Szatmári Gizella: Walks in the Castle District - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

Hentzi’s monument (Hans Gasser, 1852)

Also here in Szent György tér stood, for almost half a century, a monument dedicated to Heinrich Hentzi (1785-1849). The Austrian general defended the Castle of Buda from the siege of the Hungarian army until he fell fighting against General Görgey on 21 March 1849. After the defeat of Hungary’s anti-Hapsburg War of Independence, Emperor Joseph Francis himself ordered in 1852 the erection of a column in memory of his late general in the most impressive square of the Castle District. In its appearance recalling the Immaculata columns of the Baroque period, the monument elevated the dead—Colonel Allnoch and 418 of his comrades as well as General Hentzi whose names were all inscribed on the sides of the pedestal—to quasi-cultic heights. The figure of a dying soldier and an angel holding a wreath of laurels above him beneath the canopied central structure was sculpted by Franz Bauer, while allegories of military virtue (faith, watchfulness, loyalty to the flag, etc.) and the corner posts were the work of Hans Gassner.

The removal of the monument, so deeply offensive to the national pride of Hungarians, was preceded by heated parliamentary debates, arguments in the press and even angry demonstrations. Eventually the monarch in August of 1899, accepting the need for a spot on the impressive square for a monument of Queen Elizabeth as an excuse, gave his consent to the relocation of the

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