The fascinating story of the Memorial Stone at Budapest's Heroes' Square

In December 2023, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Budapest, where during his brief visit to Heroes' Square he laid a wreath at the Memorial Stone of the Heroes located in the centre of the square. The stone is a symbolic memento foreign dignitaries regularly lay wreaths on. But even among Hungarians, not many know that the Memorial Stone is not historically linked to the nearby Millennium Monument. The small, unadorned block has been dismantled and rebuilt several times during the past almost one hundred years of political controversies, and the original inscription about the Trianon Peace Treaty was also replaced by several successive messages.

The Memorial Stone of the Heroes was not revealed until 1929, which was decades after the construction of the Millennium Monument in 1896. The National Commission for the Commemoration of Heroes issued a decree in 1917, with the goal of honoring the memory of the soldiers who died in the First World War. According to the decree, all municipalities were required to set up some form of a tribute to the soldiers who died in the First World War. It could be anything – a plaque, a statue, whatever – depending on the municipality's financial situation. Once the war ended, in 1921, another decree was passed, stating that a central memorial should also be established.

Let's blow up part of Gellért Hill!

In response to societal demand, the Commission designated the last Sunday in May as Heroes' Day and then announced a call for tenders for the creation of a central memorial. According to some sources, 160 entries were submitted, while others put the number at 190. In 1924, the correspondent for the 8 Óra newspaper wrote that although people were pleased with the 'unusually large number of entries', the prevailing opinion seemed to be that the idea for the memorial had come late. By that time, several other countries had already created state memorials dedicated to those who fought and died in the First World War:

“At a time when, in the fifth year since the war had concluded, we are still committing ourselves with utter devotion to the idea that we too will soon have a shared, eternal monument to the thousands of our fallen national heroes, it is comforting to know that in our country – even if this delay is understandable given the serious economic crisis – the sense of commemorating heroes has not been obscured by the propaganda-like tendency we have seen in France and elsewhere.”

The entries submitted to the committee would have placed the monument in various locations around the capital – with only some of them suggesting a location in the countryside. In the end, by the committee’s unanimous decision, Count Miklós Bánffy's application won. His entry, entitled 'We shall raise his coffin to the sky, between two rocks, to a tremendous height', envisioned erecting a memorial on the slope of Gellért Hill overlooking the Danube. The Secretary of State at the time, Róbert K. Kertész, described the plan as follows:

"[Bánffy] proposes creating a vertical rock wall by means of blasting. [...] [Thereafter] a series of terraces can be formed, with stairs leading up to them. There would be an arched, not too deep opening at the top, where the topmost terrace (about 30-40 metres high) would be located. A symbolic stone coffin, about 10 metres in length, would be placed in the opening. This is where the body of the unknown Hungarian hero would be placed'.

Let's have a simple block of stone instead!

Whatever the plan was, it ended up not being used for the monument in Heroes' Square. The Heroes' Memorial Stone is officially not considered a burial place today since it contains no remains. But rather than getting ahead of ourselves, let us return to Bánffy's idea.

In a statement given to 8 Óra, Kertész said that Bánffy's idea to blast part of the hill was great, and it also kept things close to nature. Additionally, "It is a solution that perfectly fits into the great monumental framework provided by nature, it can be completed at a relatively low cost and it best expresses the purpose of the monument." This opinion may not have been shared by many, as the winning bid was in the end rejected by the state for lack of funds. Furthermore, some were bothered by the part where a strip would have been blasted in Gellért Hill and consider that entirely "natural".

Finding a solution through a competition failed doubly, as the runner-up in the "Anonymous Hero" competition was similarly far-fetched. In it, the designer would have inserted a "long hexagonal pillar with a tapered column and tip" between the Chain Bridge and the Elisabeth Bridge, right in the middle of the Danube riverbed. Whatever the description was supposed to mean, in the end neither the Danube monument nor the blasting of part of Gellért Hill ever materialized.

Jenő Lechner, the nephew of the legendary Hungarian architect Ödön Lechner was eventually commissioned with designing the monument. And that he did. He designed a stone block 6.5 metres long, 3 metres wide, 1.3 metres high and weighing 47 tonnes. The government decided to place the block in front of the Millennium Monument located in Pest, and the decoration was kept modest enough so as not to overshadow the grandeur of the statues already there. The logistics were tricky here too: According to Lechner, it took half a year to transport the 47-tonne stone to the square.

Finally, on Heroes' Day in May 1929, in the presence of Miklós Horthy, István Bethlen and several foreign politicians, Lechner’s Monument was unveiled in Heroes' Square (which wasn't called by this name yet). In a letter to Bethlen, Horthy also called for the establishment of a memorial medal, writing that the memorial stone would commemorate the "soldiers who heroically died in the Great War, defending the thousand-year-old borders of the country".

During the stone’s unveiling, cannon shots were fired from Gellért Hill and the bells of all the churches in Budapest rang out. The newspaper called Újság wrote: "How much blood and how many tears have soaked this land for the past thousand years! It has been consecrated by the patriotism and self-sacrifice of men of great name and of unsung heroes. Our triumphs that have reached to the heavens and the suffering that has brought us to the depths of hell are the signposts of the Hungarian nation’s struggles to establish and preserve its homeland".

Many people did not like the monument. György Zala for example, who was honored at the inauguration as the designer of the Millennium Monument, complained about the square having been filled in prior to the unveiling, which meant that a step had disappeared from his work. Sculptor Ferenc Márton even created new designs, saying the stone did not fit in with the Millenium Monument already there. He proposed raising the memorial stone by four meters and sinking a loggia into the ground around it. But to no avail, the stone remained.

Becoming Heroes' Square

Rather than being about mourning, the 1929 memorial stone was about Hungary's post-Trianon losses. The inscription on the side of the stone facing Andrássy Avenue read "1914-1918", while the side facing the statue of Chieftain Árpád had the phrase "For the thousand-year borders" inscribed on it. The square was renamed Heroes' Square in 1932. This was announced in the capital's press release:

“I hereby inform the public of Budapest that the area at the end of Andrássy Avenue, in front of the Millennial Monument and the Memorial Stone of Unknown Heroes has been renamed Heroes' Square as of yesterday. This name evokes the memory of the millions of heroes of the Great War, and this dedication creates a symbolic space for the honoring of heroes in our country's capital.”

The monument was damaged during the Second World War and in 1951 it was demolished due to ideological reasons. The idea of restoring it surfaced after Stalin's death. A new memorial stone was unveiled in April 1956, but it had lost its old nationalist character. The stone was similar to the previous one, but it was no longer buried in the ground, as Heroes' Square had been paved over in 1938 in preparation for the World Eucharistic Congress. This was also when the area around the stone, which was initially covered with grass, was fenced off, as it remains today.

Communist-era communication attempted to present the new memorial stone as if nothing had ever been there before. A laurel branch was carved on top of the new stone, along with an inscription that reads "in memory of the heroes who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of our people and for our national independence". In terms of its function, the new monument remained a place where military tributes and official wreath-laying ceremonies were held.

The next time the square was renovated after 1956 was in 2001, which was when the stone received the inscription "In memory of our heroes", which is still visible today. The Hungarian Army had it restored in 2020, and once again it became an important location for Heroes’ Day. As in the 1920s, it has retained its established diplomatic function, as high-ranking foreign dignitaries visiting Hungary still pay their respects to the past of the country by placing a wreath at the Heroes’ Memorial.

Sources: Hovédelem.hu; Pestbuda; A Nagy Háború; 8 órai Újság (1924); Honvédségi Szemle (2012)