The Young Emperor
A reader notes in correspondence that Franz Joseph was not always old — though the popular conception certainly is of the Emperor in his later years. Here is the young Franz Joseph (or Ferenc József),...
View ArticleReclaiming his Birthright
Blessed Emperor Charles’s two homecomings to Hungary after the overthrow of the Hapsburgs are worthy of the greatest spy novels, except they are fact: the hushed secrecy and underground preparations,...
View ArticleSt. Zita?
Church Opens Investigation into Sanctity of Zita of Bourbon-Parma, Wife of Blessed Charles and Last Empress of Austria-Hungary It was announced recently that Mgr. Yves Le Saux, Bishop of Le Mans in the...
View ArticleHapsburg Hebraica
Empress Zita and Emperor Charles of Austria are prayed over by a Jewish rabbi. After the passing of the Hapsburg empire, which had been so protective of its Jewish subjects (especially compared to the...
View Article‘The Tolstoy of Transylvania’
In his column in the Daily Telegraph, former editor Charles Moore praises Miklos Banffy as ‘the Tolstoy of Transylvania’. Ardent Banffyites like yours truly are always pleased when the Hungarian...
View ArticleRelic of Blessed Charles in Catalonia
In October of last year, a relic ex ossibus of Blessed Charles I was formally received at the Basilica Church of Our Lady of Mercy & St. Michael Archangel in Barcelona, the capital city of the...
View ArticleThomas Molnar, 1921–2010
The Catholic philosopher and historian Thomas Molnar died last week in Virginia at eighty-nine years of age, just six days short of reaching his ninetieth year. Born Molnár Tamás in Budapest in 1921,...
View ArticleCharles of Austria
TODAY IS THE first feast of Blessed Charles since the announcement last December that the cause for the canonisation of his wife, Zita of Bourbon-Parma, has been opened as well. In an age when most...
View ArticleHungary Reasserts Sovereignty
Deputy PM Navracsics asserts to shocked Commissioner that Council of Europe “cannot impose anything which runs counter to our constitution” From ALEXANDER SHAW in Brussels Hungary yesterday declared...
View ArticleSquabbles Over Szekler Flag
In Transylvania, a “flag war” has broken out between Romanian politicians and the representatives of the Hungarian-speaking Szekler people. As România Libera reports, no one is offended by flying the...
View ArticleL’Osservatore Romano goes Hungarian
Magyarophiles will be pleased to learn that L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, will begin appearing in Hungarian. The new edition will appear every other week as a four-page insert into Új...
View ArticleThe End of Liberalism
Viktor Orban on the end of the liberal age and the threat to Europe In a speech to supporters at the Fidesz party’s fourteenth annual Kötcse picnic, the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has...
View ArticleLetter to the Editor
SIPPING a postprandial Coke last week while flipping through the Irish Times, my wandering eye was drawn towards that newspaper’s report on the Madrid congress of the European People’s Party, the...
View ArticleOliver VII
Oliver VII by Antal Szerb, trans. by Len Rix Pushkin Press (2013), £12, 208 pages Hungarian by nationality, Catholic by faith, Jewish by birth — Antal Szerb was capable of touching the boundaries of...
View Article‘Solving’ Middle Europe
Ralph Adams Cram’s First-World-War Plan for Redrawing Borders Ralph Adams Cram was not just one of the most influential American architects of the first half of the twentieth century: he was a rounded...
View ArticleFrom Buda towards Pest
A 1959 view from the Vienna gate of Budapest’s Castle district Taken in 1959, a photograph in the Fortepan archive shows two girls standing on the stone bench of the Vienna Gate — rebuilt in 1936 to...
View ArticleThe Saints are Glad
MMXXII Wishing you a blessed and happy new year I love this photo of Blessed Charles — here still the heir to the throne — inspecting Austro-Hungarian troops in the Südtirol in 1916. On the far right...
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