Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

PRO MEMORIA — signs of remembrance: plaques, reliefs, statues.

They are meant to preserve the memory of outstanding personalities, to commemorate important events for a smaller community, add to óur knowledge, teach us to appreciate the values of the past, and set examples to follow. They are intimations of "survival", flirtations with immortality.

The desirability of marking historical sites was expressed as early as the first third of the nineteenth century as one of the aspirations characteristic of the Reform Age. Municipal Councillor for the City of Pest József Patachich decreed the marking, with a memorial column, of the hillock known as the King's Mount in Rákos mezeje. Ten years later in 1829, a more general appeal was made by János Boráros, who called for the appreciation of the city’s historical sites. Lajos Arányi initiated in 1854 that the buildings in the Castle District worth marking be given memorial plaques.

There are hundreds of memorial plaques throughout Budapest today; whether featuring reliefs or bearing no more than an inscription, their subject matter is diverse. Highlighted of these in the present book are the ones which are likeliest to have public interest, ones whose subject matter is related to a recent or forthcoming anniversary, and ones that provide fresh insight. What is shared by the signs of remembrance selected here is'that they all help to enhance our knowledge of the past. Articles originally published in the daily Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation) are reproduced here in edited form.

King Sigismund's Bequest

Surrounded by a Hungarian and a Serb inscription, the likeness of the medieval knight can be seen on the house at 9 Országház utca, District I. The text is related to the power-politics and neighbourhood policies of Sigismund of Luxemburg, King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor.

The two-storey palatial building raised around the end of the fourteenth century was donated by Sigismund as a gift to his ally, István Lazarevics, Serbian Despot. It is this event that the plaque, made by the Serbian artist Nebojsa Mitrió (1987), commemorates.

István succeeded his father Lázár to the throne. Lázár had been killed fighting the Turks in the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389. His son, too, entered into alliance with Sigismund to fend off an impending Osman onslaught.

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