Budapest, Part Two

Roughly between 1870 and 1920, Budapest made a bid to be considered the center of European culture. To this day, the people of Hungary are the beneficiaries of the creative energies of those years--monumental architecture, statuary, classical music, painting, etc. The century that followed was less than kind. Today, the citizens of Budapest are living with a variety of legacies: war and revolution, the persecution and near decimation of one of Europe's largest and most prosperous Jewish communities, then Soviet domination for several decades followed by a "liberation" to capitalism. One gets the sense that the Hungarian people have emerged a little shell-shocked. At present, Hungarian politics have taken a sharp turn to the right. It is an understandable shift, but a worrisome one as well.

Budapest is a great city, an important nexus of humanitas, of cultural refinement and civility. May it find its way to past glories, but renewed in tune with 21st century exigencies: wiser for the years of suffering and humiliation, mindful of the mistakes of the past.