King of Hungary
gigatos | February 22, 2022
Summary
Apostolic King of Hungary (Hungarian apostoli magyar király) was the title of the head of state of the Kingdom of Hungary with its lands and possessions from the year 1000 to 1918 and de jure from 1920 to 1946. The bearers came from several dynasties (including, in the final phase, from the House of Habsburg-Lorraine).
The Hungarian royal title originated with the coronation of the previous Hungarian Grand Duke Stephen I as King of Hungary in the year 1000 (according to other sources 1001), after he converted to Christianity. In 1758, Pope Clement XIII bestowed the title suffix apostolic.
The first holders of the kingship came from the House of Árpád. They were followed by partly short-lived dynasties such as the Czech Přemyslids, the Bavarian Wittelsbach dynasty, the French House of Anjou, the German House of Luxembourg, briefly the Polish Jagiellons and, with the coronation of Ferdinand I in 1524, the House of Habsburg.
The dynasty provided the kings of Hungary largely constantly until 1918. However, their rule was always insecure; over the centuries, there were repeated uprisings and revolutions against the ruling dynasty, which were not least due to the confessional opposition between the Catholic Habsburgs and the minor nobility, which was to a large extent Calvinist. In addition, from 1541 the country was divided for centuries by Austria and the Ottoman Empire, which ended only after the Great Turkish War with the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699. At the same time, a rule independent of the Habsburgs was established in Transylvania, the Grand Duchy of Transylvania, whose princes formally gave up their claim to all of Hungary in 1570, but repeatedly provided military support for anti-Habsburg uprisings. The Turkish wars led to the devastation and depopulation of entire regions.
The Habsburgs were only able to counteract the Hungarians” aversion with the royal coronation of the Emperor of Austria and King of Bohemia Franz Joseph I (Hungarian I. Ferenc József) on June 8, 1867, which concluded the so-called Austro-Hungarian Compromise and the establishment of the constitutional hereditary monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The mood changed fundamentally in the wake of economic improvements during industrialization. The Magyars remained loyal to Franz Joseph I”s successor Charles I (as King Charles IV, Hungarian IV Károly), who was crowned the last king on December 30, 1916, and fought, side by side with the other peoples of the Habsburg Empire, for their king until his defeat in 1918 in World War I.
The Hungarian kingship ceased de facto with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary on October 31, 1918, and theoretically only with King Charles IV”s abdication on November 13, 1918. However, the monarch did not formally abdicate and continued to lay claim to the Hungarian crown until his death in 1922. In 1921, the Hungarian Parliament banished the Habsburgs from the royal throne, and the country maintained the monarchy without a king until the proclamation of the Republic of Hungary in 1946.
The three most important symbols of the Hungarian royal title were the three coronation insignia: St. Stephen”s crown, the orb and the scepter. The crown has been a Hungarian national symbol and part of the Hungarian coat of arms since 1867, but it had already de facto held this position before that.
The king of Hungary was first elected by the Hungarian nobility. In 1687, the Hungarian Diet declared the Hungarian crown hereditary, demanding more rights from the Habsburgs in return.
The royal residences or places of coronation of the Hungarian monarch were Stuhlweißenburg (Hungarian Székesfehérvár) in the Middle Ages, Pressburg (Hungarian Pozsony, Slovak Prešporok, since 1919 Bratislava) in the time of the Habsburg Monarchy and from 1867 the present Budapest. From that time on, the monarch resided in the Castle Palace and, dressed in Hungarian clothes and language, performed the official duties of the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire there for several weeks each year. However, his influence in the Hungarian half of the empire remained significantly less than in the Austrian half (the Austrian Empire), which was evident in unrealized reforms such as electoral law or the federalization of Hungary.
At the time of Austria-Hungary, the King of Hungary was officially also King of Croatia-Slavonia, Grand Duke of Transylvania and Grand Voivode of the Voivodeship of Serbia in personal union.
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