A River Runs Through It: The Danube River in Hungarian Strategy and Identity

The paper examines the dynamics by which the Danube was conceptualized in Hungarian modernity as both a physical and a symbolic object of national identity and international trade. From the Compromise of 1867 to the present day, the river has been conceptualized both as an outlet to the sea and as an object that binds Central European nations and defines Hungary’s environmental landscape. During the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the river was made navigable in its entirety for maritime access, while exiled Hungarians envisioned it as the central spine of Central European political cooperation. In the interwar
period, it was an object that showed how surreal the system of tightly contained nation-states really was. During the Cold War, it served as a site of Socialist cooperation, which inadvertently also catalysed a significant anti-socialist protest movement. Today, it has potential for use in Hungary's new international trade concepts. Yet it could also remain an economic “backwater” while serving as an object of environmental beauty and national identity.