Page 118 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Hungary

116  BUD APEST AREA B Y AREA FUR THER AFIELD  117

r Memento Park Captain Steinmetz VISITORS’ CHECKLIST
In December 1944, the Hungarian-born
Soviet Red Army Captain Miklós Steinmetz
During Communist rule, Socialist Realism was the artistic delivered the Ultimátum with the proposed Practical Information
Balatoni út & Szabadkai utca,
movement, resulting in some of the most striking terms for surrender from the Soviet troops District 22, Budapest. Road
sculpture of the 20th century. While most of the other to the Germans occupying Map D3. Tel (1) 424 75 00.
former Soviet-bloc countries iconoclastically toppled Budapest. He was shot while Open Apr–Oct: 10am–dusk
returning to Soviet lines.
their Socialist statuary as soon as they had toppled their daily; Nov–Mar: 10am–4pm daily.
& = ∑ mementopark.hu
Socialist leaders, the more reflective Hungarians decided Transport
to preserve these unique public works of art, which until @ 101B, 101E, 150 from Kelenföld
1989 had stood in the country’s major public squares. Metro station (M4).
The propagandist statues, some of which were erected Béla Kun Memorial . Hungarian Fighters in the
as late as the mid-1980s, are now displayed in this, Béla Kun was a Hungarian Communist Spanish International
who briefly ran the country in 1919
Brigades Memorial
Europe’s most unusual theme park of Communism. after leading a Russian-backed This monument honours the
Communist coup. Kun’s regime was Hungarian contingent of
quickly overthrown by nationalist the many European revolution-
Hungarian-Soviet forces led by Admiral Horthy, however,
Friendship Memorial and Kun fled to Russia. aries who flocked to Spain
A Hungarian worker greets a to fight there in the
Red Army officer with a 1936–9 Civil War.
hand shake in this classic
piece of Soviet agitprop.

. Workers’ Movement
Memorial
Two monstrously large
hands are about to clasp
a globe, and with it the
working class of the world.

The Trabant 601
Few objects symbolise life in socialist Central-Eastern
Europe better than the plastic-bodied Trabant. This
little car, produced in East Germany between 1957–
1990 with almost no change in shape or specifications,
was once a continual presence on the roads of the
socialist block. Although the Trabant was a small,
uncomfortable, slow and fragile car, it was much
Karl Marx and Stalin’s loved by those who were finally able to buy one
Friedrich Engels tribute after spending decades on the waiting lists.
The authors of The
Communist Manifesto
stand together in a
large archway.
. Main Entrance
The monumental main Lenin
entrance and the austere Vladimir Lenin (1870–
wall that surrounds the 1924), leader of the 1917
KEY park are designed to Revolution and first head
remind visitors of the of the Soviet state, points
1 Souvenir shop restrictive nature of the way to a bright The iconic Trabant car at Memento Park
the Iron Curtain. Socialist future.
For hotels and restaurants see pp264–269 and pp276–285

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