Hungarian independence

On 16 November 1918 in Budapest Hungary was proclaimed “a people’s republic independent and separate from every other country”. The proclamation completed the revolution that two weeks earlier had brought Count Mihály Károlyi to power, and ended nearly four hundred years of Habsburg rule over Hungary. In the same week German Austria became a republic, and in Prague the National Assembly deposed the Habsburgs.

From revolution to republic

Károlyi had become prime minister on 31 October, when the Aster Revolution took hold of Budapest. His government took its oath before Archduke Joseph August, in the name of King Charles IV, as Emperor Charles I was called in Hungary. Supporters of a republic took this badly. As early as 1 November the government asked to be released from that oath and took a new one, this time before the Hungarian National Council, which became the supreme organ of the new authority. Its chairman was the priest János Hock (PL), a Budapest parish priest. One of Károlyi’s first steps was the formal dissolution of the union with Austria. The question of the crown, however, remained.

It was settled by events in Germany and Austria. On 11 November the National Council declared that the final decision on the form of the state “can no longer be postponed” and called on the provincial councils to express their views on it. On the same day in Vienna Charles withdrew from the government of Austria. The president of the Hungarian House of Magnates, Baron Gyula Wlassics, offered Károlyi to persuade the King to take a similar step. On 13 November a delegation of magnates, which included Wlassics, Prince Miklós Móric Esterházy and the keeper of the crown, Count Emil Széchenyi, came to Eckartsau near Vienna, where the imperial family was staying. Charles hesitated for a long time, but finally signed a handwritten declaration: “I do not wish my person to be an obstacle to the free development of the Hungarian nation, for which I feel unchanged love. I therefore renounce all participation in the conduct of affairs of state and recognise in advance the decision by which Hungary determines its future form of state.” As in Vienna, the word “abdication” was not used, and the document bore no ministerial countersignature. In the afternoon the Hungarian government declared that “Charles Habsburg is not the ruler of the country”. Late that evening in Belgrade the minister Béla Linder signed, on behalf of the Károlyi government, the military convention with the Allies.

16 November

On the morning of 16 November the Hungarian parliament came to an end. The House of Representatives voted its own dissolution, and the House of Magnates, taking note of the new situation, “closed its proceedings”. The National Council, enlarged that day to about 500 members and renamed the Great National Council, took on the role of a provisional national assembly. It met in the hall under the dome of the Parliament Building and adopted the first people’s resolution, called in Hungarian “néphatározat”. Its first point read: “Hungary is a people’s republic independent and separate from every other country.” The constitution of the republic was to be determined by a constituent assembly elected under a new, universal electoral law that also included women. Until then supreme power was to be exercised by Károlyi’s people’s government, and he became provisional head of state at the same time. The resolution also announced laws on freedom of the press and of assembly and on granting land to the peasants.

The proclamation of the Hungarian People’s Republic was then announced in front of the parliament, before a huge crowd, in the presence of Károlyi and Hock. The adjective “people’s” did not then have the meaning given to it after 1945. It was meant to stress that the new state was breaking with the “lordly” Hungary of the gentry and magnates. Some of the banners in fact simply read “Hungarian Republic”.

A state without borders

The new republic governed a country whose borders nobody yet knew. The Károlyi government, convinced that a friendly Entente would respect the integrity of the lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen, had been disbanding the army since the beginning of November. Meanwhile the Serbs were occupying the Banat and the Bačka, the Czechoslovaks were entering Slovakia, and the Romanians were beginning to enter Transylvania. None of the great powers recognised the People’s Republic. Charles, who never formally renounced the crown, twice tried to regain it in 1921. The republic itself lasted only until March 1919, when after the fall of the government the Communists took power and proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic.