1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Budapest

BUDAPEST (see 4.734). In 1910 the civil pop. of Budapest was 863,735, showing an increase of 20.55% in the decade. To this must be added a garrison of 16,636 men, making a total pop. of 880,371. Of the total pop. 756,070 were Magyars, 78,882 Germans, 20,359 Slovaks and the small remainder was composed of Poles, Ruthenians, Serbs, Croatians, Rumanians and others. According to religion there were 526,175 Roman Catholics, 9,428 Greek Catholics, 6,962 Greek Orthodox, 86,990 were Protestants of the Helvetic and 43,562 of the Augsburg Confessions, 203,687 were Jews and the remainder belonged to various other creeds. During the World War the extraordinary increase in the population of Budapest diminished, the census Jan. 1 1921 showing a pop. of 1,184,616.

In the years immediately preceding the war there were over 6,000 students at the university, and from 4,000 to 5,000 at the Polytechnic Institute. A new faculty of political economy was founded at the university in 1919, and the Geological and Meteorological Institutes are also of recent foundation.

The new Tisher rampart in Romanesque-Gothic transition style, with a bronze statue of St. Stephen, rises round the Matthias church. At the N. extremity of the fortress is the Gothic building of the National Archives, unfinished in 1921.

The development of Budapest came to a standstill during the war, and the lack of housing accommodation caused great distress among the increased population. The city suffered severely during the Bolshevist ascendancy, and many robberies were committed by the Rumanian troops who occupied it in disregard of the decisions of the other Allied Powers (see Hungary). Fortunately, the English, American and Italian missions prevented the sacking of the museums and art galleries.

See Eugen Cholnoky, “The Geographical Position of Budapest,” Bulletin of the Hungarian Geographical Society, 1914–20, abridged.