Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Budapest in the Inter-War Period (1919-1945)
and Szép Szó (Beautiful Word) edited by Attila József, were published in Budapest, and the sociologists and populist writers exploring the social, economic and political distress of the peasants organized their work and discussions in Budapest. The Hungarian Radio began its transmissions in Budapest in 1925. More than a hundred newspapers and periodicals were published regularly in the capital, and in addition to the newspapers of the bourgeois opposition the daily of the Social Democratic Party, Népszava (People’s Voice) was published in Budapest, as well as underground publications of the Communist Party. The cafés and inns of Budapest formed an integral part of intellectual and political life in the inter-war period. The great discussions on art and politics took place in the main around café tables. The New York (later Hungária) Café was a well-known meeting place of writers and artists. Left-wing poets and writers gathered in the Japan Café, political activists favoured the Pilvax. The meetings of the liberal bourgeois opposition also took place in cafés and restaurants; men gathering regularly around a table might more often than not be engaged in an underground meeting of the labour movement. Although the pace and the extent of city development were dependent on the right-wing municipal government and the cumbersome and often corrupt activities of the Board of Public Works, the modernization of the city and the changes in the appearance of Budapest were very evident by the thirties. Between 1920 and 1941 the number of buildings in Budapest increased by approximately 50 per cent. But a substantial part of these were public buildings of various kinds, housing remained an unsolved problem. The decaying and poorly equipped workers’ dwellings, and even the pre-war slum settlements—mostly named after Austrian archduchesses (Augusta, Zita, Mária Valéria)—remained overcrowded. Only towards 1940 were some of them demolished, and it was only then that the municipal campaign for the construction of small dwellings began to produce results. In 1930 half the population still lived in oneroom flats. Every fifth dwelling built after 1921 lacked running water and 17.2 per cent of houses electricity. Nonetheless the number of electricity users more than doubled between 1920 and 1940. Blocks of owner-occupied flats built in the Buda Mountains were strongly influenced by the contemporary “Bauhaus” style of architecture, but the mark of poverty was clearly stamped on the half-rural outskirts of the city made up of family cottages built out of the savings of badly paid employees and workers. The appearance of the city altered again with the demolition of the Tabán (the poor, picturesque old district climbing up the northern slopes of Mount Gellért and Sun Hill on the northern side of the Buda end of Elizabeth Bridge), begun early in 1933, and at the same time as the first evening illumination of the Fishermen’s Bastion, the Matthias Church and the Chain Bridge. Four new districts were added to the existing ten by the Municipal Act of 1930 which again involved a considerable amount of building. But the problem of constructing an integrated Greater Budapest, merging the dormitory and industrial suburbs in the capital, remained unsolved. To encourage tourism, which began to be of importance in the twenties, the slogan of “Budapest the Spa City” was coined, and the Palatínus Baths, the National Swimming Pool on Margaret Island, the Széchenyi Baths in the City Park, Szent Imre (today Rác) Baths on the bank of the Danube, and the pool with artificial waves at the Hotel Gellért 51
