Translator: Zsófia Herczeg Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Our shared Eger history
is a European history.
Everything that we now consider to be typical of Eger
relates to a wider environment,
and if we fail to see this wider environment,
then we will be incapable of understanding what happened here.
For this reason, I am convinced
that the history of the town should be seen in a European context,
and I would now like to retell you this story.
I am sure you know the standard version already.
Well, this one will be a bit, well, different.
This may or may not trouble you. I don’t know.
To understand what happened in Hungary
right at the beginning,
we have to go on a trip to Wallonia.
I'm curious:
Does anyone know where Wallonia is?
That’s right. It’s in Belgium!
Wallonia is the southern part of Belgium,
and there is a town there of particular interest to us called Liège.
This is the fourth largest town in Belgium.
This town
lies in the Meuse Valley.
A mini state comes into existence here in the Middle Ages -
the Prince-Bishopric of Liège -
the founder of which was a person called Saint Lambert.
Please remember that name, Lambert, okay?
This bishopric has some issues
because it is extremely hard for it to defend its territory.
To start off, they solve this problem
by playing off the French and German rulers against one another.
And then when the new Polish and Hungarian states are founded,
they enter into a three-way alliance.
This alliance becomes a very important factor.
So this means that with this alliance,
a totally new relationship comes into existence,
and this fundamentally influences Hungary's early history.
It's important to realise
that the Prince-Bishopric of Liège lies in the Meuse Valley,
and this means
that they were expert wine producers,
and this would later be of great significance as far as Eger was concerned.
The next thing that happens ...
You may be wondering
why this Prince-Bishopric is so important from Eger's point of view.
The answer, quite simply, is that these close ties mean
that the Poles, Hungarians and the Prince-Bishops of Liège
are close friends
and that the bishops follow the events in Hungary with the greatest interest.
And so they also start
to write about events in Hungary,
and these stories feature
in the chronicles of Liège and Namur
while at the same time Hungarian historical documents
provide us with little help.
They go missing, destroyed during the Mongol invasion;
the texts are lost.
The missing information is to be found in the Walloon texts
with exact dates
and lots of concrete information.
Our joint Eger-Walloon story
starts in 1029 in the town of Liège,
when there was a terrible famine,
and one day a group appears - must have been several hundred people.
It turns out that these people speak a language
that no one understands,
and according to the chronicles,
they are also pretty oddly dressed.
You may be wondering who these people could possibly be?
Well, they were Hungarians.
These people settle in Liège
and create their own quarter,
the so-called Vicus Hungarorum,
and this quarter still exists.
A small street in Liège is still called rue Hongrée.
Hongrée being the same as the Latin Hungarorum,
really meaning 'Hungarian Street'.
About 20 years later, the town suffers another famine,
and the Bishop and the Hungarian king, who is now Andrew I,
agree that the group should return to Hungary,
and they are accompanied by the first Walloon families.
These Walloons are important to us.
They accompany the Hungarians on their way back home,
and they settle in the Eger Valley,
where they start to introduce
the advanced wine production methods of the Liège area,
and they found their own villages.
In the Eger Valley, we still encounter their place names,
such as the villages with the 'tálya' element in their names.
The French word 'taille' means to cut,
a reference to the clearance of woodland needed to establish the vineyards,
or the village name Noszvaj, which contains the Walloon 'nos ville',
that is 'our village'.
Amongst the Walloons, Saint Giles or St Aegidius was much loved,
and if we look up at Mount Eged,
which is so close to Eger that we see it day in, day out,
perhaps we should consider the fact
that on old maps the hill was marked Mons Egied,
that is Mount St Giles or St Aegidius.
The established narrative tells us
that the Bishopric of Eger is founded between 1004 and 1009.
Now we actually live on a hill called the King’s Seat,
and it is tempting to believe the legend
that King Stephen I directed the construction of his cathedral
perhaps from our garden.
The only snag with this is that it is almost certainly untrue.
If we want to know what really happened,
then we have to return once again to the Walloon chronicles.
The chronicles tell us that there was originally a bishopric based in Bihar
which was led by a Walloon,
a certain Liéduin or Leodvin.
When the Cumans destroy the Bishopric of Bihar,
it is split in two,
and this is when the bishoprics of Eger and Nagyvárad come into existence.
And with the creation of the bishopric of Eger,
we know who the first bishop of Eger was.
Liéduin or Leodvin decides to take on the task.
And this means that Eger's first bishop was a Walloon.
The story continues
because the seat of the bishopric is established on the Castle Hill
and a village services the bishopric,
while small Walloon settlements come into existence in the valley.
The first was the district of St James,
that could be found in the north-eastern corner of the of the historical centre
close to Cifrakapu Square.
The second was the area around Olasz Street,
which is now called Servita utca, Servite Street.
What this means in practice
is that Eger effectively comes into existence as a Walloon settlement.
The story goes still further.
Well after the Mongol invasion of 1241,
the town has to be rebuilt.
The town has a new bishop
whose name is Bishop Lambert.
Based on our knowledge of Liège,
we will already recognise this name
and probably recognise that it represents a form of homage to the Prince-Bishopric.
The Walloons flood into the Eger Valley.
So in a very real sense,
the Eger Valley effectively becomes a kind of Walloon colony -
you could virtually say that.
1552 is the year of Dobó’s victory defending Eger castle.
It is clear that the castle is incapable of fulfilling its defensive purpose,
and as a result,
a start is made on completely rebuilding it,
and Italian engineers carry out the work.
So Eger castle, as we know it today,
with its casemates, bastions
and cannon chambers,
all relate to the work carried out by Italian engineers.
Just out of interest, I’d like to mention
that when Hungarian tourists visit Eger castle, they will often be asked,
'What version would you like to hear?
The truth or the version that features
in Géza Gárdonyi’s famous novel Eclipse of the Crescent Moon?'
That’s a tough question.
Our heart dictates that we should hear the version
that appears in Gárdonyi’s novel,
our head says something different.
Because if we look at what he writes,
he is describing the castle as it would have looked after the siege of 1552,
and not as it looked during the siege.
The story in the book is historically somewhat inaccurate,
but we all know
what a patriot Gárdonyi was,
and just out of interest,
this person was actually a member of the Swabian German minority.
I don’t know, has anyone any idea what his original name was?
Because it wasn’t Gárdonyi.
Ziegler. That’s right. His name was Géza Ziegler.
During the 1552 siege,
Eger and the surrounding area
clearly suffered serious damage,
but the people were able to return.
When the castle is finally taken in 1596, however,
everyone flees.
And as a result,
this Walloon story that had characterized the Eger Valley for 500 years
comes to an end.
The same can be said, of course, of the Germans who had settled here.
In continuation,
Eger becomes an Ottoman town
with mosques and a highly developed bathing culture,
which is a feature of the town we recognise to the present day.
Eger’s bathing culture, of course, goes back to the Turks.
When the occupation comes to an end,
the Habsburgs return,
and the damaged buildings that survived
were offered back to their original owners,
but the situation is that no one wants their house back,
or rather that no one can be found who had owned property in Eger,
which means that the entire population had been replaced.
So if someone talks about how they belong to an old Eger family,
well, we’re not talking about a particularly long period.
The Turks, the new Christian Turks, the Rascians or Serbs were here too.
And there is a process of spontaneous immigration:
members of the army and their followers come here.
And then the bishops return.
And the bishopric has to deal with an extremely difficult situation.
On the one hand, Hungary has effectively become a Protestant country
during the occupation,
and so they have to somehow win the population back to Catholicism.
And there is also a destroyed town to deal with,
and the building work has to be started
to rebuild the town.
To begin with, they bring architects from Italy,
such as Giovanni Battista Carlone, for example.
And then they start to bring people from the German-speaking world.
The German language area was much larger
than it is now.
It not only included of modern-day Germany and Austria,
but also parts of Czechia
and Alsace,
areas that we would no longer consider belonging to the German-speaking world.
I would like to mention a few examples, a few people.
Matthias Gerl, for example.
Does anyone recognise the name?
Mátyás Gerl,
who designed the County Hall.
He was born in Klosterneuburg
and died in Vienna.
You can’t really say that he was a Hungarian,
despite the fact that he got a Hungarianised name.
If we carry on looking, then we bump into Heinrich Fassola -
yes -
the one who made the Fazola gates in Eger.
He was born in Würzburg,
and with a name like that was clearly of Italian heritage,
and he died in the village of Hámor.
Hámor was a small, German-speaking village near Miskolc.
The question crops up whether he was Hungarian.
I don’t really know.
Or I could mention someone else:
a certain Johann Lucas Kracker.
Who is that?
(Murmuring)
That’s right.
He painted the frescoes
in the Baroque Library in the Lyceum, for example.
He was born in Vienna and died in Eger.
He clearly relates somehow to Eger,
but what’s interesting is when you look him up,
he appears in Wikipedia, for example, as a Czech-Austrian artist.
Well that’s because his family originated from Bohemia.
One of the problems created by Hungarian history telling
is first of all the tendency to Hungarianise people’s names,
even when there is no real justification for doing this,
and the other is the incapability of dealing with multiple identities,
and one should not forget
that Hungary worked in many ways like a melting pot.
For example, a German peasant could decide
whether he wanted to emigrate to America or Hungary.
That the girls are so pretty in Hungary
is in many ways the result of this mixing of genes.
(Laughter)
I am convinced that if we tell ourselves and our children
how diverse our background is,
then we will find our place in Europe much more easily.
At the same time, if we tell our visitors
how diverse this place is,
often we will find points in common with tourists visiting the town
regardless of whether they come from Germany, Wallonia or France.
They will immediately feel at home.
Well yes, Eger is a European place.
(Applause)