Prohászka László: Polish Monuments - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)
defeat of the Hungarian revolution and war of independence. Together with Count Lajos Batthyány, the first Hungarian Minister responsible to the Hungarian Parliament, and the leader of the German legion Peter Gron, Hussar captain Karol d’Abancourt de Fran- queville (1811-49), a Polish nobleman of French descent, was executed in the courtyard of the ‘New Building’ (Neugebäude) in Pest on 20 October 1849. Having been previously sentenced to a heavy term of confinement in a fortress for revolutionary conspiracy in 1840, d’Abancourt was treated by the Austrian military tribunal as a perpetual offender. Freed from his confinement in Temesvár by the Hungarian government in May 1848, d’Abancourt immediately joined the national army. An aide-de-camp to general Dem- bihski, he was captured in the summer of 1849 and sentenced to death by court-martial. Although no street in Budapest is named after him and there is no memorial plaque in his memory, the spot where he suffered martyrdom did not remain unmarked. The Hungarian Parliament issued a decree in 1894 ordering that the ill-famed symbol of Austrian tyranny the Neugebäude had to be pulled down. The place where the huge barracks and prison complex had stood was re-named Szabadság tér (Freedom square), in eternal remembrance of the brave men who had served prison sentences or sacrificed their lives within its walls. Around the turn of the 19th century imposing buildings were erected on the square, including the former Stock Exchange (today the headquarters of Hungarian Television). The park in front of this building was the scene in 1936 of the unveiling ceremony of a memorial to the martyrs of the Neugebäude, a cast bronze sculpture of great suggestive force made by Farkas András Dózsa. The male figure, shaking off his ties, raising his arms high and looking toward the sky had been a great success at the 1935 World Exhibition in Brussels. In 1940 it was taken to Kassa, which had been re-annexed by Hungary in 1938. (It is not known what happened to it after 1945.) Farkas András Dózsa additionally designed a great bronze flame-case in neo-Classical style to 26
