1.
Hungarian People's Republic
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The Hungarian Peoples Republic was a socialist state that administered Hungary from 20 August 1949 until 23 October 1989. It was governed by the Socialist Workers Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Union, the state remained in existence until 1989 when opposition forces consolidated in forcing upon the government to abandon communism. The state considered itself the heir to the Hungarian Soviet Republic and it was designated a peoples democratic republic by the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Geographically, it bordered Romania and the Soviet Union to the east, Yugoslavia to the south-west, Czechoslovakia to the north, following the occupation of Hungary by the Red Army, Soviet military occupation ensued. After seizing most material assets from German hands, the Soviets tried, Communist Interior Minister László Rajk established the ÁVH secret police, in an effort to suppress political opposition through intimidation, false accusations, imprisonment and torture. In early 1947, the Soviet Union pressed the leader of the Hungarian Communists, Mátyás Rákosi, Rákosi complied by pressuring the other parties to push out those members not willing to do the Communists bidding, ostensibly because they were fascists. Later on, after the Communists won full power, he referred to this practice as salami tactics, Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy was forced to resign as prime minister in favour of a more pliant Smallholder, Lajos Dinnyés. In the elections held that year, the Communists became the largest party, the coalition was retained with Dinnyés as prime minister. However, by this time most of the parties more courageous members had been pushed out. Having emasculated most of the parties, the Communists spent the next year. This culminated in the half of 1948. In June, the Communists forced the Social Democrats to merge them to form the Hungarian Working Peoples Party. Rákosi then forced Tildy to turn over the presidency to Social Democrat-turned-Communist Árpád Szakasits, in December, Dinnyés was replaced by the leader of the Smallholders left wing, the openly pro-Communist István Dobi. The process was more or less completed with the elections of May 1949, voters were presented with a single list of all parties, running on a common programme. On August 18, the newly elected National Assembly passed a new constitution—a near-carbon copy of the Soviet Constitution, when it was officially promulgated on August 20, the country was renamed the Peoples Republic of Hungary. Rajk called it a dictatorship of the proletariat without the Soviet form called a peoples democracy, Hungary stayed that way until the late 1980s, when turmoil broke out across the Eastern Bloc, culminating with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Unions dissolution. Mátyás Rákosi, the new leader of Hungary, demanded complete obedience from fellow members of the Hungarian Working Peoples Party, Rákosis main rival for power was László Rajk, who was then Hungarys Foreign Secretary. Rajk was arrested and Stalins NKVD emissary coordinated with Hungarian General Secretary Rákosi, at the September 1949 trial, Rajk made a forced confession, claiming that he had been an agent of Miklós Horthy, Leon Trotsky, Josip Broz Tito and Western imperialism
2.
Flag of Hungary
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The flag of Hungary is a horizontal tricolour of red, white and green. In this exact form, it has been the flag of Hungary since May 23,1957. The flags form originates from national republican movements of the 18th and 19th centuries and it both shares close relations to the flag of Bulgaria. The nation of Hungary originated from the freedom movement from before 1848. The revolution was not only in opposition against the monarchy but also the Habsburg Empire, the stripes are horizontal rather than vertical to prevent confusion with the Italian flag, which had also been designed after the French flag. According to other data, the recent form of the Hungarian tricolour had been used from 1608 at the coronation of Mathias II of Hungary. Folklore of the period attributed the colours to virtues, red for strength, white for faithfulness. Alternatively, red for the blood spilled for the fatherland, white for freedom and green for the land, the new constitution, which took effect on 1 January 2012, makes the ex-post interpretation mentioned first official. As described above, the red-white-green tricolour emerged as a sign of sovereignty during the 1848–1849 revolution against the Habsburgs. The flag had the minor arms of Hungary with archangels as supporters were used as a badge on the flag. This configuration was used until the end of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, after the fall of the Habsburg Empire, the years 1918 to 1920 were highly turbulent, and several hard-to-trace minor changes took place. The red-green-white tricolour stayed the same, but small differences emerged in terms of the badge, a short interlude and exception was the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, which lasted for four-and-a-half months, it used a solid red banner. It seems that from 1920–1944 or 1945 the tricolour displayed the arms of Hungary. Between 1946 and 1949 the crown was removed from the top of the serving as the badge. With the onset of Communist rule in 1949, a new coat of arms featuring a Communist red star was placed on the flag as the badge. During the anti-Soviet uprising in 1956, revolutionaries cut out the Stalinist emblem, for some months the new government changed the flag to bear the minor arms without the crown as the badge again. Therefore, the flag of Hungary has been a pure red-white-green tricolour since 1957. After the fall of communism in 1989 there was no need to change the flag, there was a recommendation of the Committee of Symbols some years ago, that the coat of arms should be part of the state flag, while the national flag should remain plain
3.
Himnusz
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Himnusz is the official national anthem of Hungary. It was adopted in the 19th century and the first stanza is sung at official ceremonies, the full meaning of the poems text is evident only to those well acquainted with Hungarian history. The lyrics of Himnusz are a prayer beginning with the words Isten, the title in the original manuscript is Hymnus - a Latin word meaning hymn, and one which had no widely used counterpart in the Hungarian language at the time. It is only in specialist usage that it is used in its meaning of hymn in Hungarian. Although Kölcsey completed the poem on 22 January 1823, it was published first in 1829 in Károly Kisfaludys Aurora, without the subtitle. It subsequently appeared in a collection of Kölcseys works in 1832, a competition for composers to make the poem suitable to be sung by the public was staged in 1844 and won by Erkels entry. His version was first performed in the National Theatre in July 1844, then in front of an audience on 10 August 1844. By the end of the 1850s it became customary to sing Himnusz at special occasions either alongside Vörösmartys Szózat or on its own. It wasnt until 1989 that Erkels musical adaptation of Himnusz finally gained recognition as Hungarys national anthem. The public radio station Kossuth Rádió plays Himnusz at ten minutes past midnight each day at the close of transmissions in the AM band, Himnusz is also traditionally played on Hungarian television at the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve. Traditionally, Himnusz is sung at the beginning of ceremonies, recognition is also given to the Rákóczi March, a short wordless piece which is often used on state military occasions, and the poem Nemzeti dal written by Sándor Petőfi. Another popular song is the Székely Himnusz, a national anthem of the Hungarian-speaking Szekler living in Eastern Transylvania. Two English versions are given below, both are free translations of the Hungarian words, since Hungarian is a genderless language, references to the Magyar as he in the English translations are in fact directed to all Hungarians regardless of gender. On May 7,2006, a sculpture was inaugurated for Himnusz at Szarvas Square, Budakeszi and it was created by Mária V. The musical form of the poem can be played on the bells, the cost of its construction,40 million forints, was collected through public subscription. Sheet Music is available at the Hungarian Electronic Library website, Hungarian Anthem on Music Keyboard 2.4
4.
Budapest
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Budapest is the capital and most populous city of Hungary, one of the largest cities in the European Union and sometimes described as the primate city of Hungary. It has an area of 525 square kilometres and a population of about 1.8 million within the limits in 2016. Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the Danube river with the unification of Buda and Óbuda on the west bank, the history of Budapest began with Aquincum, originally a Celtic settlement that became the Roman capital of Lower Pannonia. Hungarians arrived in the territory in the 9th century and their first settlement was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241–1242. The re-established town became one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture by the 15th century, following the Battle of Mohács and nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule, the region entered a new age of prosperity, and Budapest became a global city after its unification in 1873. It also became the co-capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a power that dissolved in 1918. Budapest was the point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919, the Battle of Budapest in 1945. Budapest is an Alpha- global city, with strengths in arts, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, services, research, and tourism. Its business district hosts the Budapest Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the largest national and international banks and it is the highest ranked Central and Eastern European city on Innovation Cities Top 100 index. Budapest attracts 4.4 million international tourists per year, making it the 25th most popular city in the world, further famous landmarks include Andrássy Avenue, St. It has around 80 geothermal springs, the worlds largest thermal water system, second largest synagogue. Budapest is home to the headquarters of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, the European Police College, over 40 colleges and universities are located in Budapest, including the Eötvös Loránd University, Central European University and Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Budapest is the combination of the city names Buda and Pest, One of the first documented occurrences of the combined name Buda-Pest was in 1831 in the book Világ, written by Count István Széchenyi. The origins of the names Buda and Pest are obscure, according to chronicles from the Middle Ages, the name Buda comes from the name of its founder, Bleda, brother of the Hunnic ruler Attila. The theory that Buda was named after a person is also supported by modern scholars, an alternative explanation suggests that Buda derives from the Slavic word вода, voda, a translation of the Latin name Aquincum, which was the main Roman settlement in the region. There are also theories about the origin of the name Pest. One of the states that the word Pest comes from the Roman times. According to another theory, Pest originates from the Slavic word for cave, or oven, the first settlement on the territory of Budapest was built by Celts before 1 AD
5.
Hungarian language
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Hungarian is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is spoken by communities of Hungarian people in neighbouring countries. Like Finnish and Estonian, it belongs to the Uralic language family, its closest relatives being Mansi and it is one of several European languages not part of the Indo-European languages, and the most widely-spoken European language that does not belong to the Indo-European family. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar or magyar nyelv, the word Magyar is used as an English and Hungarian word to refer to Hungarian people as an ethnic group. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family, the name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur, there are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, for example, Hungarian ház house vs. Khanty xot house, and Hungarian száz hundred vs. Khanty sot hundred. The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular, during the later half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian. Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, foremost based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz. The traditional view argues that the Hungarian language separated from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium b. c. e. in western Siberia, east of the southern Urals. The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from settled hunters to nomadic pastoralists, in Hungarian, Iranian loans date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium. Among these include tehén ‘cow’, tíz ‘ten’, tej ‘milk’, increasing archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan found in the previous decades confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and Ural Mountains. The Onogurs later had a influence on the language, especially between the 5th-9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied, and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic, e. g. borjú ‘calf’, dél ‘noon, many words related to agriculture, to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a dramatic way during these 300 years. After the arrival of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin the language came into contact with different speech communities, Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians who settled in Hungary during the 12th-13th centuries, e. g. koboz ‘cobza’, komondor ‘mop dog’. Hungarian borrowed many words from especially the neighbouring Slavic languages, in exchange, these languages also borrowed words from Hungarian, e. g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hung ásó ‘spade’. Approximately 1. 6% of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin, on the basis of the growing genetic evidence, the accepted origin theory is contested by geneticists too
6.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
7.
Romanian language
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Romanian is a Romance language spoken by around 24 million people as a native language, primarily in Romania and Moldova, and by another 4 million people as a second language. It has official status in Romania and the Republic of Moldova and it is one of the official languages of the European Union and the Latin Union. Romanian is a part of the Balkan-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin separated from the Western Romance during the 5th–8th centuries. To distinguish it within that group in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. Eastern Romance languages, like the branches of Romance languages, descend from Vulgar Latin. These vestiges of military usage are unique to Romanian in its language family. s. o, sat village, șes plain, a supune, tindă veranda, țară homeland a. s. o. This linguistic evidence challenges the Roeslerian theory, the vestiges from sermo castrensis particularize the Romanian language in the neolatin area, together with its isolated history. e. With Rom. māgurā and Alb. magulë etc, the Roman Empire withdrew from Dacia in 271–272 AD, leaving it to the Goths. The history of Eastern Romance between the 3rd century and the development of Proto-Romanian by the 10th century, when the area came under the influence of the Byzantine Empire, is unknown. It is a matter of debate whether Proto-Romanian developed among Romanized people who were left behind in Dacia by the Roman withdrawal or among Latin-speakers in the Balkans south of the Danube, during the Middle Ages, Romanian became influenced by the Slavic languages and to some degree by Greek. Romanian remains unattested throughout the Middle Ages, and only enters the record in the early 16th century. The use of the denomination Romanian for our language and use of the demonym Romanians for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state. In 1534, Tranquillo Andronico notes, Valachi nunc se Romanos vocant, francesco della Valle writes in 1532 that Romanians are calling themselves Romans in their own language, and he subsequently quotes the expression, Știi Românește. After travelling through Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania Ferrante Capecci accounts in 1575 that the population of these regions call themselves românești. Pierre Lescalopier writes in 1574 that those who live in Moldavia, Wallachia, the Transylvanian Saxon Johann Lebel writes in 1542 that Vlachi se numeau între ei Romuini and the Polish chronicler Stanislaw Orzechowski notes in 1554 that în limba lor walachii se numesc romini. In Palia de la Orăștie stands written «, că văzum cum toate limbile au și înfluresc întru cuvintele slăvite a lui Dumnezeu numai noi românii pre limbă nu avem. și le-au dăruit voo fraților români. », nevertheless, the oldest extant document written in Romanian remains Neacșus letter and was written using Cyrillic letters. There are no records of any documents written in Romanian from before 1521
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This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies document "Hungary" by Stephen R. Burant.
Coordinates: 47°29′N 19°02′E / 47.483°N 19.033°E