Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

of Protestant churches in Budapest was also meant to serve the purposes of community activities other than those directly linked to religious services, which is why communal and theatrical auditoria were installed beside the churches or beneath them in the basements, where the congregation could organise charitable and other social or cultural events.

From 1945 to the middle of the 1980s there were some 250 new churches built in Hungary. The overwhelming majority of these (165) were Roman Catholic, with some 20 Calvinist and 15 Lutheran churches being built. Besides the so-called historical churches of Protestantism, there are also "minor churches” functioning in Budapest, which are associated in the Council of Free Churches. These include the congregations of Hungary's Baptists, Adventists, Methodists, the Congregation of Christian Brotherhood, the Free Christians and the Pentecostal Congregation. Some further sects that have broken away from the major Protestant congregations also have their houses of worship in Budapest. It was not only the historical churches whose activities received a new impetus from the democratic changes that occurred in the early 1990s in Hungary, but the various smaller sects, many of which were of foreign origin, also began to proselytise and build their own churches at an increasing speed.

Surveyed in this volume are the Lutheran, then the Calvinist and finally the Unitarian churches in the chronological order of their construction.

The Lutheran Church in Deák tér

No. 4 Deák tér, District V

The request submitted by the Pest Lutheran Parish for a church building site was granted in 1792 on the intercession of Prince Joshua Coburg, commander- general of the Pest garrison, who was himself of the Lutheran faith. The 2260- square-yard plot was allocated beside the Grenadiers’ Barracks outside the city walls because the church was meant to accommodate the seven hundred Lutheran soldiers of the garrison as well as the citizenry of the same denomination. Before the church was completed, the Lutherans of the city went to church on Sundays to Cinkota, a village some 15 kilometres from Pest, or else attended service inside the barracks. Besides the two most well-to-do patrons of the Lutheran congregation, Countess Miklós Beleznay and József Teleki, the Prince Primate of Hungary, Count József Batthyány, also made donations to help finance the construction, and contributions also came from the parishes of Württemberg and the city of Hamburg.

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