Székesfehérvár

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Székesfehérvár
Székesfehérvár coat of arms
Székesfehérvár (Hungary)
Székesfehérvár
Székesfehérvár
Basic data
State : Hungary
Region : Central Transdanubia
County : Fejér
Small area until December 31, 2012 : Székesfehérvár
District since 1.1.2013 : Székesfehérvár
Coordinates : 47 ° 12 ′  N , 18 ° 25 ′  E Coordinates: 47 ° 12 ′ 0 ″  N , 18 ° 25 ′ 0 ″  E
Height : 118  m
Area : 170.89  km²
Residents : 101,943 (Jan. 1, 2011)
Population density : 597 inhabitants per km²
Telephone code : (+36) 022
Postal code : 8000
KSH kódja: 14827
Structure and administration (as of 2020)
Community type : city
Mayor : András Cser-Palkovics ( Fidesz )
Postal address : Városház tér 1
8000 Székesfehérvár
Website :
(Source: A Magyar Köztársaság helységnévkönyve 2011. január 1st at Központi statisztikai hivatal )

Székesfehérvár [ ˈseːkɛʃfɛheːrvaːr ], listen to ? / i (abbreviated also Fehérvár , German Stuhlweissenburg ) is a city in Hungary with county law and the county seat of Fejér county . It has 96,940 inhabitants (2019) and is also called the “City of Kings ” in Hungary , as it was the coronation city of the Hungarian kings in the Middle Ages, alongside Buda . Audio file / audio sample  

history

Surname

The Hungarian name Székesfehérvár is composed of Szék "chair" and Fehérvár ("white castle") and is often shortened to Fehérvár in everyday language. Chair denotes the ruler's seat. The name of the city in other languages is often formed by literal or partial translation of the Hungarian name (German: Szekesfehervar , Latin Alba Regalis or Alba Regia , Slovak Stoličný Belehrad , Serbian - Cyrillic Столни Београд and Stolni Beograd , Croatian Stolni Biograd , Slovenian Stolni Belograd , Czech Stoličný Bělehrad , Polish Białogród Stołeczny or Białogród Królewski , Turkish İstolni Belgrad etc.).

Early history

Traces of human settlement have been found in the city's area since the Neolithic Age (5th millennium BC). Grave fields also date from the Avar period (9th century AD).

The settlement and later city, located between Lake Platten and Lake Velence , has always been a hub of important trade routes. In this area trade routes led through the valley of the Mór area and the area around Veszprém to the southeast on the Balkan Peninsula , to the northeast to a Danube crossing point (today's Budapest ) and finally along the shores of Lake Balaton towards Italy .

Székesfehérvár is still today a hub of Transdanubia for both rail and road traffic.

middle Ages

Székesfehérvár 1601 after the temporary Christian reconquest; G = "Hauptkirch" - St. Stephen's Basilica
The same happened with a fire and a destroyed basilica

The forerunner of today's city was founded by the Magyars at the time of their conquest . In 970, Prince Géza made the city the first Hungarian capital. After 972 they built a tiny stone castle, inside of which the prince's palace and a church. His son Stephan I (first King of Hungary, canonized in 1083) elevated the settlement to the status of a city and the secular seat of his kingship, the early city with a large basilica (1003-1038) developed. The treasury, the state archive and the state emblems were kept here. The city was one of the occasionally changing places in which the Hungarian parliament was convened. By 1526, 43 Hungarian kings were crowned in the royal basilica and fifteen of them were buried here by 1540, including Stephen I. The spiritual center of the country was the seat of the Archbishop of Gran ( Esztergom ).

In the 11th century the city was an important stop on pilgrimages to the Holy Land . During the Middle Ages the city continued to develop; the suburbs arose on the hills protruding from the swamps. Monastic orders, craftsmen and traders settled there. In 1222 the city was the scene of an event of particular importance. King Andrew II issued the so-called Golden Bull , the first constitution in the country, which determined the privileges of all nobles and the duties of the king towards them.

In the spring of 1242 the city was attacked by the Mongols who invaded all of Hungary. The sudden melting of the snow protected the city, which was surrounded by a swamp, from the invasion of the Mongol horsemen, as they could not penetrate as far as the walls of the city.

After the Hungarian parliament was convened for the first time in 1298, Buda became the Hungarian capital from 1361. Székesfehérvár initially continued to flourish. A number of palace buildings are mentioned in documents from the 13th to 15th centuries. The face of the city, which flourished in the Middle Ages, was immortalized in numerous engravings from around 1490.

16./17. century

St. Anne's Chapel

In 1526 the existence of Hungary was threatened by the efforts of the Ottoman Empire to conquer . 20,000 members of the nobility and clergy were killed in the Battle of Mohács . King Ludwig II also died on the battlefield. In 1541 Buda was conquered by the Turks, in 1543 Székesfehérvár also fell. With the death of Ludwig, the Hungarian crown and with it the northern and western remainder of the empire came to the Habsburgs . The capital of the rest of Habsburg Hungary was Pozsony (Pressburg, Bratislava) .

Székesfehérvár was now a Turkish border fortress until 1688, with the exception of a single year when the city was temporarily retaken in 1601. Most of the city's population fled, many buildings were destroyed, and urban life largely came to a standstill. The Turkish occupation forces only had a few buildings built. The royal basilica, which had been sacked by the Ottomans along with the royal tombs and then used as a warehouse for gunpowder, exploded in the turmoil of 1601.

18./19. century

Városház tér (Town Hall Square), Szent Imre (left) and Szent János churches
The new St. Stephen's Cathedral

After the city was recaptured from the Turks, it flourished again from the beginning of the 18th century. German and Moravian settlers came to the local Hungarian and Serbian residents. In 1703 the city was regained the status of a royal free city ; but it was no longer the capital of the country. The state parliaments continued to take place in Pressburg until the 19th century , where the Habsburg kings, who had their seat for all their countries in Vienna , were crowned . In the middle of the 18th century, major construction activities began. B. the religious house and the Church of the Franciscans (OFM) , the ecclesiastical buildings of the Jesuits . Public buildings, baroque palaces and town houses were built. The development of the city can be clearly seen in the pictures from the years 1720 to 1870. In 1777 the Catholic diocese Stuhlweissenburg was established .

After the liberation from Ottoman rule, mostly immigrants from southern Germany moved to the largely depopulated city. Under the influence of reform efforts at the beginning of the 19th century, the citizens of the Magyar began to gradually grow. On March 15, 1848, the citizens and youth joined the revolution . After the suppression of the revolution and the subsequent war of freedom, Székesfehérvár became a barely industrialized agricultural city in the shadow of the now rapidly growing Budapest.

20th century

After the Trianon Peace Treaty in 1920, the city experienced a period of boom in the interwar period.

In 1922, a large radio station was built in Székesfehérvár , which had two braced steel truss masts, each 152 meters high, and which served long and short wave radio. The large masts were demolished in 2009.

The city, which in 1945 still had 35,000 inhabitants, grew to 100,000 by the end of the 1970s. New housing estates were built; But the city center retained its baroque character and the buildings were preserved as monuments of art. The most important baroque buildings are the cathedral, the episcopal palace and the town hall. A well-known newer building on the outskirts of the city is the "Bory-Burg" ( Bory-vár ), a seven-tower private castle built over decades by the artist Jenő Bory (1879–1959), which today functions as a museum.

On August 18, 1951, a serious railway accident occurred near Szekesfehervar in which more than 150 people died.

Worth seeing

In the course of archaeological research over the past few decades, the medieval remains were uncovered, which are continuously being restored and exhibited. In the "ruin garden" you can find the remains of the Romanesque basilica and the mausoleum of King Stephen I from the 11th century and the remains of the late Gothic Anna chapel from around 1470.

Application as European Capital of Culture 2023

At the end of 2017, the city applied together with seven other Hungarian cities as European Capital of Culture 2023. In the preliminary round in February 2018, Székesfehérvár was allegedly chosen because of a promotional film about the city which, in the opinion of the EU Culture Committee, contained “too many happy white people”, “ too many crosses and churches ”and“ too few poor people and migrants ”were removed from the competition. These reasons for the decision caused great outrage in Hungary and the mayor of Székesfehérvár demanded that the details of the hearing and the decision be published.

economy

Aggressive industrialization continued from the middle of the 20th century . Among other things, an aluminum rolling mill and a motorcycle factory were built. The semiconductor manufacturer IBM founded a hard disk factory here, which was shut down towards the end of 2002. Denso, an automotive supplier, is based on the site today.

traffic

sons and daughters of the town

Honorary citizen

Sports

gallery

  • New Stephans Cathedral

  • Ruins of the old St. Stephen's Basilica

  • Fejér County Administration

  • Northeastern suburbs

  • Csalapuszta Palace

Twin cities

Web links

Commons : Székesfehérvár  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helyi önkormányzati választások 2019 - Székesfehérvár (Fejér megye). Nemzeti Választási Iroda, October 13, 2019, accessed April 28, 2020 (Hungarian).
  2. ↑ http://www.ksh.hu/apps/hntr.telepules?p_lang=EN&p_id=14827
  3. ↑ Seven Hungarian cities are competing for the European Capital of Culture (Hét hazai város pályázik az Európa Kulturális Fővárosa címre). December 27, 2017, Retrieved May 11, 2018 (Hungarian).
  4. ↑ Herczeg Márk: A fideszes polgármester arról, hogy nem az ő városa lesz 2023-ban Európa Kulturális Fővárosa: MIGRÁNSOK - 444 . In: 444 . February 15, 2018 (Hungarian, 444.hu [accessed May 11, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Nem akarnak migránsokat . In: Lokál . April 5, 2018 (Hungarian, local.hu [accessed May 11, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Too many “white happy Christians”? Hungary's city excluded from the EU cultural competition . In: RT German . February 22, 2018 ( rt.com [accessed May 11, 2018]).
  7. ↑ A sok kereszt és a kevés migráns miatt bukta Fehérvár az EKF-pályázatot? In: Dunaújváros Online . February 16, 2018 (Hungarian, dunaujvaros.com [accessed May 11, 2018]).
  8. ↑ szekesfehervar.hu ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , The Mongolian city of Erdenet is the new twin city of Székesfehérvár @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.szekesfehervar.hu