A monument to Miklós Horthy

Conventional life-size bronze bust on granite pedestal.

In 1993, only a few years after the political changes, Horthy’s remains were returned from Portugal to his hometown of Kenderes. This “unofficial” reburial marked the starting point of the long process of the rehabilitation of the Horthy era. Thousands and thousands of people and almost the entire government, although only as individuals, attended the ceremony in Kenderes, where a life-size bust was unveiled in front of the former Horthy Castle. Since then, the image of the Nazi collaborator, irredentist and confirmed antiSemite was transformed into an icon of the patriot and “exceptional statesman”, just as PM Orbán called him in 2017.

Horthy is the main symbol of Hungarian irredentism, which is based on feudal fantasies of lost land and glory. He was an Austro-Hungarian Navy Vice Admiral during WWI, who returned to Budapest in 1919 with the counter-revolutionary National Army, which was instrumental in the White Terror that followed. The politics of Horthy concentrated on regaining control over the lost land and he quickly found allies in Italy, Austria and Germany. In 1920 he adopted the first in a series of anti-Jewish laws, his “uneasy“ collaborationism sent around 437000 Jews to Auschwitz.

Some monuments to Horty

Monument to Miklós Horthy at the Hungarian Reformed Church’s Temple of Homecoming, Szabadság Square, Budapest; Monument to Miklós Horthy at Bodaszõlõs-Zelemér, Hajdúböszörmény, Baltazár kúria (mansion of the Baltazár Family), Monument to Miklós Horthy at Diófa Restaurant, Harc; Monument to Miklós Horthy at Hotel Attila, Budapest; Monument to Miklós Horthy at Kereki; Monument to Miklós Horthy at Csókakő, Monument to Miklós Horthy at Hosszúvölgy, Kossuth utca 3.

Some Horty Related Toponyms

The municipality of Kereki created a motorway rest area at the entrance to a small village which they named “Horthy Square”. A year later, they inaugurated a wooden sculpture of Horthy next to a Trianon memorial. The spot of the memorial in Csókakő was named “Greater Hungary Square” after the inauguration of the Horty monument.

Trianon Memorials

With the new waves of Hungarian irredentism, the monuments erected to mourn the Trianon Treaty can be seen as Horthy prostheses. There are more than 400 Trianon memorials in Hungary and a Trianon Museum in Várpalota.