Monument, Bábolna Hill

A structure to be erected in commemoration of the 520th anniversary of the victory at Bábolna of the Transylvanian Hussite–peasant uprising of 1437.

A significant element of Kós Károly’s literary and theatrical oeuvre is the drama and stage play about Budai Nagy Antal, which premiered in 1937 in Kolozsvár and Budapest, and was subsequently revived in multiple editions and performances over several decades. Kós Károly also prepared the costume designs for the play, and was involved in stage direction and set design. In the 1930s, in his novel Országépítő (“Nation Builder”), Kós wrote about King Saint Stephen as the builder of the state; in this case, however, the stage play was created for the 500th anniversary of the peasant uprising of 1437. The following twenty years were filled with dramatic events; nevertheless, Budai Nagy Antal can be seen as parallel to the practical work Kós Károly undertook in rural life and cultural fields to organize communities and improve quality of life. In this work he cooperated with the churches—primarily the Reformed Church, though the Catholic Church–related Kalot movement may also be mentioned. Part of the work of the EMGE (Transylvanian Hungarian Economic Association) likewise belongs here, as does the collective effort to rebuild Józseffalva in Bukovina. After the war, Kós Károly worked not only as a member of parliament, but also within an advisory body of the Hungarian People’s Alliance, which provided assistance to rural cooperatives and their inhabitants.

The monument design itself is an intriguing episode in this story. It was prepared for Bábolna Hill, north of Kolozsvár, by the beginning of the winter of 1957, for the 520th anniversary of the peasant uprising. In light of the site, the design is somewhat grandiose; accordingly, the realized work was reduced in height and executed without the surrounding cemetery walls. However, in the articulation of the tower it shows close affinity both to the original design and to Kós Károly’s other towers. It can therefore be stated with relative confidence that the final object was created with reference to Kós Károly’s sketch design, adapted to local conditions. This does not exclude the possibility that Kós Károly participated in the detailed design, although by then he was seventy-four years old and retired.

Kós Károly produced several monument designs, often taking the form of a bell tower or church tower as a point of departure. His artistic and architectural activity related to commemorative works would merit greater attention. In the text quoted below, the spirit of the age is naturally discernible; nevertheless, it provides interesting context for the creation of the monument. Just as the village served as the model for the center of the collective economy, and the source of the modern farmstead lay in the traditional rural house, so too a historical watchtower or bell tower was placed on the summit of Bábolna Hill, fixing centuries-old traditions in stone.

István Nagy: “In the Five Hundred and Twentieth Year,” in Utunk, vol. XII, no. 50 (476), Kolozsvár, 12 December 1957.

Excerpt (after the original typesetting, without corrections):

Until now, only Romanian Hungarian literature has erected a prose monument to the Bábolna peasant rebels: Kós Károly’s history of Budai Nagy Antal and its dramatic version, which the Thália Theatre in Kolozsvár staged in 1937 on the occasion of the five-hundredth anniversary. With little success, for the puffed-up grandees lounging in the boxes and ground-floor rows of the Hungarian theatres of the time were just as enraged by the straightened scythes of the Hungarian and Romanian serf rebels appearing on stage as their ancestors had been five centuries earlier. Nor was the audience of the Pest Vígszínház delighted; the newspapers of the high clergy once again clamored for an inquisition, just as Bishop Lépes had done in 1437. The approval of the working-class audience confined to the balconies did not count. Had anyone predicted that in the five hundred and twentieth year after the uprising there would be a Romanian Workers’ Party, and as a result of the struggle of the popular masses led by it there would be a ten-year-old Romanian People’s Republic with a firmly standing government, which would erect a gigantic stone obelisk on Bábolna Hill as a symbol of the unbreakable revolutionary brotherhood of the Romanian people and the nationalities who fought alongside them—such a person would first have been beaten crippled by the police and then dragged off to an asylum. Even the thought that such monuments might ever be erected was considered madness.

Well, this “madness” became reality a little over a week ago, on Sunday. On Bábolna Hill, from where in 1437 the Transylvanian Hungarian and Romanian serf rebels set out to break the rule of the Catholic high clergy and the nobility, the surrounding peasants gathered once more, joined also by journeymen from Kolozsvár, Nagyenyed, and Dés, whose great-great-grandfathers had stood at the side of the straightened peasant hosts. And let us imagine this other “madness”: they did not gather—as our counterrevolutionary enemies would have wished—to rise against popular power, but rather to fuse with it even more closely. They streamed in from every direction; in the villages of the valley, the finest carpets and folk-embroidered bedspreads were laid out on the fences. The lightly snow-covered mountains, worn and bent over the course of vanished centuries, had grown barer; the forests had thinned, and the ploughed fields had crept higher. The landscape had changed in other ways as well, under the imprint of the architect’s and sculptor’s hands.

There, where once sky-lashing bonfire flames signaled the shepherds of neighboring hills to rise up and kindle new signal fires, today a sky-piercing white stone obelisk proclaims that the great popular uprisings have finally crushed the old order of the arrogant grandees in this region. We may see the obelisk as a stone-frozen, pointed tongue of flame, shining far and wide just as the signal fires of the rebelling peasants once did. And let our enemies rejoice as well: this stone-turned flame also calls to uprising—urging the villages of the valleys to help bring the cause of socialism to final victory, to unite their scattered, narrow-strip farms into associations and collective farms…