Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 6. (Budapest, 2011)
Recenziók
414 Abstracts the modem age. Its precursors, however, can be traced to various forms of planning at different places and times throughout the approximately 5 thousand years of urban history. Demographic processes and the movements, activities and demands of society have constantly exerted formative influences on the countenance, exploitation, function and structure of towns large and small. One strand of the urban fabric which is of particular interest is the living space. This has the most to say about the operation, hierarchy and cooperation of urban society, the social perception of the political order, and the related regimes. This account of the living spaces peculiar to Inner Erzsébetváros, their economic functions and the local social and market trends, sheds light on the role and changing prestige of this section of the bérház zone (the area of Pest dominated by 4-5 storey blocks of flats). It forms part of a wider research project investigating unsolved problems of this district, and the causes and consequences of they form it has evolved into today. LÍVIA PROSINGER The plan to demolish the Baroque buildings on Batthyány tér, and how it was stopped This is a story of historic monument protection in Hungary and Budapest between the years 1949 and 1957. It reveals the official framework of protection of monuments in this period, particularly its organisational fragmentation, the influence of Soviet models, the pressures on the profession and the fundamental ambivalence of the early state socialist system towards the architectural heritage. (It also touches on the variations in place and time of the principles and practice of looking after historic buildings, and the changing views of what constitutes a historic building. The emerging issues thus include the perception of historic buildings in the nineteen fifties, when the very idea of “heritage” was redefined.) An examination of the organisational, political and ideological background is followed by the story of the struggle surrounding the Batthyányi tér ecclesiastical buildings (St Anne’s Church and priest’s house the church of Sisters of St Elizabeth and other buildings), which sheds light on the ideological
