Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)
ROOM 12. Revolution and War of Independence in 1848-49 "I Fall on My Knees Before the Greatness of the Nation" (Lajos Kossuth) (Katalin Körmöczi - Tibor Kovács S.)
and, after five minutes discussion, agreed to everything. The soldiery was ordered to do nothing, the censorship was abolished, and the doors of Tancsics's prison were opened" (March 15, 1848). The printing press on which the Twelve Points, the demands of the March Revolution, were printed without censorship has come to symbolize freedom of the press, one of the freedoms associated with bourgeois states. This memento, now a symbol, occupies the central place in our exhibition concerning the events of 1848. Hard-pressed by the events in Vienna and Pest, the Habsburg monarch complied with the Hungarian demands, and on March 17 appointed the prime minister of the first responsible, independent Hungarian government, Count Lajos Batthyány. On April 11, the 1848 laws received the monarch's assent. He thus accepted social and economic modernization: liberation of the serfs with state compensation, the abolition of entail, general taxation and the equality of the legally "received" religious denominations. He had ensured the basic conditions for a bourgeois constitutional state order: an independent, responsible government; a bicameral Parliament; and a census-based suffrage. It fell to Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány (Fig. 33) and his government, the first responsible ministry, to give force to the laws of April 1848, which also qualified as a constitution. The handling of military and financial affairs became independent of the Court, but, ambiguously, the issue of foreign affairs was left without clear formulation. By taking radical steps in military and financial affairs, Kossuth moved towards the achievement of complete state independence, but in the sphere of foreign affairs Lajos Batthyány, together with Ferenc Deák, saw Hungarian 51 independence as a realistic option only in the event of unification in Germany. The prime minister s desk represents responsible, independent and national power; on it are the prime minister's circular letters nos. 1 and 2. The first advised of the appointment of a "national prime minister", while the second contains the text of the law to liberate the serfs. Law VIII of 1848, on general taxation, liquidated the feudal system and formed the basis for the reconciliation of interests. The articles of the 1848 serf liberation law proclaimed the abolition of feudal services, Church tithes and entailment, as well as the handing over of land to the peasants who tilled it. The ministers' chairs recall the first responsible government; above them, in lithographs by F. Eybl, are portraits of the members of Lajos Batthyány 's first government: Count István Széchenyi, Baron József Eötvös, Ferenc Deák, Lajos Kossuth, Bertalan Szemere, Lázár Mészáros, Gábor Klauzál, and Prince Pál Esterházy. In the middle is a portrait of the prime minister, Count Lajos Batthyány, painted by Miklós Barabás. In front of the ministers' chairs are basic constitutional documents from 1848-49: the April Laws; the guarantee, sanctioned by the king, of constitutional transformation in 1848 and of Hungary's internal independence; the bilingual proclamation of the accession to the throne of Francis Joseph I (18481916) on December 2, 1848; the Olmiitz Constitution (March 4, 1849), and Hungary's Declaration of Independence (April 19, 1849). The 1848 legislation still envisaged state independence in the spirit of the earlier basic law, the Pragmatica Sanctio, and established a bourgeois parliamentary
