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 14. Endurance, Compromise and Economic Boom "The Repudiation of That Which is Illegal is No Mere Option, But Rather an Obligation" (Ferenc Deák) (Katalin Körmöczi - Edit Haider)

committee of experts was set up in 1867 to prepare for its adoption. Law VIII of 1874 made the metric system compulsory in Hungary. SOCIETY DURING THE "HAPPY TIMES OF PEACE" The social cyclorama of the fin de siècle is a synthesis of Hungarian historical development during the 19th century, and brings together the economic, social and political strands of the exhibition. In addition to the depictions of tools and work scenes, the figure of the emigrating peasant affords a glimpse into peasant life in rural Hungary at the turn of the century. From the 1880s onwards, uneven development, the division of land into smaller and smaller plots, and lack of capital caused an increasing number of peasant farms to go bankrupt. The new poor, the agrarian proletariat, took employment as day-labourers and navvies, or, moving to the towns, worked as the reserve army of the industrial working class, mainly in the construction industry. Those who could not find work at home joined a great social movement sweeping Europe and emigrated to America in the hope of a better life. Broken down according to nationality, onethird of the emigrants were Hungarian by mother-tongue; the majority of those leaving the country were non-Hungarians. The background of the social cyclorama is a street in Budapest, which had become a metropolis, and a Pest coffee-house. After the Compromise - during the period of the country's boom-like capitalist development -, Budapest, the capital united in 1873, became the centre of the national market, of Hungarian industry, and of the country's transportation system, as well as 85 the centre of its political life, its administration and its cultural life. In the dualist decades it became a metropolis, and the empire's second capital. The conscious shaping of the townscape of the rapidlydeveloping city began before unification, on the initiative of the government. The Municipal Council for Public Works was formed in 1870, and its tasks were regulation of the Danube, building up the transportation network, and city planning. During the time of its operation, Sugár út (subsequently Andrássy út) was constructed, with the Opera House and the City Park. Also built were the Grand Boulevard, a new City Hall, the University Library, the General Post Office, the Main Customs House on the Little Boulevard, buildings for the University, today's Múzeum körút, the clinics, the Basilica, the southern railway bridge, and various public utilities buildings. The busy street scene in the capital reflects a bourgeois society with feudal features, palpably under the authority of the Habsburgs, which had been sanctioned in 1867. At the apex was His Majesty the Emperor and King; under him were the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie; the landowning nobility and that part of it which was becoming impoverished, the gentry; the town-dwelling middle class; and finally the peasantry - halfway between serfdom and citizen's status -, and the agricultural and industrial workers. At the end of the century there were new tensions between them: the mercantileagrarian antagonism, opposition to Jewish assimilation, and, as a new phenomenon, emigration. In the street picture, there is an aristocratic lady dressed for a special occa-