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Hungary


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| cctld = .hu1
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| calling_code = 36
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| ISO_3166-1_alpha2 = HU
| ISO_3166-1_alpha3 = HUN
| ISO_3166-1_numeric = 348
| sport_code = HUN
| vehicle_code = H
| footnote1 = Also .eu as part of the European Union.
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Hungary (Magyarország; ; ), officially in English the Republic of Hungary (''Magyar Köztársaság'' , 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, Visegrád Group and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, which is part of the Finno-Ugric family. It is one of the four official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin.

Following a Celtic (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (9 BC – c. 4th century) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late Ninth Century by the Magyar chieftain Árpád, whose great grandson Stephen I of Hungary ascended to the throne with a crown sent from Rome in 1000. The Kingdom of Hungary existed with interruptions for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world (Stephen I, Louis I, Matthias Corvinus, Lajos Kossuth). A significant power until the 1910s, Hungary lost over two-thirds of its territory (along with 3.3 million ethnic Hungarians) due to the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, the terms of which have been considered harsh, and even humiliating by Hungarians. 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 parliamentary republic (since 1989). Today, Hungary is a high-income economy, and a regional leader regarding certain markers. Its current goal is to become a developed country by IMF standards.

Hungary was one of the 15 most popular tourist destinations in the world in the past decade, with a capital regarded as "one of the most beautiful urban landscapes in the world". The country is home to the second largest thermal lake in the world (Lake Hévíz), the largest lake in Central Europe (Lake Balaton), and the largest natural grassland in Europe (Hortobágy).


History


The land before AD 895



After the Western Roman Empire collapsed under the stress of the migration of Germanic tribes and Carpian pressure, the Migration Period continued bringing many invaders to Europe. Among the first to arrive were the Huns, who built up a powerful empire under Attila. Attila the Hun was erroneously regarded as an ancestral ruler of the Hungarians, opinion rejected today by majority of scholars. It is believed that the origin of the name "Hungary" does not come from the Central Asian nomadic invaders called the Huns, but rather originated from 7th century, when Magyar tribes were part of a Bulgar alliance called On-Ogour, which in Bulgar Turkic meant "(the) Ten Arrows".[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-34784/Hungary Hungary], Encyclopædia Britannica.
After Hunnish rule faded, the Germanic Ostrogoths 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, 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. 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 until the freshly unified Hungarians led by Árpád settled in the Carpathian Basin starting in 895.

Medieval Hungary (895–1526)















Hungary is one of the oldest countries in Europe. It was settled 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 (Vérszerződés) forged one nation, thereafter known as the Hungarian nation[http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/hunspir/hsp05.htm Stephen Sisa: The Spirit of Hungary - 1 Who Are the Magyars?] and led the new nation to the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century. After an early Hungarian state was formed in this territory military power of the nation allowed the Hungarians to conduct successful fierce campaigns and raids as far as today's Spain. A later defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 signaled an end to raids on foreign territories, and links between the tribes weakened. The ruling prince (''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, rebuilding the state according to the Western political and social model. 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.

The Patrimonial Kingdom (1000-1222)



Hungary was established as a Catholic Apostolic Kingdom under saint Stephen I.

Applying to Pope Sylvester II, Stephen received the insignia of royalty (including the still existent Holy Crown of Hungary) from the papacy. He was crowned in December 1000 AD in the capital, Esztergom. Papacy confers on him the right to have the cross carried before him, with full administrative authority over bishoprics and churches. He was the son of Géza and thus a descendant of Árpád. By 1006, Stephen had solidified 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, complete with forced Christianisation.
Stephen established a network of 10 episcopal and 2 archiepiscopal sees,and ordered the buildup of monasteries churches and cathedrals.
He followed the Frankish administrative model: The whole of this land was divided into counties (megyék), each under a royal official called an ispán count (Latin: comes)—later főispán (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 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 Battle of Mohi), and conquering Croatia in 1091.

Important members of the Árpád dynasty:

King Coloman the "Book-lover"
(King: 1095-1116):

One of his most famous laws was half a millennium ahead of its time: De strigis vero quae non sunt, nulla amplius quaestio fiat (As for the matter of witches, no such things exist, therefore no further investigations or trials are to be held).

Béla III
(King: 1172-1192):

was the most powerful and wealthiest member of the dynasty, Béla disposed of annual equivalent of 23,000 kg of pure silver. It exceeded those of the French king (estimated at some 17,000 kilograms) and was double the receipts of the English Crown. He rolled back the Byzantine potency in Balkan region.

Andrew II of Hungary
(King: 1205-1235) :

In 1211, he granted the Burzenland (Transylvania) to the Teutonic Knights. In 1225, Andrew II expelled the Teutonic Knights from Transylvania, hence Teutonic Order had to transfer to the Baltic sea.
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. Its purpose was twofold: to reaffirm the rights of the smaller nobles of the old and new classes of royal servants (servientes regis) against both the crown and the magnates and to defend those of the whole nation against the crown by restricting the powers of the latter in certain fields 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. The most important legal-ideology was the Doctrine of the Holy Crown.

Mongol attacks:

In 1241–1242, this kingdom received a major blow in the form of the Mongol Invasion: after the defeat of the Hungarian army in the Battle of Mohi, Béla IV of Hungary fled, and a large part (historians estimate that up to half of Hungary's two million population at that time were victims of the Mongol invasion.) of the population died (leading later to the invitation of settlers largely from Germany) in the ensuing destruction (''Tatárjárás''). Only strongly fortified cities and abbeys could withstand the assault. As a consequence, after the Mongols retreated, King Béla ordered the construction of hundreds of stone castles and fortifications, meant to be defense against a possible second Mongol invasion. Mongols returned to Hungary in 1286, but the new built stone-castle systems and new tactics (using heavy cavalry) 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), but their cost 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.

During the Russian campaign, the Mongols drove some 200,000 Cumans, a nomadic tribe of pagan Kipchaks, west of the Carpathian Mountains. There, the Cumans appealed to King Béla IV of Hungary for protection. The Iranian Jassic people came to the Hungary together with the Cumans after they were defeated by the Mongols. During the centuries they were fully assimilated to the Hungarian population, their language disappeared, but they preserved their identity and their regional autonomy until 1876.

Age of elected Kings









Árpád's direct descendants in the male line ruled the country until 1301. During the reigns of the Kings after 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, declaration of wars against foreign monarchs). After the destructive period of interregnum (1301–1308), the first Angevin king, Charles I of Hungary (King: 1308-1342) -a descendant of the Árpád dynasty on the female line- successfully restored the royal power, who defeated oligarch rivals, the so called "little kings". His new fiscal, customs and monetary policies proved successful under his reign. One of the primary sources of his power was the wealth derived from the gold mines of Transylvania and north Hungary (modern Slovakia). Eventually production reached the remarkable figure of 3,000 lb. 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. Charles also sealed an alliance with the Polish king Casimir.

The second Hungarian king in the Angevin line, Louis I the Great (King: 1342–1382) extended his rule over territories to the Adriatic Sea, and occupied the Kingdom of Naples several times. Under 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 (1357–58, 1378–81) against Venice annexed Dalmatia and Ragusa and more territories at Adriatic Sea. Venice also had to raise the Angevin flag on St. Mark's Square on holy days.
Louis I established a university in Pécs in 1367 (by papal accordance). The Ottoman Turks confronted the country ever more often. In 1366 and 1377, Louis led successful champaigns against the Ottomans (Batlle at Nicapoli in 1366), therefore Balkanian states became his vassals. From 1370, the death of Casimir III of Poland, he was also king of Poland. Until his death, he retained his strong potency in political life of Italian Peninsula.

King Louis died without a male successor, and the country was stabilized only after years of anarchy when Sigismund (king: 1387-1437) a prince from the Luxembourg line succeeded to the throne by marrying Louis's daughter, 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 restoration of the authority of the central administration took decades of work. In 1404 Sigismund introduced the Placetum Regium. According to this decree, Papal bulls and messages could not be pronounced in Hungary without the consent of the king. Sigismund congregated Council of Constance (1414-1418) to abolish the Papal Schism of Catholic church, which was solved by the election of a new pope. In 1433 he even became Holy Roman Emperor. The first Hungarian Bible translation completed in 1439, but Hungarian Bible was illegal in its age

In 1446, the parliament elected the great general John (János) Hunyadi as governor (1446–53) and then as regent (1453–56) of the kingdom. Hunyadi 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 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), news of the victory arrived before the order, and the ringing of the church bells at noon thus transformed into a commemoration of the victory. The Popes didn't withdraw the order, and Catholic churches still ring the noon bell to this day.

Age of early absolutism




The last strong king was the Renaissance king Matthias Corvinus (king 1458–1490). Matthias was the son of John Hunyadi. Hungary was the first non-Italian country, where the renaissance appeared in Europe. András Hess set up a printing press in Buda in 1472.

This was the first time in the medieval 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. Although Matyas regularly convened the Diet and expanded the lesser nobles' powers in the counties, he exercised absolute rule over Hungary by means of huge secular bureaucracy. Matthias set out to build a great empire, expanding southward and northwest, while he also implemented internal reforms. The serfs, common people considered Matthias a just ruler because he protected them from excessive demands and other abuses by the magnates. 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; toward that end he deemed necessary the conquering of large parts of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1479, under the leadership of Pál Kinizsi, the Hungarian army destroyed the Ottoman and Wallachian troops at the Battle of Breadfield. Army of Hungary, almost all times destroyed the enemies when Matthias was the king.
His mercenary standing army called the Black Army of Hungary (Fekete Sereg) was an unusually big army in its age, it accomplished a series of victories also capturing 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 religious material. His renaissance library is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Decline of Hungary (1490–1526)





The magnates, who did not want another heavy-handed king, procured the accession of Vladislaus II, king of Bohemia (Ulászló II in Hungarian history), precisely because of his notorious weakness: he was known as King Dobže, or Dobzse (meaning “Good” or, loosely, “OK”), from his habit of accepting with that word every paper laid before him. Under his reign the central power began to experience severe financial difficulties, largely due to the enlargement of feudal lands at his expense.

In 1514, the weakened 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 preeminence. In 1521, the strongest Hungarian fortress in the South, Nándorfehérvár (modern Belgrade) fell to the Turks, and in 1526, the Hungarian army was crushed at the Battle of Mohács. The early appearance of protestantism further worsened the relations in the anarchical country. The leader of the Hungarian army, Pál Tomori also died in the battle.

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

Ottoman Conquest 1526–1699







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 heroes live more in a famous poet, what was wrote by Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos called: ''Summáját írom Eger várának, I am writing history of Eger's castle"''.
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).

Pozsony (Bratislava) became the new capital (1536–1784), coronation town (1563–1830) and seat of the Diet (1536–1848) of Hungary. Nagyszombat(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.

In 1686, Austria-led Christian forces reconquered Buda, and in the next few years, all of the country except the Pashalik of Temesvár (Timişoara). In the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz these changes were officially recognized, and in 1718 the entire Kingdom of Hungary was annexed by the Habsburgs from the Ottomans. Much of the country became depopulated due to the prolonged period of warfare. After the Turkish wars, Hungarians became minority in Hungary in the XVIII century. According to the 1787 data, the population of the Kingdom of Hungary (with kingdom of Croatia) numbered 2,322,000 Hungarians (29%) and 5,681,000 non-Hungarians (71%).



History of Hungary 1700–1867







There were a series of anti-Habsburg (i.e. anti-Austrian) and anti-Catholic (requiring equal rights and freedom for all Christian religions) uprisings between 1604 and 1711, which – with the exception of the last one – took place in Royal Hungary. The uprisings were usually organized from Transylvania. The last one was an uprising led by 'II. Rákóczi Ferenc', who after the dethronement of the Habsburgs in 1707 at the Diet of Ónód took power as the "Ruling Prince" of Hungary. 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. Afterwards, to make further armed resistance impossible, the Austrians blew up some 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 ''végvár''s among them).

The Period of Reforms

(1825-1848)

During the Napoleonic Wars and afterwards, the Hungarian Diet had not convened for decades. In the 1820s, the Emperor was forced to convene the Diet, and thus a Reform Period 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 ,the most prominent statesmen of the country recognized the urgent need of modernization and their 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 in mostly symbolic ways because of their inability to understand the needs of the laborers. Louis Kossuth emerged as leader of the lower gentry in the Parliament.
A remarkable upswing started as the nation concentrated its forces on the inevitable modernization, even though the reactionary Habsburgs were obstructing all important liberal reforms.


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, 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. Some members of the nationalities gained coveted 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 and on October 6, ordered the execution of 13 leaders of the Hungarian army as well as Prime Minister Batthyány. Lajos Kossuth escaped into exile.




Following the war of 1848-49, 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.

Austria-Hungary



(1867-1918)









Due to external and internal problems, reforms seemed inevitable to secure the integrity of the Habsburg Empire. Major military defeats, 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.

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. 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.

World War I



Austria-Hungary drafted 7,8 million soldiers in WW1 (4 million from Kingdom of Hungary).
In First World War Austria-Hungary was fighting on the side of Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey. The Central Powers conquered Serbia. With great difficulty, the central powers stopped and repelled the attacks of the Russian Empire. Romania proclaimed war. The Central Powers conquered Southern Romania and the Romanian capital Bucharest. The Austro-Hungarian army could not make significant progress against Italy after January of 1918. 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. French Entente troops landed in Greece. In October 1918, the personal union with Austria was dissolved.

Between the two world wars (1918–1941)






In 1918, as a result of defeat in World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy collapsed. On October 31, 1918, the success of the Aster Revolution in Budapest brought the left liberal count Mihály Károlyi to power as Prime-Minister. Károlyi was a devotee of Entente . In 1918, by a notion of Wilson's pacifism, Károlyi ordered the full disarmament of Hungarian Army. Hungary remained without national defense in the darkest hour of its history. The First Republic proclaimed in November 16, 1918 (Károlyi was the president of the republic).
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. 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. Initially, Kun's regime achieved some impressive military successes: the Hungarian Red Army, under the lead of the genius strategist, Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, ousted Czech troops from the north and planned to march against the Romanian army in the east. 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 the aftermath of a coup attempt, the government took a series of actions called the Red Terror, murdering several hundred people, which alienated much of the population. The Soviet Red Army was never able to aid the new Hungarian republic. The Hungarian Red Army was dissolved before it could successfully complete its campaigns. 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. 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 many members of Kun's government were Jewish, making it easy to blame the Jews for the government's mistakes).
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 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. Radical Whites launched pogroms against the Jews, displayed as the cause of all the difficulties of Hungary. The leaving Romanian army pillaged the country: livestock, machinery and agricultural products were carried to Romania in hundreds of freight cars. 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. On November 16, with the consent of Romanian forces, Horthy's army marched into Budapest. His government gradually restored security, stopped terror, and set up authorities, but thousands of sympathizers of the Károlyi and Kun regimes were imprisoned. Radical political movements were suppressed. 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.

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.
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. 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, 82% of its heavy industry, and 70% of its banks.
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 3,850km2 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''.)

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 and started an effort to magyarize the few remaining ethnic minorities in Hungary. 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.[http://historicaltextarchive.com/books.php?op=viewbook&bookid=7&pre=1 ''Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite''] John F. Montgomery, ''Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite''. Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1947. Reprint: Simon Publications, 2002. 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.

Hungary in World War II (1941–1945)




After being awarded by the Germans and Italians part of southern Czechoslovakia and Subcarpathia in the First Vienna Award of 1938, and then northern Transylvania in the Second Vienna Award of 1940, in 1941 Hungary participated in their first military maneuvers on the side of the Axis. Thus, Hungarian army was part of the invasion of Yugoslavia where it committed numerous war crimes, of which the best known is the Novi Sad raid, gaining some more territory and joining the Axis powers in the process (showing his disagreement, prime minister Pál Teleki committed suicide). 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 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 now it was clear that the Hungarians were Germany's satellite. On October 15, 1944, 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.[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/index.php?ModuleId=10005458 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Holocaust Encyclopedia] Over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were slaughtered during the Holocaust, as well as tens of thousands of Romani people, mostly in occupied Bačka. 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. On February 13, 1945, the Hungarian capital city surrendered unconditionally. On May 8, 1945, World War II in Europe officially ended.

Communist era (1947–1989)




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. 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. Hungary experienced one of the harshest dictatorships in Europe. Approximately 350,000 officials and intellectuals were purged from 1948 to 1956 [http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2003/sample/granville%20chap.pdf Granville/ frm]
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 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 Soviets retaliated massively with military force, sending in over 150,000 troops and 2,500 tanks. Nearly a quarter of a million people left the country during the brief time that the borders were open in 1956.

Kádár era (1956-1988)

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 more relaxed travel restrictions than that of other Eastern Bloc countries, 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-)


In June 1987 Károly Grósz took over as premier. In January 1988 all restrictions were lifted on foreign travel. In March demonstrations for democracy and civil rights brought 15,000 onto the streets. In May, after Kádár's forced retirement, Grósz was named party secretary general. Under Grósz, Hungary began moving towards full democracy, change accelerated under the impetus of other party reformers such as Imre Pozsgay and Rezső Nyers. Also in June 1988, 30,000 demonstrated against Romania's communist Regime plans to demolish Transylvanian villages.

In February, 1989 the Communist Party's Central Committee, responding to 'public dissatisfaction', announced it would permit a multi-party system in Hungary and hold free elections. In March, for the first time in decades, the government declared the anniversary of the 1848 Revolution a national holiday. Opposition demonstrations filled the streets of Budapest with more than 75,000 marchers. Grósz met Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, who condoned Hungary's moves toward a multi-party system and promised that the USSR would not interfere in Hungary's internal affairs.
In May, Hungary began taking down its barbed wire fence along the Austrian border – the first tear in the Iron Curtain. June brought the reburial of Prime Minister Nagy, executed after the 1956 Revolution, drawing a crowd of 250,000 at the Heroes' Square. The last speaker, 26-year-old Viktor Orbán publicly called for Soviet troops to leave Hungary. In July U.S. President George Bush visited Hungary. In September Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that East German refugees in Hungary would not be repatriated but would instead be allowed to go to the West. The resulting exodus shook East Germany and hastened the fall of the Berlin Wall. On October 23, Mátyás Szűrös declared Hungary a republic.

At a party congress in October 1989 the Communists agreed to give up their monopoly on power, paving the way for free elections in March 1990. The party's name was changed from the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party to simply the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and a new programme advocating social democracy and a free-market economy was adopted. This was not enough to shake off the stigma of four decades of autocratic rule, however, and the 1990 election was won by the centre-right Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), which advocated a gradual transition towards capitalism. The liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), which had called for much faster change, came second and the Socialist Party trailed far behind. As Gorbachev looked on, Hungary changed political systems with scarcely a murmur and the last Soviet troops left Hungary in June 1991.

In coalition with two smaller parties, the MDF provided Hungary with sound government during its hard transition to a full market economy. József Antall, the first democratically-elected prime minister of Hungary, died in December 1993 and was replaced by the Interior Minister Péter Boross.

The economic changes of the early 1990s resulted in declining living standards for most people in Hungary. In 1991 most state subsidies were removed, leading to a severe recession exacerbated by the fiscal austerity necessary to reduce inflation and stimulate investment. This made life difficult for many Hungarians, and in the May 1994 elections the Hungarian Socialist Party led by former Communists won an absolute majority in parliament. This in no way implied a return to the past, and party leader Gyula Horn was quick to point out that it was his party that had initiated the whole reform process in the first place (as foreign minister in 1989 Horn played a key role in opening Hungary's border with Austria). All three main political parties advocate economic liberalisation and closer ties with the West. In March 1996, Horn was re-elected as Socialist Party leader and confirmed that he would push ahead with the party's economic stabilisation programme.

In 1997 in a national referendum 85% voted in favour of Hungary joining the NATO. A year later the European Union began negotiations with Hungary on full membership. In 1999 Hungary joined NATO. Hungary voted in favour of joining the EU, and joined in 2004.

Science




As of 2007, 13 Hungarians (who were born in Hungary) had received a Nobel prize, more than Japan, China, India, Australia or Spain. A further eight scientists (of Hungarian origin on both sides) were born abroad.

Hungary is famous for its excellent mathematics education which has trained numerous outstanding scientists. Famous Hungarian mathematicians include Paul Erdős (Erdős Pál), famed for publishing in over forty languages and whose Erdős numbers are still tracked; János (John) Bolyai (Bolyai János), designer of non-Euclidean (or "absolute") geometry in 1831;[http://www.hungemb.com/damascus/hungarians_to_universal_culture.htm ''The Contribution of Hungarians to Universal Culture''] (includes inventors), Embassy of the Republic of Hungary, Damascus, Syria, 2006.
and John von Neumann (Neumann János),Quantum Theory, a pioneer of digital computing. Many Hungarian Jewish scientists, including Erdős, von Neumann, Edward Teller (Teller Ede), and Eugene Wigner (Wigner Jenő), fled rising anti-Semitism in Europe and made their most famous contributions in the United States.

Hungarian inventions include the noiseless match (János Irinyi), the electric motor and first Electrical generator (Ányos Jedlik), Rubik's cube (Ernő Rubik), and the krypton electric bulb with tungsten (Imre Bródy), Electronic Television and camrera-tube (Kálmán Tihanyi). Ottó Bláthy, Miksa Déri and Károly Zipernowsky invented the transformer in 1885. 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, mathematical tools to study fluid flow mathematical background of supersonic flight and inventor of swept-back wing Theodore Kármán. Several other inventions were made by Hungarians who fled the country prior to World War II, including holography (Dennis Gabor), the ballpoint pen (László Bíró), the theory of the hydrogen bomb (Edward Teller (Teller Ede), and the BASIC programming language (John Kemeny, with Thomas E. Kurtz).


Image:Jedlik2.jpg|Ányos Jedlik, he is considered to be the Unsung Father of the Dynamo and Electric Motor.
Image:JanosBolyai.jpg|Janos Bolyai
Image:GyorgyiNIH.jpg|Albert Szent-Györgyi, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937.
Image:Robert Barany.jpg|Robert Barany, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1914.
Image:Charles simonyi.jpg|Charles Simonyi
Image:George de Hevesy.jpg |George de Hevesy, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1943.
Image:EdwardTeller1958.jpg|Edward Teller, "The father of the hydrogen bomb."
Image:JohnvonNeumann-LosAlamos.gif|John von Neumann




Politics




The President of the Republic, elected by the Parliament every five years, has a largely ceremonial role, choosing the dates of elections.

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.

A unicameral, 386-member National Assembly (the ''Országgyűlés'') is the highest organ of state authority and initiates and approves legislation sponsored by the Prime Minister. National Parliamentary elections are held every four years; the next are due to be held in 2010.

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

Regions, counties, and subregions





:''See also List of historic counties of Hungary''
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.




PlacesImages

Counties (County Capital)


*Bács-Kiskun(Kecskemét)
*Baranya(Pécs)
*Békés(Békéscsaba)
*Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén(Miskolc)
*Csongrád(Szeged)
*Fejér (Székesfehérvár)
*Győr-Moson-Sopron(Győr)
*Hajdú-Bihar(Debrecen)
*Heves(Eger)
*Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok(Szolnok)
*Komárom-Esztergom(Tatabánya)
*Nógrád(Salgótarján)
*Pest(Budapest)
*Somogy(Kaposvár)
*Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg(Nyíregyháza)
*Tolna(Szekszárd)
*Vas(Szombathely)
*Veszprém(Veszprém)
*Zala(Zalaegerszeg)
*Budapest,capital city

Regions


*Western Transdanubia
*Southern Transdanubia
*Central Transdanubia
*Central Hungary
*Northern Hungary
*Northern Great Plain
*Southern Great Plain




Image:Budapestnight100.jpg|Budapest, capital city
Image:Debrecen400.jpg|Debrecen
Image:Szeged400.jpg|Szeged


Image:Pecs(hungary)103.jpg |Pécs
Image:Gyor24.jpg|Győr
Image:Diosgyor castle and king louis.jpg|Miskolc


Image:Kecskeméti Városháza.jpg|Kecskemét
Image:Szekesfehervar Orb and Episcopal Palace.JPG|Székesfehérvár
Image:Veszprem varfeljaro2.jpg|Veszprém


Image:Eger400.jpg|Eger
Image:Sopron Tuztorony.jpg|Sopron
Image:Koszeg400.JPG|Kőszeg


Economy





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 2012-13 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.



Total government spending is high. Many state-owned enterprises have not been privatized. Business licensing is a problem, as regulations are not applied consistently.[http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?id=Hungary Index of Economic Freedom] According to the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, Hungary's economy was 67.2 percent "free" in 2008, which makes it the world's 43rd-freest economy. Its overall score is 1 percent lower than last year, partially reflecting new methodological detail. Hungary is ranked 25th out of 41 countries in the European region, and its overall score is slightly lower than the regional average.




The Hungarian sovereign debt's credit rating is BBB+ . However Standard & Poor's may downgrade Hungary's BBB+ sovereign credit rating due to mounting financial-sector funding pressures and their potential to raise general government debt materially from its current level of 67% of GDP (October 2008). Foreign investors' trust in the Hungarian economy has declined, as they deem that the stringency measures planned in the second half of 2006 are not satisfactory; their focus being mainly on increasing the income side rather than curbing government spendings. Economic reform measures such as health care reform, tax reform, and local government financing are being addressed by the present government.

General government net lending was 9.2 percent in 2006, instead of estimated 10.1 percent (but still the largest in Europe) due to the austerity program of the government, and was 5.5 percent in 2007, and recent estimates of the government says 4 percent in 2008.

Because of the large austerity program, the real growth of the incomes was negative in 2007 at -5.5 percent, and the estimates say 1 percent increase in 2008. The GDP growth was only 1.4 percent in 2007, much lower than in 2006, due to the decreased government spending, in first quarter of 2008 the GDP growth was 1.7 percent, slightly stronger than last quarter of 2007 (0.9 percent). During the second quarter in 2008, the GDP growth was 2.0 percent in yr/yr term, and due to the effects of the 2008 financial crisis on the Hungarian forint, and on the bank system, the 3rd quarter growth was slew down to 0.8 percent yr/yr. The estimates for 2009 are well between 1 and 1.5 percent decline.

The 2008 financial crisis hit Hungary mainly in October 2008. As quick decline versus euro, the Hungarian National Bank raised interest rates at 3.0 percent, to 11.5 percent on 22 October. As the Hungarian Government asked financial rescue package worth $25.1 billion from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the World Bank, promising to IMF that recalculate the 2009 budget, as Hungary's GDP declines 1.0 percent, and slow down government spending, for example, stop the wage increase for state workers. This way, the budget gap decline to 2.6 percent down from 5.5 percent of GDP in 2007, and will meet Maastricht criteria. In this circumstances, more and more economists estimate, that Hungary can join the ERM-II, which gives the possibility that Hungary can adopt the euro 2 years after joining the ERM-II monetary system.

Geography






Landscape




Slightly more than one half of Hungary's landscape consists of flat to rolling plains of the Pannonian Basin: the most important plain regions include the Little Hungarian Plain in the west, and the Great Hungarian Plain in the southeast. The highest elevation above sea level on the latter is only 183 metres.

Transdanubia is a primarily hilly region with a terrain varied by low mountains. These include the very eastern stretch of the Alps, Alpokalja, in the west of the country, the Transdanubian Medium Mountains, in the central region of Transdanubia, and the Mecsek Mountains and Villány Mountains in the south. The highest point of the area is the Írott-kő in the Alps, at 882 metres.

The highest mountains of the country are located in the Carpathians: these lie in the northern parts, in a wide band along the Slovakian border (highest point: the Kékes at 1,014m (3327 ft)).

Hungary is divided in two by its main waterway, the Danube (Duna); other large rivers include the Tisza and Dráva, while Transdanubia contains Lake Balaton, a major body of water. The largest thermal lake in the world, Lake Hévíz (Hévíz Spa), is located in Hungary. The second largest lake in the Pannonian Basin is the artificial Lake Tisza (''Tisza-tó'').

Phytogeographically, Hungary belongs to the Central European province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF, the territory of Hungary belongs to the ecoregion of Pannonian mixed forests.



Image:Visegrad01.jpg|Visegrád by the Danube Bend
Image:HungarianGreyCattle3.jpg|Hungarian Grey Cattle in the Great Hungarian Plain
Image:Hortobagy-ziehbrunnen.jpg|Great Hungarian Plain
Image:Transdanubia5.jpg|Transdanubia
Image:Balatoni naplemente2.JPG|Sunset by Lake Balaton
File:Kekesteto1.JPG|Kékes is Hungary's highest mountain
Image:Cave 2 by andy205.jpg|Cave in Aggtelek
Image:Bélapátfalva,Hungary.JPG|Old abbey in village Bélapátfalva at the foot of the Bükk Mountains



Climate


Hungary has a Continental climate, with hot summers with low overall humidity levels but frequent rainshowers and frigid to cold snowy winters. Average annual temperature is 9.7°C (49.5°F). Temperature extremes are about 42°C (110°F) in the summer and −29°C (−20°F) in the winter. Average temperature in the summer is 27 to 35°C (81 to 95°F), and in the winter it is 0 to −15°C (32 to 5°F). The average yearly rainfall is approximately 600 millimeters (24in). A small, southern region of the country near Pécs enjoys a reputation for a Mediterranean climate, but in reality it is only slightly warmer than the rest of the country and still receives snow during the winter.


Military





The Military of Hungary, or "Hungarian Armed Forces" currently has two branches, the "Hungarian Ground Force" and the "Hungarian Air Force." The Hungarian Ground Force (or Army) is known as the "Corps of Homeland Defenders" (''Honvédség''). This term was originally used to refer to the revolutionary army established by Lajos Kossuth and the National Defence Committee of the Revolutionary Hungarian Diet in September 1848 during the Hungarian Revolution.The term ''Honvédség'' is the name of the military of Hungary since 1848 referring to its purpose (''véd'' in ''Honvéd'') of defending the country. The Hungarian Army is called ''Magyar Honvédség''. The rank equal to a Private is a ''Honvéd''. The Hungarian Air Force is the air force branch of the Hungarian Army.


Black Army of Hungary: The ''Black Army'' (''Black Legion or Host'') - named after their black armor panoply - is in historigraphy the common name given to the excellent quality of diverse and polyglot military forces serving under the reign of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.
It is recognized as the first standing continental European fighting force not under conscription and with regular pay since the Roman Empire. Hungary's ''Black Army'' traditionally encompasses the years from 1458 to 1490.

Hussar: A type of irregular light horsemen was already well established by the 15th century in medieval Hungary.Hussar refers to a number of types of light cavalry created in Hungary in the 15th century and used throughout Europe and even in America since the 18th century. Some modern military units retain the title 'hussar' for reasons of tradition.

Demographics





For 95% of the population, the mother language is Hungarian, a Finno-Ugric language unrelated to any neighbouring language and distantly related to Finnish and Estonian. The main Minority group are the Roma (2.1%). Other groups include: Germans (1.2%), Slovaks (0.4%), Croats and Bunjevcis(0.2%), Romanians (0.1%), Ukrainians (0.1%), and Serbs (0.1%).

For historical reasons (see Treaty of Trianon), significant Hungarian minority populations can be found in the surrounding countries, most of them in Romania (in Transylvania), Slovakia, Serbia (in Vojvodina). Sizable minorities live also in Ukraine (in Transcarpathia), Croatia (mainly Slavonia) and Austria (in Burgenland). Slovenia is also host to a number of ethnic Hungarians, and Hungarian language has an official status in parts of the Prekmurje region.

Germans


The largest wave of German-speaking immigrants into Hungary occurred after the Treaty of Karlowitz. Between 1700 and 1750, German-speaking settlers immigrated to the regions of Pannonia, Banat, and Bačka, which had been depopulated by the Ottoman wars. Prior to World War II, approximately 1.5 million Danube Swabians lived in Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. In 2001, 62,105 people declared to be German in Hungary.

Religion in Hungary




Religious history




The majority of Hungarian people became Christian in the 10th century. Hungary's first king, Saint Stephen I, took up Western Christianity, although his mother, ''Sarolt'', was baptized in the eastern rite. Hungary remained predominantly Catholic until the 16th century, when the Reformation took place and, as a result, first Lutheranism, then soon afterwards Calvinism became the religion of almost the entire population. In the second half of the 16th century, however, Jesuits led a successful campaign of counterreformation among the Hungarians. The Jesuits founded educational institutions, including Péter Pázmány, the oldest university that still exists in Hungary, but organized so-called ''missions'' too in order to promote popular piety. By the 17th century, Hungary had once again become predominantly Catholic. Some of the eastern parts of the country, however, especially around Debrecen ("the Calvinist Rome"), still have significant Protestant communities. Orthodox Christianity in Hungary has been the religion mainly of some national minorities in the country, notably, Romanians, Rusyns and Ukrainians, Serbs.

Hungary has been the home of a sizable Armenian community as well. They still worship according to the Armenian Rite, but they have reunited with the Catholic Church (Armenian Catholics) under the primacy of the Pope. According to the same pattern, a significant number of Orthodox Christians became re-united with the rest of the Catholic world (Greek Catholics).

Faith Church, one of Europe's largest pentecostal churches is also located in Hungary. Faith Church accepts the results and spiritual, moral values of both early Christianity and the Reformation, as well as other revival movements serving the progress of the Christian faith. Based on the 1% tax designation to churches, Faith Church is the fourth most supported church in Hungary. The weekly Sunday service of the Church is regularly broadcasted in live television.

Jewish Hungarians




Hungary has historically been home to a significant Jewish community, especially since the 19th century when many Jews, persecuted in Russia, found refuge in the Kingdom of Hungary. The largest synagogue in Europe is located in Budapest. The census of January 1941 found that 6.2% of the population, i.e. 846,000 people, were considered Jewish according to the racial laws of that time. From this number, 725,000 were Jewish by religion. Some Hungarian Jews were able to escape the Holocaust during World War II, although many were either deported to concentration camps or simply executed by the Hungarian Arrow Cross fascists.

Culture




Architecture



Hungary is home to the largest synagogue in Europe (Great Synagogue), the largest medicinal bath in Europe (Széchenyi Medicinal Bath), the third largest church in Europe (Esztergom Basilica), the second largest territorial abbey in the world (Pannonhalma Archabbey), the second largest Baroque castle in the world (Gödöllő), and the largest Early Christian Necropolis outside Italy (Pécs).

Music


The music of Hungary consists mainly of traditional Hungarian folk music and music by prominent composers such as Liszt, Dohnányi, Bartók, Kodály, and Rózsa. Hungarian traditional music tends to have a strong dactylic rhythm, as the language is invariably stressed on the first syllable of each word. Hungary also has a number of internationally renowned composers of contemporary classical music, György Ligeti, György Kurtág, Péter Eötvös and Zoltán Jeney among them.




Literature







In the earliest times Hungarian language was written in a runic-like script (although it was not used for literature purposes in the modern interpretation). The country switched to the Latin alphabet after being Christianized under the reign of Stephen I of Hungary (1000–1038). There are no existing documents from the pre-11th century era.

The oldest written record in Hungarian is a fragment in the founding document of the Abbey of Tihany (1055) which contains several Hungarian terms, among them the words ''feheruuaru rea meneh hodu utu rea'', "up the military road to Fehérvár" The rest of the document was written in Latin.

The oldest complete text is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer ''(Halotti beszéd és könyörgés)'' (1192–1195), a translation of a Latin sermon.

The oldest poem is the Old Hungarian Laments of Mary ''(Ómagyar Mária-siralom)'', also a (not very strict) translation from Latin, from the 13th century. It is also the oldest surviving Finno-Ugric poem.

Among the first chronicles about Hungarian history were Gesta Hungarorum ("Deeds of the Hungarians") by the unknown author usually called ''Anonymus'', and Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum ("Deeds of the Huns and the Hungarians") by Simon Kézai. Both are in Latin. These chronicles mix history with legends, so historically they are not always authentic. Another chronicle is the ''Képes krónika'' (Illustrated Chronicle), which was written for Louis the Great.

Renaissance literature flourished under the reign of King Matthias (1458–1490). Janus Pannonius, although wrote in Latin, counts as one of the most important persons in Hungarian literature, being the only significant Hungarian Humanist poet of the period. The first printing house was also founded during Matthias' reign, by András Hess, in Buda. The first book printed in Hungary was the ''Chronica Hungarorum''.
The most important poets of the period was Bálint Balassi (1554–1594) and Miklós Zrínyi (1620–1664). Balassi's poetry shows Mediaeval influences, his poems can be divided into three sections: love poems, war poems and religious poems. Zrínyi's most significant work, the epic ''Szigeti veszedelem'' ("Peril of Sziget", written in 1648/49) is written in a fashion similar to the ''Iliad'', and recounts the heroic Battle of Szigetvár, where his great-grandfather died while defending the castle of Szigetvár.
Among the religious literary works the most important is the Bible translation by Gáspár Károli (The second Hungarian translation in the history), the Protestant pastor of Gönc, in 1590. The translation is called the ''Bible of Vizsoly'', after the town where it was first published. (See Hungarian Bible translations for more details.)

The Hungarian enlightenment was delayed about fifty years compared to the Western European enlightenment. The new thoughts arrived to Hungary across Vienna. The first enlightened writers were Maria Theresia's bodyguards (György Bessenyei, János Batsányi and so on). The greatest poets of the time were Mihály Csokonai Vitéz and Dániel Berzsenyi.
The greatest figure of the language reform was Ferenc Kazinczy. The Hungarian language became feasible for scientific explanations from this time, and furthermore many new words were coined for describing new inventions.

Hungarian literature has recently gained some renown outside the borders of Hungary (mostly through translations into German, French and English). Some modern Hungarian authors have become increasingly popular in Germany and Italy especially Sándor Márai, Péter Esterházy, Péter Nádas and Imre Kertész. The latter is a contemporary Jewish writer who survived the Holocaust and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002.
The older classics of Hungarian literature and Hungarian poetry have remained almost totally unknown outside Hungary. János Arany, a famous nineteenth century Hungarian poet is still much loved in Hungary (especially his collection of Ballads), among several other "true classics" like Sándor Petőfi, the poet of the Revolution of 1848, Endre Ady, Mihály Babits, Dezső Kosztolányi, Attila József and János Pilinszky. Other well-known Hungarian authors are Ferenc Móra, Géza Gárdonyi, Zsigmond Móricz, Gyula Illyés, Albert Wass and Magda Szabó.

Comics




Cuisine






The Hungarian cuisine is a prominent feature of the Hungarian culture, just as much like the art of hospitality. Traditional dishes such as the world famous Goulash (''gulyás'' stew or ''gulyásleves'' soup). Dishes are often flavoured with paprika (ground red peppers), a Hungarian innovation. Thick, heavy Hungarian sour cream called ''tejföl'' is often used to soften the dishes flavour. The famous Hungarian hot river fish soup called Fisherman's soup or ''halászlé'' is usually a rich mixture of several kinds of poached fish.
Other dishes are Chicken Paprikash, Foie gras made of goose liver, ''pörkölt'' stew, ''vadas'', (game stew with vegetable gravy and dumplings), trout with almonds and salty and sweet dumplings, like ''túrós csusza'', (dumplings with fresh quark cheese and thick sour cream). Desserts include the iconic Dobos Cake, Strudels (''rétes''), filled with apple, cherry, poppy seed or cheese, Gundel pancake, plum dumplings (''szilvás gombóc''), ''somlói dumplings'', dessert soups like chilled Sour cherry soup and sweet chestnut puree, ''gesztenyepüré'' (cooked chestnuts mashed with sugar and rum and split into crumbs, topped with whipped cream). ''Perec'' and ''kifli'' are widly popular pastries.

The ''csárda'' is the most distinctive type of Hungarian inn, an old-style tavern offering traditional cuisine and beverages. ''Borozó'' usually denotes a cozy old-fashioned wine tavern, ''pince'' is a beer or wine cellar and a ''söröző'' is a pub offering draught beer and sometimes meals. The ''bisztró'' is an inexpensive restaurant often with self-service. The ''büfé'' is the cheapest place, although one may have to eat standing at a counter. Pastries, cakes and coffee are served at the confectionery called ''cukrászda'', while an ''eszpresszó'' is a cafeteria.

;Drinks





Pálinka: is a fruit brandy, distilled from fruit grown in the orchards situated on the Great Hungarian Plain. It is a spirit native to Hungary and comes in a variety of flavours including apricot (barack) and cherry (cseresznye). However plum (szilva) is considered the best of all.

Beer: Beer goes well with many traditional Hungarian dishes. The five main Hungarian breweries are: Borsodi, Soproni, Arany Ászok, Kõbányai, and Dreher.

Wine: As Hugh Johnson says in ''The History of Wine'', the territory of Hungary is ideal for wine-making. Since the fall of communism there has been a renaissance of Hungarian wine-making. The choice of good wine is widening from year to year. The country can be divided to six wine regions: North-Transdanubia, Lake Balaton, South-Pannónia, Duna-region or Alföld, Upper-Hungary and Tokaj-Hegyalja. Hungarian wine regions offer a great variety of style: the main products of the country are elegant and full-bodied dry whites with good acidity, although complex sweet whites (Tokaj), elegant (Eger) and full-bodied robust reds (Villány and Szekszárd). The main varieties are: Olaszrizling, Hárslevelű, Furmint, Pinot gris or Szürkebarát, Chardonnay (whites), Kékfrankos (or Blaufrankisch in German), Kadarka, Portugieser, Zweigelt, Cabernet sauvignon, Cabernet franc and Merlot. The most famous wines from Hungary are Tokaji Aszú and Egri Bikavér.

Tokaji: Tokaji, meaning "of Tokaj", or "from Tokaj" in Hungarian, is used to label wines from the wine region of Tokaj-Hegyalja in Hungary. Tokaji wine has received accolades from numerous great writers and composers including Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert and Goethe; Joseph Haydn's favorite wine was a Tokaji. Louis XV and Frederick the Great tried to outdo one another in the excellence of the vintages they stocked when they treated guests like Voltaire to some Tokaji. Napoleon III, the last Emperor of the French, ordered 30–40 barrels of Tokaji for the Court every year. Gustav III, King of Sweden, never had any other wine to drink. In Russia, customers included Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth of Russia.

Zwack Unicum: For over 150 years, a blend of 40 Hungarian herbs has been used to create the liqueur Unicum. Unicum is a bitter, dark-coloured liqueur that can be drunk as an apéritif or after a meal, thus helping the digestion. The recipe is held secret by the Zwack family.

Spa Culture




Hungary is a land of thermal water. A passion for spa culture and Hungarian history have been connected from the very beginning. It has been shown that Hungarian spa culture is multicultural. The basis of this claim is architecture: Hungarian spas feature Roman, Greek, Turkish, and northern country architectural elements.
Due to an advantageous geographical location thermal water can be found with good quality and in great quantities on over 80% of Hungary's territory.
The Romans heralded the first age of spa in Hungary, the remains of their bath complexes are still to be seen in Óbuda, to this day. The spa culture was revived during the Turkish Invasion who used the thermal springs of Buda for the construction of a number of bathhouses, some of which are still functioning (Király Baths, Rudas Baths). In the 19th century the advancement in deep drilling and medical science provided the springboard for a further leap in bathing culture. Grand spas such as Gellért Baths, Lukács Baths, Margaret Island, and Széchenyi Medicinal Bath are a reflection of this resurgence in popularity.
Approximately 1,500 thermal springs can be found in Hungary. About half of these are used for bathing.
The spa culture has a nearly 2,000 year history in Budapest. Budapest has the richest supply of thermal water among the capitals of the world. The amount of thermal water used in Budapest is roughly equal to two million bath tubs per day.
There are approximately 450 public baths in Hungary. Nowadays the trend shows that bath operators are modernizing their facilities and expanding the services offered.
A total of 50 of the 160 public baths are qualified as spas throughout the country. Services are offered for healing purposes. These spas provide every type of balneal and physical therapy. Throughout history bathing and spa tourism has always played an important role in Hungary.

;The thermal lake of Hévíz

The thermal lake of Hévíz is the largest biologically active, natural thermal lake of the world.
The oldest and most well-known bath of Hungary, in accordance with records from the Roman era, has a history of 2000 years. The Hévíz treatment, in its present sense, also dates back more than 200 years.
The 4.4 ha lake is fed by its spring rushing up at a depth of 38 m, containing sulphur, radium and minerals. Due to the high water output of the spring, the water of the lake is completely changed within 48 hours. The water of the Hévíz Lake is equally rich in dissolved substances and gases, combining the favourable effects of naturally carbonated medicinal waters and those containing sulphur, calcium, magnesium, hydrogen-carbonate, as well as those with a slightly radioactive content. The medicinal mud, which covers the bed of the lake in a thick layer, deserves special attention. The Hévíz mud, which is unique of its kind, contains both organic and inorganic substances and the radium-salts and reduced sulphuric solutions in it represent special medicinal factors. The medicinal water and mud originating from the several then thousand year-old Pannonian Sea, together with the complex physiotherapeutic treatments, are suitable for treating all kinds of rheumatic and locomotory diseases. The temperature of the water is 23-25 C in winter and 33-36 C in summer.

Folk Art


Folk Dance



Ugrós (Jumping dances): Old style dances dating back to the Middle Ages.
Solo or couple dances accompanied by old style music, shepherd and other solo man's dances from Transylvania, and marching dances along with remnants of medieval weapon dances belong in this group.

Karikázó: a circle dance performed by women only accompanied by singing of folksongs.

Csárdás: New style dances developed in the 18-19th centuries is the Hungarian name for the national dances, with Hungarian embroidered costumes and energetic music. From the men's intricate bootslapping dances to the ancient women's circle dances, Csárdás demonstrates the infectious exuberance of the Hungarian folk dancing still celebrated in the villages.

Verbunkos: a solo man's dance evolved from the recruiting performances of the Austro-Hungarian army.

The Legényes: is a men's solo dance done by the ethnic Hungarian people living in the Kalotaszeg region of Transylvania. Although usually danced by young men, it can be also danced by older men. The dance is performed freestyle usually by one dancer at a time in front of the band. Women participate in the dance by standing in lines to the side and sing/shout verses while the men dance. Each lad does a number of points (dance phrases) typically 4 to 8 without repetition. Each point consists of 4 parts, each lasting 4 counts. The first part is usually the same for everyone (there are only a few variations).

Embroidery




It was in the beginning of the eighteenth century that the present style of Hungarian folk art took shape, incorporating both Renaissance and Baroque elements, depending on the area, as well as Persian Sassanide influences. Flowers and leaves, sometimes a bird or a spiral ornament, are the principal decorative themes. The most frequent ornament is a flower with a centerpiece resembling the eye of a peacock's feather.
Nearly all the manifestations of folk art practiced elsewhere in Europe also flourished among the Magyar peasantry at one time or another, their ceramics and textile being the most highly developed of all.
The finest achievements in their textile arts are the embroideries which vary from region to region. Those of Kalotaszeg in Transylvania are charming products of Oriental design, sewn chiefly in a single color - red, blue, or black. Soft in line, the embroideries are applied on altar cloths, pillow cases and sheets.
In Hungary proper Sárköz in Transdanubia and the Matyóföld in the Great Hungarian Plain produce the finest embroideries. In the Sárköz region the women's caps show black and white designs as delicate as lace and give evidence of the people's wonderfully subtle artistic feeling. The embroidery motifs applied to women's wear have also been transposed to tablecloths and runners suitable for modern use as wall decorations.

Black pottery


These vessels, made of black clay, reflect more than three hundred years of traditional Transdanubian folk patterns and shapes. No two are precisely alike, since all work is done by hand, including both the shaping and the decorating. The imprints are made by the thumb or a finger of the ceramist who makes the piece.

Herend Porcelain




Founded in 1826, Herend Porcelain is one of the world's largest ceramic factories, specializing in luxury hand painted and gilded porcelain. In the mid-19th century it was purveyor to the Habsburg Dynasty and aristocratic customers throughout Europe. Many of its classic patterns are still in production. After the fall of communism in Hungary the factory was privatised and is now 75% owned by its management and workers, exporting to over 60 countries of the world.

Hungarian public holidays and special events


=== Hungary has nine fixed public holidays: ===



Holidays not endorsed by the state:




Hungarian domestic animals




There are special Hungarian species of domestic animals which are seen as national symbols in Hungary, and there are "gene banks" to ensure their survival, especially in national parks.

*Long-horn Hungarian Grey Cattle- Hungarian breed, traditionally kept in the open full year. Nowadays they are raised for infant food due to natural, healthy meat.
*Magyar Vizsla - one of the oldest hunting dogs of the world. The ancestors of this dog came into the Carpathian Basin with the nomadic Hungarian tribes.
*Hungarian Puli - small shepherd dog
*Hungarian Komondor - large shepherd dog, was brought to Hungary a thousand years ago by nomadic Magyars.
*Hungarian Kuvasz - large shepherd dog.
*Hungarian Pumi - small shepherd dog.
*Magyar Agár (Hungarian Greyhound) is already known in the 8th century, it is as old as the Vizsla.
*Transylvanian Bloodhound - Hungarian hound.
*Hungarian Mudi shepherd dog.
*Hungarian thoroughbred horses - a mid-19th century mixture of the best Arab and English race horse characteristics.
*Mangalica, a breed of pigs, characterised by their long curly hair and relatively fatty meat which makes them ideal for making sausages and salami.

Special events


Hungary's most outstanding annual events include the Budapest Spring Festival (mid-march to mid-April), Hortobágy Equestrian Days (late June), Sopron Early Music Days (late June), Búcsú (Farewell), Festival in Budapest (late June), Miskolc Opera Festival (late June), Miskolc Kalálka International Folk Festival (July), Győr Summer Festival (late June), Győr Summer Cultural Festival (late June to late July), Pannon Festival in Pécs (July and August), Szentendre Summer Festival (July), Kőszeg Street Theatre Festival (late July), Savaria International Dance Competition in Szombathely (July), Debrecen Jazz Days (July), Szeged Open Air Festival (mid-July to August), Diáksziget (shorter: ''"Sziget"'' or "Sziget Festival", Student Island or Pepsi Island) north of Budapest (August), Eger Wine Harvest Festival (September), and Budapest Autumn Arts Festival (mid-September to mid-October).

St Stephen's Day (August 20) is celebrated with sporting events, parades and fireworks nationwide. On the same day there is a Floral Festival in Debrecen and a Bridge Fair in nearby Hortobágy. Formula 1 car races are held in early August at the Hungaroring near Mogyoród, 18 km northeast of Budapest.

Budapest Spring Festival



Designed to fit the needs of Budapest's cultural heritage and its requirements as a modern Central European centre, this metropolitan festival was instituted in 1981. By presenting and disseminating cultural assets it boosts the city's image and encourages dynamic development of its cultural tourism. This "festival of festivals", traditionally covering a range of artistic fields, presents a series of homogeneous artistic activities to which international professional symposia are linked.
The Budapest Spring Festival takes place in the last two weeks of March. Its main emphasis is on those symphony orchestra concerts, opera and ballet performances which will appeal to the widest audience, but the program also includes open-air events and an Operetta Festival. The performances take place in the capital's most important concert halls and theatres, and often near historic monuments.
Over the years a number of regional towns have been included in the Budapest Spring Festival - Debrecen, Gödöllő, Győr, Kaposvár, Kecskemét, Sopron, Szentendre and Szombathely - and thus it has more or less expanded into a national festival. The list of events always includes renowned foreign guests as well as distinguished artists and groups from the Hungarian musical life. Highlights include classical concerts, productions at the Opera House, open air events, the Operetta Festival, the Dance House Convention, the Dance Panorama, and what are considered to be the real treat, the exhibitions.

Haydn Festival in Eszterháza



Haydn at Eszterháza: During its first quarter century, the palace was the primary home of the celebrated composer Joseph Haydn, who wrote the majority of his symphonies for the Prince's orchestra. Starting in 1768, the theater was a major venue for opera, often with more than a hundred performances per year.
The palace was geographically isolated, a factor which led to loneliness and tedium among the musicians. This is seen in some of Haydn's letters, as well as in the famous tale of the Farewell Symphony

The basic aim of the festival is to evoke the musical paradise that Eszterháza was in Haydn's time, within the original walls, with the help of period instruments and performing practice. The programmes focus mainly on the works composed during the Eszterháza period of Haydn's creative life, and among these, on compositions belonging to the most important genres (symphonies, string quartets, keyboard sonatas and trios). In addition, however, the concert programmes regularly inclu