A Capital in the Periphery. The Developmental Specificity of Budapest (as a Big East Central European City)

A short essay can only flag the problem of creation of the image of Budapest as a capital city, and a symbol or epitome, of the Hungarian Kulturnation. I will focus on four matters: first, a few examples will be used to briefly exemplify the ideological programme of Historicist architecture. Second, the reception of this programme in the period’s journalistic writing will be shown (in brief, again), with particular emphasis on the craving for paralleling the West. Third, I will show how the Art Nouveau, rebelling against Historicism, essentially took over its historical mission. And, fourth, I will show the ways in which certain authors discerned already then the pretentiousness, or superficiality, of success. To end with, I will make a reference to the Sonderweg issues