An ignored museum
The Kerepesi Road Cemetery
MúzeumCafé 13.
According to Michel Foucault, a cemetery is an important element of social space, yet simultaneously outside it. A cemetery is a specific, significant space for the practice of symbolic power – the compilation of “final resting” rites and architecture, as well as moral and cultural topography. The question, however, involves who by, when and how it is used. The cemeteries of ancient times are today populated by palaeontologists and archaeologists, researchers examining remains with different technologies, trampling on each other’s heels. More modern cemeteries are closed from time to time, in line with the demands of urban development when they are in the way, or when they become full. Cemeteries become precious when they suddenly are important from the aspect of a specific discourse. The cultural value of the Hajongard Cemetery in Cluj, for example, is undisputable for Hungarians. Research involves accurate analysis of the ethnicity of those resting in the new graves, reflecting the traumatic experience of “the territory occupied by the Romanians”. The Silesian Polish town of Oswieczim, otherwise known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, although located several hundred kilometres from the Hungarian border, can be regarded as the largest Hungarian cemetery on the virtual cultural-geographical map. For a variety of reasons some modern cemeteries may suddenly become museums receiving new meaning and interpretation, which retrospectively can also change their history and the narration referring to them. The notion of a ‘national pantheon’ in connection with the Kerepesi Road Cemetery in Pest was first raised in 1871. In the idea of a Hungarian ‘pantheon’, following the example of Walhalla or Père Lachaise, and the memory of the dead resting in the cemetery is preserved in two forms of interpretation. Individual virtues and the rhetoric of immortality – favoured forms and themes of sepulchral and monument sculpture – coincide with national remembrance. A ‘national pantheon’ is not merely the burial place of famous people, such as the Farkasrét Cemetery in Buda, but the scene of national recollection. As with Walhalla, every individual merit and life also represents existential proof of a national community. Hence a national graveyard is nothing other than a form of national museum – a prominent space of self-representation. The Kerepesi Cemetery shows how the Mausoleum of the Labour Movement or the tomb of former premier József Antall represent different anthropologies. A special issue concerns the condition of graves of Soviet soldiers buried here after 1945 and the ‘monument of martyrs’, namely the Mausoleum of the Labour Movement established in 1959. Both of these virtually ignored plots containing tombs and monuments pointedly reflect an issue which has proved impossible to solve after 1989: how does present-day Hungarian society relate to the period 1945-1989. The monuments in prominent places of the national graveyard have practically not been looked after by anyone since 1989. The mausoleum is on the verge of dilapidation and thus as ruins has become a peculiar and unintentional museum. The funding body clearly does not regard it as part of the planned uniform area and would prefer it to be invisible. As often happens with monuments, this creates unexpected meanings and associations. Who would think how neatly post-1989 society’s crises over legitimacy and its interpretation in connection with the 1956 revolution can be seen in this symbolic space?