Photographic Memory – The Two Girls: Normafa, Hungary 1900 (Rendezvous With An Obscure Destiny #6)

It is an image that fascinates and haunts me in equal measure. Though it was taken seventy-one years before I was born, in a kingdom thousands of miles and an ocean away, during a period when an Emperor still reigned supreme, the photo still manages to touch something deep inside of me. Each time I look at the image it manages to transcend space and time, making me feel the presence of a specific part of the past. The photo to which I refer was taken in 1900, high in the hills above Buda in an area known as Normafa. The photo shows two young girls standing together while looking out at hills and mountains in the distance. They wear flatbill hats and have their hair done up in ponytails. One girl, in a dark day dress, points at something in the distance. While the other girl, looks out at whatever her attention is being directed towards. They stand beside a fence which surrounds a large tree.

I am fascinated with this photo because for me it captures the profound curiosity of youth, the innocence and joy of adolescence in early 20^th century Hungary. Two young girls explore the world together while sharing a moment of discovery. Whatever these girls are looking at will forever remain a mystery. In that mystery lies much of the photo’s power. Are they playing make believe? They would not be the only ones. While looking at this photo, I also play make believe. Imagining their conversation, the joys they share, memories that hopefully lasted a lifetime. The girl pointing seems to be helping the other to understand what is in front of and beyond them. There is magic in these girl’s innocence and precociousness. And for children who could not have been more than eight or nine years old at the time, their whole lives were ahead of them, out there somewhere was a future that neither they nor anyone else could imagine.

Pointing the way forward – Two girls at Normafa in 1900 (Credit: Fortepan)

Fortepan – A Visual History Of 20^th Century Hungary
A sense of astonishment gripped me the first time I saw the photo mentioned above. It would not be the last time. Such is the beauty and power to be found on Fortepan (fortepan.hu). The website is what I consider to be the single greatest resource of Hungarian photography in the 20^th century. It hedges the power of crowdsourcing to bring images of everyday life, architecture, and anything else captured by the photographic lens for most of the 20^th century. Hungarians are free to upload images, most of which are part of personal collections, to the site. The photos are arranged in chronological order from 1900-1990. I do not remember exactly how I found my way to the Fortepan site many years ago, but what I do remember that photo of the two girls in Normafa was featured on the home page. It was an unforgettable find and this was just the start. At one point I went year by year, selecting my favorite image for each one. I knew many of the places in the pictures from visits to Hungary.

It was a different story with the people. They were strangers who soon became strangely familiar to me. For instance, that image with the two girls in the hills above Buda made me feel a personal connection. Whether the connection was to my childhood or travels, such images linked my past to the past in the photos. None of this image inspired time travel would have been possible if not for two old high school friends who in 2010 decided to start a free Online Photography Archive. They uploaded a personal collection of 5,000 black and white photos. Since that time, the archive has grown to over 146,000 photos. Anyone is free to download and use the images. The only requirement is that they give proper attribution.

Life goes on – Budapest scene in 1942 (Credit: Fortepan)

Capturing History – One Photograph At A Time
Those interested in the history of Hungary during the 20^th century would do well to spend part of their time perusing these images. Fortepan contains a visual record of Hungary’s relatively recent past. The photos document the experiences and interests of Hungarians behind and in front of the camera. This was how history was made, one photograph at a time. The photos on Fortepan surprised me in ways that I did not expect. For instance, while Hungarian soldiers were fighting and dying on the eastern front during World War II, I discovered that the people back home were living comparatively normal lives. How could they not? Life goes on despite world historical events. Whether or not Hungarians were aware that the war was on the verge of upending their country is open to debate.

Yet when the photos were taken no one knew what the future would hold. They had no idea that the Red Army would have troops on Hungarian soil for forty-five years. Another surprise was to see the normalcy of life during communism, especially in the 1960’s forward. For good reason, the worst excesses of communism cover the pages of history. What about those who were not party members or politicians? The story could not have been more different. It was often said that Hungary was the happiest barracks on the Eastern Bloc. I am not so sure that statement is entirely true, after all Hungary had an astronomical suicide rate during this time. Nonetheless, the young still danced, families vacationed, the middle class wined and dined across the country. Thousands of images make this abundantly clear. 

Natural beauty – Two girls in meadow at Normafa in 1900 (Credit: Fortepan)

Magnificent Moments – Like Something Out Of A Dream
After looking at hundreds of images on Fortepan, I still find myself going back to those two girls at Normafa. Specifically, to another image I found of them that is just as striking as the one described earlier. In this photo, the two girls are sitting in a meadow. They must not be far away from where the first image was taken, there are hills and mountains in the distance. The two of them are looking out over a beautiful natural landscape. Somewhere below and beyond them is Budapest. The city was bursting at the seams with development. It was the fastest growing urban area in Europe during the final third of the 19^th century. The future was filled with promise. Life was getting better for all Hungarians. It was the age of progress, everything seemed to be changing for the better.

Growing up during this time in a family of financial means, such as the two girls in the photos, must have been like something out of a dream, except for the fact that this was a reality in turn of the 20^th century Hungary. Life was filled with adventure, curiosity, and discovery. I can only guess what those two girls were discussing. Perhaps their dreams of the future, that future would turn out different from anything they could have imagined at the time. They had no idea that those magnificent moments in Normafa could not last for them or their country. But that moment has lasted, captured in two images that have been transmitted from past to present through the power of Fortepan. The images have allowed me a window into another world, one that was about as good as it could get for those girls and for Hungary in 1900.

Click here for: Spiritual Echo Chambers – The Romanesque Church at Jak (Rendezvous With An Obscure Destiny #7)

A Measure For Their Dreams – Budapest By The Danube: Heart Of Optimism (Travels In Eastern Europe #27)

There is only one thing to do after arriving in Budapest for the very first time. It is to make your way over to see the Hungarian Parliament Building. I know this from experience as it was late in the afternoon on a sunny day in mid-March when I rushed over to see the structure. As such there was no time to try and take a tour of the interior. That was fine with me because truth be told all I really wanted to do was feast on the ultimate piece of architectural eye candy, a building that brings to mind a confection of the most fantastical kind. No amount of superlatives can aptly describe the Hungarian Parliament building. It is much larger than photos of it are able to capture. Just to walk around the building at a rather brisk pace takes a good twenty minutes. The sheer glamour of this neo-Gothic masterpiece is overwhelming. The beauty and grandeur of the building is one thing, but consider that the Parliament serves a country of only ten million people. It looks like something one would expect to find as the seat of government for a world power. Hungary is only a mid-sized country in east-central Europe, but it obviously has much greater designs.

Hungarian Parliament Building (Credit: Ivanhoe)

Historic Convergence – Pulling A City Together
The Parliament is a reflection of how the Hungarians see themselves and their place in Europe. These are people of outsize ambition, who take creativity to its ultimate extreme. This is how they ended up with such a fantastical confection astride the Danube. It is also how they ended up creating a city along both sides of the river front of unsurpassed majesty. The area where Budapest is strung along the Danube brings to mind an old phrase, “the hits just keep coming.” From where I stood in the shadow of the Parliament on the river’s embankment I took in a scene of architectural enchantment that was as much the product of a fairy tale, as it was the work of man. Gazing upriver, across the placid, slate gray surface of the Danube I spotted the unique three-part Margaret Bridge connecting both sides of the city with an island of the same name. Then I looked downriver where the Chain Bridge, that inaugural link between the two sides of what became the same city, stretched across the watery expanse.

The bridge is a historic link, it allowed the lifeblood of Buda and Pest to flow unimpeded into one another. Its centrality to the city’s convergence is without equal in annals of European history, magnetically pulling the two sides together to create Europe’s fastest growing metropolis in the latter half of the 19^th century. The Buda Hills across the river from where I stood that day, displayed a series of treasured buildings that any city would be pleased to call its own. I counted at least six church spires, the most prominent of which soared above all, that of the Matthias Church on Castle Hill. There was another set of spires recognizable just below the church. These were part of the Fisherman’s Bastion. Further on was a dome that signaled the top of Buda Castle which spread royal wings beneath it. This panorama of Buda as seen from Pest was so wondrous that I could hardly believe my eyes.

Looking towards Castle Hill from the Danube in Budapest

Rising From Ruins – The Building Of Buda
To think that all this is not the product of prior planning, but many centuries worth of organic growth is mind boggling. Here is a scene of stunning urban perfection that has scarcely been repeated. Descriptions will not do it justice. Taken as a whole, this part of the city as it stands astride the Danube is one of the great wonders of the world, a setting that has no peer, even in the annals of old Europe. The sheer scale of grandiosity on offer along the Danube in Budapest is overwhelming. That makes it hard to imagine that the beautiful scene standing on the Buda Hills has been reduced to a smoldering ruin on multiple occasions in the past. When the Habsburgs took it back from the Ottoman Turks in 1686 and the Red Army stormed it during the winter of 1945, they left a residue of rubble that paradoxically became a foundation for regrowth, rebirth and reconstruction.

Following World War II, what was left of both the Margaret and Chain Bridges lay submerged in the river. Revolutions in 1848, 1919 and 1956 left bullet scared buildings and rising plumes of smoke in their wake, signals of the resistance that lay at the heart of all good Magyars. The embankment I stood upon has been inundated by the Danube too many times to recount, sending parts of Pest to a watery grave. Good men and women laid low by the pessimism of the Magyar mentality have leapt into the dark waters of the Danube in alarming numbers over the past two centuries. Jews had been marched to these river banks and shot by the hundreds in acts of genocidal indifference. Historical fate had subdued this city and its citizens repeatedly. Yet through it all the city rises again and again.

Chain Bridge looking up at Buda Castle at night (Credit: Noval Goya)

The Will To Splendor – In The Minds Of Magyars
Budapest by the Danube is a sparkling example of triumph over tragedy, the will to splendor, an astounding adherence to national destiny. For all their reputed gloomy cynicism, the heart of every Hungarian must be filled with an abiding optimism to overcome the many misfortunes of history inflicted upon their nation. How else to explain the creation of a capital that is such a showcase of scintillating beauty? Optimism is the eternal answer. Optimism took the grey Danube, spun it into a silvery thread and wove it into a fantasy cityscape of the most furtive imagination. Optimism built a series of unforgettable bridges that transcended nature to connect a city and nation into a greater whole. Optimism touched the sky with steeples that soared from a wellspring of faith. And optimism created a city that is a stunning exposition of the majesty that lives in the heart and mind of every Magyar.

An Incredible Intensity – Lviv, Budapest, Krakow, Berlin & Vienna: Explaining Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe, how best to understand such a complex, and conflicted region? Perhaps one should start with the cities, many different cities, in many different countries. Catalog the impressions and then ponder what it means, if anything, if nothing.

Lviv – A Man With No Legs
Travel to Lviv in western Ukraine, that beautiful city frozen in a state of rapturously Austro-Hungarian glory. Stroll through the heart of the historic old town. Listen to the sound of stilettos on cobblestone, voices of desire. Gaze at the bucolically bright mansions surrounding Ploshcha Rynok. Spend at least one single morning watching a man with no legs in a wheelchair. He patiently waits to see if any passers-by scatter a bit of change in the bowl that sits in his lap. The man does not beg, he just sits there patiently. He is not dirty or ill-kempt, but actually rather well dressed, if modestly so, from the waist up everything seems normal. The complete picture is quite different, like the many sides of this city. This drama takes place in the shadow of the Neo-Renaissance Opera House. Operas are fiction, while the dramas played out on the street are real.

The Opera House in Lviv – fiction inside & reality outside

Budapest – Beauty, Horror & Grandeur
Go to Budapest. Float down the Danube, on one side the hills of Buda blossom, staked out by the spires of churches and castles. Opposite lies Pest, home to the Hungarian Parliament, that delicious architectural confection of neo-Gothicism, a scene and style that devours the skyline. Disembark on the embankment just before the Chain Bridge, walk a bit upriver on the Pest side, to find a series of sculpted shoes at water’s edge. It was here, that hundreds of Jews were forced during the winter of 1944-45 to take off their footwear just before being shot on the banks of the frozen Danube.  Buda and Pest, here is a city that combines beauty, horror and grandeur in uncertain order.

Shoes on the Danube Bank Memorial in Budapest – hundreds of Jews were forced during the winter of 1944-45, to take off their footwear just before being shot on the banks of the frozen Danube

Krakow – Defying Disbelief
Onward to Krakow, in that main magnificent square, Rynek Glowny, reputedly the largest medieval square in all of Europe, whatever that is supposed to mean. Here, the glory and pageantry of Poland is spread over 40,000 stunning square meters. All that once was, still remains, the Cloth Hall and the Clock Tower, St Mary’s and the Mickiewicz Monument. Could this square, this astonishing slice of Poland’s rich history, really have once been subject to the diktats of totalitarianism? It all seems too bad to be true. Amid such magnificence one tends to forget the more recent and troubled past. A cure for any case of 20^th century Polish historical amnesia is just a tram ride away.

Cloth Hall with the Clock Tower in the background at Rynek Glowny in Krakow (Credit: Jan Mehlich)

Stand outside the gates of Nowa Huta and ponder the terrible, fierce rust bucket beauty that was still born here. This suburb was what Krakow, Poland and all of Eastern Europe was supposed to become. A whole city, an entire nation and a wide swath of Europe forged out of iron and steel. Factories lauded as the new cathedrals, heavy industry as the master mold of mid-20^th century civilization. Nothing lasts forever, but this hardly lasted a lifetime. Nowa Huta still exists, but its glory days are gone, its labor days are not. This place has become a piece of modern art that rusts right before the eyes.

Model of Nowa Huta – It seemed like a good idea at the time

Berlin – French Kissing Fear
To understand Eastern Europe, surely one must understand Berlin. Why it is so hip, so youthful, so vibrant, so alive. This used to be the world capital of disunity, but now it is united in revelry. 21st century Berlin is a city that seems to be giving fear a French kiss. It is so interesting, all those places where terrible things happened and now most of them can be seen for free. There is enough history here to last several lifetimes, but the past need not detain anyone, when there is another club to hop. Stand beneath the Brandenburg Gate and ponder Frederick the Great, the Kaiser, the Nazis, West vs. East. This is where both ends met the middle and a nation, became arbiter of a world divided against itself.

Now the traveler can dance until dawn in no man’s land, admire galleries worth of graffiti at any random underpass and glide by, rather than through Checkpoint Charlie. That once formidable barrier, looks so small and stupid in retrospect. What is more illuminating, the helpfulness of Berliner’s who rush to provide directions or the fact that nothing really happens here anymore, unless fun and efficiency is now of world historical importance.

An apartment block in East Berlin – putting a coat of color on the past

Vienna – The Madness of Fairy Tales
Final stop, the fairy tale city of Vienna. Like all fairy tales, this one has more than its fair share of madness. The Hofburg, at the heart of the city, imposes splendor and arrogance, refinement and oppression upon the visitor in unequal measure. Here is where the Habsburg’s decided what was beautiful and everyone else had to live with it or suffocate from it. This was a world that made its own rules which the rest of the world was supposed to live and die by. And the Hofburg is just the start.

Vienna is a grand illusion, a magic act made out of marble and sculpted stone. There is more than enough of this to go around and around the Ringstrasse. It is enough to drive someone mad. No wonder this city gave the world Freud, Klimt and Wittgenstein. It was not just Metternich and Franz Josef who strolled through the gardens at Schonnbrunn, it was also Hitler and Stalin, at the same time, long before they became deities of death, these men were plotting and plodding amid the perfectly kept pathways. Modern Vienna is filled with an world of underlying tension, irksome and uptight. This can best be seen in the strained countenances of the Viennese. Those faces that stare away from the traveler. They are forever peering out tram windows, looking at nothing in particular, with an incredible intensity.

A tram in Vienna – An incredible (and troubling) intensity

A World Turning Inward On Itself
The man with no legs, candy colored baroque buildings, shoes sculpted from stone, forty thousand square meters of magnificence, the heavy heart of heavy industry, a world that bordered on the apocalypse and now on frivolity, the weight of history at the Hofburg and so many other things. These are the impressions that help the traveler understand Eastern Europe, its peoples and it cities. What does all this amount to? There is no clear answer, there never will be. Eastern Europe is complex and conflicted. It is filled with the joys and horrors of life. As in the present, as in the past, it is forever turning inward on itself.