Re-territorializing the ‘Guilty City’: Nationalist and Right-wing Attempts to Nationalize Budapest during the Interwar Period

Abstract

In addition to successive Hungarian governments’ revisionist agenda and the re-education of the population in a Christian and national spirit, the symbolic takeover of Budapest spaces was another priority of Hungarian nationalist policy during the interwar period. From 1920 nationalist and right wing groups in Hungary demonized the capital and attempted to erase its previous associations with communism, cosmopolitanism, liberalism and unbridled consumerism by re-rooting it in the national soil. In order to achieve this effect they limited the autonomy of the municipality of Budapest, erected new monuments and re-wrote the meaning of old ones as well as periodically organizing the spatial takeover of Budapest by Magyar villagers. From the later 1920s on it was the annual celebration of St Stephen in a two-week long festival which became the fulcrum of nationalist efforts to take over the public spaces of the city. However, economic concerns related to the development of urban tourism limited their effectiveness. This article argues that due to the spread of consumerism and tourism propaganda concerns within the festival, by the 1930s it was rather Budapest that was urbanizing nationalism instead of the right wingers nationalizing the city.