Budapest arms & colours. Throughout the centuries (Budapest, 1998)
4 The design for the arms and banner, accepted on 29th May, 1873, was confirmed by King Francis Joseph on 21. September in the same year. The arms and colours of Budapest remained a matter of controversy from their birth: it was wrong to have the arms of Pest placed in the upper field; to have the lion removed from the medieaval arms of Buda and "degraded" into a mere supporter; to have Óbuda represented only by a single gate; furthermore, it was wrong to have the Danube included at all, since the river does not connect but, in fact, seperates the two cities./!/ 11 The controversies kept flaring up in professional circles, like in 1886, when László Toldy, the scholarly chief archivist of the capital found the time ripe for mending the shortcomings of the escutcheon. His efforts failed but he published a study, summarizing his research on the subject, in 1896, the year of the Milleneum 12 . In this publication he also came up with a new arms design for the capital, including the medieval seal images of all three cities, with painstaking care to have them depicted in equal share. He also made the recommendation that the lion and the griffin, both of unknown origin, be replaced with the two savages /!/, who had originally supported the escutcheon of Buda in 1553"I have run into problems in regard to the supporters. VTolcly/ 13
