Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Memorials up and down the stairs: the Granite Steps
(The Sunday News), from Buda to Vienna in 9 hours 9 minutes. His most acclaimed feat performed in Buda was when he raced his four-in-hand, drawn by horses untrained for the task, down the steep and vaulting stairway leading from the Water Gate to the Watertown. He got away scot-free. He was not, however, invariably that lucky. He fractured a collar bone or a rib on some occasions, spraining his knee or sustaining concussions on others. After becoming mentally deranged in 1850, he was locked up first in the Prague and then in the Döblin lunatic asylums. His death on 23 February 1878 also inspired legends according to which the four fiery black steeds drawing the cart home with his remains bolted outside the church of Bajna and when they were eventually restrained with great difficulty, the poor things collapsed dead. Surviving to mark the memory of Count Móric Sándor is this short little stairway in Buda as well as the family mansion in Bajna and Imre Kálmán's operetta Der Teufielóreiter or The Devil Rider. Memorials up and down the stairs-, the Granite Steps Tourists headed for the Buda Castle from the direction of Vérmező mostly opt for the comfortable, shadowy Gránit lépcső (Granite Steps). Right at the start they tend to be halted by József Kampfl's sculpture, the lovely bust of Teréz Brunswick set up at the lower section of the stairway with its face turned toward what used to be the Nursery School here (the building at 81 Attila út). Countess Teréz Korompai Brunswick (Brunszvik) was born on 27 July 1775 in Bratislava. On 1 June 1828 she opened the first nursery school in Hungary, an establishment she named Angels’ Garden. She had also been the first to set up a Christmas tree in Hungary, in 1824. Her memory is kept alive by innumerable nursery schools in her country as well as a pedagogical award all named after her. Where her bust is there used to stand a sculpture of Károly P. Szathmári, until it was moved to the upper end of the stairs at Lovas út in 1984. Sculpted by Károly R. Kaisler in 1931, it bore the following inscription: "Unwise it is to stare at the sunset; / 1 look out for the sun on the rise, / Awaiting a dawn to shine on Hungary”. Neither this nor the dates inscribed are sufficient for most people to identify the sharp-featured male face. Szathmári was born on 24 July 1830 in Szilágysomlyó (today's Simleu Silvaniei, Romania). As a young man he fought in Hungary's War of Liberty in the battalion commanded by General József Bern, after which he went into hiding for years. Following the Astro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 he sat in parliament, and worked as a journalist and then an editor. As a parliamentarian, he prepared several bills furthering the cause of infant protection. 17
