Disappearing high-water marks in Budapest

MAGYARUL

"And shall your children ask ye tomorrow  
what this stone is in your temple,  
thus shall ye say unto them:  
Let the last generation hear  

that the waters of the Danube reached this high.."  

   

The last comprehensive study on the high-water marks of Budapest was completed in 1977. György Rajna’s “Flood tables in Budapest” was published only two years later, in 1979, in the 21st volume of Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából (Studies from the Past of Budapest). This short span of time was enough to force the author to add a short addendum, that during these two years two flood tables of 1838 disappeared from two buildings in Ferencváros, and two other were demolished together with the house in Újpest. 35 years have passed since the publication of this study. What has been the fate of the carefully collected and documented tables? This is what I tried to survey. 

A nice example of the rescue of a flood table: Ferencváros, Bokréta utca 32.

Pamätné tabule ľadovej povodne z roku 1838 v meste Ostrihom

MAGYARUL 

Históriu spúšte ľadovej povodne poznáme najmä z udalostí v Budapešti. Barón Miklóš Wesselényi a gróf Széchenyi István v svojich pamätiach opísali udalosti takmer z minúty na minútu. Ako nastalo nakopenie ľadu, ako sa pretrhli hrádze, ako zaliala voda ulice. Preto sa často stáva, že túto povodeň nazývame Budapeštianska. Táto povodeň ale narobila škody po celej dĺžke Dunaja, od Nyergesújfalu až po Moháč. Medzi prvými zatopenými mestami bolo aj mesto Ostrihom. Ako pamätné memento ostali po celom meste v kameni zamrznuté ruky na mramorových tabuliach, ktoré ukazujú dátum a hladinu vody pri tejto udalosti. Vydajme sa spolu vypátrať, aký bol v tom čase skutočný stav Dunaja v tomto kráľovskom meste.

  

Survivor of the 1838 flood - The horse-apple tree on the Margaret Island

Between March 6th and 18th, 1838, the Margaret island between Buda and Pest ceased to exist. For two weeks the whole island, a property of Archduke Joseph, the Palatine of Hungary was under water, while the moving ice-shield completely devastated it, on the 13th march. After the flood went down, replenishing works took place, clearing away almost all of the memories of the devastation. After the II. World War, the small, yellow palatine summer house was torn down, with the marble slab marking the high water mark of 1838. In the 1920s Gyula Krúdy, a known Hungarian writer described the “Seven chieftain sycamore tree”, which was broken in the icy flood, then grew 7 new branches. This tree has also disappeared since. Only one tree remained on the Margaret island, which still bear the marks of the flood, an old Horse-apple tree.