HUNGARY’Sorigin story is a set of myths about certain heroes, villains, and rightful territorial claims that seem so obvious and normal that you don’t stop to question how the story came to be or who is missing.

Hungary’s story involves princes and kings and nobility (not peasants, like my ancestors), a handful of extraordinary “Magyar” men (not women, like me), recurring white horses, and a precious homeland.

THEUgric tribes also spoke a unique language (remotely related to Finnish and Estonian), which set them proudly apart in this region...

TWOhundred years later (in the easy-to-remember year 1000), Árpád’s great-great grandson Prince Vajk was crowned Hungary’s very first king. Calling himself “King Stephen” (István), he is a hero in Hungary’s national story for recognizing the importance of Christianity.

An important (but often forgotten) footnote is that the strongest nobles were busy repressing a major peasant rebellion elsewhere, leaving Hungary undefended as the Ottomans pushed northward.

Hungary was also experiencing internal strife because of the Reformation: Roman Catholics and Protestants were too busy killing each other to worry about the Ottoman threat!

THEtraditional story emphasizes how Turkish occupation devastated Hungary’s population through warfare and high taxes. But the occupiers also brought new cultural traditions to the region, as well as astronomy, medical science, navigation, and a numerical system. They built beautiful mosques and bath houses (some of which you can still visit today) and introduced paprika and coffee to the Hungarian diet.

Under Ottoman Turkish rule, many Hungarians were free from Catholic rulers’ interference and converted to Protestantism; a few Hungarians even converted to Islam, making Ottoman-ruled Hungary a much more religiously diverse place! The Ottomans also fought viciously against the Austrian Habsburgs, laying siege (unsuccessfully) to Vienna.

ITwas the intensely Catholic Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I (aka “hogmouth” due to his unfortunate Habsburg chin), who finally kicked the Turks out of Hungary in 1683, and according to myth, saved Christendom. The triumphant Leopold (a Viennese German) lorded his victory over the provincial nobles, and boasted of his cultural superiority.

Hungarian nobles who were Catholic fared better. Leopold changed the fortunes of a young bishop named György Széchényi, who could trace his noble ancestry back to Árpád (he was a “real” Magyar).

Two years after the Ottomans left Hungary, Leopold appointed Széchényi the Archbishop of Esztergom. (Esztergom, located in Western Hungary, is the center of Hungarian Catholicism to this day.) Leopold also granted Széchényi a large chunk of land in central Hungary, all along the south shores of Lake Balaton.

You may recall that Lake Balaton is the largest body of water in the Carpathian Basin, and that it is shallow, and muddy, and 77 km long, and that it is named after the Slavic word for swamp ("blato").

Surrounding Lake Balaton are rich agricultural fields and vineyards. And it was on these gently-sloping southern hills overlooking Lake Balaton (which now belonged to Archbishop Széchényi), that my relatives worked the land. They were serfs — agricultural laborers bound under the feudal system to toil on a nobleman’s enormous estate. My family’s history would be intertwined with the noble Széchényi family from this point forward.

ANDthen came another hero in Hungary’s national story. Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II, one of the richest nobles in Hungary (owning thousands of acres of land), responded to Habsburg arrogance and oppression in 1703 by leading peasants, and eventually other nobles, against the Habsburgs. This was Hungary’s first significant anti-Habsburg rebellion, and a rare, if fleeting, example of collaboration between nobles and peasants!

ONEof my favorite figures at this time was Joseph II (Maria Theresa’s son, Marie Antoinette’s brother), who ruled the Habsburg Empire 1765-1790, half of the time with his mother.

It always strikes me as funny that Joseph II took on the persona of “Count Falkenstein” and traveled incognito to see what his peasants thought of his Empire. He was fluent in French, German, Italian, and Magyar (a difficult language — impressive!) and liked to show off his language skills. Learning about the miserable, slave-like conditions of his subjects, Joseph II tried to abolish serfdom in 1781, an idea the Magyar nobility (who benefitted so greatly from their labor) adamantly opposed. He also tried to impose the German language throughout the Habsburg Empire in an effort towards sovereign unity. The Magyar nobility, many of whom didn’t even speak Hungarian themselves, were appalled at this attack on Maygar identity, proud as they were of their country’s unique mother tongue.

Ferenc Széchényi also became prominent in Marcali — the nearby town where my family members eventually settled. He used his Marcali castle as a boarding school for promising boys with poor backgrounds, training them to become important lawyers and reformers.

TWOdecades later, in 1825, Ferenc’s son István Széchenyi emerged as an important reformer himself. He proudly donated a year’s income from his numerous landed estates to establish the Hungarian Academy of Sciences—a gesture he hoped his fellow noblemen, who all lived with extraordinary advantages, would follow (some did). He became a national hero, too.