Global True Lithuania Encyclopedia of Lithuanian heritage worldwide

Hungary

Hungary has the largest number of Lithuanian monuments in Central Europe among the countries that have no historic Lithuanian communities.

Uniquely, the construction of Lithuanian monuments in Hungary began at the most unlikely time when Lithuania was under Soviet occupation and Hungary was ruled by a communist regime. Unlike in the Western world, where such Lithuanian monuments and buildings could only be built by the diaspora which had left Lithuania before the Soviet occupation in the 1940s, in Hungary, they were built by Lithuanians who grew up or even lived in Soviet-occupied Lithuania.

Lithuanian Sculpture Park in Tokaj

Lithuanian Sculpture Park in Tokaj (1986-1988)

This was possible for two reasons.

Firstly, while it was still very difficult for people of Soviet-occupied Lithuania to travel or migrate to other communist-ruled countries, this was not as impossible as traveling or emigrating to the West. Typically, a “good reason” was needed, as well as good recommendations from various communist institutions. That “good-enough reason” for emigration to Hungary almost always was marriage – having met Hungarians who, for example, were studying in the Soviet Union, Lithuanians could marry them and, if the regime allowed it, emigrate to Hungary even during the height of the Soviet occupation ~1960s-1970s. Dozens of such multi-ethnic families were what began the Lithuanian community in Hungary where it never existed before.

A second reason that allowed the construction of the first Lithuanian monuments was a comparatively more lenient Hungarian regime, known as “goulash communism”. Unlike the subjects of the Soviet Union, Hungarians were allowed to travel abroad (even to Western countries), and foreign artists were allowed to come and create (with even the band “Queen” famously performing in Budapest in 1986).

Lithuanian Sculpture Park of Tokaj

Lithuanian Sculpture Park of Tokaj (a town with a population of 5000 in Hungary’s wine-growing region) was the first of Hungary’s Lithuanian sites. It was initiated in 1986 and opened in 1988. It was created by Lithuanian wood artists Ipolitas Užkurnys and Antanas Česnulis who were arriving here from Soviet-occupied Lithuania to temporarily stay in an “art colony” and craft these sculptures. While such international endeavor was unheard of while Lithuania was under Soviet occupation, there were still many limitations: the sculptures could not incorporate any traditional Lithuanian symbols, such as the coat of arms or the tricolor, as they were banned by the Soviets, while religious symbols that are prominent in Lithuanian folk art were also shunned. Meanwhile, the artists themselves would not have wanted to build any symbols that the Soviets forced upon Lithuania, such as the Lithuanian SSR coat of arms with hammer and sickle. Therefore, they chose traditional Lithuanian (and Hungarian) crafts to represent the nations as the best possible alternative. Crafts such as fishing, agriculture, and others are represented through carved figures on the wooden poles. However, these crafts are pretty international, therefore, it is difficult to ascertain the figures as Lithuanian on themselves.

Top half of one of the sculptures in Tokaj

Top half of one of the sculptures in Tokaj

However, in 2007 (long after both Lithuania and Hungary had shed communism and became democratic ~1990), the park was renovated. A new plaque now firmly explains that it is a Lithuanian Sculpture Park (Litván szoborpark), while a Lithuanian tricolour is among the flags that perpetually fly above the park, making it the only such place in Hungary outside of the Lithuanian embassy.

The sign at the sculpture park

The sign at the sculpture park

Jogaila and Jadvyga monuments in Tokaj

In 2021, Tokaj received a new couple of Lithuanian wooden-pole monuments located near the town church. These are dedicated to Jogaila (king of Poland and Lithuania) and his wife, known in Lithuanian as Jadvyga. These Lithuanian names are joined by the Hungarian alternatives on the monuments: Szt. Hedvig and II. Ulászló. Jadvyga / Hedvig was of partly Hungarian origin, a daughter of the king of Hungary and Poland, whose marriage to the then-pagan ethnically Lithuanian Jogaila was an instrument in expanding alliances and Christendom. Her Hungarian roots are the reason why this couple is enshrined here.

Jogaila and Jadvyga monuments in Tokaj

Jogaila and Jadvyga monuments in Tokaj

Built in modern times, these monuments faced no restrictions. Jogaila's monument features Lithuanian details prominently, including the Cross of Vytis on his shield and huge Columns of Gediminas behind his back.

Close-up of the Jogaila monument

Close-up of the Jogaila monument

Columns of Gediminas at Jogaila's back

Columns of Gediminas at Jogaila's back

Paulius Normantas plaque in Nyiregyhaza

The Lithuanian community of Hungary was always small, while its exclusively “multi-ethnic family” nature meant it was also assimilating over a single generation. The monuments thus exist thanks to a few activists, most famously Paulius Normantas (1948-2017), a Lithuanian poet, photographer, and traveler who married a Hungarian woman and emigrated to Hungary in 1983. It was he who initiated Tokaj’s Lithuanian Sculpture Park, helping acquire the necessary permits for visiting Lithuanian artists. In 1988, when the Park was opened, Normantas held the first meetings of Lithuanians in Hungary and then became the first leader of the official Lithuanian community within Hungary.

Normantas’s achievements went beyond that. Traveling to many locations in Asia at a time when such travels were still rare and difficult for the people of Lithuania (due to the travel bans during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania and the Soviet-ravaged Lithuanian and Hungarian economies), Normantas amassed large numbers of photos and mementos, building bridges between not only Lithuania and Hungary but also Lithuania/Hungary and Asia.

As such, after Normantas’s death, a commemorative plaque for him was unveiled on Varosi art gallery in Nyiregyhaza city where he lived by Lithuanian Travel Journalists Club and the municipality of Nyiregyhaza. In both Lithuanian and Hungarian languages, the plaque claims to be a bridge between the two nations “where the free spirit of Paulius Normantas is alive”.

Commemorative plaque for Paulius Normantas in Nyiregyhaza

Commemorative plaque for Paulius Normantas in Nyiregyhaza

The building where Normantas plaque was put on

The building where Normantas plaque was put on

Klaipėda Street in Debrecen

One of the few direct official relations Lithuanian institutions could keep with foreign institutions while Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union was that of the sister cities. Of course, the sister cities would be selected only from other communist-ruled countries such as Hungary but that was still something.

Hungary’s second-largest city Debrecen established a sister city relationship with Lithuania’s Klaipėda in 1989. As was common in such “relationships”, the cities exchanged street names, with there being a Debrecen (Debreceno) street and an entire district in Klaipėda, and Klaipėda Street (utca) in Debrecen (also Klaipėda public transport stop). Both streets are located in Soviet-era apartment block districts.

While there are numerous Vilnius or Kaunas streets all over the world, streets named after Klaipėda are very rare.

Klaipėda bus stop in Klaipėda Street in Debrecen

Klaipėda bus stop in Klaipėda Street in Debrecen

Lithuanian monuments in Budapest

Hungary’s capital and primate city Budapest has three Lithuanian monuments.

Two of these monuments are located in the cemeteries and are dedicated to the victims of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when Soviet tanks and troops crushed the initially successful Hungarian attempts to re-establish democracy. To Lithuanians, that resonated with their own freedom fight by the “Forest brothers” which was also largely defeated in the 1950s. Therefore, once Hungary democratized and the mass graves of those who supported the revolution (as well as many children killed during these events) were discovered on a field in a far-away unused area of Budapest's New Cemetery, Lithuanians would gifted one of the first monuments to be erected on the site.

The first monument was built in the New Cemetery in 1990 by the same Lithuanian sculptors who crafted the Lithuanian Sculpture Park in Tokaj. Vytautas Landsbergis, the leader of Lithuania which had declared its independence from the Soviet Union merely half a year before, participated in its unveiling. The monument is in the form of a traditional Lithuania chapel-post, with a Rūpintojėlis (traditional Lithuanian figure of a worried Jesus) on its top.

Lithuanian monument in the New Cemetery

Lithuanian monument in the New Cemetery (left)

The second such monument was crafted in 2006 by A. Teresius and R. Zinkevičius in the Kerepesi Cemetery, where other revolutionaries had been buried. Its construction was organized by Vytautas Grinius, then the leader of Hungary’s Lithuanian community. A plaque lists it as a Lithuanian monument and it is inspired by the Lithuanian folk art.

Lithuanian memorial for the killed Hungarian revolutionaries in the Kerepesi Cemetery

Lithuanian memorial for the killed Hungarian revolutionaries in the Kerepesi Cemetery

Lithuanian ambassadors would visit the memorials every year in the anniversary of the failed Hungarian Revolution.

The newest among Budapest’s Lithuanian monuments is built of stone right next to Buda’s old town entrance. It is also dedicated to Jogaila and Jadvyga who sit quite apart from each other, this symbolizing the age barrier that separated them. The space in-between is filled with the coats of arms of Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary; the monument also has the Columns of Gediminas symbol. The statue was funded by the Lithuanian government in 2013 and it has been unveiled for the Lithuanian presidency of the European Union Council and represents a popular thought that the peacefully united Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a kind of predecessor to the European Union. Moreover, by adopting a Western (Catholic rather than Orthodox) form of Christianity Jogaila also set a pro-Western political momentum for Lithuania, which continues to this day. The sculpture is located near European park where every European capital had planted a tree. Additional stone in front of the statue tells the story behind Jogaila and Jadvyga, while a map carved on the monument’s back shows all the domains they ruled. This way, sculpture also serves as a tool to teach the passers-by about the Lithuanian history. The authors of the statue were from Lithuania: Dalia Matulaitė, Jūras Balkevičius and Rimantas Buivydas.

Jogaila and Jadvyga sculptures in Budapest

Jogaila and Jadvyga sculptures in Budapest

Map on the back of the sculptures

Map on the back of the sculptures

Despite the monument being Lithuanian-built and funded the Latin plaque on the sculpture calls the King by his Polish name Jagiello. Not only that he is called "Wladislaus Jagiello, Rex Poloniae Et Dux Supremus Lithuaniae 1386-1434" (Wladislaus Jagiello, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania 1386-1434", but he is also anachronistically called "Jagiello, Magnus Dux Lithuaniae 1377-1386" (Jagiello, Grand Duke of Lithuania 1377-1386) - even though in those days Lithuania had been his one and only realm and he was known by his Lithuanian name. Being an ethnic Lithuanian who ascended to the Polish throne in his 30s Jogaila is known to have spoken Polish badly.

Names of Jogaila and Jadvyga on the monument

Names of Jogaila and Jadvyga on the monument

Click to learn more about Lithuania: Europe (East), Hungary Leave a comment
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)

No comments yet.


Leave a comment

No trackbacks yet.