Hungarian Learning Community and Resources

What Is Celebrated On The 15th of March in Hungary?

March 15th is a bank holiday, commemorating the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The uprising paved the way towards establishing the Austro-Hungarian Compromise ions nationwide.

It was part of the European revolutionary wave – the revolution also broke out in Pest-Buda and won bloodlessly with the slogans of national sovereignty and bourgeois transformation ("equality, freedom, fraternity"). The modern parliamentary Hungary was born, and the process leading to the war of independence began, the aim of which was to end the Habsburg rule, to win independence and a constitutional system.

The "Pilvax circle" (among others Petőfi, Jókai, Pál Vasvári and Gyula Bulyovszky) had finally decided the night before that they would take action in the wake of the Vienna revolution. It was mobilized on the morning of March 15 the university youth, they read out the 12 points, which were later printed in Landerer and Heckenast's printing house together with the National Anthem, without censorship permission (this is how freedom of the press was born). At three in the afternoon, a rally was held at the National Museum, and then the crowd, which swelled to ten thousand, marched across the bridge to Buda, where the frightened Governor's Council put into effect the demands contained in the 12 points and released the journalist Mihály Táncsics, who had been imprisoned for alleged press offences, and whom the crowd took in a triumphal procession to Pest. In the evening, the victory of the revolution was celebrated in the National Theater with a performance of the banned Bánk Bán.

After the fall of the freedom struggle, all social strata secretly cherished the memory of March 15, even though during the years of retaliation, not only the revolution mention of his achievements was forbidden, but also the Kossuth beard, the red-white-green color and the Rákóczi note. After the agreement of 1867, the commemoration became freer, but also more cautious for the sake of Austro-Hungarian cooperation. In 1898, on the occasion of the half-century anniversary, the celebration of March 15 was tacitly accepted, but April 11, the day of the consecration of the laws of 1848, was made a public holiday.

March 15 became an official national commemoration in 1928. The communists abolished it in the 1950s (the 1956 revolution revived the ideas of 1848 at several points), and later reinstated its celebration within strictly defined frameworks. After the system change, the National Assembly declared the VIII. of 1991 as an official national holiday. on the basis of TV, which was also confirmed by the 2012 Basic (fundamental ) Law. After the raising of the Hungarian flag on the national holiday, the revolution is commemorated at prominent locations (at the National Museum, Buda Castle).

Nora, OLS Community Manager – Hungarian