Boros Géza: Statue Park - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
The endless promenade dedicated to the ideas and events of the labour movement
The local authority of District II, which was in favour of demolition, actually at one point raised the alternative idea of re-cutting the star in the shape of Hungary's (crown-topped) coat of arms, in which case the monument would have been allowed to stay where it was. This, however, would have been tantamount to falsifying the very essence of the piece, which is why the (also controversial) decision of having the monument relocated was accepted. Another monument of the regiment, which didn’t have the totalitarian symbol, made by Iván Szabó and Károly Jurcsik and set up in 1967 on Vérmező, was left in its place undisturbed. The last station of the promenade takes the visitor to the closure of the park. "As the way leaves the pattern of the paths (which, for the sake of its very absurdity, is a nice flower motif)’’, as the designer once said, "the walk continues and reaches two giant statues which, towering as some back gate, close off the park. They refer back to all three promenades as they represent two personalities whose names are closely associated with the history of the country’s liberation and have assumed symbolic meaning on account of their original locations. Here stand side by side Ostapenko and Steinmetz, those two former gatekeepers’, one formerly standing on the west, the other on the east side of Budapest.” These two statues are emblematic figures capable of summing up history: both represented falsified events of history, both were destroyed in 1956 and restored afterwards, and when their legend was gone, they were both tamed from monuments of untruth into landmarks of orientation. 40. Statue of Captain Steinmetz (Sándor Mikus, 1958) Immediately after the liberation of Budapest a political decision was taken on the fitting commemoration of how two Soviet envoys delivered, in December of 1944, an ultimatum demanding that the encircled Germans surrender themselves to the Soviet Army and how these two were 'treacherously murdered’ by the Nazis, according to communist propaganda. What in fact happened was that the car carrying Steinmetz, a Hungarian-born Soviet officer, hit a land-mine as it approached the German positions from the southeast, the explosion killing both Steinmetz and his driver. Although the competition inviting designs for the monument was won by Jenő Kerényi, the commission went to a member of the jury, Sándor Mikus. Not only was the memorial made under close Soviet supervision, but Captain Vasilyev, a Soviet officer, also participated in preparing the design. As part of the inauguration ceremony, the remains of Captain Steinmetz were exhumed from the 50
