Csernus Lukács - Triff Zsigmond: The Cemeteries of Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

Fate has been harsher to cemeteries in Hungary than elsewhere. Estrangement from the dead and from death itself is a universal development of recent times, but its physical symptoms, ranging from neglect to downright vandalism, are especially conspicuous in Hungary. The phenomenon takes a specific, “official”, manifestation in the rearrangement of cemeteries carried out on various pretexts. A politically motivated example of this was when, in the 1960s, a deputy-premiers' section was created between Lajos Kossuth’s mausoleum and the graves where the martyrs of the 1848^49 War of Independence rested. The absence of rules regulating burials performed in Kerepesi Cemetery, or the fact that the sections formed around the turn of the century in the Kozma utca Jewish Cemetery are now being surrounded by new graves, are indicative of another brand of disrespect for the dead and for sepulchral art, stemming as it does from a narrow-minded preference given to economic feasibility.

Likewise, whatever scanty literature on the topic of funeral sites is available is the exclusive result of civic initiative. This slim volume itself relies heavily on enthusiastic voluntary research in its attempt to help the like-minded visitor find his or her way around the cemeteries of Budapest. While identifying the creators of the monuments of artistic merit, this work’s prime concern is to account for the graves where prominent persons lie buried. Just as it would have been impossible to apply unassailable criteria of selection with respect to the individual cemeteries, so was it far beyond the scope of this thin volume to enumerate each and every person or artwork of consequence. That is one reason why the walks suggested here are likely to present the visitor with many a surprising discovery, all the more so as finding individual tombs may often be by no means easy. It is not only due to the lack of space that such specifics of location as row or tomb-number are not given, but also because the numbering system applied varies from one cemetery to the other. On many occasions when such data are provided, it is still easier to ask for the help of the cemetery’s employees.

The old graveyards of Buda, Óbuda and Pest

Wherever we go in the streets of Budapest, we tread on the ashes of the dead. Millions of those who have passed away over the centuries lie mouldering beneath the earth. In the past, whenever a cemetery had filled up, its soil was ploughed up and sown with grass-seeds or planted with trees. Regrettably, no cemetery comparable to the Házson3