Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
From City to Metropolis (1849-1919)
a number of ironworks, foundries and engineering workshops of varying sizes were established in Pest-Buda, including the Ganz Works, which had started as a small iron foundry in 1845, and made its name with new patented railway wheels which were being sold all over Europe by 1870. The influx of countryfolk from all parts of Hungary into the capital continued to augment. By 1851 the number of inhabitants had grown to 178,000, by 1857 to 187,000 and by 1869 to 270,000: at that time, out of a total of 200,000, 45.000 of the inhabitants of Pest were “aliens”. The shape and appearance of the towns began to change as well: the beginnings of a factory zone made their appearance on the outskirts of the city; the regulation of the section of the Danube flowing between the two cities and the construction of embankments began; railway stations were built at the terminals of the railway lines into Pest-Buda. New streets began to emerge, the old streets were renovated, the number of multi-storey buildings increased. Architecture in the Romantic and early Eclectic style blossomed beside the neoclassical style. In 1856 gas was introduced into Pest, and a little later, in 1862, gas-lighting was installed in Buda as well. In 1867 a large-scale waterworks, although intended to be temporary, was built in Pest (Buda continued to depend on small waterworks for its drinking water for a long time to come); in 1866 the first horse-drawn trams began to ply in the Pest streets; in 1870 a steam-funicular up to the Buda Castle District was built, and in 1873 the cog-wheel railway from Buda to the mountains was constructed to make access to the city easier. The expanding capital became increasingly the centre of both a Hungarian-based culture and its corollary, the national movement fighting ever more openly from 1850 onwards against the absolutist rule of Vienna. The Hungarian population, which during these years had become the largest group in the city, found support in this struggle even among some of the old German citizens, since the political dependence of the country on Austria harmed their business interests. In 1867 the famous Compromise was reached between Austrian and Hungarian ruling classes; the Austrians abandoned their oppressive policies and designs for assimilation, the Hungarians the passive resistance they had practised, and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy came into being. Following the Compromise, the Hungarian ruling class, for both political and economic reasons, devoted their energies to developing the capital: an Act was passed regulating large-scale city development, and the Municipal Public Works Council independent of the city management, was set up under the direction of the Prime Minister to organize and direct the new town-planning schemes. Based on the results of an international competition a detailed scheme of town-planning was begun in 1872. In the same year Buda, Pest and Óbuda were legally merged into one, and in 1873 they became a single city in administrative and all other ways. But the bourgeoisie of the new capital, Budapest, celebrating the Compromise and the merger of the three cities, had also to consider an emerging proletariat, produced by the fast evolution of the capitalist economy and especially the rapid development of industry, and with it the first appearance of an organized labour movement in Budapest. In 1868 the General Workers’ Association was founded, influenced at first by the teachings of Lassalle, but in which—not least under the effects of the Paris Commune—the internationalists who were already Marxists soon played an increasing part. As early as 1870 38
