Photo Album of the 1919 May Day Celebration in the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
48 original, vintage, black and white photographs. Image size: 55 × 40 mm. In original red cloth. 12 album card leaves. The binding is slightly worn, the photos are in good condition.
Unique photographic documentation of the 1919 May Day celebration in Budapest. Showing the parades, demonstrations, propaganda posters, buildings and statues that arose in the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, a communist revolution that installed the Béla Kun régime, lasting 133 days.
The capital was changed for the celebration, buildings were newly structured for May Day, planned and designed by the chief Hungarian avant-garde artists, just as the posters that were placarded entire walls in the city. These iconic revolutionary posters appear in many of these photographs, among others Béla Uitz’s “Vörös katonák, előre” (Red Soldiers Advance!) Róbert Berény’s “Fegyverbe! Fegyverbe” (To Arms! To Arms/) Bertalan Pór “Világ proletárjai egyesüljetek” (Proletarians of the World, Unite!) and Mihály Biró’s “Red Man with a Hammer”. Other images show the temporarily erected sculptures and other structures in Budapest, and also workers marching with bicycles or chariots ornamented with political messages.
Such photographs have become the hallmark of the short-lived era. The statues and building structures were destroyed in the toppling of the régime led by Admiral Miklós Horthy, the victorious Romanian army occupation and the subsequent White Terror of 1920–21 led by Horthy’s government.
This unique album serves as a genuine representation of the atmosphere of the most important celebration of the labour movement during the proletarian dictatorship.
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Price: €8,000.00