Hungarian Heritage Review, 1985 (14. évfolyam, 12. szám)
1985-12-01 / 12. szám
DECEMBER 1985 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW 5 3Ht lß0tCmß!3 Jtt ROOER BbGOODMAN Hungarian The election of Arpad as leader of the Hungarian people and nation. —From a painting by Mihály Kovács MILESTONES IN HUNGARIAN HISTORY — Part One — EDITOR'S NOTE: Enough histories of Hungary have been written and published to fill a five-mile-long, freight train. Unfortunately, however, many of these learned tomes reflect their author’s ideopolitical interpretation of Hungarian history, rather than unbiased fact. In this series of articles, our Roger B. Goodman will attempt to slice through the maze of mis-information in order to get at the kernels of truth and to present them in such a way that we will all get some idea of what the history of Hungary is all about. The mystery of the history of Hungary is its mystery! Here is a nation which has occupied the same geographical area for an unbroken period of more than one thousand years; here is a people which, according to some scholarship (disputed by other scholarship!) can trace its origins back through the centuries to ancient Mesopotamia and Sumeria, and can point to national and linguistic similarities among peoples as far apart as the Piets of ancient England and the Maories of New Zealand. Here is a country which, in 1222 A.D. promulgated a decree — the Golden Bull — which stands with the Magna Carta as a landmark in the growth of civil rights and liberties; a country which, alone and singlehanded stood against the greatest threat to Christendom — the Ottoman Empire — and in 1456 defeated it, winning for Europe a reprieve of almost one hundred years. —continued next page
