Árvízi hangok. Az 1878-as miskolci árvizet megélt személyek történetei
Voices of the Flood. Reminiscences by the Survivors of the 1878 Miskolc Flood

Summary/Abstract: The sudden flooding that hit Miskolc at night time on 30 August 1878 changed the lives of thousands of people in a few hours. Despite the fact that out of all the natural disasters of the nineteenth century this flood claimed the most lives, neither the Miskolc disaster nor the one that took place seven months later at Szeged have received much scholarly attention, even at the level of general interest. On the contrary, contemporary media was acutely aware of the tragedy, recording events and the experiences of people, who had witnessed the terror of the summer disaster. The study attempts to make the voices of flood survivors heard, by reconstructing who they were, their lives before the flood, their experience on the fateful night and how it affected their lives afterwards if they managed to survive. Fifteen stories of widows, elderly men, bachelors, children and family men have been reconstructed from narrative and statistical sources to shed light on the perceptions and experiences of the survivors. As the number of narratives is insufficient for overarching conclusions about ‘crisis management strategies’, the aim of the study is simply to present the reconstructed life stories of survivors. In conclusion, however, the narratives do show that the chances to rebuild lives after the flood largely depended on the flexibility of the bread-winner’s occupation and its adaptability to new conditions.

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