Our Danube

2024.05.15. 12:55

It is our Danube, say the Germans, Slovaks, Romanians and we Hungarians, but how can you own such a huge, flowing river. While we try to capture its essence with metaphors - highlighting its function as bridge and border - sometimes with the epithets of queen, sometimes with the epithet of king, perhaps it would be enough to appreciate this wonderful, living river.

Impressions of the Danube

„The Danube is not a thing, not its water, not its water molecules, not its perilous riverbed, the Danube is the Whole, the Danube is the Form.”–Péter Esterházy, The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube)

But what is our Danube like? Europe's second longest river meanders through 10 countries. The entire territory of Hungary lies within its watershed, and its main branch here is some 417 kilometres long.

Where does it take its source? The Romans already knew that the source of the Danube was in the Black Forest, but the exact location was not so clear. If you look at a map, you can see that it is the confluence of two small streams, the Breg and the Brigach, which become the Danube as we know it at Donaueschingen, and then meanders 2,850 kilometres to the Black Sea.

The urban river, which flows in a deliberate flow, is of course incomparable to its swirling form in the Danube bend. Also the Danube in Paks also shows a very different face from its counterparts in Vienna and Bratislava.

In Budapest in the 1970s, the water quality of the Danube was so bad that bathing was banned throughout the city. This ban remained in place for a long time, as did the questionable cleanliness of the river. But bathing in the Danube is a great thing, and always has been, according to contemporary photographs. It was possible to swim in the Roman Beach, Nagymaros or Zebegény, in fact on the 3.5 kilometre stretch from the Újpest railway bridge to the city border.

For example, the first golden age of the Roman beach was after the First World War, and its popularity is illustrated by the fact that in the early 1920s there was only one boat garage, but by 1925 there were already 3,000 vehicles in the mushrooming boathouses on the beach. Perhaps the most famous were owned by Mihály Magasházy, János Fojt and Károly Bürgermeister.

World War II put an end to this idyllic atmosphere: many boathouses were destroyed by bombing and the wood was used for fuel. In addition to the war, flooding caused more damage, as ice floes piled up on the wreckage of a blown-up railway bridge meant that it was not only the coastal areas that were flooded. After the war, life quickly returned to the banks of the Roman beach, with deprivatisationed holiday resorts and boat garages replacing private boathouses.

The Danube Terrace was one of the former catering establishments on th Roman Riverbank which were until the aforementioned restrictions, highly frequented. The last open beach was closed in 1973, and visitors were then forced to use the swimming pools for which they had to pay.

The only change came in the 2010s, when the water quality of the Danube was once again good enough for bathing. It took barely a decade to finally open the Roman open-air beach for a one-day period in 2019 and 2020, and for a month in 2021 and 2022, and to make bathing legal again. Let's hope this year will be no different.

TÉ

translated by László Gönczi

Sources:

https://pestbuda.hu

Száraz Miklós György: Duna, Mítoszok Dunája – a Duna mítosza, Scolar, Budapest, 2002.

Recommendation

Aquincum, Roman ruins, history of the museum

Regular archaeological excavations have been carried out in the territory of Budapest for more than 150 years, but new archaeological monuments still appear during constructions. The history of Aquincum can only be reconstructed with the help of excavations, as few historical sources mention Pannonia and the cities along the Danube.

The early period of nature study

Nature study was the common name of the following sciences: zoology, botany, mineralogy, petrology and palaeontology in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it mostly consisted of collecting, systematising and expounding knowledge based on observations. As the expression ‘nature study’ became old-fashioned after the uprise of sciences based on experiments in the 20th century, the denomination ‘natural science’ replaced it. In this week’s virtual exhibition, we have chosen some quotations and illustrations from the natural study works of old times.

Eucharistic World Congress in Budapest

The 52nd International Eucharistic Congress, which starts this week, will be held in Budapest this year, but this is not the first time that the historical event is held in our capital. In our selection this week, we recall the first Hungarian Congress of 1938, and also bring to life a little of the history of the event. Where was the first pilgrimage held? Which city's withdrawal helped Budapest win the organizing of the event? In our latest article, you can get answers to these questions, among other things.

The Land of Witches and Grimm Tales - The Harz Mountains

The mysterious landscapes of the Harz Mountains have inspired many tales and horror stories, including the stories of the Grimm brothers and the Walpurgis Night set in Goethe’s Faust. The characteristic wooden beamed houses of the countryside create a truly fairytale-like milieu. In addition to fairytales, the cities around the Harz also have a rich and intricate historical past.

Aquatic stories

Nowadays, it is taken for granted that you can open the tap and get either cold drinking water or fine warm water. But only few people have this luck in the world and maybe our grandchildren will not be able to enjoy this comfort. How did water supply developed in Hungary since the ancient Romans? Would you ever think of how many aquatic relics you pass by during your days? Our aquatic exhibition is going to answer these questions.

The Cult of Empress Elisabeth

Public monument sculpture played a significant role in the image of 19th century settlements. However, the sculptures are not only about the changes that have taken place in the fabric of the city; they can also be used to trace the development of the cult of a given person, including the memory of Empress and Queen Elisabeth. Nowadays, the statue of Elisabeth looks at the Buda side calmly in the park next to the bridge named after her, even though it used to be an ornament of the Pest side. Most of the Queen’s monuments were made in the years after her death. Still, this monument in Budapest followed a series of statues more than 30 years later, when Sisi's memory had quite faded. What conditions hindered the completion of the work, and what was the cult of Elisabeth like at the beginning of the 20th century, will be revealed in our selection.

More thematic virtual exhibitions