Room 16 / From "the Belle Époque" to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
A part of the objects on display here illustrate the economic and cultural prosperity of the first decade of the 20th century, but also shows the limits of political democracy. Another section focuses on the First World War and its aftermath. Hungary, as a member of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, was dragged into the world war against its will, but the defeat not only dismantled the Monarchy, but also left Hungary dismembered. The exhibition shows the political attempts of the country, which lost about two thirds of its territory, to find its way, from the Hungarian People's Republic under Mihály Károlyi, through the proletarian dictatorship of the Hungarian Soviet Republic to the counter-revolution of Miklós Horthy.
Fun facts:
- In 1904, the opposition smashed the newly completed furniture of the Chamber of Deputies, deeming the new standing orders of the House unacceptable. Mementos of the destruction, splinters of furniture signed by opposition MPs, are exhibited here.
- The Romanian troops occupying Budapest in 1919 planned to loot the Transylvanian treasures of the National Museum. The attempted invasion was fortunately thwarted by the American commander of the Entente military mission, General Harry Hill Bandholtz, using his riding crop.
The "Belle Époque" period, the happy times of peace ended with the outbreak of World War I. In Mihály Bíró's iconic poster commissioned by the Social Democratic Party, created in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), death is shovelling people into the cannon barrel to make cannon fodder.
The military defeat of the Central Powers in the First World War ended in revolution. On the poster, the revolutionary figure places the two-headed eagle of the Habsburgs into a coffin.
The bourgeois living environment of the turn of the century blended historicism and Art Nouveau. The exhibited interior also features some of the characteristic representatives Hungarian culture of the period. On the wall hangs portraits of Ödön Lechner, the greatest master of Hungarian Art Nouveau architecture, and Endre Ady, the creator of modern symbolic poetry, while on the table is a portrait of Béla Bartók, genius of 20th-century modern music.
In the midst of the war, at the end of 1916, the aged ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Emperor Franz Joseph, died. His successor, the last Hungarian king, Charles IV, was crowned in pre-war ceremonies. The country, along with its good wishes, presented its new ruler with this silver chest.
