Protection of monuments in the service of identity politics in late 19th-century Hungary

Text: Viktor Rozmann, Deodáth Zuh

The first part of this paper, published in MÉ 2023/6, seeks to answer the question of how the principles of monument preservation fitted into the efforts to strengthen national identity in the last third of the 19th century in Hungary, and in this context, also to examine the meaning of (neo)gothic style in the art theory of Imre Henszlmann. This section reviews five important theoretical issues that provide a deeper understanding of the 19th-century revival of national architectural aspirations. These are, in order: the scientific justification of architecture; the universal intelligibility of styles; the need for market recognition in the development of a distinctive visual image; the question of nationalist tendencies building from the bottom up; and the particular situation created by the struggle for competition between national identity politics, which has in turn led to a variety of nuances in the assessment of the predominantly ‘universalist’ or ‘nationalist’ artistic tendencies of certain nations. From the early days of his career, Henszlmann championed national stylistic aspirations based on the scientific foundations of architecture. In them he saw the potentials of a universally communicable message. Thus, the rationality and high engineering quality of Gothic supporting structures could provide a universal token for what at first sight appeared to be merely local, regional national characteristics.