15 March
Day of the 1848/49 Revolution and War of Independence

15th of March. Day of the 1848/49 Revolution and War of Independence

On March 15, 1848, in response to the revolution that had broken out in Vienna two days earlier, radical Hungarian youths – including Sándor Petőfi, Mór Jókai, and Pál Vasvári – decided in Pest to print and make public the "12 Points" of their demands and Petőfi's poem Nemzeti dal ("National Song"), written just a few days before.

At the large gathering in front of the National Museum, tens of thousands of people eagerly listened to the points and Petőfi's poem. The crowd then marched to Buda, where they secured the terrified Governor’s Council's agreement to the requested changes. At the crowd's insistence, revolutionary leader Mihály Táncsics, who had been imprisoned, was released.

These events marked the beginning of the 1848 Hungarian revolutionary transformation, which would later require the defence of the achieved goals through an armed war of independence. Following the defeat of the revolution, the autocratic regime naturally banned any commemorations of the revolution, so patriots could only secretly mark the day.

In 1860, there was an attempt to hold a public commemoration, but the regime responded with force. Nonetheless, from the 1860s, especially among the youth of the time, gatherings were held to recall the events of 1848.

After the 1867 Compromise, the Habsburgs no longer officially prohibited March 15 commemorations, but the Hungarian government remained restrained, unwilling to offend the sensitivities of the monarch who had participated in suppressing the revolution. However, in 1898, on the 50th anniversary of the revolution, the entire Hungarian political elite officially celebrated the event, of course, advocating for reconciliation with the Austrians.

It was after World War I and the subsequent revolution that March 15 became a truly national holiday, celebrated as the legacy of the triumphant revolution. Under the Horthy regime, it was made an official national holiday. However, from the late 1930s, March 15 ceased to be merely a day marked by official speeches. It became a symbol for the popular writers, left-wing youths, and anti-fascist intellectuals, representing the desire for change and opposition to both Germany and the war.

After World War II, the communist regime in power embraced the centennial commemorations, emphasising the "world-revolutionary" and plebeian character of the events that had occurred a hundred years earlier. However, the regime’s ambivalence was shown by its decision to make March 15 a working day from 1951. Particularly after the 1956 failed revolution, the regime sought to suppress any public commemoration of the 1848 events.

In the late 1960s, the authorities invented the Revolutionary Youth Days, held in spring, during which they sought to merge the remembrance of March 15 with celebrations of the March 21st Hungarian Soviet Republic and the April 4th liberation from fascist occupation. Despite this, from the 1970s, March 15 became a day for the democratic opposition, especially among young people. In Budapest, protests became regular, particularly from the 1980s, at the Petőfi and Bem statues and at the Batthyány Memorial Flame. As a sign of the "thawing" of the regime, in 1987 March 15 was once again declared a national holiday. The March 15, 1989, rallies, calling for independence and democracy, justly became a landmark event in the series of happenings that led to the birth of democratic Hungary.

In 1991, the newly elected, democratic National Assembly officially declared March 15 a national holiday.