It is the evening of 04.November, 1944, and a small caravan of military trucks accompanied by SS tanks pulls out of the Parliament building in Budapest, crosses the river and heads up the hill into the most ancient part of the city, Castle Hill. Marshal Malinovskys 2nd Ukrainian Front is poised just outside the city, having just failed to break the German-Hungarian defenses. Time however is on the Soviets side, and few doubt they will soon rule Budapest. With the battle subsiding for now, cafes and movie theaters re-open, and people walk the streets once again in what everyone knows is the eye of the storm.
The caravan wound its way through the Old Citys narrow streets and past the Halászbástya (Fishermans Bastion) towards the Prime Ministers official palace. The convoy stopped, and out poured Hungarian palace guards in their dark red medieval uniforms, who form a line to the entrance of the palace. The Hungarian national anthem began to play, and a lone figure, Ferenc Szálasi, stepped out and through the corridor of royal guards into the palace. The new Hungarian head of state, installed by Hitler, made his way through the palace into the medieval Throne Room where Hungarian kings used to receive visitors. There, assembled behind windows blockaded with sandbags and timber, stood all of the members of the Hungarian Parliament, or at least those as yet still alive. The Hungarian government that Szálasi was replacing was technically a royal government, and one controlled closely by the aristocracy after the disastrous end of the First World War. Szálasi however was not an aristocrat but a commoner, and worse yet the leader of an extremist rightwing Hungarian fascist party, the Nyilaskereszt (Arrow Cross), which the aristocrats had suppressed. The aristocrats were caught by Hitler trying to negotiate with the West and the final straw came when they announced publically a truce with the USSR, and claimed they were withdrawing from the war. Hitler overthrew their government, interning its leader (Horthy), and installed Szálasi as a puppet in Budapest but he was universally loathed in Hungary, so to address that problem he arranged this ceremony.
While Szálasis thugs brutalized the population and began the first deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, he assembled all the nations prominent political personalities here in the Throne Room of the old royal palace to swear an oath to serve the interests of the nation over the countrys ancient Royal Crown, kept in secret vaults beneath the royal palace, as it was done in old times. The German ambassador Dr. Veesenmeyer was present, flanked by SS generals, as was archduke József, a representative of the House of Habsburg (to which Hungary still technically belonged, though a Habsburg hadnt sat on the Hungarian throne since 1918). Everyone was standing in their correct place according to protocol, braving a cold autumn Budapest night in a medieval building with several broken windows and almost no heating. The assemblage was losing its patience as a half hour, then another passed with no sign of Szálasi, who disappeared into the vaults with guards to retrieve the royal objects. As yet another half hour passes, the assembled begin to realize that something was wrong.
Down below, Szálasi, accompanied by his close associate Jenô Szôllôsi, followed the three constitutionally-appointed guardians of the Royal Crown and jewels into the vault and watched as they opened the steel doors to reveal an empty room. Szôllôsi immediately ordered the execution of the guardians, but Szálasi realized that only they knew where the royal crown was and he negotiated with the guardians. A deal was struck, and in short order the three guardians Colonel-General Lakatos, Baron Perényi and Baron Radvánszky, accompanied by their accomplice Colonel Ernô Pajtás, head of the Royal Crown Guard lead Szálasi to the place they secretly buried the Crown jewels five weeks before when they saw the Soviets approaching Budapest so rapidly. The crown was found as left, buried in caverns beneath the palace guard barracks in the hill by the Turks four hundred years before, and turned over to Szálasi for his ceremony.
************************************************
After their defeat at the hands of Otto I at Augsburg in 955, Hungarys rulers realized they had a decision to make. They had been marauding around Europe like the Huns for decades after their arrival in the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century, but the Europeans had just stopped them cold in their tracks. The question now was whether to join Europe by converting to Christianity and submitting to its political protocols, or wait for the inevitable invasion. A particularly gifted leader who took the reins of the country after the defeat, Géza, chose the former option and invited foreign priests into the country to begin the conversion. His son, Vajk, took over after his death in 997 and took the process farther by converting himself, taking the name István (Stephen) as his Christian name and renouncing the old pagan ways. István faced great opposition to Christianity but after defeating several pagan revolts he managed to Christianize the country. As a reward, Pope Sylvester II in 1001 sent István a crown, which meant that Hungary was being upgraded in the Western political schema from a duchy to a kingdom, and István was the countrys first king.
All the countries of Eastern Europe were balancing between the realms of Western and Eastern Christianity, with several Hungary among them states switching allegiance at different times between Rome and Constantinople. In 1074, 73 years after Pope Sylvester sent his first crown to the Hungarians, Byzantine emperor Michael Dukas sent another to Hungary. This second crown was welded to the first, with the Latin crown on top of the Greek one. This combined crown served Hungarian kings for nearly 900 years. It was carried to safety with King Béla IV when he fled the Mongol assault in 1241, it was buried on the field at Mohács in 1526 so it wouldnt fall into Turkish hands, it was buried again at the village of Orsova in 1849 to hide it from the advancing Russians who were crushing the 1848-49 Hungarian revolution. And then, on a cold September night in 1944 when Russians again advanced into Hungary, it was buried once again by its official guardians to protect it. Its story was not quite over yet, however.
**************************************************
Szálasi and the guardians had struck a deal. Szálasi got to use the crown, scepter, sword, apple, and coronation robe all used originally by king István for his ceremony, but immediately after he finished, they were whisked away to western Hungary to a secret location by Colonel Pajtás. Pajtás remained with the royal objects in secret, ignoring orders from Szôllôsi to bring them back to Budapest. Several months later when Pajtás received the news that the Soviets had completely surrounded Budapest and the Crowns guardians were trapped in the city, he made his move. Accompanied by his guards, he crossed the Hungarian-Austrian border secretly on 27. March, 1945, and headed for Vienna where a Hungarian government-in-exile was forming. Pajtás stayed with the Hungarian exiles for a month at Kammer castle near Lake Atter, but beginning to distrust some members of the government and sensing imminent doom in the war, he grabbed the Crown jewels and made a dash from the castle (with the prime ministers secret consent) on 25. April. Pajtás made his way to a small town north of Salzburg, Mattsee, where he put the Crown in the care of a local monastery. And he waited.
On 03. May, the American Seventh Army took Mattsee without a shot being fired, and a somewhat surprised American lieutenant was approached by the 13 Hungarians requesting an audience with their field marshal. The Americans tracked down a general and after sorting out the language barrier they were made to understand by Pajtás that they were now the guardians of the Hungarian royal Crown and jewels.
The United States took possession of the Crown regalia (with the help of a local Austrian priest) and moved them, under heavy military escort, to Fort Knox, KY. For decades afterwards through the worst years of the Cold War the U.S. kept the Crowns whereabouts a secret, though members of the Hungarian exile community were on a few occasions allowed secret visits to the Crown. Finally, in the early 1970s the American administration led by Richard Nixon made the first steps towards a new approach in the Cold War. Previous administrations, Democrat and Republican, had viewed the Communist world as a single monolithic block of enemy states but renegade theorists in the late 1960s began to see the cracks in this united communist façade. Nixons dramatic China policy was the most visible effect of the new policy, but Washington began to develop individual relationships with all of the communist states, finally beginning to do what the Soviets had been trying for decades; trying to split off and strip away the enemys allies. As a continuation of this policy, President Jimmy Carter in 1978 made some dramatic visits of his own to Eastern Europe to reward the less hostile regimes and develop closer ties between them and the West. As a conciliatory gesture to Hungary and as a reward for its amazing (by communist standards) freedoms for its people, President Carter sent the Crown back to Hungary and it arrived to a dramatic ceremony in Budapest on 07. January, 1978. Several anti-communist and Hungarian-American groups filed lawsuits to stop the crown from being turned over to a communist government, but they were defeated and the Crown was received in Hungary by rapturous crowds. It can be seen today in the Hungarian Parliament building in Budapest, where it has been since being moved from the Nemzeti Múzeum (National Museum) in January 2000.
The caravan wound its way through the Old Citys narrow streets and past the Halászbástya (Fishermans Bastion) towards the Prime Ministers official palace. The convoy stopped, and out poured Hungarian palace guards in their dark red medieval uniforms, who form a line to the entrance of the palace. The Hungarian national anthem began to play, and a lone figure, Ferenc Szálasi, stepped out and through the corridor of royal guards into the palace. The new Hungarian head of state, installed by Hitler, made his way through the palace into the medieval Throne Room where Hungarian kings used to receive visitors. There, assembled behind windows blockaded with sandbags and timber, stood all of the members of the Hungarian Parliament, or at least those as yet still alive. The Hungarian government that Szálasi was replacing was technically a royal government, and one controlled closely by the aristocracy after the disastrous end of the First World War. Szálasi however was not an aristocrat but a commoner, and worse yet the leader of an extremist rightwing Hungarian fascist party, the Nyilaskereszt (Arrow Cross), which the aristocrats had suppressed. The aristocrats were caught by Hitler trying to negotiate with the West and the final straw came when they announced publically a truce with the USSR, and claimed they were withdrawing from the war. Hitler overthrew their government, interning its leader (Horthy), and installed Szálasi as a puppet in Budapest but he was universally loathed in Hungary, so to address that problem he arranged this ceremony.
While Szálasis thugs brutalized the population and began the first deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, he assembled all the nations prominent political personalities here in the Throne Room of the old royal palace to swear an oath to serve the interests of the nation over the countrys ancient Royal Crown, kept in secret vaults beneath the royal palace, as it was done in old times. The German ambassador Dr. Veesenmeyer was present, flanked by SS generals, as was archduke József, a representative of the House of Habsburg (to which Hungary still technically belonged, though a Habsburg hadnt sat on the Hungarian throne since 1918). Everyone was standing in their correct place according to protocol, braving a cold autumn Budapest night in a medieval building with several broken windows and almost no heating. The assemblage was losing its patience as a half hour, then another passed with no sign of Szálasi, who disappeared into the vaults with guards to retrieve the royal objects. As yet another half hour passes, the assembled begin to realize that something was wrong.
Down below, Szálasi, accompanied by his close associate Jenô Szôllôsi, followed the three constitutionally-appointed guardians of the Royal Crown and jewels into the vault and watched as they opened the steel doors to reveal an empty room. Szôllôsi immediately ordered the execution of the guardians, but Szálasi realized that only they knew where the royal crown was and he negotiated with the guardians. A deal was struck, and in short order the three guardians Colonel-General Lakatos, Baron Perényi and Baron Radvánszky, accompanied by their accomplice Colonel Ernô Pajtás, head of the Royal Crown Guard lead Szálasi to the place they secretly buried the Crown jewels five weeks before when they saw the Soviets approaching Budapest so rapidly. The crown was found as left, buried in caverns beneath the palace guard barracks in the hill by the Turks four hundred years before, and turned over to Szálasi for his ceremony.
************************************************
After their defeat at the hands of Otto I at Augsburg in 955, Hungarys rulers realized they had a decision to make. They had been marauding around Europe like the Huns for decades after their arrival in the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century, but the Europeans had just stopped them cold in their tracks. The question now was whether to join Europe by converting to Christianity and submitting to its political protocols, or wait for the inevitable invasion. A particularly gifted leader who took the reins of the country after the defeat, Géza, chose the former option and invited foreign priests into the country to begin the conversion. His son, Vajk, took over after his death in 997 and took the process farther by converting himself, taking the name István (Stephen) as his Christian name and renouncing the old pagan ways. István faced great opposition to Christianity but after defeating several pagan revolts he managed to Christianize the country. As a reward, Pope Sylvester II in 1001 sent István a crown, which meant that Hungary was being upgraded in the Western political schema from a duchy to a kingdom, and István was the countrys first king.
All the countries of Eastern Europe were balancing between the realms of Western and Eastern Christianity, with several Hungary among them states switching allegiance at different times between Rome and Constantinople. In 1074, 73 years after Pope Sylvester sent his first crown to the Hungarians, Byzantine emperor Michael Dukas sent another to Hungary. This second crown was welded to the first, with the Latin crown on top of the Greek one. This combined crown served Hungarian kings for nearly 900 years. It was carried to safety with King Béla IV when he fled the Mongol assault in 1241, it was buried on the field at Mohács in 1526 so it wouldnt fall into Turkish hands, it was buried again at the village of Orsova in 1849 to hide it from the advancing Russians who were crushing the 1848-49 Hungarian revolution. And then, on a cold September night in 1944 when Russians again advanced into Hungary, it was buried once again by its official guardians to protect it. Its story was not quite over yet, however.
**************************************************
Szálasi and the guardians had struck a deal. Szálasi got to use the crown, scepter, sword, apple, and coronation robe all used originally by king István for his ceremony, but immediately after he finished, they were whisked away to western Hungary to a secret location by Colonel Pajtás. Pajtás remained with the royal objects in secret, ignoring orders from Szôllôsi to bring them back to Budapest. Several months later when Pajtás received the news that the Soviets had completely surrounded Budapest and the Crowns guardians were trapped in the city, he made his move. Accompanied by his guards, he crossed the Hungarian-Austrian border secretly on 27. March, 1945, and headed for Vienna where a Hungarian government-in-exile was forming. Pajtás stayed with the Hungarian exiles for a month at Kammer castle near Lake Atter, but beginning to distrust some members of the government and sensing imminent doom in the war, he grabbed the Crown jewels and made a dash from the castle (with the prime ministers secret consent) on 25. April. Pajtás made his way to a small town north of Salzburg, Mattsee, where he put the Crown in the care of a local monastery. And he waited.
On 03. May, the American Seventh Army took Mattsee without a shot being fired, and a somewhat surprised American lieutenant was approached by the 13 Hungarians requesting an audience with their field marshal. The Americans tracked down a general and after sorting out the language barrier they were made to understand by Pajtás that they were now the guardians of the Hungarian royal Crown and jewels.
The United States took possession of the Crown regalia (with the help of a local Austrian priest) and moved them, under heavy military escort, to Fort Knox, KY. For decades afterwards through the worst years of the Cold War the U.S. kept the Crowns whereabouts a secret, though members of the Hungarian exile community were on a few occasions allowed secret visits to the Crown. Finally, in the early 1970s the American administration led by Richard Nixon made the first steps towards a new approach in the Cold War. Previous administrations, Democrat and Republican, had viewed the Communist world as a single monolithic block of enemy states but renegade theorists in the late 1960s began to see the cracks in this united communist façade. Nixons dramatic China policy was the most visible effect of the new policy, but Washington began to develop individual relationships with all of the communist states, finally beginning to do what the Soviets had been trying for decades; trying to split off and strip away the enemys allies. As a continuation of this policy, President Jimmy Carter in 1978 made some dramatic visits of his own to Eastern Europe to reward the less hostile regimes and develop closer ties between them and the West. As a conciliatory gesture to Hungary and as a reward for its amazing (by communist standards) freedoms for its people, President Carter sent the Crown back to Hungary and it arrived to a dramatic ceremony in Budapest on 07. January, 1978. Several anti-communist and Hungarian-American groups filed lawsuits to stop the crown from being turned over to a communist government, but they were defeated and the Crown was received in Hungary by rapturous crowds. It can be seen today in the Hungarian Parliament building in Budapest, where it has been since being moved from the Nemzeti Múzeum (National Museum) in January 2000.
