Prohászka László: Polish Monuments - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

The memorial medal of the Hungarian Mickiewicz Society

became livelier in the late 1920s, often through small but significant gestures. In May 1928 a Polish art exhibition, organised at the National Salon (then housed in the Erzsébet tér pavilion, which was pulled down in 1960) was opened by the Hungarian president. In April 1938 the Műcsarnok staged an exhibition of some of the finest pieces of Polish art. A powerful bust of general Pilsudski, by Stanislaw Rzecki, was at the centre of the exhibition.

In the early 1930s Minister Miklós Kozma presented the BATORY cruiser with a small bronze replica of Hussar Looking at his Sword, a sculpture by Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl. The statuette, whose original stands at the beginning of Szenty György utca in Buda castle, became a precious ornament on the cruiser named after István Báthory, which was the pride of the Polish commercial fleet. In 1933 the Hungarian president received an official gift from Poland in the form of a bust of Marshall Pilsudski. It was destroyed in the fire which swept through the former royal palace of Buda in early 1945.

In the 1930s Polish motifs began to appear in Hungarian medal art. Pál Pátzay made a memorial medal for the Hungarian Mickiewicz Society in 1933, Sándor Farkas Boldogfai a plaque for the National Hungarian-Polish Students’ Association in 1938. The most accomplished of a number of medals showing “Cincié Bern” was moulded by Ferenc Csúcs in 1939.

34