CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Sudar, Orsolya Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | In the Spirit of National Greatness: The Long Search for National Architecture in Hungary through the Analysis of the Buda Palace, 1867-2024 |
| Summary | This dissertation investigates the political and cultural history of Buda Castle’s reconstructions from the 1880s to the present, exposing how architecture has been weaponized to manufacture nationalist myths and manipulate historical memory. Conceived as a monumental symbol of Hungarian statehood after the 1867 Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the Palace has served as a battleground for ideological struggles over national identity, power, and historical continuity. By adopting a framework informed by nationalism theory, historical revisionism, and longue-durée perspectives, this study critically assesses how successive regimes have used architecture to legitimize political authority while erasing inconvenient historical realities. The analysis is structured around three pivotal periods. The first, spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries, explores the construction of a national architectural idiom amid Hungary’s constrained sovereignty within the Dual Monarchy. Parliamentary debates and contemporary media reveal a persistent struggle between aspirations for national autonomy and the realities of imperial subordination. The Palace’s transformation under Alajos Hauszmann and the emergence of iconic landmarks like the Parliament illustrate how architecture was instrumentalized to forge a Hungarian self-image while remaining tethered to Habsburg authority. This period also set the stage for later revisionist appropriations of the Palace’s history. The second period examines the Palace’s wartime destruction and its reconstruction under successive regimes, each imposing its own ideological imprint on the site. Regent Miklós Horthy’s appropriation of national history selectively framed the Castle as a relic of feudal greatness, while the postwar Stalinist regime, reluctant to restore its political function, left its role undefined. The socialist era’s engagement with the Buda Castle, particularly after 1956, redefined the site as a cultural and public space. This shift, while ideologically ambiguous, represented a democratization of historical space, challenging the Palace’s earlier role as an elite stronghold. The chapter situates these transformations within broader debates on socialist realism, modernist architectural interventions, and the regime’s paradoxical relationship with national heritage. The third period explores the post-1989 reinvention of Buda Castle, contrasting it with Berlin’s Humboldt Forum as a comparative case study. While Berlin’s debates over architectural compromise and historical accountability demonstrate a critical engagement with the past, Hungary’s post-transition approach has largely evaded such reflection. The ongoing restoration of the Castle, particularly under the post-2010 government, aligns with broader trends of nationalist revisionism and spectacle-driven architecture. This chapter interrogates the role of historical reconstruction as a political tool, tracing how the selective reimagining of the past serves contemporary ideological agendas. Far from a professional revival of historical heritage, Hungary’s return to historicist architecture represents a calculated political strategy, designed to fabricate continuity with an imagined national past while suppressing histories that do not serve the dominant nationalist narrative. The spectacle of historical reconstruction is not merely an aesthetic project but an ideological statement, one that trades historical complexity for a sanitized, mythologized vision of national identity. Ultimately, this dissertation questions whether Hungary can escape the cycle of architectural revisionism and confront its past with intellectual honesty, or whether it will remain trapped in the mass reproduction of nostalgic falsehoods masquerading as heritage. |
| Supervisor | Bodnár, Judit, PhD; Rév, István |
| Department | Historical Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/sudar_orsolya.pdf |
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