„Lovon vagy gyalog”
”On horseback or on foot”

The creation and dismantlement of the Andrássy monument in the light of the sources

Summary/Abstract: On 19 February 1890, the day after the death of Count Gyula Andrássy, Sr., former Prime Minister of Hungary and Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary, Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza proposed a bill to the House of Representatives about erecting a monument for Andrássy. Since the inception of the idea there had been serious debates about whether the diplomat Andrássy should receive an equestrian or a standing statue. Finally, taking the family’s wish into account, they decided on the former. The end of Andrássy Avenue, the current Heroes’ Square was chosen as the statue’s location. György Zala won the competition to build the monument in 1893. The originally planned architectural framework designed by Albert Schickedanz, a semicircular colonnade, was discarded. In 1894, a decision was made to build the Millennium Memorial at the planned location. The memorial also designed by Zala and Schickedanz can be considered a more developed version of the Andrássy monument’s original architectural plan. The square in front of the Parliament was assigned as the new location of the Andrássy statue. The sculptor wanted to place the statue in front of the main facade, but this was refused both by professionals and decision makers due to practical considerations. Since Zala regularly missed deadlines, the statue was inaugurated only in 1906 in front of the Parliament’s southern facade. The decision to dismantle the statue, which was damaged during World War II, was made in 1945 because of the construction of the temporary Kossuth Bridge. The fate of the bronze statue’s pieces can be tracked until 1950, after that the fragments were most likely melted. The reconstructed version of the monument was erected in 2015-2016.

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