MaNDAHungarian National Digital Archive

I remember that the shop-window of confectionery Hauer on Rákóczi Road preserved its upper middle class feature even when it was faded and abandoned. Many times and many authors wrote about the Rákóczi Road: how it lost its pedestrian nature, after the construction of the underground and the disappearance of the tramway. In its present form, it is rather a highway, especially between Keleti railway terminal and Blaha Lujza Square. Who would like to ambulate and watch shop-windows beside such a busy road? In fact, there is not much to see indeed. However, its heyday was not very long ago; it was considered a real commercial centre in the 1970s – just think about the department stores Verseny, Csillag, Lottó, and Corvin. However, its earlier golden age was after the inauguration of Keleti (eastern) railway terminal in 1884, when apartment palaces, tenement houses, restaurants, hotels and confectioneries were built one after the other. This week we are evoking the history of confectionery Hauer, the emblematic place on Rákóczi Road.

A guest arrived at the Zrínyi Hotel of Balatonföldvár in June 1932. The already renowned author longed for solitude, because he did not have any privacy at home due to the guests attracted by his wife’s cooking. Naturally, he did not come only for that; his doctors wanted to cure his heart and he wanted to write. Ferenc Móra had a contract for a new novel, The Gold Coffin (Aranykoporsó). But he could not make progress with the work, actually he did not write a line of it yet, but the largest problem was that he did not have any idea. A decorative woman entertained him in the hotel professionally; their liaison has been well-known by literary history for a long time.

According to Iván Balassa’s disputed theory, Hungarians knew and grew hemp even before the conquest (9th century). Besides ropes and strings, they made accessory elements of clothes, like belts, from hempen fibre. This theory seems to be backed up by the fact that the Hungarian word “kender” is a loanword of ancient Turkish origin from the period before the Hungarian conquest. It is certain that indigenous Slavs in the Carpathian Basin already cultivated it in waterside settlements before the conquest.

Regarding the location of the city, it is not a plain nor a highland. It did not witness big battles nor peace treaties. It is not a historical city, but it does not want to seem to be. Strangely, strong stereotypical attributes are connected to the city and the county. Whether it is a curse, we are going to find it out from this week’s collection.

“The tirelessly searching human mind that can never rest has found the method with which it can outsoar the light of the inaccessible “sun” that allows it to conjure fairy light from dark skies and created daylight from the night. And all these immortal achievements have been reached by electricity that has been peeked and riddled from the secrets of nature.” – Kiskunhalas, 1898. Our weekly exhibition is going to guide you into the world of the development history of lighting technology, with the aid of archive photos from our database.