“Camp and Flag Are One”
Awkward Traditions in Hungary’s Remembrance Culture
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Hungarian memory culture is in turmoil. For more than a decade, a reinterpretation of the past has been taking place. Right-wing extremists play an awkward role in this process. The ruling party, Fidesz, inadequately sets itself apart from this view of history. Unconsidered traditions and concepts such as the bird Turul, the Árpád stripes, and Greater Hungary have become national symbols. While Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész is ignored by the official media or disparaged, the politicians in power make respectable “role models” such as writer Albert Was, who would have to be considered intolerable in a democratic constitutional state. In history policy, a creeping radicalization is to be observed.
(Osteuropa 12/2011, pp. 281–302)