Horváth J. András: A megigényelt világváros. Budapest hatósága és lakossága a városegyesítés éveiben - Disszertációk Budapest Főváros Levéltárából 2. (Budapest, 2010)
Summary
international trends; to point the contradiction between efforts of the mentioned „supralocal attitude” of the élite versus human and material resources; to outline values and their elements, how they increased through pratice of daily political and administrative routine. Contemporaries strongly criticized disfunctional features of personal representation of local politics, mainly due to law defects. But this should not shadow the fact that in the case of Budapest we could find a similar phenomena of that „renaissaince of cities and of their middle classes” which appeared elsewhere in Europe. Its main historical significance was, that representatives of upper and middle classes, were completed by many, looking for possibilities of social integration, and nourishing strong urban ambitions, promoting social integration. It is important to point to the inclination of value-transfering and accepting character of key figures of the city politics of the unification period. One of the most noticeable form of the 1873 „great transformation” was a general inclination to integrate different worlds of values of old and new elites representatives in social activities. Old burghers’ strive to accomodate to the new world, - and new members’ ambitions to interiorize the old mentality. The years of the unification reflect common efforts of élites based on common values and objective-oriented social efforts. State, municipalities, cities and towns have been fundamentally transformed in a long historical process starting in the late feudalistic era with symbolic and power-politics factors, through the Rechtstaat-type dualist period, to the 20th century social service administration. The capital played a significant role in this developing process. However, legal regulations were similar to that of other municipalities, the capital had to face basically different and harder social demands. The urban governance of the Hungarian metropolis at the time of the bourgeois transformation presented a certain congested, disfunctional character. The main reasons were a growing number of inhabitants; stressed demands of representativity and physical and human-infrastructure; different specialities of new urban needs. It is clear, taking into consideration all city administration issues, that contemporaries were not really able to cope with all the tasks, with the given organizational, financial and mental conditions. It was impossible to reach the level of Vienna and Berlin. Not because of finance shortage and agenda broadness. But mostly because of the cultural-civilization 470
