The Trianon Peace Edict, signed 124 years in the past on June 4, 1920, offered a nationwide, socio-economic tragedy to Hungary. Since then, the occasion and its penalties have largely been talked about in a tone of ache, after the Trianon challenge grew to become one of the crucial common taboo subjects after the regime change. The taboo lasted till the tip of the 2000s, however it’s on the verge of disappearing because of the processes happening over the past fifteen years, the strengthening of nationwide activism. Nevertheless, Trianon remains to be a forbidden matter in lots of respects within the successor states of the Carpathian Basin, because it impacts state, social, psychological, financial, and even European contexts in deep layers.
Exhibition of the Trianon Museum. Picture: Tibor Katona
“We began very deep.” Twenty years in the past, the de-Romanization of the Transylvanians and the de-Slovakization of the Highlanders have been the guiding ideas for a major a part of the Hungarian public. Right here, we have to discuss not a lot about suicidal tendencies occurring on the stage of consciousness, however about how
Throughout forty years of socialism and twenty years of freedom, it was potential to plant the blocking of our alternatives and mission within the Carpathian Basin into the unconscious. That is the place the complicated group studying course of started with movies, discussions, demonstrations, associations, occasions, museums, and never least journeys overseas, by which many individuals skilled as a private expertise that Hungarians nonetheless stay in these international locations after 100 years.
Regardless of the partial successes of current years, we can’t be happy. There are nonetheless no institutionalized, integrative, long-term self-sustaining “safety works” within the Carpathian Basin. We might have managed to remove the risk to the existence of Hungarian nationwide communities, however the harder a part of reunification remains to be forward of us – outlines historian Csaba Pál Szabó, founding father of the Trianon Museum in Várpalota.
It was established within the Zichy Fort and opened its doorways for the primary time in 2004 Trianon Museum its founder sees the establishment he carried out because the guardian of the second and trauma. Within the meantime, the museum is making an attempt to resume itself, to beat the part of ache, to research the stable level from which it’s potential to excavate and strengthen the foundations of Hungary’s reconstruction. – With out Trianon, there is no such thing as a self-aware Hungary with regular relations with its neighbors. The Trianon Museum is unavoidable as a result of development of the nation, since this stable level has been lied to the neighboring peoples virtually fully for greater than 100 years, and partially to the Hungarians. Due to this fact, our mission is important and irreplaceable to guard the foundations – provides Csaba Pál Szabó.
Within the meantime, a radical change has taken place within the museum idea, and it has been open once more since September 22, 2023. Hundreds of tourists have already been curious in regards to the reminiscence politics exhibition, and from the second they enter, they’re in the course of the Trianon circuit, even when they don’t essentially perceive the sound and lightweight results. Lights, sounds, information and faces repeatedly wave throughout twelve stations. Throughout the go to of the exhibition titled Baljós shadows created within the basement, for instance, Béla Bartók’s work Music for String Devices, Percussion and Celesta is performed. In keeping with the organizers of the exhibition, it could appear daring that the work, which is categorized in music historical past as a chunk obtained from the autumn of conventional societies, was positioned in one of many genuine interpretation places. On this method, the customer goes by the phases in music, surroundings, noises, lights, quantity and drama, the organizers imagine that on this method everybody can discover a message that’s necessary to them.
Nevertheless, Csaba Pál Szabó considers the actual query: will they be capable of be sure that all younger folks taking part in public schooling get to the museum no less than as soon as. He trusts that the situations might be created in a short while, in order that a complete era can begin eager about Hungary’s scenario within the Carpathian basin from a brand new basis.
The analysis of the Trianon phenomenon is an actual gold mine, of which solely a fraction has been found up to now. Some of the efficient elements of the brand new exhibition is the two-space Hungarian resistance theme, by which Hungarian navy, greater schooling municipal, civil, and scholar resistance actions following the occupation of 918 are offered, which till now have been largely unknown to the general public. Such is the story of the Igloo machine gunners, the heroic deed of the highlanders, which could be thought of probably the most genuine armed resistance. A small sub-unit consisting primarily of Hungarians and some Germans beat the Reds out of Miskolc, they performed an necessary position within the recapture of Balassagyarmat, however additionally they recaptured many different settlements, the crew was particularly feared within the eyes of the Czechs. It turned out that the commander of the Igloo machine gunners, Captain István Mamusich, lived in Szeged, alone, with out respect, in a displaced household. Only some issues remained from his legacy: the Louis service plaque, the picture and the household coat of arms. The museum’s specialists looked for and obtained the objects, which for the primary time pay tribute to those Hungarian troopers and their commanders as an impartial exhibition.
For the primary time within the historical past of the June 4th Nationwide Unity Day, non-Hungarians additionally stand by Trianon in an interpretable framework. The Trianon Museum is commemorating the best tragedy of Hungarians with an Italian solidarity motion. One of many stay classics of the three legendary tenors, Placido Domingo, addresses the general public with a video message.
There was no precedent for this. Along with the digital presence of the devoted pro-Hungarian Spanish artist, quite a few Italian friends will even arrive: the Trieste police chief, a delegation from Fiume, in addition to staff of the Italian representations in Hungary, the embassy and the cultural institute. Italian actors will even carry out in this system, carried out by János Ács, who has turn into world well-known in Italy. For the primary time within the historical past of Hungarian music literature, the aria “Hazám, hazám” from the opera “Bánk bán” might be carried out partly in Hungarian by the Transcarpathian Antoni Norbert, and partly in Italian by Giuseppe Gerardi.
Emphasizing the significance of Trianon relies upon not solely on the success of the exhibition. The museum hosts many well-known ambassadors – János Ács, world-famous conductor Luciano Pavarotti and the three tenors, three-time Olympic champion grasp coach Dénes Kemény, performer Péter Levente, rock musician Attila Nyerges, Kossuth Prize-winning author János Orbán, coronary heart surgeon Lajos Papp, Olympic silver medalist Katalin Makray Schmittné gymnast, entertainer Pál Szalóczy, Reformed bishop László Tőkés and mountaineer Csaba Varga – entrusts them to proceed their work with ardour and religion, which additionally helps the unity of the Carpathian Basin and the Trianon Museum’s re-establishing the historic authorized continuity and unifying illustration.
