Hungarian and Romanian state officials spoke of the importance of Hungarian-Romanian cooperation as they on Saturday unveiled a statue in Cluj (Kolozsvar), Romania, of King Matyas (Matthias) which has been restored with the joint financial support of the two countries.
The ceremony revealing the huge equestrian statue by Janos Fadrusz (1858-1903), which first saw light of day on the main square in front of St. Michaels’s Church 109 years ago, was accompanied by a series of events in the city throughout the day.
Apostu Sorin and Attila Laszlo, the local government leaders, welcomed those assembled, and Hunor Kelemen, leader of Romanian-Hungarian party RMDSZ, Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen, Minister of National Resources Miklos Rethelyi and State Secretary of Culture Geza Szocs addressed the audience.
Kelemen said the statue was there to protect the spririt of the historical figure King Matyas, which has long lived among Transylvanian Hungarians.
„King Matyas belongs to the people of Cluj, Transylvania, Europe and Christianity,” he said.
Semjen called the statue cluster a three-fold symbol. First of all, it recalls King Matyas, the person, „who embodies our national self-expression”. At the same time, the statue „symbolises Hungarian perseverance, in the way it has weathered the storms of history and survived destruction in the Ceausescu-era”. „And thirdly, the story of the statue’s restoration is symbolic of Hungarian-Romanian cooperation,” Semjen said.
He insisted that the advancement of Hungarians in Transylvania was strongly bound to Romania’s success.
Rethelyi told the gathering he welcomed that Hungarians would now retain their identity and the city of Cluj had not lost its townscape over the years.
„This is one of the sacred locations of Hungarian historical memory,” the minister said, calling the statue one of the high points of Hungarian fine arts.
Cluj daily Szabadsag quoted historian Jeno Muradin as saying that twenty years ago the community of Cluj could not have possibly dreamt of the memorial being renovated. Indeed, it had been widely feared the statue cluster would be demolished, he said.
Laszlo Tokes, Deputy leader of the European Parliament and head of the Transylvanian Hungarian National Council (EMNT), addressing the ceremony, said that just as it had been awful to live as a Hungarian in Romania under Ceausescu and Funar (Mayor of Cluj in 1992-2004), „it was bad to live in Hungary under (former Socialist) Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany”. He called for the reunification of Hungarians under joint individual and community rights, being one of the „equal citizens of the Europe of a myriad of languages”.
Geza Szocs, Hungary’s state secretary for culture who was born and raised in Transylvania, said he welcomed the fact that the tensions surrounding a church procession on the square in 1992, with participation of Hungarian church and political figures, had now faded from memory.
Leaders of the Transylvanian historical churches blessed the statue and a choir from the historical castle town of Hostat and a Renaissance dance ensemble performed at the ceremony.
The north-western Romanian city, which once belonged to Hungary, is today considered among Romania’s most important cultural, academic and business centres in Romania, and boasts the country’s largest university, Babes-Bolyai University.
