastic ancestry and relationship, mounted the royal throne. A true Renaissance prince, a successful military leader and administrator, an outstanding linguist, a learned astrologer, and an enlightened patron of the arts and learning.^[44] Although Matyas regularly convened the Diet and expanded the lesser nobles' powers in the counties, he exercised absolute rule over Hungary by means of a huge secular bureaucracy. He set out to build a great empire, expanding southward and northwest, while he also implemented internal reforms. The serfs and common people considered him a just ruler because he protected them from excessive demands from and other abuses by the magnates.^[45] Like his father, Matthias desired to strengthen the Kingdom of Hungary to the point where it became the foremost regional power and overlord, strong enough to push back the Ottomans; to that end he deemed it necessary to conquer much of the Holy Roman Empire.^{[citation needed]} In 1479, under the leadership of Pál Kinizsi, the Hungarian army destroyed the Ottoman and Wallachian troops at the Battle of Kenyermezo. The Hungarian army was almost always victorious during his reign. His mercenary standing army, the Black Army of Hungary, (Hungarian: Fekete Sereg) was an unusually large army for its time, and it conquered parts of Austria, Vienna (1485) and parts of Bohemia. The king died without a legal successor. His library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles, philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second only in size to the Vatican Library which mainly contained Bibles and religious material. His renaissance library is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.^[46]

Decline of Hungary (1490-1526)

Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia, the 20 years old king, who died at Battle of Mohács.

Dózsa's peasant war

The battle of Mohács, by Bertalan Székely

Main articles: Dozsa Rebellion and Battle of Mohács

By the early 16th century, the Ottoman Empire had become the second most populous state in the world; this enabled the creation of the largest armies of the era.

The Hungarian magnates, who did not want another heavy-handed king, procured the accession of Vladislaus II (reigned 1490-1516), king of Bohemia (Ulászló II in Hungarian), because of his notorious weakness: he was known as King Dobže, or Dobzse in Hungarian orthography (king "okay") from his habit of accepting without question every petition and document laid before him.^[44] Under his reign the central power began to experience severe financial difficulties, largely due to the enlargement of feudal lands at his expense. The magnates also dismantled the national administration systems and bureaucracy throughout the country. The country's defenses sagged as border guards and castle garrisons went unpaid, fortresses fell into disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled.^[47] Hungary's international role declined, its political stability shaken, and social progress was deadlocked.

In 1514, the weakened old King Vladislaus II faced a major peasant rebellion led by György Dózsa, which was ruthlessly crushed by the nobles, led by János Szapolyai. The resulting degradation of order paved the way for Ottoman pre-eminence. In 1521, the strongest Hungarian fortress in the South, Nándorfehérvár (modern Belgrade) fell to the Turks. The strongest nobles were so busy oppressing the peasants and quarrelling with gentry class in the parliament, that they failed to heed the agonized calls of king Louis II against the Turks. In 1526, the Hungarian army was crushed at the Battle of Mohács. The childless young king Louis II, and the leader of the Hungarian army, Pál Tomori died on the battlefield. The early appearance of protestantism further worsened internal relations in the anarchical country.

Through the centuries Hungary kept its old constitution, which granted special freedoms or rights to the nobility, the free royal towns such as Buda, Kassa (Košice), Pozsony (Bratislava), and Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) and groups such as the Jassic people and the Transylvanian Saxons.

Ottoman wars 1526–1699

Main articles: Ottoman Hungary, Principality of Transylvania, Ottoman–Habsburg wars, Wesselényi conspiracy, Kuruc, House of Esterházy, and Battle of Saint Gotthard (1664)

Hungary around 1550

"Women of Eger"

The largest expansion of Turks (1683)

Siege of a town (Érsekújvár, 1663)

The siege of united Christian forces in Buda, 1686

After some 150 years of wars with the Hungarians and other states, the Ottomans conquered parts of Hungary, and continued their expansion until 1556. The Ottomans gained a decisive victory over the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. The next decades were characterised by political chaos; the divided Hungarian nobility elected two kings simultaneously, 'Szapolyai János' (1526–1540) and Ferdinand Habsburg (1527–1540), whose feud for the throne further weakened the kingdom. With the conquest of Buda in 1541 by the Turks, Hungary was divided into three parts. Even with a decisive 1552 victory over the Ottomans at the Siege of Eger, which raised the hopes of the Hungarians, the country remained divided until the end of the 17th century. The north-western part (see map) termed as Royal Hungary was annexed by the Habsburgs who ruled as Kings of Hungary. The eastern part of the kingdom (Partium and Transylvania), in turn, became independent as the Principality of Transylvania, under Ottoman (and later Habsburg) suzerainty. The remaining central area (mostly present-day Hungary), including the capital of Buda was known as the Pashalik of Buda. A large part of the area became devastated by permanent warfare. Most smaller settlements disappeared. The Turks were indifferent to the Christian religion of their subjects and the Habsburg counter-reformation measures could not reach this area. As a result, the majority of the population of the area became Protestant (Calvinist)^{[citation needed]}.

Pozsony (today Bratislava) became the new capital (1536–1784), coronation town (1563–1830) and seat of the Diet (1536–1848) of Hungary. Nagyszombat (today Trnava) in turn, became the religious center in 1541.

In 1558 the Transylvanian Diet of Turda declared free practice of both the Catholic and Lutheran religions, but prohibited Calvinism. Ten years later, in 1568, the Diet extended this freedom, declaring that "It is not allowed to anybody to intimidate anybody with captivity or expelling for his religion". Four religions were declared as accepted (recepta) religions, while Orthodox Christianity was "tolerated" (though the building of stone Orthodox churches was forbidden). Hungary entered the Thirty Years' War, Royal (Habsburg) Hungary joined the catholic side, until Transylvania joined the Protestant side.

There were a series of other successful and unsuccessful anti-Habsburg /i.e. anti-Austrian/ (requiring equal rights and freedom for all Christian religions) uprisings between 1604 and 1711, the uprisings were usually organized from Transylvania.

In 1686, two years after the unsuccessful siege of Buda, a renewed European campaign was started to enter the Hungarian capital. This time, the Holy League's army was twice a large, containing over 74,000 men, including German, Croat, Dutch, Hungarian, English, Spanish, Czech, Italian, French, Burgundian, Danish and Swedish soldiers, along with other Europeans as volunteers, artilleryman, and officers; with this force, the Christian forces reconquered Buda. The second Battle of Mohács (1687) and Battle of Zenta (1697) were crushing defeats for the Turks, in the next few years, all of the former Hungarian lands, except areas near Temesvár (Timişoara), were taken from the Turks. In the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz these territorial changes were officially recognized, and in 1718 the entire Kingdom of Hungary was removed from Ottoman rule. The constrained Habsburg Counter-Reformation efforts in the seventeenth century reconverted the majority of the kingdom to Catholicism. The Hungarian aristocracy successfully preserved its former positions in the political and economic sphere.

Ethnic aftermath of Ottoman wars

As a consequence of the prolonged constant warfare between Hungarians and Ottoman Turks, population growth was stunted and the network of medieval settlements with their urbanized bourgeois inhabitants perished. The 150 years of Turkish wars fundamentally changed the ethnic composition of Hungary. As a result of demographic losses including deportations and massacres, the number of ethnic Hungarians in existence at the end of the Turkish period was substantially diminished.^[48]

The average Hungarian people (the vast majority of Hungarian lowborn people hated^{[citation needed]} the Habsburg monarchs) were considered rebellious by Habsburg Monarchs. After the "liberation" of Hungary from the Turks, The Austrian — Habsburg government settled large groups of Serbs and other Slavs in the south, allowed mass Vlach (Romanian) immigration into Transylvania and settled Germans in various areas, but not a single Hungarian person was allowed to settle or re-settle in the south of the Great Plain.^[49] The Hungarian aristocracy successfully preserved its former positions in political and economic sphere.

History of Hungary 1700–1919

Main articles: History of Hungary 1700–1919, István Széchenyi, Austria–Hungary, Lajos Kossuth, and Hungarian Revolution of 1848

Ferenc Rákóczi

BME, The oldest University of Technology in the World, founded in 1782

Széchenyi Chain Bridge in Buda and Pest, Until 1848, the bridge was the world's biggest suspension bridge(1839–1848) in its era. It was a technological experiment too.

The greatest Hungarian István Széchenyi, as said by Lajos Kossuth.

Statue of Lajos Kossuth in the United States Capitol

Artist Mihály Zichy's rendition of poet Sándor Petőfi reciting the Nemzeti dal to a crowd on March 15, 1848

Map of the counties in the Kingdom of Hungary 19th century

Between 1703 and 1711 there was a large-scale uprising led by Francis II Rákóczi, who after the dethronement of the Habsburgs in 1707 at the Diet of Ónód, took power provisionally as the "Ruling Prince" of Hungary for the wartime period, but refused the Hungarian Crown and the title "King". After 8 years of war with the Habsburg Empire the Hungarian Kuruc army lost the last main battle at Battle of Trencin (Trencsény) (1711); however, they also had successful actions, for example when Ádám Balogh almost captured the Austrian Emperor with Kuruc troops. When Austrians defeated the uprising in 1711, Rákóczi was in Poland. He later fled to France, finally Turkey, and lived to the end of his life (1735) in nearby Rodosto. Ladislas Ignace de Bercheny who was the son of Miklós Bercsényi immigrated to France and created the first French hussar regiment. Afterwards, to make further armed resistance impossible, the Austrians blew up Hungarian castles (most of the castles on the border between the now-reclaimed territories occupied earlier by the Ottomans and Royal Hungary), and allowed peasants to use the stones from most of the others as building material (the végvárs among them). In this century lived one of the most famous Hungarian hussars named Michael de Kovats who created the US cavalry in the American Revolutionary War. He has a statue now in Charleston.

The Period of Reforms (1825–1848)

During the Napoleonic Wars and afterwards, the Hungarian Diet had not convened for decades.^{[citation needed]} In the 1820s, the Emperor was forced to convene the Diet, and thus a Reform Period (Hungarian: reformkor) began. Nevertheless, its progress was slow, because the nobles insisted on retaining their privileges (no taxation, exclusive voting rights, etc.). Therefore the achievements were mostly of national character (e.g. introduction of Hungarian as one of the official languages of the country, instead of the former Latin).

Count István Széchenyi, one of the most prominent statesmen of the country recognized the urgent need of modernization and his message got through. The Hungarian Parliament was reconvened in 1825 to handle financial needs. A liberal party emerged in the Diet. The party focused on providing for the peasantry. Lajos Kossuth - famous journalist at the time - emerged as leader of the lower gentry in the Parliament. Habsburg monarchs tried to preclude^{[citation needed]} the industrialisation of the country. A remarkable upswing started as the nation concentrated its forces on modernisation even though the Habsburg monarchs obstructed all important liberal laws about the human civil and political rights and economic reforms. Many reformers (like Lajos Kossuth, Mihály Táncsics) were imprisoned by the authorities.

Revolution and War of Independence

On March 15, 1848, mass demonstrations in Pest and Buda enabled Hungarian reformists to push through a list of 12 demands. Faced with revolution both at home and in Vienna(Bécs in Hungarian), Austria first had to accept Hungarian demands. Later, under governor and president Lajos Kossuth and the first Prime minister, Lajos Batthyány, the House of Habsburg was dethroned and the form of government was changed to create the first Republic of Hungary. After the Austrian revolution was suppressed, emperor Franz Joseph replaced his epileptic uncle Ferdinand I as Emperor. The Habsburg Ruler and his advisors skillfully manipulated the Croatian, Serbian and Romanian peasantry, led by priests and officers firmly loyal to the Habsburgs, and induced them to rebel against the Hungarian government. The Hungarians were supported by the vast majority of the Slovak, German and Rusyn nationalities and by all the Jews of the kingdom, as well as by a large number of Polish, Austrian and Italian volunteers.^[50] In July 1849 the Hungarian Parliament proclaimed and enacted the first laws of ethnic and minority rights in the world. Many members of the nationalities gained coveted the highest positions within the Hungarian Army, like General János Damjanich, an ethnic Serb who became a Hungarian national hero through his command of the 3rd Hungarian Army Corps. Initially, the Hungarian forces (Honvédség) defeated Austrian armies. To counter the successes of the Hungarian revolutionary army, Franz Joseph asked for help from the "Gendarme of Europe," Czar Nicholas I, whose Russian armies invaded Hungary. The huge army of the Russian Empire and the Austrian forces proved too powerful for the Hungarian army, and General Artúr Görgey surrendered in August 1849. Julius Freiherr von Haynau, the leader of the Austrian army, then became governor of Hungary for a few months, ordered the execution of 13 leaders of the Hungarian army as well as Prime Minister Batthyány in October 1849. Lajos Kossuth escaped into exile. Following the war of 1848–1849, the whole country was in "passive resistance". Archduke Albrecht von Habsburg was appointed governor of the Kingdom of Hungary, and this time was remembered for Germanization pursued with the help of Czech officers.^{[citation needed]}

Austria–Hungary (1867–1918)

Heroes' Square in Budapest

Cutaway Drawing of Millennium Underground in Budapest (1894–1896) which was the first underground in Continental Europe

Automobile from 1904 (produced in Hungary) Between 1900 and 1918, there were 10 automotive factories in Hungary

King Charles IV of Hungary, with Zita and their child: Crown Prince Otto von Habsburg. Coronation portrait Budapest, 1916

Due to external and internal problems, reforms seemed inevitable to secure the integrity of the Habsburg Empire. Major military defeats of Austria, like the Battle of Königgrätz (1866), forced the Emperor to concede internal reforms. To appease Hungarian separatism, the Emperor made a deal with Hungary, negotiated by Ferenc Deák, called the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, by which the dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary came into existence. The two realms were governed separately by two parliaments, with a common monarch and common external and military policies. Economically, the empire was a customs union. The first prime minister of Hungary after the Compromise was Count Gyula Andrássy. The old Hungarian Constitution was restored, and Franz Joseph was crowned as King of Hungary.

Austria-Hungary was geographically the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire (239,977 sq. m in 1905 ^[51]), and the third most populous (after Russia and the German Empire).

The era witnessed an impressive economic development. The formerly backward Hungarian economy become a relatively modern and industrialized by the turn of the century, although agriculture remained dominant until 1890. In 1873, the old capital Buda and Óbuda(Ancient Buda) were officially merged with the third city, Pest, thus creating the new metropolis of Budapest. The dynamic Pest grew into the country's administrative, political, economic, trade and cultural hub. Technological change accelerated industrialization and urbanization. The GNP per capita grew roughly 1.45% per year from 1870 to 1913. That level of growth compared very favorably to that of other European nations such as Britain (1.00%), France (1.06%), and Germany (1.51%). Many of the state institutions and the modern administrative system of Hungary were established during this period.

Due to various reasons including migration of millions, the census in 1910 (excluding Croatia), recorded the following distribution of population: Hungarian 54.5%, Romanian 16.1%, Slovak 10.7%, and German 10.4%. The largest religious denomination was the Roman Catholic (49.3%), followed by the Calvinist (14.3%), Greek Orthodox (12.8%) /Romanians Serbians Ruthenians), Greek Catholic (11.0%), Lutheran (7.1%), and Jewish (5.0%) religions. In 1910, 6.37% of the population were eligible to vote in elections due to census.^[52]

World War I

Main article: Hungary in World War I

Hungarian built dreadnought class battleship SMS Szent Istvan at Pula (military dock)

A submarine from the U-27 series.

After the Assasination in Sarajevo the Hungarian prime minister, István Tisza and his cabinet (sole in Europe) tried to avoid the breaking out and escalating of a war in Europe, but his diplomatic attempts remained unsuccessful.

Austria–Hungary drafted 9 million (fighting forces: 7,8 million) soldiers in World War I (4 million from the Kingdom of Hungary). In World War I Austria–Hungary was fighting on the side of Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey. The Central Powers conquered Serbia. Romania proclaimed war. The Central Powers conquered Southern Romania and the Romanian capital Bucharest. On November 1916 Emperor Franz Joseph died, the new monarch Charles IV sympathized with the pacifists. With great difficulty, the Central powers stopped and repelled the attacks of the Russian Empire. The Eastern front of the Allied (Entente) Powers completely collapsed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire then withdrew from all defeated countries. On the Italian front, the Austro-Hungarian army could not make more successful progress against Italy after January 1918. Despite great Eastern successes, Germany suffered complete defeat in the more determinant Western front. By 1918, the economic situation had deteriorated (strikes in factories were organized by leftist and pacifist movements), and uprisings in the army had become commonplace. In the capital cities (Vienna and Budapest), the Austrian and the Hungarian leftist liberal movements (the maverick parties) and their leader politicians supported and strengthened the separatism of ethnic minorities. Austria-Hungary signed general armistice in Padua on 3 November 1918. In October 1918, the personal union with Austria was dissolved.

Between the two world wars (1918–1941)

Main articles: Treaty of Trianon, Hungarian Soviet Republic, and Hungarian Communist Party, Béla Kun, Hungarian Revolutionary War, Hungary between the two world wars, Hungarian interwar economy, First Vienna Award, and Second Vienna Award

World War I Memorial in Solt, Hungary

The first Republic of Hungary

In 1918, as a political result of German defeat on the Western front in World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy collapsed. French troops landed in Greece to rearm the defeated Romania, Serbia and the newly formed Czech state. Despite the general armistice agreement, the Balkanian French army organized new campaigns against Hungary with the help of Czech, Romanian, and Serbian governments.

On October 31, 1918, the success of the Aster Revolution in Budapest brought the left liberal count Mihály Károlyi to power as Prime-Minister. Roving soldiers assassinated István Tisza.^[53] Károlyi was a devotee of Entente from the beginning of the World War. By a notion of Woodrow Wilson's pacifism, Károlyi ordered the full disarmament of Hungarian Army. Hungary remained without national defense in the darkest hour of its history. On 5 November 1918 Serbian Army with French involvement attacked Southern parts of the country, on 8 November Czech Army invaded Northern part of Hungary (present-day Slovakia), on 2 December Romanian Army started to attack the Eastern (Transylvanian) parts of Hungary. The First Republic was proclaimed on 16 November 1918 with Károlyi being named as president. The Károlyi government pronounced illegal all armed associations and proposals which wanted to defend the integrity of the country. The Károlyi government also dissolved the gendarme and police, the lack of police force caused big problems in the country. By February 1919 the government had lost all popular support, having failed on domestic and military fronts. On March 21, after the Entente military representative demanded more and more territorial concessions from Hungary, Károlyi resigned. Károlyi (with a new Czechoslovakian passport and Czechoslovak diplomatic help) moved to Paris.

The Hungarian Soviet Republic

The Communist Party of Hungary, led by Béla Kun, came to power and proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The Communists also promised equality and social justice. The Communists – "The Reds" – came to power largely thanks to being the only group with an organized fighting force, and they promised that Hungary would defend its territory without conscription. (possibly with the help of the Soviet Red Army). Hence: the Red Army of Hungary was a little voluntary army (53,000 men). Most soldiers of the Red Army were armed factory workers from Budapest. In terms of domestic policy, the Communist government nationalized industrial and commercial enterprises, socialized housing, transport, banking, medicine, cultural institutions, and all landholdings of more than 400,000 square metres. The support of the Communists proved to be short lived in Budapest. The Soviet Red Army was never able to aid the new Hungarian republic. Despite the great military successes against Czechoslovakian army, the communist leaders gave back all recaptured lands. That attitude demoralized the voluntary army. The Hungarian Red Army was dissolved before it could successfully complete its campaigns. The Communists had never been popular in country towns and countryside. In the aftermath of a coup attempt, the government took a series of actions called the Red Terror, murdering several hundred people (mostly intellectuals), which alienated much of the population. In the face of domestic backlash and an advancing Romanian force, Béla Kun and most of his comrades fled to Austria, while Budapest was occupied on August 6. Kun and his followers illegally took along numerous art treasures and the gold stocks of the National Bank.^[54] All these events, and in particular the final military defeat, led to a deep feeling of dislike among the general population against the Soviet Union (which had not kept its promise to offer military assistance) and the Jews (since most members of Kun's government were Jewish).

The Hungarian Kingdom

The new fighting force in Hungary were the Conservative Royalists counter-revolutionaries – the "Whites". These, who had been organizing in Vienna and established a counter-government in Szeged, assumed power, led by István Bethlen, a Transylvanian aristocrat, and rear-admiral Miklós Horthy, the former commander in chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Starting in Western Hungary and spreading throughout the country, a White Terror began by other half-regular and half-militarist detachments (as the police power crashed, there were no serious national regular forces and authorities), and many Communists and other leftists were tortured and executed without trial. The leaving Romanian army pillaged the country: livestock, machinery and agricultural products were carried to Romania in hundreds of freight cars.^[55]^[56] The estimated property damage of their activity was so much that the international peace conference in 1919 did not require Hungary to pay war redemption to Romania.^{[citation needed]} On November 16, with the consent of Romanian forces, Horthy's army marched into Budapest. His government gradually restored security police and gendarmee, stopped terror, and set up authorities, but thousands of supporters of the leftist-liberal Károlyi and communist Kun regimes were imprisoned (for "High treason" and "anti-Hungarian actions"). But radical rightist political movements were suppressed too. In March, the parliament restored the Hungarian monarchy but postponed electing a king until civil disorder had subsided. Instead, Miklos Horthy was elected Regent and was empowered, among other things, to appoint Hungary's Prime Minister, veto legislation, convene or dissolve the parliament, and command the armed forces.

The Treaty of Trianon: Hungary lost 72% of its territory, and lost its sea ports in Croatia, 3,425,000 ethnic Hungarians found themselves separated from their motherland. Hungary lost 8 of its 10 biggest Hungarian cities.^[57]^[58]

Hungary's signing of the Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, ratified the country's dismemberment. The territorial provisions of the treaty, which ensured continued discord between Hungary and its neighbors, required Hungary to surrender more than two-thirds of its pre-war lands. However, nearly one-third of the 10 million ethnic Hungarians found themselves outside the diminished homeland. The country's ethnic composition was left almost homogeneous, Hungarians constituting about 90% of the population, Germans made up about 6%, and Slovaks, Croats, Romanians, Jews and Gypsies accounted for the remainder.^{[citation needed]}

New international borders separated Hungary's industrial base from its sources of raw materials and its former markets for agricultural and industrial products. Hungary lost 84% of its timber resources, 43% of its arable land, and 83% of its iron ore. Furthermore, post-Trianon Hungary possessed 90% of the engineering and printing industry of the Kingdom, while only 11% of timber and 16% iron was retained. In addition, 61% of arable land, 74% of public road, 65% of canals, 62% of railroads, 64% of hard surface roads, 83% of pig iron output, 55% of industrial plants, 100% of gold, silver, copper, mercury and salt mines, and 67% of credit and banking institutions of the former Kingdom of Hungary lay within the territory of Hungary's neighbors.^[59]^[60]^[61]

Because most of the country's pre-war industry was concentrated near Budapest, Hungary retained about 51% of its industrial population, 56% of its industry. Horthy appointed Count Pál Teleki as Prime Minister in July 1920. His government issued a numerus clausus law, limiting admission of "political insecure elements" (these were often Jews) to universities and, in order to quiet rural discontent, took initial steps toward fulfilling a promise of major land reform by dividing about 3,850 km² from the largest estates into smallholdings. Teleki's government resigned, however, after, Charles IV, unsuccessfully attempted to retake Hungary's throne in March 1921. King Charles's return produced split parties between conservatives who favored a Habsburg restoration and nationalist right-wing radicals who supported election of a Hungarian king. Count István Bethlen, a non-affiliated right-wing member of the parliament, took advantage of this rift forming a new Party of Unity under his leadership. Horthy then appointed Bethlen prime minister. Charles IV died soon after he failed a second time to reclaim the throne in October 1921. (For more detail on Charles's attempts to retake the throne, see Charles IV of Hungary's conflict with Miklós Horthy.)

Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya , Regent of Hungary

As prime minister, Bethlen dominated Hungarian politics between 1921 and 1931. He fashioned a political machine by amending the electoral law, providing jobs in the expanding bureaucracy to his supporters, and manipulating elections in rural areas. Bethlen restored order to the country by giving the radical counterrevolutionaries payoffs and government jobs in exchange for ceasing their campaign of terror against Jews and leftists. In 1921, he made a deal with the Social Democrats and trade unions (called Bethlen-Peyer Pact), agreeing, among other things, to legalize their activities and free political prisoners in return for their pledge to refrain from spreading anti-Hungarian propaganda, calling political strikes, and organizing the peasantry. Bethlen brought Hungary into the League of Nations in 1922 and out of international isolation by signing a treaty of friendship with Italy in 1927. The revision of the Treaty of Trianon rose to the top of Hungary's political agenda and the strategy employed by Bethlen consisted by strengthening the economy and building relations with stronger nations. Revision of the treaty had such a broad backing in Hungary that Bethlen used it, at least in part, to deflect criticism of his economic, social, and political policies. The Great Depression induced a drop in the standard of living and the political mood of the country shifted further toward the right. In 1932 Horthy appointed a new prime-minister, Gyula Gömbös, that changed the course of Hungarian policy towards closer cooperation with Germany. Gömbös signed a trade agreement with Germany that drew Hungary's economy out of depression but made Hungary dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and markets. Adolf Hitler appealed to Hungarian desires for territorial revisionism, while extreme right wing organizations, like the Arrow Cross party, increasingly embraced Nazi policies, including those related to Jews. The government passed the First Jewish Law in 1938. The law established a quote system to limit Jewish involvement in the Hungarian economy.

Imrédy's attempts to improve Hungary's diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom initially made him very unpopular with Germany and Italy. In light of Germany's Anschluss with Austria in March, he realized that he could not afford to alienate Germany and Italy for long; in the autumn of 1938 his foreign policy became very much pro-German and pro-Italian.^[62] Intent on amassing a base of power in Hungarian right wing politics, Imrédy began to suppress political rivals, so the increasingly influential Arrow Cross Party was harassed, and eventually banned by Imrédy's administration. As Imrédy drifted further to the right, he proposed that the government be reorganized along totalitarian lines and drafted a harsher Second Jewish Law. The Parliament under the new government of Pál Teleki approved the Second Jewish Law in 1939, which greatly restricted Jewish involvement in the economy, culture, and society and, significantly, defined Jews by race instead of religion. This definition altered the status of those who had formerly converted from Judaism to Christianity.

Regions that belonged to Kingdom of Hungary from 1867 to 1918

Countries of the
Holy Crown

Hungary proper	Burgenland / Őrvidék (Austria) · Carpathian Ruthenia / Zakarpattia Oblast / Kárpátalja (Ukraine) · Međimurje / Muraköz (Croatia) · Prekmurje / Muravidék (Slovenia) · Transylvania / Erdély; Crişana / Partium; Maramureş / Máramaros; Szeklerland / Székelyföld (Romania) · Upper Hungary / Felvidék / present-day Slovakia (Slovakia) · Bačka / Bácska (Serbia) · Banat / Bánát (Romania, Serbia) · Baranja / Baranya (Croatia)

Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia	Croatia / Horvátország (Croatia) · Slavonia / Szlavónia (Croatia) · Syrmia / Szerémség (Serbia, Croatia)

Corpus separatum	Rijeka / Fiume (Croatia)

joint Austrian-Hungarian administration	Bosnia and Herzegovina / Bosznia-Hercegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Hungary in World War II (1941–1945)

Main articles: Hungary during World War II, First Army (Hungary), Hungarian Second Army, Arrow Cross Party, Hungarian Gold Train, Battle of Debrecen, Hungarian Volunteers in the Winter War, Raoul Wallenberg, and Soviet occupation of Hungary

The Germans and Italians granted to Hungary part of southern Czechoslovakia and Subcarpathia in the First Vienna Treaty of 1938, and then northern Transylvania in the Second Vienna Treaty of 1940. In 1941 Hungary participated in its first military manoeuvres as part of the Axis. Thus the Hungarian army was part of the invasion of Yugoslavia, gaining some more territory. On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union under Operation Barbarossa; Hungary joined the German effort and declared war on the Soviet Union on June 26, and formally entered World War II on the side of the Axis. In late 1941, the Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front experienced success at the Battle of Uman. By 1943, after the Hungarian Second Army suffered extremely heavy losses at the River Don, the Hungarian government sought to negotiate a surrender with the Allies. On March 19, 1944, as a result of this duplicity, German troops occupied Hungary in what was known as Operation Margarethe. By then it was clear that Hungarian politics was suppressed by Hitler's intent to hold the country in war on the side of the Nazi Third Reich because its strategic location. On October 15, 1944, Miklós Horthy made a token effort to disengage Hungary from the war. This time the Germans launched Operation Panzerfaust and Horthy was replaced by a puppet government under the pro-German Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi. Szálasi and his pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party remained loyal to the Germans until the end of the war. In late 1944, Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front again experienced success at the Battle of Debrecen, but this was followed immediately by the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Battle of Budapest. During the German occupation in May-June 1944, the Arrow Cross Party and Hungarian police deported nearly 440,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz.^[63]. The Swedish Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg managed to save a considerable number of Hungarian Jews by giving them Swedish passports, but when the soviets arrived he was arrested as a spy and disappeared. ^[64]. Hundreds of Hungarian people were also executed by the Arrow Cross Party for sheltering Jews.

The war left Hungary devastated destroying over 60% of the economy and causing huge loss of life. Many Hungarians, including women and children, were brutally raped, murdered and executed or deported for slave labour by Czechslovaks, Russian Red Army troops, Yugoslavs (mostly Serbian partisans and regular units), and the Romanian so-called "Munteanu Guard" paramilitary units — by the end of the war approximately 500,000-650,000 people.

On February 13, 1945, the Hungarian capital city surrendered unconditionally. On May 8, 1945, World War II in Europe officially ended. By the agreement between the Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš and Joseph Stalin the wild expulsions of Slovaks from Hungary and Magyars from Czechoslovakia started. 250,000 ethnic Germans were also transferred to Germany pursuant to article XIII of the Potsdam Protocol of 2 August 1945 ^[65].

Communist era (1947–1989)

Main article: People's Republic of Hungary

Main article: Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Communist Statue Park

Vandalised fallen head of a statue of Joseph Stalin during the revolution

Following the fall of Nazi Germany, Soviet troops occupied all of the country and through their influence Hungary gradually became a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union. Many of the communist leaders of 1919 returned from Moscow. After 1948, Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi established Stalinist rule in the country complete with forced collectivization and planned economy. Mátyás Rákosi now attempted to impose authoritarian rule on Hungary. An estimated 2,000 people were executed and over 100,000 were imprisoned. Approximately 350,000 officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956 ^[66] Many people (freethinkers democrats) were secretly arrested and taken to inland or foreign concentration camps without any judicial sentence. Hungary experienced one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe.

Rákosi had difficulty managing the economy and the people of Hungary saw living standards fall. His government became increasingly unpopular, and when Joseph Stalin died in 1953, Mátyás Rákosi was replaced as prime minister by Imre Nagy. However, he retained his position as general secretary of the Hungarian Workers Party and over the next three years the two men became involved in a bitter struggle for power.

As Hungary's new leader, Imre Nagy removed state control of the mass media and encouraged public discussion on political and economic reform. This included a promise to increase the production and distribution of consumer goods. Nagy also released anti-communists from prison and talked about holding free elections and withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. Nagy was removed by Soviets. Rákosi did manage to secure the appointment of his puppet and close friend, Ernő Gerő, as his successor.

The rule of the Rákosi government was nearly unbearable for Hungary's war-torn citizens. This led to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and Hungary's temporary withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. The multi-party system was restored by Nagy. Soviets and Hungarian political police(AVH) shot at peaceful demonstrators, many demonstrators died throughout the country, which made the events irreversible. Spontaneous revolutionary militias arose and heavy street fights started against the Soviet Army and the fearful communist secret police (AVH) in Budapest. The roughly 3,000-strong Hungarian resistance fought Soviet tanks using Molotov cocktails (in the narrow streets of Budapest) and machine-pistols. The immense Soviet preponderance suffered heavy losses, by 30 October most Soviet troops had withdrawn from Budapest to garrisons in the Hungarian countryside. The Soviet Union sent new armies to Hungary. On 4 November 1956, the Soviets retaliated massively with military force, sending in over 150,000 troops and 2,500 tanks.^[67] During the Hungarian Uprising an estimated 20,000 people were killed, nearly all during the Soviet intervention. Nearly a quarter of a million people left the country during the brief time that the borders were open in 1956.^[68]

Kádár Era (1956-1988)

János Kádár (who was the appointed leader by the Soviets) reorganized the communist party as the puppet of the Soviets. Once he was in power, Kádár led an attack against revolutionaries. 21,600 mavericks (democrats, liberals, reformist communists alike) were imprisoned, 13,000 interned, and 400 killed. Imre Nagy, the legal Prime Minister of the country was condemned to death. From the 1960s through the late 1980s, Hungary was often satirically referred to as "the happiest barrack" within the Eastern bloc. As a result of the relatively high standard of living, and less restricted travel rights than those in force elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, Hungary was generally considered one of the better countries in which to live in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. (See also Goulash Communism for a discussion of the Hungarian variety of socialism.) This was under the autocratic rule of its controversial communist leader, János Kádár. It was the so called Kádár era (1956–1988). The last Soviet soldier left the country in 1991 thus ending Soviet military presence in Hungary. With the Soviet Union gone the transition to a market economy began.

The Third Hungarian Republic (1989–present)

Science

Rubik's cube

As of 2009, 13 Hungarians (who were born in Hungary) had received a Nobel prize, more than China, India, Australia or Spain.^[69] A further eight scientists (of Hungarian origin on both sides) were born abroad.

The world's first institution of technology was founded in Selmecbánya, Hungarian Kingdom (today Slovakia) in 1735. Budapest University of Technology and Economics (the BME) is considered the oldest institution of technology in the world, which has university rank and structure. The legal predecessor of the university was founded in 1782 by Emperor Joseph II.

Hungary is famous for its excellent mathematics education which has trained numerous outstanding scientists. Famous Hungarian mathematicians include János (John) Bolyai (Bolyai János), designer of modern geometry ( non-Euclidean (or "absolute") geometry ) in 1831. Paul Erdős (Erdős Pál), famed for publishing in over forty languages and whose Erdős numbers are still tracked;^[70] and John von Neumann (Neumann János), Quantum Theory, Game theory a pioneer of digital computing and main mathematician in Manhattan Project. Many Hungarian scientists, including Erdős, von Neumann, Leo Szilard, and Edward Teller immigrated to the United States. The other cause of scientist emigration was the Treaty of Trianon, that "little Hungary" amputated by the Trianon treaty was unable to support the large-scale costly scientific researches, therefore some Hungarian scientists made their most famous contributions in the United States.

Most famous Hungarian inventions

Old times

Steel spring (medieval), Coach (carriage) (medieval) and coach suspension. The English word "coach" came from the Hungarian kocsi, a wagon from the village of Kocs, Hungary.^[71], the noiseless match (János Irinyi)

Modern times

First electric motor (1827) and first electrical generator (Ányos Jedlik), (David Schwarz) invented and designed the (aluminium-made) first flyable rigid airship, later he sold his patent for German Graf Zeppelin. Ottó Bláthy, Miksa Déri and Károly Zipernowsky invented the transformer in 1885.^[72]^[72] (Ottó Bláthy) invented the Turbogenerator and Wattmeter, Telephone exchange (Tivadar Puskás), Ford Model T and production line (therefore he is the inventor of industrial mass production) József Galamb, Tungsten electric bulb (1904) (Sándor Just) and the krypton electric bulb (Imre Bródy), Electronic Television and camrera-tube (1926) and Plasma TV (1936) (Kálmán Tihanyi), Vitamin C and the first artificial vitamin Albert Szent-Györgyi, mathematical tools to study fluid flow and mathematical background of supersonic flight and inventor of swept-back wings "father of Supersonic Flight" (Theodore Kármán), ramjet propulsion Albert Fonó, Turboprop propulsion by (György Jendrassik), (Leó Szilárd): (nuclear chain reaction (Therefore he was the first who realized the really operable "atomic bomb". In August 1939, Szilard approached his old friend and collaborator Albert Einstein and convinced him to sign the Einstein–Szilárd letter, lending the weight of Einstein's fame to the proposal. The letter led directly to the establishment of research into nuclear fission by the U.S. government and ultimately to the creation of the Manhattan Project. Szilárd also invented the Nuclear Reactor. Other notable Hungarian inventions include holography (Dennis Gabor), the ballpoint pen (László Bíró), Thermonuclear fusion and the theory of the hydrogen bomb (Edward Teller), and the BASIC programming language (John Kemeny, with Thomas E. Kurtz), Low level laser therapy or "light therapy" (Endre Mester), artificial blood (István Horváth), Rubik's cube (Ernő Rubik)^[70].

Jedlik Ányos, he is considered to be the Unsung Father of the Dynamo and Electric Motor.	Bolyai János	Albert Szent-Györgyi, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937.	Bárány Róbert, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1914.
Simonyi Károly	Hevesy György, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1943.	Teller Ede, "The father of the hydrogen bomb."	Neumann János

v • d • e Hungarian or Hungarian-Born Nobel Laureates

Lénárd Fülöp (1905) · Bárány Róbert (1914) · Zsigmondy Richárd (1925) · Szent-Györgyi Albert (1937) · Hevesy György (1943) · Békésy György (1961) · Wigner Jenő (1963) · Gábor Dénes (1971) · Polányi János (1986) · Elie Wiesel (1986) · Harsányi János (1994) · Oláh György (1994) · Kertész Imre (2002) · Avram Hershko (2004) ·

Politics

Main article: Politics of Hungary

Hungarian Parliament in Budapest

The President of the Republic, elected by the members of the National Assembly every five years, has a largely ceremonial role, but he is nominally the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and his powers include the nomination of the Prime Minister who is to be elected by a majority of the votes of the Members of Parliament, based on the recommendation made by the President of the Republic.

Due to the Hungarian Constitution, based on the post-WWII Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Prime Minister has a leading role in the executive branch as he selects Cabinet ministers and has the exclusive right to dismiss them (similarly to the competences of the German federal chancellor). Each cabinet nominee appears before one or more parliamentary committees in consultative open hearings, survive a vote by the Parliament and must be formally approved by the president.

The Prime Minister is elected by Parliament and can only be removed by a constructive vote of no confidence. The prime minister selects Cabinet ministers and has the exclusive right to dismiss them. Each Cabinet nominee appears before one or more parliamentary committees in open hearings and must be formally approved by the President.

The unicameral, 386-member National Assembly (Országgyűlés) is the highest organ of state authority and initiates and approves legislation sponsored by the Prime Minister. Its members are elected for a four year term. 176 members are elected in single-seat constituencies, 152 by proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies, and 58 so-called compensation seats are distributed based on the number of votes "lost" (i.e., the votes that did not produce a seat) in either the single-seat or the multi-seat constituencies. The election threshold is 5%, but it only applies to the multi-seat constituencies and the compensation seats, not the single-seat constituencies.

An 11-member Constitutional Court has power to challenge legislation on grounds of unconstitutionality.

Regions, counties, and subregions

Main articles: Counties of Hungary, Regions of Hungary, and Subregions of Hungary

See also List of historic counties of Hungary

Regions of Hungary with their regional centres

Administratively, Hungary is divided into 19 counties. In addition, the capital city (főváros), Budapest, is independent of any county government. The counties and the capital are the 20 NUTS third-level units of Hungary.

The counties are further subdivided into 173 subregions (kistérségek), and Budapest is its own subregion. Since 1996, the counties and City of Budapest have been grouped into 7 regions for statistical and development purposes. These seven regions constitute NUTS' second-level units of Hungary.

There are also 23 towns with county rights (singular megyei jogú város), sometimes known as "urban counties" in English (although there is no such term in Hungarian). The local authorities of these towns have extended powers, but these towns belong to the territory of the respective county instead of being independent territorial units.

Counties (County Capital)

Regions

Budapest, capital city	Debrecen	Szeged	Pécs
Győr	Miskolc	Kecskemét	Székesfehérvár
Veszprém	Eger	Sopron	Kőszeg

Economy

Main article: Economy of Hungary

Hungary held its first multi-party elections in 1990, following four decades of Communist rule, and has succeeded in transforming its centrally planned economy into a market economy. Both foreign ownership of and foreign investment in Hungarian firms are widespread. The governing coalition, comprising the Hungarian Socialist Party and the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats, prevailed in the April 2006 general election. Hungary needs to reduce government spending and further reform its economy in order to meet the 2012–2013 target date for accession to the euro zone.

Hungary has continued to demonstrate economic growth as one of the newest member countries of the European Union (since 2004). The private sector accounts for over 80% of GDP. Hungary gets nearly one third of all foreign direct investment flowing into Central Europe, with cumulative foreign direct investment totaling more than US$185 billion since 1989. It enjoys strong trade, fiscal, monetary, investment, business, and labor freedoms. The top income tax rate is fairly high, but corporate taxes are low. Inflation is low, it was on the rise in the past few years, but it is now starting to regulate. Investment in Hungary is easy, although it is subject to government licensing in security-sensitive areas. Foreign capital enjoys virtually the same protections and privileges as domestic capital. The rule of law is strong, a professional judiciary protects property rights, and the level of corruption is low.

Hungarian Forint (obverse)

Hungarian National Bank

Planned general government net lending 2005-2010.

The Hungarian economy is a medium-sized, structurally, politically, and institutionally open economy in Central Europe and is part of the EU single market. Like most Eastern European economies, it experienced market liberalisation in the early 1990s as part of a transition away from communism. Today, Hungary is a full member of OECD and the World Trade Organization. OECD was the first international organization to accept Hungary as a full member in 1996, after six years of successful cooperation.

History of the Hungarian Economy

Hungarian economy prior to the transition

The Hungarian economy prior to World War II was primarily oriented toward agriculture and small-scale manufacturing. Hungary's strategic position in Europe and its relative high lack of natural resources also have dictated a traditional reliance on foreign trade. For instance, its largest car manufacturer, Magomobil (maker of the Magosix), produced a total of a few thousand units.^[73] In the early 1950s, the communist government forced rapid industrialization after the standard Stalinist pattern in an effort to encourage a more self-sufficient economy. Most economic activity was conducted by state-owned enterprises or cooperatives and state farms. In 1968, Stalinist self-sufficiency was replaced by the "New Economic Mechanism," which reopened Hungary to foreign trade, gave limited freedom to the workings of the market, and allowed a limited number of small businesses to operate in the services sector.

Although Hungary enjoyed one of the most liberal and economically advanced economies of the former Eastern bloc, both agriculture and industry began to suffer from a lack of investment in the 1970s, and Hungary's net foreign debt rose significantly—from $1 billion in 1973 to $15 billion in 1993—due largely to consumer subsidies and unprofitable state enterprises. In the face of economic stagnation, Hungary opted to try further liberalization by passing a joint venture law, instating an income tax, and joining the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. By 1988, Hungary had developed a two-tier banking system and had enacted significant corporate legislation which paved the way for the ambitious market-oriented reforms of the post-communist years.

Transition to a market economy

Duna Tower

After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet satellites had to transition from a one-party, centrally-planned economy to a market economy with a multi-party political system. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc countries suffered a significant loss in both markets for goods, and subsidizing from the Soviet Union.^{[citation needed]} Hungary, for example, "lost nearly 70% of its export markets in Eastern and Central Europe." The loss of external markets in Hungary coupled with the loss of Soviet subsidizing left "800,000 unemployed people because all the unprofitable and unsalvageable factories had been closed."^[74] Another form of Soviet subsidizing that greatly affected Hungary after the fall of communism was the loss of social welfare programs. Because of the lack of subsidizing and a need to reduce expenditures, many social programs in Hungary had to be cut in an attempt to lower spending.^{[citation needed]} As a result, many people in Hungary suffered incredible hardships during the transition to a market economy. Following privatization and tax reductions on Hungarian businesses, unemployment suddenly rose to 12% in 1991 (it was 1,7% in 1990 ), gradually decreasing till 2001.^{[citation needed]} Economic growth, after a fall in 1991 to -11,9%, gradually grew until the end of the 1990s at an average annual rate of 4,2%.^{[citation needed]} With the stabilization of the new market economy, Hungary has experienced growth in foreign investment with a "cumulative foreign direct investment totaling more than $60 billion since 1989."^[75]

Megyeri Bridge

The Antall government of 1990–94 began market reforms with price and trade liberation measures, a revamped tax system, and a nascent market-based banking system.^{[citation needed]} By 1994, however, the costs of government overspending and hesitant privatization had become clearly visible. Cuts in consumer subsidies led to increases in the price of food, medicine, transportation services, and energy.^{[citation needed]} Reduced exports to the former Soviet bloc and shrinking industrial output contributed to a sharp decline in GDP.^{[citation needed]} Unemployment rose rapidly to about 12% in 1993. The external debt burden, one of the highest in Europe, reached 250% of annual export earnings, while the budget and current account deficits approached 10% of GDP.^{[citation needed]} The devaluation of the currency (in order to support exports), without effective stabilization measures, such as indexation of wages, provoked an extremely high inflation rate, that in 1991 reached 35% and slightly decreased till 1994, growing again in 1995.^{[citation needed]} In March 1995, the government of Prime Minister Gyula Horn implemented an austerity program, coupled with aggressive privatization of state-owned enterprises and an export-promoting exchange raw regime, to reduce indebtedness, cut the current account deficit, and shrink public spending. By the end of 1997 the consolidated public sector deficit decreased to 4.6% of GDP—with public sector spending falling from 62% of GDP to below 50%—the current account deficit was reduced to 2% of GDP, and government debt was paid down to 94% of annual export earnings.^{[citation needed]}

The Government of Hungary no longer requires IMF financial assistance and has repaid all of its debt to the fund.^{[citation needed]} Consequently, Hungary enjoys favorable borrowing terms. Hungary's sovereign foreign currency debt issuance carries investment-grade ratings from all major credit-rating agencies, although recently the country was downgraded by Moody's, S&P and remains on negative outlook at Fitch.^{[citation needed]} In 1995 Hungary's currency, the Forint (HUF), became convertible for all current account transactions, and subsequent to OECD membership in 1996, for almost all capital account transactions as well.^{[citation needed]} Since 1995, Hungary has pegged the forint against a basket of currencies (in which the U.S. dollar is 30%), and the central rate against the basket is devalued at a preannounced rate, originally set at 0.8% per month, the Forint is now an entirely free-floating currency.^{[citation needed]} The government privatization program ended on schedule in 1998: 80% of GDP is now produced by the private sector, and foreign owners control 70% of financial institutions, 66% of industry, 90% of telecommunications, and 50% of the trading sector.^{[citation needed]}

Kőröshegy-Viaduct

After Hungary's GDP declined about 18% from 1990 to 1993 and grew only 1%–1.5% up to 1996, strong export performance has propelled GDP growth to 4.4% in 1997, with other macroeconomic indicators similarly improving.^{[citation needed]} These successes allowed the government to concentrate in 1996 and 1997 on major structural reforms such as the implementation of a fully-funded pension system (partly modelled after Chile's pension system but enclosing major modifications), reform of higher education, and the creation of a national treasury.^{[citation needed]} Remaining economic challenges include reducing fiscal deficits and inflation, maintaining stable external balances, and completing structural reforms of the tax system, health care, and local government financing.^{[citation needed]} Recently, the overriding goal of Hungarian economic policy has been to prepare the country for entry into the European Union, which it joined in late 2004.^{[citation needed]}

Hungarian Police HQ (Police Palace)

Prior to the change of regime in 1989, 65% of Hungary's trade was with Comecon countries.^{[citation needed]} By the end of 1997, Hungary had shifted much of its trade to the West. Trade with EU countries and the OECD now comprises over 70% and 80% of the total, respectively.^{[citation needed]} Germany is Hungary's single most important trading partner.^{[citation needed]} The U.S. has become Hungary's sixth-largest export market, while Hungary is ranked as the 72d largest export market for the U.S.^{[citation needed]} Bilateral trade between the two countries increased 46% in 1997 to more than $1 billion.^{[citation needed]} The U.S. has extended to Hungary most-favored-nation status, the Generalized System of Preferences, Overseas Private Investment Corporation insurance, and access to the Export-Import Bank.^{[citation needed]}

With about $18 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) since 1989, Hungary has attracted over one-third of all FDI in central and eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union.^{[citation needed]} Of this, about $6 billion came from American companies.^{[citation needed]} Foreign capital is attracted by skilled and relatively inexpensive labor, tax incentives, modern infrastructure, and a good telecommunications system.^{[citation needed]}

By 2006 Hungary’s economic outlook had deteriorated. Wage growth had kept up with other nations in the region; however, this growth has largely been driven by increased government spending.^{[citation needed]} This has resulted in the budget deficit ballooning to over 10% of GDP and inflation rates predicted to exceed 6%. This prompted Nouriel Roubini, a White House economist in the Clinton administration, to state that "Hungary is an accident waiting to happen."^[76]

Hungarian economy today

In 2006 Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány was reelected on a platform promising economic “reform without austerity.” However, after the elections in April 2006, the Socialist coalition under Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany unveiled a package of austerity measures which were designed to reduce the budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2008.

Hungary, as a member state of the European Union may seek to adopt the common European currency, the Euro. To achieve this, Hungary would need to fulfill the Maastricht criteria.

Because of the austerity program, the economy of Hungary slowed down in 2007. However, due to many large investments, GDP growth may improve to 2.8-4.0 percent in the second half of 2008. In foreign investments, Hungary has seen a shift from lower-value textile and food industry to investment in luxury vehicle production, renewable energy systems, high-end tourism, and information technology.

The fulfillment of the Maastricht criteria

	Convergence criteria					Obligation to adopt ⁴	Target date		Euro coins design
Country ¹	Inflation rate²	Government finances		ERM II membership	Interest rate ³		set by the country	recommended by the Commission
Country ¹	Inflation rate²	annual government deficit to GDP	gross government debt to GDP	ERM II membership	Interest rate ³		set by the country	recommended by the Commission
Reference value ⁵	max 3.0%	max. 3%	max. 60%	min. 2 years	max 6.4%	NA	NA	NA	NA
Hungary	3.7%	3.4%	69%	0 years	7.5%	yes	2010-2014	NA	in progress

¹ Current EU member states that have not yet adopted the Euro, candidates and official potential candidates.
² No more than 1.5% higher than the 3 best-performing EU member states.
³ No more than 2% higher than the 3 best-performing EU member states.
⁴ Formal obligation for Euro adoption in the country EU Treaty of Accession or the Framework for membership negotiations.
⁵ Values from May 2007 report.^[77] To be updated each year.

The austerity measures introduced by the government are in part an attempt to fulfill the Maastricht-criteria.

The austerity measures in

Hungary

Contents

History

Before 895 AD

Medieval Hungary (895–1526)

The Patrimonial Kingdom

Important members of the Árpád dynasty

Mongol attacks

Age of elected Kings

Age of early absolutism

Decline of Hungary (1490-1526)

Ottoman wars 1526–1699

Ethnic aftermath of Ottoman wars

History of Hungary 1700–1919

The Period of Reforms (1825–1848)

Revolution and War of Independence

Austria–Hungary (1867–1918)

World War I

Between the two world wars (1918–1941)

The first Republic of Hungary

The Hungarian Soviet Republic

The Hungarian Kingdom

Hungary in World War II (1941–1945)

Communist era (1947–1989)

Kádár Era (1956-1988)

The Third Hungarian Republic (1989–present)

Science

Most famous Hungarian inventions

Old times

Modern times

Politics

Regions, counties, and subregions

Counties (County Capital)

Regions

Economy

History of the Hungarian Economy

Hungarian economy prior to the transition

Transition to a market economy

Hungarian economy today

The fulfillment of the Maastricht criteria