Civil society, civil values, and civil morality at Pest - Buda in the 19th century

Temporary exhibition in the Budapest History Museum

 

 

 

Civil society, civil values, and civil morality. Still expressed on many occasions today, these terms conveyed different meanings in the 19th and 20th centuries. Citizens and the set of civil values often became the supreme motif of social and political programmes in modern and contemporary history, hence the crucial deprivation of their original connotation that took place as a consequence of the constant attempts of their redefinition. Who can be regarded as a "true" citizen anyway? What are the prime elements of civil mentality and morality? How did the term "citizen", which we regard as either an example to follow or an enemy to be destroyed in specific cases even today, come into being? This exhibition has been intended to give answers to the preceding questions.  

 

 

 

             

This exhibition will guide you through the time period taking place between the end of the 18th century and the day of urban unification to show you the evolution of the social history of citizenship. This was indeed the period, when the foundations of citizenship, as understood today, were set afoot. Particular elements of the capitalist economical background indispensable for the birth of the modern civil society had already appeared in the era of reforms. Ulteriorly, the revolution of 1848 in Hungary created relevant legitimate grounds that enabled the emergence of a new social group that operated independently from the framework of the historical estates. Although the defeat of the Hungarian War of Independence interrupted this process for a short time, the so-called Ausgleich (Compromise of 1867) confirmed that both modernization and civilization were unavoidable in the Habsburg Monarchy. As regards the history of Budapest, the outset of the lengthy process of civilization requiring nearly one hundred years was closed by the unification of Pest, Buda and Óbuda, which was the genesis of the  Hungarian capitol of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  

           

      

 

The citizens of Pest-Buda were of a noticeably sundry combination in the beginning of the 19th century as regards ethnical, linguistic, and religious aspects. Conflicts at the end of the 18th century between the large ethnos, such as Hungarians, Germans, and the Greek orthodoxes composed of variegated Balkan peoples – Serbs, Macedonians, and Greeks – were of rather economical and not cultural nature.

 

    

 

German citizens dominated the inner board of councillors in charge of controlling the cities, as well as the key urban administration functions, such as the mayor, judge, and constable, because only those were allowed to take active part in the urban administration of Pest and Buda prior to 1848, who retained civil rights. By the time of the Reform Period, nonetheless, Pest became the centre of the nation’s political life, and concurrently, of the efforts to lay the solid foundations of a nation-state. The liberal part of the nobility that fostered the ideology of reforms was most convinced of the weight of the objective to institute Hungary’s own capital. Reform nobility, at the same time, was reluctant to rely on the citizens by virtue of their "alien" nature; therefore, the citizens of Pest-Buda could not contribute to the launch of the political movements in Pest.

 

The differences between Buda and Pest became increasingly conspicuous as the two cities progressed to amalgamate into the true capital of Hungary in the 19th century. The headway of the two city’s evolution and expansion vitally differed basically as a consequence of their geographical conditions, which fact was also reflected in the content of their urban societies. What happened to their city walls can adequately illustrate the aforementioned: while the defence objects have remained in the castle of Buda until now, the city walls of Pest were totally demolished between 1788 and 1808. While Buda did not substantially outgrow its city walls in the beginning of the 19th century, except for particular quarters, such as the Tabán (also called "Rácváros" (something like "Serbian Town")), the Várhegy ("Castle Hill"), and the Víziváros (something like "Watery or Aqueous Quarter"), Pest sizably outgrew its old inner centre located within its city walls.    

 

The same phenomenon can be identified if the social structure is analyzed. As a consequence of conscious urban planning and the increasingly dynamic economical development, the occupational structure and the property status of the urban society in Pest underwent noteworthy alterations. Husbandry within the city nearly disappeared until the middle of the 19th century, while the number of merchants, suppliers, and caterers swelled. Moreover, the expansion of the scope of the urban and governmental administrative responsibilities and moving the university from Buda to Pest in 1784 implied the escalation in the number of intellectuals and civil servants.

 

 

The term "citizen" conveyed a triple connotation in the Hungarian language in the 19th century: (i) a national, to say the core unit of the civil society; (ii) a civil person contrary to a military man or clergyman; and finally (iii) an urban citizen. The term "citizen", by virtue of social conversion, also adopted the meaning of the term "modern bourgeois".  

 

Who, in the eyes of the law, could be regarded as a citizen was stipulated by charters re-issued in 1703 subsequent to the liberation of Pest and Buda from the Turkish occupation. Having procured independent royal urban rights again, Buda and Pest was posteriorly capable of electing their own mayors, using their own coat of arms, and boasting the entitlement of granting civil rights among other urban privileges.