The idea and cultural history of statehood in Hungary

The paper presents the history of the interaction between statehood and culture. The literature focuses mainly on the cultural and organizational influence of large empires, but the changes in smaller regions are neglected. The analysis will look at Hungari- an historiographical narratives of the 20th century and changes in modern concep- tualisation in general, based on the history of celebrations in the second half of the 19th century. It also puts the different stages of the history of the state in context and within them the cult representing Christian culture and statehood. The paper aims to establish the concept of “state-creating culture” from a historical perspective and to demonstrate its potential application in explaining past processes, the first attempt to do so in the literature. The conceptualization and the attempt to apply the concept demonstrate that the derived concept is capable of illuminating and summarizing his- torical and cultural processes, since the analysis of the history of state and culture, tak- en as an example, explains the continuity of events and the survival of the community.