Contested Places, Contested Pasts : Sites of Memory and Commemoration in the Hungarian Landscape

Contested Places, Contested Pasts focuses on how the First and Second World Wars, Holocaust, Cold War communist period, and 1956 Uprising have been memorialized and marked in the Hungarian landscape. The book explores the difficult debates surrounding the remembrance and commemoration of these events.

This is the first comprehensive, book-length study of Hungary’s commemorative landscapes from the First World War to the present. By stressing the spatiality and materiality of memory practice, it offers new insights into why some events are celebrated widely, while other controversial events are marked modestly or not at all. Using a comparative case study methodology, the book crisscrosses the country using archival sources and extensive fieldwork to document the stories behind dozens of major and minor memorials. Examples from Budapest are important, but key contributions of this book are the examples drawn from cities, towns, and villages outside the capital. A wealth of photographs, maps, and diagrams are included to illustrate important ideas, especially the range of responses that have emerged to commemorate major historical events. In the end, the book highlights the value of studies like this one that explore the varied ways in which the World Wars, Holocaust, and Cold War have been represented in the commemorative landscapes of Europe and beyond.

This book is for readers interested in Hungarian and European history, public art and architecture, landscape studies, and commemorative practices. Weaving theory and examples in an engaging storyline, the book will appeal to broader audiences interested in the challenges of confronting Europe’s legacies of twentieth-century war, violence, and political upheaval.