The Nazi elephant

Whoever yesterday morning arrived along the Múzeum street to the Little Boulevard, had a special experience. Due to the unbearable tension in style and quality between the 19th-century neoclassical building of the National Museum and the recent glass-and-steel mammoth of the nearby Calvin Center, the space-time continuum was ruptured, and the vortex threw to the surface an Indian elephant in full dress, complete with a throne and a maharaja.


Such phenomenon is absolutely common in Budapest, whose streets since time immemorial are unexpectedly flooded by elephants which then just as suddenly disappear in the nothing. A proof is this photo by Endre Friedmann from 1958 showing a whole herd of elephants marching along the Theresa (at that time Lenin) Boulevard towards the Andrássy (at that time People’s Republic, some months earlier Hungarian Youth and even earlier Stalin) Boulevard: maybe it was the accelerated rhythm of name changes to cause such space-time fluctuation.


That the unexpected appearance of elephants on the streets of big cities is a concomitant of great political earthquakes is proved with many examples by twentieth-century Russian history. Beginning with the elephant, which appeared in 1916 at the imperial residence of Saint Petersburg’s Tsarskoe Selo and disappeared within a short time together with Nicholas II and his family feeding it on this picture. But on this we will write another time: the elephants of St. Petersburg have their own secret history.



And ending with the one that appeared in Chernobyl at the end of the 1980s. In this case, however, it was the socialist reality that proved more virtual: the Soviet Union disappeared and the elephant was left.



Thus it is just natural that the third, most shocking event of 20th-century Russian history, the Great Patriotic War was also accompanied by the emergence of an elephant, which, similarly to the war, came from Germany.


The elephant named Punch arrived together with the circus captured in Berlin as a trophy by Marshal Zhukov. In Moscow it was accommodated in the famous Ugolok Durova Animal Theatre founded in 1912 by animal trainer and clown Vladimir Durov. Its caretaker, Karl Stvora, who also came as part of the trophy, led it to a walk every day to the nearby Suvorov Square, either alone or with the camel of the circus, to the great pleasure of the people of Moscow.

The theater’s founder Vladimir Leonidovich Durov and his piglet, ca. 1910

The building marked is the Ugolok Durova Animal Theater. The oblong square to the left is Suvorov Square (before 1917, Catherine Square) with the Catherine Garden along its northern side and the characteristic five-pointed star-shaped building of the Theater of the Soviet Army which can be seen on the photos below. Click for full map



Krilov: The elephant and the pug-dog (1809)

По улицам Слона водили,          Как видно напоказ - Известно, что Слоны в диковинку у нас -     Так за Слоном толпы зевак ходили. Отколе ни возьмись, навстречу Моська им. Увидевши Слона, ну на него метаться,        И лаять, и визжать, и рваться,        Ну, так и лезет в драку с ним.        “Соседка, перестань срамиться,- Ей шавка говорит,- тебе ль с Слоном возиться? Смотри, уж ты хрипишь, а он себе идет                  Вперед И лаю твоего совсем не примечает”.- “Эх, эх! - ей Моська отвечает,- Вот то-то мне и духу придает,     Что я, совсем без драки, Могу попасть в большие забияки. Пускай же говорят собаки:    “Ай, Моська! знать она сильна,        Что лает на Слона!”

An elephant was led along the streets,           so people would see it: as you know, elephant is a rarity at us,      so the crowd flocked after it. A pug fell among them, from nowhere, and as soon as he saw the elephant,        started barking and screaming at it,        showing that he would fight with it. “Come on”, a spitz says, “with the elephant        you’d like to tinker? Stop it! You see: you are barking at it, and it just goes                  ahead, not even hearing your noise.” “Eh!” the pug answers. “It’s a sign     of my greatness of spirit, that I     absolutely without a fight     can put to flight so big bullies! Just let the dogs all say in an awe:     “Well, the pug! he’s a real macho!        he has even barked at the elephant!”

Dedushkin’s blog also quotes a contemporary recollection:

“Nowadays probably very few people remember the elephant which used to live at the Ugolok Durova. For us it was like a prisoner of war, as it was brought from Germany for war reparation, together with a German to take care of it. We children, whose fathers were killed or came home as invalids, even fifteen years after the end of the war hated all Germans. To us “German” and “Nazi” was one and the same, and we spent our revenge on the elephant and its caretaker. We climbed over a hole in the fence (all holes in all fences were ours) and started throwing stones on the elephant and its caretaker. The guard caught us, and we were sincerely wondering: how’s that he’s standing up for the Nazis – does not know that these all Germans, therefore Nazis? We hit the caretaker with the stones on the head so much that he had to be taken to the hospital. This is how we revenged ourselves for our fathers and relatives, and we did not run away even when it was clear that we cannot avoid being caught. But then some strange thing happened. We were not punished, and we started to realize that things are not exactly as we thought… A few weeks later our fathers – whoever had one – collected us, they bought vodka, sausage, and certainly some more things as well, and we set off somewhere: as it turned out, to the Ugolok Durova, to the German. He lived in the elephant’s house, because the only stove was there, such a little iron stove, because without that there would have been terribly cold all over winter. They spoke to him in German as much as they could, because he spoke very bad Russian. All his head was bandaged. But then somehow they managed to discuss with them what they wanted, then they all drank, he gave us hand, and told something that we did not understand, and then we children were sent home. My father came home late, drunk. The next day we learned that all the relatives of the German died in a bomb attack, and he had nobody in this world besides the elephant, and that he spent all his poor earnings to buy cabbage and beets to it, while he drags on from one day to another. If you knew how ashamed we felt! If we were punished, then we would have thought we were right, but like this… We collected all our money (we were collecting it for soccer buttons, it was the dream of every child to have HIS OWN team), and we went to the central market hall to buy some boxes of vegetables. We spent all the money on this, we wanted to mend what we had done. We took it to the elephant. The caretaker came to meet us, but I will never forget: the elephant did not let him to come to us, it blocked his path, and when he kept trying to come, it wrapped its trunk around it and lifted him in the air. This is how it defended him. We gave over the vegetables and left. At home we told everything, and my mother began to cry. And the next evening my dad brought me a soccer button team.”

The elephant with Gagarin and his family

Fever

In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orfices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over the others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another. At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry. The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more or less blindly.

Bashō

Fervor

En mi forma temporal, la de cien huesos y nueve orificios, hay también algo que, a falta de una denominación más adecuada, podría llamarse duende volátil, ya que recuerda una tela fina que se frunce y echa a volar elevada por el soplo más suave de viento. Fue precisamente ese algo lo que hace muchos años se puso a escribir poemas, primero solo por diversión, aunque aquella tarea no tardó mucho en llenar toda mi existencia. Tengo que reconocer que ese algo se hundía a menudo en una melancolía tan grande que se sentía decidido a abandonar, mientras otras veces se hinchaba de soberbia lo bastante para complacerse en ilusorios triunfos sobre los demás. Desde que se dedica a la poesía no ha tenido ni un momento de calma, atormentado por toda clase de dudas. Un día en el afán de vivir una vida segura, decidió ponerse al servicio de la corte; otro día, deseando medir el abismo de su ignorancia, intentó convertirse en hombre de ciencia, pero su amor insaciable a la poesía lo salvó de lo uno y de lo otro. Porque de hecho no conoce otro arte que el de componer versos, por lo cual se limita a él con resignación.

Bashō

555

Skyline of Belgrade in 1456, a reconstruction by Marko Radosavljević, and the fortress on the first Austrian military survey of 1769-1772

…years ago, on 22 July 1456 the Hungarian and Croatian defenders of the fortress of Belgrade led by the Hungarian governor János Hunyadi and his brother in law, Mihály Szilágyi, lord-lieutenant of Temes county, after three weeks of siege fought off the Ottoman army led by Sultan Mehmed II, outnumbering them ten-fold. The heavy defeat broke the impulse of the Ottoman conquest three years after the fall of Constantinople (1453) and stopped its European advance for seventy years.

The round anniversary of 2006 was remembered by a large number of publications, events and exhibitions, while this one by much less. One of the few is the 2010/12 issue of the journal Várak, kastélyok, templomok (Fortresses, castles, churches), entirely dedicated to the anniversary.

The “heritage tourism journal” Várak, the youngest (2005) but also the most beautiful among the Hungarian journals of cultural heritage and art history, fills a serious gap. It consciously intends to match a popular interest in its field, where only professional journals have been hitherto published, but its articles are always written by the best representatives of the respective topics. Its theme, the military fortresses of Hungary has been almost entirely absent from the education of local art history. And as – due to the troubled centuries of the region in the late middle ages and early modern age – the various systems of defense often changed within the country, by reconstructing these blurred lines it often calls attention to forgotten historical relationships which lends a new importance to some modest ruins and their neighborhood, mainly known by locals and tourists.

What new can be said about Belgrade, five years after 2006? This thematic issue meets the question, rather than by describing the siege and the fortress once more, by offering a series of articles on fortresses and churches that are somehow linked to it, and in whose web the place and historical role of Belgrade is more clearly defined.

The fortresses and churches reviewed in this issue on the map of 15th-century Hungary

Valentin Cseh, the author of the most recent book and a detailed web summary on the late medieval fortress of Belgrade shows its importance within the 15th-century fortress system. The establishment of this defense line was begun by Emperor Sigismund against the Ottomans after the defeat of Nicopolis (1396), and it was completed by King Matthias Corvinus by reconquering Northern Bosnia from the Turks. This system of fortresses ran along 800 kilometers from the Adriatic through Syrmia and Northern Bosnia to the Southern Carpathians, and its key was just Belgrade at the meeting of the waterways along the Danube and the Sava with the ancient commercial and military road running from the Balkans to the north. „This fortress is the key of the country, a gate of Hungary, the easiest entrance into this land,” wrote the Franciscan Giovanni da Tagliacozzo. And when in 1521, after a two-month siege it finally fell in Turkish hand, Louis II, King of Hungary wrote: „Our country is now open to the Turks both on water and in land, and it cannot be happy and peaceful as long as Szabács and Belgrade are in the hands of the enemy.” He did not know yet how much he was right. Five years later, in 1526 the Ottoman army launched a definitive offensive, and the king also fell in the battle of Mohács, which marks the end of the medieval Hungarian kingdom.

The fortress of Belgrade today and the 15th-century southern fortress system

Some more key fortresses around Belgrade are visited by Csaba Csorba. The most important was the adjacent castle of Zimony/Zemun, which also had a significant role during the siege of 1456. Below Belgrade, along the Danube still stand two other important fortresses, Smederevo and Golubac, while Keve Castle, built on the opposite side of the river, does not exist any more, and Lászlóvár, built by Emperor Sigismund after the loss of Golubac to the Turks in 1427, is in ruins. It is at this point that the Danube becomes the largest river of Europe, so it is not surprising that during the siege of Belgrade the Turkish and Hungarian navy also played an important role.

The fortress of Golubac

The siege of Belgrade on an engraving of 1522

Besides Mihály Szilágyi and János Hunyadi, a prominent role was played in the siege by the Franciscan St. John of Capistrano, who had arrived to Hungary in May 1455 on behalf of Pope Calixtus III to organize a crusade against the Turks. István Zombori’s article reconstructs the routes of Capistrano during this year in Hungary, from his first encounter with the king and the nobility in Győr to his meeting with Hunyadi in Transylvania and his campaigns in the southern counties, by highlighting the role of Szeged which, as an important center of Observant Franciscans, had been known to him from the letters of his co-religionist San Giovanni di Marche, who from around 1430 led from here the missions among the Bogumils in the Balkans.

Giovanni di Bartolomeo d’Aquila: San Giovanni Capistrano in the battle of Belgrade

Just some days after the victory of Belgrade both Hunyadi and Capistrano fell victim to the plague (Mihály Szilágyi Mihály would fell into Turkish captivity four years later, and then beheaded in Istanbul as he was not willing to betray the weak points of the castle), and the journal dedicates an article to each church where they were placed to eternal sleep, even when this meant only a few decades in reality. St. John of Capistrano, writes Tamás Fedeles, wanted to be buried in the Observant Franciscan church of Újlak (today Ilok, Croatia), since his popularity could thus give a new impetus to the Franciscan mission in the Balkans. This coincided with the aspirations of the landlord of Syrmia Miklós Újlaki to build out an autonomous territory over the Drava river, also seizing Northern Bosnia and even obtaining the title of King of Bosnia from Matthias Corvinus. The presence of such a revered relics greatly increased the importance of the center of his lands and his prestige as a landlord. Soon after the death of Capistrano he initiated his canonization which, however, was realized only in 1690. Nevertheless, Újlak even so became the most important pilgrimage site of late medieval Hungary, which also brought a major economic boom, and the town was elevated to the rank of a free royal city in 1525. One year later, in the days after the battle of Mohács, the Turks set the city to fire, and the body of St. John of Capistrano disappeared.

A drawing on Turkish Belgrade in the book of poems by Ferenc Wathay, written during his Turkish captivity between 1602 and 1606

János Hunyadi was buried in the Cathedral of Gyulafehérvár (now Alba Iulia, Romania) as he had ordered already in 1442 when he made a major foundation for the restoration of the church. The precedents of this donation are reviewed by Nándor Udvarhelyi. In the spring of 1442 a 15 thousands strong Turkish army broke into Transylvania. Hunyadi and the bishop of Transylvania György Lépes encountered them at Marosszentimre (Sântimbru), but they were defeated, and the bishop also fell. Nevertheless, Hunyadi soon organized a new army and, reinforced by the troops of the above mentioned Miklós Újlaki, at Nagyszeben (Sibiu) he destroyed the enemy just as the much larger Turkish army sent as a retaliatory campaign some months later. The rich spoils were partly used to restore several churches – Gyulafehérvár, Marosszentimre, Alsóorbó (Gârbova de Jos) – damaged in the Maros (Mureş) valley along the path of the Turkish offensive, as well as to build a new Franciscan church in Tövis (Teiuş). Besides the stylistic similarities of the churches, the article also refers to the similarity of their fate, which also threatens hundreds of other Transylvanian monuments today. With the gradual disappearance of the Hungarian population in the Mureş valley, the Gothic churches remain unattended, and the Romanian national bureau of historic buildings does not provide for their protection. Of the church of Gârbova de Jos only the foundation walls can be seen, Sântimbru is threatening with collapse, and the church of Teiuş also has only a few faithful left around, without a priest.

The Gothic church of Sântimbru (Marosszentimre, Emrichsdorf, Romania), from here

On the tombstone of János Hunyadi in the Cathedral of Alba Iulia a summary is given by Árpád Mikó, one of the best experts of the history of Hungarian Renaissance art. The three sarcophagi standing in the southern nave of the cathedral are traditionally attributed to János Hunyadi, his younger brother, the “younger János” died in 1440, and his son László. However, the graves were ransacked on several occasions, and they were recomposed only in the 18th century. The original inscription of Hunyadi’s tomb, recently discovered by Ágnes Szalay Ritoók among the writings of the Renaissance bishop Antal Verancsics, attests it’s having been erected by King John Szapolyai in 1533, not by Hunyadi’s son King Matthias Corvinus around 1460 as it was previously supposed. It was Szapolyai who in 1529, just three years after the battle of Mohács offered an oath of loyalty to Sultan Suleiman, so he had all reason to improve his image by erecting a tombstone for the great conqueror of the Turks. The two side reliefs of Hunyadi’s tomb, representing a battle and the conduct of prisoners and made on the model of early 16th-century woodcuts, also fit the later date. Its original cover, however, is the one now attributed to László Hunyadi, on which the coats of arms of the Hunyadi and Szapolyai families, each held by an angel, appear together.




The international aspects of the victory of Belgrade are addressed by the articles of József Török and Géza Érszegi. Pope Calixtus III, a great international diplomat came to the papal throne in 1455, and he immediately took the oath to recover Constantinople which fell two years earlier. The Borja pope’s native Valencia and Gandia still had an important and recently conquered Moorish population at that time, so unlike most Western European countries, he had a first-hand impression of the seriousness of the threat of Islam. He immediately ordered a general collection for a future crusade, and the amount received was used to mount a navy which successfully occupied the Ottoman forces on the Aegean sea just at the time of the siege of Belgrade. On 29 June 1456 he issued a papal bull ordering a general daily prayer for the victory of Belgrade, for which the bells had to be rang every day between three o’clock – the death of Christ – and the vespers as a reminder. His nephew and successor Alexander VI also renewed his order in the year of jubilee of 1501 – whose income he also ordered to the future crusade –, fixing at noon the time of bell-ringing which has thus since then reminded every day all over the Christian world of the siege of Belgrade.

The probably earliest (1468) representation of the victory of Belgrade in a fresco in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Olomouc (Bohemia), with St. John Capistrano in the center (detail)

According to the  liturgical historian József Török, the original call by Calixtus – three Ave on the bell before vespers – survive in the prayer of Angelus (whose best known “representation” was painted by Millet just four hundred years after the victory of Belgrade), although others dispute it. However, one more important liturgical moment is surely connected with the victory: the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ on the Mount Tabor on 6 August. This feast which, on Eastern influence, was sporadically celebrated in Western Europe from the eleventh century, was made a general feast on the memory that he received notice of the victory of Belgrade on that day.  As the article of the ethnographer Gábor Barna points it out, one of the earliest Hungarian churches with this patrocine is the Salvator Chapel on the hill of Csíksomlyó (Şumuleu, Romania) which in the local tradition was founded by Hunyadi himself to commemorate the victory. Even if he probably had no time for that in his last days, it is highly possible that the chapel was built by the local households ordered by Hunyadi himself to the service of the Franciscan convent of Csíksomlyó, even if the present building dates of 1678. And as the pilgrimage to this place with the participation of several hundreds of thousands at every Pentecost ends with the visit of this chapel, therefore even if Capistrano’s tomb in Újlak/Ilok was lost, the most important modern Hungarian site of pilgrimage is nevertheless connected with the victory of Belgrade.

Much more could be added to this mosaic, but even this much revives the historical context of the events of 1456. It would be particularly interesting how the Turkish tradition has preserved the memory of this day. We know that a janissary of Croatian origin, Konstantin Mihailović wrote a detailed story of the siege, and also 16th and 17th-century Turkish historians refer to it several times. But what? We hope that our Turkish readers would share it with us.

Two 17th-century Turkish miniatures on the siege of Belgrade in 1456

In the valley of Liébana

„Not many of the Cantabri were captured; for when they had no hope of freedom, they
did not choose to live, either, but some set their forts on fire and cut their own throats,
and others of their own choice remained with them and were consume in the flames,
while yet others took poison in the sight of all. Thus the most of them
and the fiercest element perished.”
(Dio Cassius, Historia romana, 54.5.1)

No, this is not Berlin after the Allied bombing, this is the town of Potes in the heart of the Valley of Liébana, Cantabria, in 1937, one year after the beginning of the Civil War. When Franco’s army on 2 September 1937 entered Potes, they met with a spectacle of an almost complete devastation. According to the official reports, the previous night the Republicans, who had hitherto resisted the besiegers, set fire to the town before abandoning it. This is how the report drafted by the 6th Brigade of Navarre after the occupation describes the events:

“Two third of the settlement of Potes has been devastated by the fire that was lasting even as we entered the town. We have captured from the enemy 2 supply depots, 3 cars and a light truck, a deposit of dynamite, 8,000 kg flour and an optical equipment” (S.H.M. –Legajo 458 – Carpeta 14).

In fact, it has never been found out who was responsible for setting the town on fire, an it is characteristic that during the past eighty years no one attempted to find out the truth, just as in thousands of similar events of the Spanish Civil War. In any case, it is strange that the defenders set fire to the town while leaving their deposits untouched to the besiegers. However, the accused were many. A few months later, at the end of 1937 the twenty-three year old teacher and leader of the local Republican militia Eugenio Ortega Ruiz, before being executed under this charge, presented in his defense a record attesting that the fire-raisers of Potes had been arrested by them. This allegation did not help anything. It appears that this fire became a good excuse to get square with the local opposition.

Between 30 August and 4 September 1937 the troops occupying the smoldering ruins of Potes shot fourteen locals at the wall of the cemetery. The repression run through all the villages of the valley of Liébana, in such an arbitrary and outraged way and it was usual in all Spain.


This was the street along the market square, leading over the bridge to the upper part of the town, before the fire of 1937.


Either this square or the one across the river, facing the church was the market place since 1291, the reign of King Sancho IV. An edict of the king forced everyone going to the livestock market to leave their arms in the inn. The above photo was taken from the Torre del Infantado.



Nowadays every Monday is market day. No livestock market, only vegetables, where you can buy honey, the “quesucos” that is the cheese of Áliva smoked on green juniper wood, huge red onions, small chickpeas and grape-brandy, all characteristic products of the villages of the valley of Liébana. But livestock markets are also held in Potes six times a year, the most important one on the day of All Saints, November. It was established by John I back in 1379.



Before the destruction of the war, this was “the gallery of butter” in the Plaza de Potes, where the neighboring village women sold butter on every Monday. The huge cypress which almost hides the Torre del Infantado no longer exists.


Crossing the New Bridge in the 1950s. This part of the town was rebuilt by then, thanks to the “Devastated Areas Program” launched at the end of the war. In many ways this reconstruction completed the devastation. Nowadays still there are farmers who use such clogs of beech wood as we see in the picture.


The tower screened by the snow is the most characteristic building of Potes, the Torre del Infantado, erected in the 15th century by the family of Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marques of Santillana, who dominated the valley at that time and who made this settlement the center of Liébana. Today it houses a permanent exhibition on the famous Beatus of Liébana.

Archive photos by Eusebio Bustamante

Many ancient historians and geographers, Strabo, Silius Italicus, Florus, and even Horace recall the legendary courage and ferocity of the Cantabri who, for example, sang hymns of victory while being crucified by the Romans (Strabo). In the last quarter of the 1st century B.C. the emperor August had to personally intervene in the conquest and lead here his legions, together with an unusually large contingent – fifty thousand – of settlers to start the Romanization of Cantabria which has never been completed. According to the chronicles, August had to overcome a thousand difficulties on the way, from the inviable mountain paths to epidemics, and he was even close to being struck by lightning, which killed the slave who preceded him. Without doubt, the proverbial hardness of the Cantabri found a good ally in the natural walls and thick forests of the Peaks of Europe.


The view of Potes from the Hermitage of San Miguel, near the Monastery of Santo Toribio. From here we will give a tour to the valley of Liébana in the following days.


Sirena del mar. Sung by Ángel Roiz, Uznayo de Polaciones, Valley of Liébana. Collected by Alan Lomax, 1952-53