Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)
ROOM 14. Endurance, Compromise and Economic Boom "The Repudiation of That Which is Illegal is No Mere Option, But Rather an Obligation" (Ferenc Deák) (Katalin Körmöczi - Edit Haider)
ROOM 14 Endurance, Compromise and Economic Boom "The Repudiation of That Which Is Illegal Is No Mere Option, But Rather an Obligation" (Ferenc Deák) The force of the Hungarian struggle of self-defence was broken by international might supporting the Habsburg empire. There followed reprisals which prompted protests from European public opinion, and the establishment of a centralized absolutist system. Sándor Petőfi was declared dead, Count Lajos Batthyány was executed, and Lajos Kossuth and a good many participants in the revolution fled the country. István Széchenyi was brooding behind the walls of a mental institution at Döbling. Withdrawing to Kehida, Ferenc Deák recommended passive resistance to the nation, while the attempts of the conservative aristocracy to restore the Hungarian constitution remained fruitless. The failure of neoabsolutism had become clear by the end of the decade; this was signalled by the October Diploma in 1860 and by the calling of the Hungarian Parliament in 1861. The power-lines for an adjustment of Austro-Hungarian relations, and of relations in Europe generally, began to take shape. The period of 19th-century Hungarian history characterized by the struggle waged for bourgeois transformation and national independence came to an end in 1867. The ideas of the Reform Age and the achievements of the revolution and independence war acquired constitutional form with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867. Many contemporaries regarded Hungary's constitutional position within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as the realization of the demands of 1848, despite the concessions made at the expense of self-determination. The economic map of Europe at this time showed the reciprocal influence of regions of unequal development, and with regard to East-Central Europe a disadvantageous division of labour and a significant time-lag. However, the development which began in the second half of the 18th century, acquiring new force during the Reform Age and from the bourgeois achievements of 1848, received sanction in 1867 - within the framework of a unifying Central European imperial market. The Industrial Revolution occurred in Hungary during the second half of the 19th century, and the country produced achievements at the highest levels of technical development. The room presents commemorative material from the decades of neoabsolutism and dualism. Visitors can see the "Endurance, Compromise and Economic Boom" theme in a comparatively unbroken line of economic, bourgeois-type development and in a social cyclorama which deals with the political activity of the Kossuth emigration, Hungary's conservatives, the passive resistance of Deák and the lesser nobility, and the run-up to the Compromise, on the basis of their relationship to 1848-49 and to the Compromise of 1867, which can be understood as the determinants of events in the second half of the 19th century. In the middle of the room visitors can see ceremonial costumes worn at the coronation of 1867. At equal distances from these are three desks, intended to express three basic political stances. Kossuth's desk represents the political emigres opposed to the Compromise, Deak's deskihe, Hungarian aristocrats and lesser nobles prepared to conclude it, and Boldizsár Horvát 's desk the beginnings of the Compromise period and of a bourgeois order (Horvát was the only minister of middleclass origin in the 1867 government).
