Boros Géza: Statue Park - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
The star-shaped flower-bed
for the defacement of the statue. The state attorney demanded that the perpetrators cover the expenses of having the statue repaired, but the judge, stressing that similar gratuitous acts should be prevented in the future, dismissed the case as one not posing any significant danger to the public. 26. •. Bust of Ede Chlepkó (György Szabó, 1980) A square in Kispest bore the name of this veteran of the labour movement from 1962, before which it had been called Sztálin tér. Chlepkó was a founding member of the Communist Party of Hungary in 1918. He emigrated after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and died in prison in the Soviet Union. The statue was toppled by unknown persons in 1981. Renamed Ötvenhatosok tere (Square of the Fifty-Sixers) in 1991, the square today features one of the most remarkable monuments of 1956 in Budapest, a work of László Péterfy. 27- Kálmán Turner Memorial Plaque (1959) The plaque was brought to the Statue Park from the Hungarian Worsted and Cotton Mill. The inscription reads: Comrade Kálmán Turner, a former worker oh thii factory, was cruelly murdered by counter-revolutionaries on 4 November 1956. His life oh struggle is an example to us all. The ornamental bronze bolt of the plaque is regrettably missing (as also are some from other plaques). What we can see is not the original. 28 . Kató Hámán Plaque (1959) Installed by the District IX Women's Council at Mester utca 59, the plaque commemorated an outstanding figure of the labour movement. Thousands of plaques commemorating important personages, events and locations were put up all over the country by government, party and mass organisations between 1945 and 1989. This was how the political regime aimed to demarcate its sphere of power in space and time, and thus construct a history for itself. The star-shaped flower-bed A uniquely shaped symbol was placed in the heart of the Statue Park by its designer. ("There is no park without flowers in the middle and no thematic park without thematic flowers in its middle.") Unlike the monuments, the flowerbed in the shape of a star was not made for eternity; it is an ephemeral symbol that has to be tended to, one that evokes the spirit of an era in its 37
