Katasztrófa(történet)? Az 1880. évi zágrábi földrengés példája
Disaster (history)? The 1880 Earthquake in Zagreb

Summary/Abstract: The study comprise two main parts, the first being the summary of the most important recent developments in Disaster Studies, an academic field, which has attracted little or no attention in Hungarian historical research. In the past few years, historiographers have pointed out that the perception of natural events as disasters is a human construct shaped by cultural reflexes, such as religion, media and so on. The study then goes on to discuss the political, media and scientific reception of the 1880 Zagreb earthquake, an event that has not received much scholarly attention so far. Even though this particular earthquake brought on significant material damage and claimed human lives, it was not altogether exceptional in the life of the city. Contemporaries recorded several other instances of smaller-scale seismic activity causing minor damages in the decades preceding 1880. Nevertheless, the 1880 earthquake became the focus of increased attention partly due to political reasons. While emphasising a close Hungarian-Croatian relation was important for certain political figures at the time, some used the event to stress Croatian autonomy. In addition, even though the earthquake was not exceptional in the scientific sense, it had a great impact on sciences in general, as it was the direct reason behind setting up the first regular earthquake monitoring in Hungary. The system was launched on the first anniversary of the earthquake in 1881, which is very early even by international standards.

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