“IN MEMORIAM 1956. OKTÓBER 25.”: THE MUSEUM AS AN INSTRUMENT TO FORGET IN BUDAPEST

Abstract

The reconfiguration of Kossuth Square in Budapest began in 2011. The objective was to return the square to the way it looked in 1944, the year in which the preamble of the 2010 Constitution states that Hungary lost its sovereignty. To the detriment of its contemporaneity, authenticity, harmony, and heritage value, the square and its elements were reorganized individually and collectively to meet the political strategy of Viktor Orbán’s government. Our research investigates the transfer in 2014 of the symbolic grave of the victims of the 1956 massacre, constructed by Laszló Gömbos and Imre Makovesz in 1991, from the square to the memorial exhibition “In memoriam 1956. Október 25.”. The space was built by the Imre Steindl Program in the basement of the square. We use the definition of museum published by ICOM and the literature on memory studies and symbolic politics in post-democratization Hungary to analyze the process of change of the monument and question whether the museum was used as a place to preserve memory or one more space of territorial dominance and power. Our sources were the bibliographical review, visits to the square over the last decade, and the online search for keywords expanded into a “snowball” method. Based on a critical assessment and problematization of the new configuration of Kossuth Square resulting from the interventions by the Steindl Program, we intend to demonstrate how the promise to “better accommodate heritage and memory” can contribute to the control over the discourses of memories of the 1956 Revolution.