The Great War in the Museum of Military History
From Sarajevo to Paris … and Four Years in Between
The Military History Institute and Museum stands in the north-west corner of Budapest’s Castle District. Its new, permanent exhibition Hungary in the Great War, 1914–1918, which opened in May, could represent a milestone in the institute’s history. The birth of the museum, on 16 November 1918, was closely connected with the First World War. Those who established the collection and the archives themselves had fought in the war. The museum’s first appeal addressed the military commands returning from the war and those on the home front, requesting that for the benefit of later analysis, relevant war-time documents, diaries, notes, letters, photographs and objects be “donated as soon as possible with a view to their safe-keeping”. In 1929 the expanding collections could be moved to their present location, the building of the Nándor Barracks. The area had featured prominently in the 1686 siege of Buda. Later here stood the Grenadiers’ Barracks, where those sentenced to death for participating in the Jacobin conspiracy were held. The Kapisztrán Square wing was opened in 1847 and during World War I a Bosnian infantry regiment was stationed in the barracks. The building, which has always belonged to the Defence Ministry, steadfastly preserves the relics of military tactics and strategy. The museum’s permanent exhibitions provide visitors an insight into Hungary’s military history and its armed forces – from 1815 to 1968 – primarily with equipment, armaments documents and medals. The curators outline a military past in which, among the faceless military, there are iconic Hungarian soldiers and heroic deeds, discoveries and technical innovations. How can a new permanent exhibition, which concerns a war ending tragically for Hungary, with the declared centenary aim of going beyond the winners-losers dichotomy, as well as the political and military history relations of the war, fit into this scenario? Is a museum, for decades familiar with a particular form of discourse, able – alongside the homeland, the comradeship, the self-sacrifice and the use of force – to reflect on the changed structures of European society, to go beyond the boundaries related to the traditions of presenting the First World War? In what way can an institute with its own research field and collection assert that the exhibition is not only about conflicts, military theatres, battles, heroes and victims, and the brilliant developments in the history of military technology, but also about devastation and awfulness? The organisers have been restricted by the listed building, its dimensions and arrangement, its rows of halls and the existing exhibitions. The curators have aimed to overcome these disadvantages.