Majorossy Judit: "A királynét megölni nem kell félnetek jó lesz…"Merániai Gertrúd emlékezete, 1213 - 2013. Történeti vándorkiállítás kiállításvezető - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, D. sorozat: Múzeumi füzetek - Kiállításvezetők 4. (Szentendre, 2013)

Felhasznált irodalom

rule over Hungary, the story of Banc ban became an emblematic national play with the "demonized” German-origin Queen Gertrude symbolizing foreign oppression on one side, and the murderer but also defencer Banc ban as the national "hero” and patron of the suffering Hungarians on the other side. From this respect, it is interesting that an Austrian contemporary of Katona, Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872), who also treated Gertrude’s story, portrayed Banc as the symbol of loyalty to the king (to the Habsburgs). Parallel to her being the embodiment of a negative and "guilty” queen, Gertrude also had a much more neutral - if not "positive” - historical image. It was generated primarily along the widespread and popular cult of Saint Elisabeth as well as that of Saint Hedwig from the Middle Ages onwards, particularly on German and Polish territories. In this tradition Gertrude as a close relative of holy women - the sister of Hedwig, the mother of Elisabeth and the grandmother of the Blessed Gertrude, prelatess of Altenberg - appeared on late medieval panel paintings and was commemorated in family-related psalters, necrologies and chronicles where the (in this light unjustified) murder was mentioned without any hint to causes and the background.

The 800th anniversary of Queen Gertrude’s death provides a proper occasion to introduce the queen, her Bavarian family background and the royal milieu of her stay in Hungary and display the variety and complexity of historical traditions around her figure. It also give an excellent opportunity to collect "under one roof’ the otherwise usually separately existing historical, literary, theatre and cinematic traditions of this "famous/infamous” character of the Hungarian past.

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