Terror Haza

If the House of Terror did not enclose such a grim legacy - Hungary's more than four decades of terror under Nazi and then Soviet occupations - it would almost succumb to the absurdity in much of tourism. The museum alternates between the poignant (interviews with former prisoners, fascist and Communist propaganda, a preserved basement of torture and incarceration) and the cheesy (a video of actors changing clothes as they found new roles under changing regimes, a pig because collective welfare made it difficult to own your own). I don't know if cheesy is the right word, because I couldn't decide whether to admire the curators for mixing history with symbolism (as that would make them artistic) or dismiss them for trying too hard to please tourists (as that would make them cheesy, like the Buda labyrinth).

But if there's any place a tourist should see in Budapest, this is probably it. The Terror House grabs attention easily, for a few reasons: 1) its name, even if people first think it's a Halloween attraction; 2) its odd location on Andrassy Avenue, known for shopping and its UNESCO World Heritage recognition; and 3) its facade, an overhang with the word "TERROR" carved out like stencils so that the sun writes the letters on the sidewalk below.

Beyond the initial impressions, the museum delivers. This is probably due to its small size, but I've never seen a museum presented as such a complete package that is simultaneously concise and dramatic. The first image that greets visitors is the wall of victims: thousands of low relief, black-and-white head shots, about a square foot each, depicting the deceased and inscribed along a central wall that spans all three floors and the elevator. In the basement is the smaller portion of the wall, that of the victimizers. Their faces are smaller, but they have names and dates, many showing the victimizers to be alive still - hence the debate over what should be done with them and whether they should be allowed into public office.

Like the wall (and like a good meal), the exhibition rooms also rely on the power of presentation for impact. I've realized most of them are works of art in themselves, often for their symbolic significance. One room made manifest the dualism of oppression under fascists and Communists by screening footage on either side of the same wall in the center of the room, Hitler on one side, Stalin on the other. Working with the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, both at different times controlled Hungary, which seemed to trade one form of totalitarianism for another.

Another room shipped us off to Siberia, as the condemned Hungarians were once expelled. Horizontal wood paneling lined the walls, with windows simulated by TV screens showing the landscape roll by. A carpet map began in Hungary at the entrance and ended in the Soviet far east at the exit. Then there was (what I call) the Warhol room of '60s ads denoting the prosperity and consumption under socialism; the Catholic room, along the length of which ran a huge white cross "exposed" by floorboards pulled aside; and the black-and-white Gabor Peter room, white where the Communist police chief enjoyed a clean office, black where the Jewish Hungarian served a prison sentence under the system he once controlled.

All of this trimming disappears, however, once you walk through the rooms of the basement. For solitary confinement, you have the choice of a closet big enough to hold one person, a larger room just three feet high, or a wet cell. There's a Hungarian flag with the Soviet emblem cut out, a common image during the 1956 Revolution. A gallows is intact. Interviews run on a loop, men and women lamenting the senselessness of their subjugation. A young woman reads the names of the dead. And in the background plays a Hungarian version of Lili Marleen.

Civizational clash: nationalism and stereotypes

The trip to Eger on Sunday was an educational one even before we arrived, in that I learned how the main roads work. Turning into an exit, we encountered highway patrol parked there to check whether drivers had paid the fee to use the highway. Luckily my friends had, because I think it's similar to the hit-or-miss enforcement of the metro. Speaking of which, the subway is slightly less enigmatic now, and I bet Hungarians have figured out how to cheat the system because it's not difficult over time to get a sense of where guards will be checking tickets - the exception being the one time I came across a guard who actually hopped onto a train to see our tickets.

Anyway, the highway procedure should not be so surprising, I'm just used to U.S. tax policy. What my friends did on the other hand was buy a day pass at a gas station. You can buy passes for any range of times, and by SMS as well, which is funny because you could theoretically have to keep your confirmation SMS for a year to show as proof.

The remaining enlightenment that I derived from Eger was similarly not direct nor immediate, creeping up on me days later.

I was glad to have known about Egri Csillagok, the nationally required reading about Eger's uniquely successful defense against the expanding Ottomans in 1552. It means Stars of Eger, but is for some reason translated as Eclipse of the Crescent Moon, and the writer Geza Gardonyi's grave can be found at the castle in Eger. I didn't learn much from the Hungarian tour guide, depending instead on what my friends could translate. While deciding on the obligatory wine (the city is known for it), one friend insisted I buy Egri Bikaver, i.e., Bull's Blood of Eger. The legend goes that in the days preparing for the Ottoman attack, Hungarians drank this red wine, which dripped down their lips and convinced the Ottomans that they had drank bull's blood, and that was why they were strong enough to defeat them.

The story, along with the history as a larger context, joins other sources of national pride (the unsuccessful 1848 rebellion against the Habsburgs, the disastrous 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, the smooth 1989 shedding of communism, etc.). These, in turn, have their part in the even larger context of the overall idea of any country's national legacies, which I have started to wonder about lately. Brainwashing is just the extreme form of a universal practice in national education systems of conditioning citizens to understand and support their countries. At least at a basic level this means emphasizing achievements over mistakes as proof of greatness. Doesn't a country founded on liberty sound better than one founded on tax evasion?

It's true that the events of 1989 and 1956 and 1848 durably shape the Hungary we see today. And if anyone is to inherit these legacies, mustn't it be the Hungarians? But my problem, or at least what I question, is whether and how much anyone has a right to claim these legacies. Yesterday I read this in The Unbearable Lightness of Being: "What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure."

The Spain of today is not the Spain of the conquistadors. That is to say Prime Minister Zapatero's government had no say in the country's colonization decisions in the 16th century. What fidelity, then, do Latin Americans owe Spain? What accountability, then, does Spain owe them? I thought of this in more recent history when hearing that a French court blamed the country for deporting Jews during the Holocaust, and (in an Eastern/Central European class) that Polish people in the town of Jedwabne killed the Jewish half of their neighbors. In class my professor distinguished between guilt (as Sarkozy should not feel guilty for the choices of de Gaulle) and responsibility (as the Polish should admit historical accuracies).

If we take it for granted that, indeed, Belgium is liable for its colonial past or that Italians rightly take pride in the roots of the Renaissance, I think this implies some credence to Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. It divides the world and much of its history into seven main civilizations, which define conflict along cultural lines. It's not the best way to examine the aforementioned legacies, but in my mind there's a relevantly deterministic outlook. His theory has generally met resistance (including from me), probably because we dislike the idea of simplifying cultures so much that we say Germans behave that way because they're German. In this way it's 'wrong' to stereotype peoples, and yet right to identify them according to histories dating back decades, centuries, or millenniums. I'm still trying to reconcile this.

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Listening to: Dru Hill, "We're Not Making Love No More"
Reading: Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Art in Vienna

[Click on the headline for the Facebook album]

Three hours away by train, Vienna makes for a popular weekend trip, so I took one with my study abroad program. Going into these things, I'm never armed with enough background knowledge, but with a general understanding of the Habsburgs, the World Wars, and Kurt Waldheim, I could appreciate the time there - at least more so than the people who inspire the "There are no kangaroos in Austria" postcards. Seriously. I don't forgive the ignoramus I encountered at Columbia who believed Schwarzenegger is from Australia.

I will grant, though, that there is some benefit to not doing your homework, namely, the pleasant surprise in discovering just how much art the Habsburgs amassed. Bruegel! Rembrandt! Even Raphael! It almost made up for all the art I missed in Rome (I forgot most museums close Mondays). There is something magical about standing a foot away from Madonna of the Meadow or Napoleon of the Saint-Bernard Pass, remembering not just the hands that painted them, but the shared experience with admirers from a century ago or half a millenium ago as they interpreted the work in their respective contexts.

"I can't believe I'm looking at THE Napoleon," said at least one member of the study abroad group. But I find this initial awe meaningless if you don't get to stop and experience the process that the artist went through, imagine Jacques-Louis David (who also did my favorite, The Death of Socrates) moving from one color to the next, question why he placed the break in the clouds where he did, wonder whether it was he who created the change in texture from cloth to leather or us who imagined so. That's hard to do when a guide is rushing you from one room to another.

But even that is not enough. I sometimes like a painting or sculpture for its aesthetic appeal, but I can only look at so many Madonnas (there was just one in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, but I mean in general) and have realized I favor paintings that depict the ancient or historical over the religious or vain (read: portraits). That may be my atheist bias, but also I'm not enough of a connoisseur to value a piece just for the style, form, and decisions of the creator. It's the same with literature, except that the latter doesn't have as much leeway to offer a legacy based chiefly on the author's technical abilities. We are more likely I think to venerate the books whose meanings transcend plot and prose; hence my preference for literature over art. So it is with ancient/historical paintings.

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Listening to: Feist, "My Moon, My Man"

Redemption

That is, if I needed to be redeemed, today gave me enough fodder to justify (culturally, educationally, historically) coming to Hungary. I generally grimace at all things touristy but went on a tour this afternoon thinking it can/should be done once. Then, our guide (Jeff, I thought, but he didn’t respond when called it) made a case for his existence, though I’m pretty sure it was unintentional: past halftime, we were asking which nearby cities he recommends visiting, which led to a spiel on remembering to read the guidebooks and go to the tourist hot spots because one can, believe it or not, learn a lot from them. Now that I think of it, he was referring to the Disneyworld in the Czech Republic. Previously I had been attracted to Hungary’s communist past, revolutionary pride, and developing status, but now on to more specific points of interest:

• Jeff put on a German accent and tells us what he says other tour guides would tell other tourists: two lions greet you at the entrance of the famous bridge over the Danube, and when it was first erected, people admired and praised the bridge as the first (after Vienna's) to connect East and West, but one little boy remarked that the lions had no tongues, which put the creator of the bridge to such shame that he jumped off said bridge. Bull shit, as it turned out. Moral of the story: don’t believe everything guides tell you. After all, they’re in the business of “edu-tainment,” in his words. I thought that was a good way for Jeff to begin our tour. (Disclaimer: the above photo was taken by a friend, not me.)
  


• I think the East-West part was true.


• At first I was cynical that he should show us hotels, but those, too, had their redeeming qualities. Namely, they broke ground in ushering in Western capitalism, therefore symbolizing goulash communism, Hungary’s soft approach to that craze of the second half of the 20th century.


• An even better symbol is the nearby McDonald’s, the first to open doors in a communist country. For its debut, journalists hailed the event as groundbreaking and Hungarians turned out in droves, dressed to impress.


• Hungary’s is the second largest synagogue in the world, after the one on Fifth Avenue. A fellow student pointed out: one would think Israel could hold its own in that race.


• It’s built in the Moorish style in homage to the days when Jews and Muslims got along. Later synagogues included organs, flouting the Christian patent, because Hungarian Jews couldn’t get enough of that Beethoven.


• After World War II, the best preserved (not entirely sure what that means) group of Jewish people were those in Hungary.


• The country’s name derives from the initial impression that the first settlers here were related to the Huns, which despite a physical resemblance at the time, has been disproved. In fact, they were genetically much closer to the Mongols. (Two words: lion’s tongues).