 Author's program note. These are troubling days in the heart of what was once one of the grandest and most civilized of kingdoms... for Hungary was all that and more, a people of the highest culture, sophisticated, masters of every refined nuance of the art of living; a life-enhancing people, exuberant, with a zest all their own and a profound patriotism exceeded by no other nation, forged from ardent and ineradicable memories of a glorious past and ensuing generations of crushing defeat and tragedy. Now Hungary is again moving towards the precipice and her many friends around the globe must urge restraint and so save the nation at a crucial moment in her checkered history, so full of pain, sorrow, miscalculation, punishment, anguish, adamant willfulness, and crippling arrogance. For the musical accompaniment to this article I have selected "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by one of Hungary's most renowned sons, Franz Liszt (1811-1886). This is not merely brilliant music. No, it soars beyond that. It is magic, an excruciating technical challenge that divides pianists who dare attempt it into two sharp categories: the wizards who render the astonishing notes with the requisite virtuosity... and the merely excellent, unable to rise to such demanding proficiency. Go now to any search engine and listen to at least two of its versions. First, the piano solo. This was composed in 1847 and published in 1851. Liszt dedicated it to his fellow countryman Count La'szlo' Teleki, a nobleman who lives in history because he had the good fortune to befriend a genius. Its immediate success and popularity on the concert stage led to an orchestrated version, arranged by the composer in collaboration with Franz Doppler. Later, in 1874, the composer arranged a piano duet version that was published the following year. Each version of this masterpiece reminded the dominant Magyars (who considered themselves the only "true" Hungarians) what their great people could achieve if they would but focus on the key elements of the well lived life, rather than the chimera of power and military glory. But too often these feckless Magyars were seduced from the constructive path by those who saw greatness only in terms of how many others they could subjugate, over what expanded acreage. Thus the great resources of the nation were squandered by men of noble pedigree in tight-fitting uniforms of wondrous panache; men intent on seeing their Hungary rise higher and higher, instead bringing her low, to desolation, to destruction, to degradation, master of despicable behaviors and disgusting deeds, heinous and shameful. For you see, the Magyars are an unlucky people, once desiring to join the Great Powers, but achieving only the position of Great Obstacle, a nation without the wisdom and necessary resources to reach their desired eminence, instead settling for blocking others from achieving theirs. Thus Hungary and its perennially discontented Magyars, too few to achieve what they wanted, too many and too determined to ignore, became the greatest negative factor in European politics after the Dual Monarchy with Austria was established in 1867. Indeed, they were so obstinate and stubborn, so selfish and sanctimonious, so purblind and self-congratulatory that even their Habsburg rulers could not abide them. Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir apparent to the crown of Hungary, disliked his future Magyar subjects to the point where he could not stand being in the same room with them, "moustachioed gypsies" being one of his few printable descriptions. When he was assassinated in Sarajevo in July, 1914, there was glee in Budapest. Their greatest nemesis was dead... their finest hour surely now at hand. They knew that Austria could not wage successful war without them... and so they drove the hardest of bargains with the doddering Emperor Francis Joseph (reigned 1848-1916) and his hapless successor, the last reigning Emperor and Apostolic King of Hungary, Charles I (reigned 1916-1918). Thus the Dual Monarchy faced its dwindling future hobbled, divided, antiquated, ready for history's scrapheap... which duly arrived for the Magyars at the Treaty of Trianon (1920) where the victorious Allies had their vengeful way for generations of Hungarian hubris and condescension. Each paragraph of the precise protocols was designed to hurt the erring heirs of Attila the Hun, not least removing 77% of their carefully acquired patrimony, raising the nations and peoples they despised (Romanians, Slovaks and South Slavs) to a superiority they loathed and vowed to destroy... and so Satan's seeds were well and truly planted, ensuring years of calumny, catastrophe and calamity far, far worse than those which went before. At its center was one man, Admiral Miklo's Horthy de Nagyba'nya, "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary". >From March 1,1920 to October 15, 1944 Miklo's Horthy spun his webs and played the difficult game that constituted Eastern European politics in those turbulent years. I warn you; it is a game as complicated as any on Earth, and Horthy was a past master of its intricate maneuvers... to the extent that whist hundreds of thousands of Hungarians (including a half million Jews, Roma, and homosexuals) were exterminated during his tumultuous regime, he survived... finally savoring the sunset of his life in Estoril, in Portugal where he enjoyed the ultimate revenge of the once powerful, now in exile. He wrote his autobiography.... Horthy's anecdotage. He published his memoirs in German in 1953, the English translation, "A Life for Hungary" in 1956, the year Hungary rose against her Communist overlords in a revolt that tugged at our hearts as we watched the valiant patriots of this ancient land killed in their own streets. I was just nine at the time and the searing images of this glorious but futile endeavor constitute my earliest recollection of what people will do to be free. As for Horthy, having done all that a wily man might do to save his skin, he then had the good sense to die (1957), aged 88. He is the ultimate example of this profound observation, "Living well is the best revenge." Horthy's ghost. Hungary, like all the ancient kingdoms and domains of Mittel Europa and the Balkans, is a land of ghosts and eerie reminders, no less potent for their dotage, of benighted policies that destroyed lives for reasons no one but arcane specialists can now recall. In these lands such lurid ghosts can live again whenever the witches brew ferments just so.Thus the hobgoblins of the past may arise at any time in the great capitals of Eastern Europe, no more so than in Hungary, land of so much promise but far more bitterness and rue. These pernicious spirits are now apparent in Hungary... and the world is right to be concerned, even appalled by their early reappearance after the great havoc they brought so often before. Each Magyar needs a sprig of rosemary, "that's for remembrance", for now above all they need to remember all that went before; that which they would oh so much rather forget. The revival of Hungarian fascism. Autocracy, monarchy, fascism, nazism, communism. These are the inauspicious modes of governance known to Hungary and the Hungarians for a millennium and more. Arguably there was no democracy until 1989 and this fragile plant so long coming needed longer to take root and grow; time it did not get. Thus when the European economy began to deteriorate (2011), the fragile Hungarian experiment with democracy started to deteriorate, too, each quarter's more dismal economic news yet another opportunity for reviving the tried and failed shibboleths of the unhappy past. And so the tired old bogeymen were trotted out, hatred of Jews, detestation of' ethnic Roma, hostility to homosexuals; all the malignities of the past revived, never mind that each of these had already proven to be toxic to the nation and its people. This included the creation and rise of neo-fascists, particularly in the Jobbik Party, now Hungary's third largest (and fastest growing) political party with 17 percent of the vote in the last national elections (2010). Local experts agree that Jobbik is even stronger today. The current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban seems to agree. His own party, Fidesz, is sympathetic to Jobbik's divisive goals and cannot disregard its growing importance. Equally he must pay close attention to the concerns of his European Union colleagues, unsettled by the growing instabilities in Budapest. In short, it is "deja vu all over again," Yogi Berra's famous redundancy. But is the worrisome situation in Hungary today, neo-fascism clearly on the rise, a reincarnation of the first fascists and their baneful regime? Gladly, things are very different in Hungary now from the grim days of the resplendent Regent Horthy. The World Jewish Congress is closely monitoring anti-Semitism, to the extent that they held their assembly (usually held in Jerusalem) in Budapest this year. No Jew could be outraged or seized today without universal outrage and instant WJC action. Equally, ethnic Roma, once fair game for every humiliation and injury, today enjoy a level of acceptance and understanding never seen before in their long history of injustice and acute malevalence. They, too, no longer face peril without protection, the EU will see to that. As for Hungary's gay population, it, too, has advanced marvelously, no longer forced to live desperate lives and lies, previously unthinkable same-sex marriage is now a commonplace; their rights, too, protected by the EU. Why then should we worry about the situation in Budapest and the obnoxious practices of a few fanatics? Because without constant monitoring and prompt intervention the few fanatics of today can become a dangerous movement tomorrow, polished jackboots crushing democracy as well as any chance for a peace and harmony this storm-tossed nation and its contumacious Magyars have never had. Helping that democracy survive and flourish is mandatory, Hungary's last chance to be the nation all Hungarians deserve, of the people, by the people, for the people, all the people. We must all be clear on that. |
