Budapest Between Multiculturalism and Nationalism, 1848–1919

Abstract

The multiculturalism of Budapest is not obvious to travellers at the end of the nineteenth century, and the first tourists tend to see the city as a Hungarian metropolis. However, Budapest was a multicultural if not otherwise German-dominated city, especially before 1848, before the Hungarians gradually transformed it into a Magyar city in the course of the nineteenth century. Immigration gradually gave the city a Hungarian face. In the following decades, and especially after the Compromise of 1867, Budapest bore this legacy. It partially lost its multicultural character, not only because of the rapid assimilation of the new immigrants, but also because many rejected it as a multicultural metropolis. By the end of the century, the multicultural image of the city has indeed changed: the city is Hungarian, Jewish and Slovakian, because the proletariat is just as multicultural, which corresponds to the transnational character of social democracy. Finally, the question arises: is multiculturalism over in 1919? Yes and no, but in fact it signals the end of an attraction that is limited to a shrunken country. No more “national” ambition? Yes and no, because although the regime was hostile to the Western and cosmopolitan urban model, the city had a (permanent) resilience that signalled the beginning of a confrontation between the city and the authorities.