It was buried in the mud along the Danube River. The Crown of St. Stephen, along with the coronation jewels, was placed there by Hungarian revolutionary leaders (either Lajos Kossuth or Bertalan Szemere). The Habsburgs, with help from Russian troops, were stamping out the short-lived Hungarian Revolution of 1848 to 1849. The revolution was lost, but keeping the jewels from the Habsburgs was a consolation. The consolation was short-lived as well.
In September of 1853, near modern-day Orsova, Romania, a traveler discovered the crown and jewels inside a mud-covered wooden box. The jewels were immediately taken to Vienna, capital of the Habsburgs. There was some relief when the jewels were returned to Hungary, as the Crown of St. Stephen had by this time been an 850-year-old symbol of statehood.
In 1867, the crown was placed on the head of Franz Joseph, the monarch of the newly established Austro-Hungarian Empire—an empire that lasted 50 years. Shortly after Joseph’s death in 1916, the empire witnessed its demise in 1918, weeks before the end of World War I. From 1920 to 1944, the Kingdom of Hungary (though there was never a king) became the new home of the Crown of St. Stephen. By 1945, occupied by the Nazis but faced with imminent invasion by the Soviets, the Kingdom needed to find a new hiding place for the crown jewels.
Jewels Taken and Retaken
The Allies were sweeping through Europe. The Americans and British from the west and the Soviets from the east. It was a race to Berlin.By April 1945, the 12th U.S. Army Group, which fought alongside British, Canadian and French armies, was pushing through western Germany. Within this Army Group was the 86th U.S. Infantry Division, which had become part of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army on April 19, and was moving through southern Germany. A week later, on April 27, the division crossed the Danube, heading toward Munich, and, ultimately, the Austrian border.
While the 86th was sweeping across Austria and the Third Ukrainian Front was sweeping through Hungary, the Nazi-installed prime minister of Hungary, Ferenc Szalasi, was caught between two invading forces. He fled Budapest to Austria and was captured in Mattsee on May 2 by troops of the 86th. In Szalasi’s possession were the Hungarian crown jewels—a scepter, an orb, mantle, coronation robe and sword, and the Crown of St. Stephen.
Considering the fact that the Soviets were now occupying Hungary, the crown jewels were handed over to the Americans for safekeeping. The jewels, stowed in a black bag, were safely transported to Wiesbaden in western Germany, part of the American Zone. Szalasi, for his trouble, was taken by the Soviets, placed on trial, convicted of war crimes, and executed.
American-Hungarian Relations
Shortly after the end of World War II, the Cold War between the former allies of the western democracies and the Soviet Union began. The Soviet-backed communist government of Hungary showed little concern about regaining its Christian-themed symbols. And so the jewels remained in America.Over the ensuing decades, America and Hungary’s diplomatic relations were under constant strain. The Hungarian Communist regime proved to be consistently suspicious of espionage, often in cases where there was no espionage. Diplomats were often forced to leave the country or prevented from returning.
In 1956, Hungary experienced another revolution. The revolution, as it had been a century before, was short-lived and crushed, again, by the Russians. One of the most vocal critics of the communist rulers was Cardinal József Mindszenty, who had been archbishop of Hungary since 1945 and had been imprisoned since 1949. When the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 ended after 12 days, with thousands killed and hundreds of thousands fleeing to the West (with approximately 30,000 settling in America), Mindszenty, freed from prison, fled to safety inside his own country. He found a place of refuge in the U.S. embassy in Budapest.
Diplomatic Considerations
A few months before Mindszenty left Budapest, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, of President Richard Nixon’s National Security Council Staff, sent a dispatch to the Presidentʼs Assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger, entitled, “The Crown of St. Stephen: Should We Return It?”Sonnenfeldt understood the difficulty of returning such an important national and Christian symbol to a nation that was both anti-nationalist and atheist. It was difficult not just because of optics, but also because of the large Hungarian American population that was adamantly against such an action while the country was under communist control. He noted that returning it would be viewed as “a breach of the trust under which we have safeguarded the Crown since 1945” and that it was this difficulty that was the primary reason the Hungarian government had not pressed for its return.
A Convincing Argument
It took the administration of President Jimmy Carter before such action was strongly considered. But nearly six years had passed since Sonnenfeldt had sent his dispatch, and the countries’ diplomatic relations had continued to slowly improve.“The Communist regime in Hungary is a far cry from being democratic,” he wrote, “but over the past few years, Hungary has developed into the most internally liberal country in the Warsaw Pact: a tolerant attitude toward dissidents, good church-state relations and a modus vivendi with the Vatican, openness to Western information, a relatively liberal travel and emigration policy, and an innovative, decentralized economic system.”
He conceded that Hungarian Americans opposed the action because it would appear to legitimize the communist regime, but added that “[f]or most Americans, return of the Crown would not be an issue, and return would probably be supported as a moral act.” He provided seven more reasons for returning the crown, including that it would “concretely support our long-range goal of encouraging greater autonomy, national identity and Western orientation in Eastern Europe.”
Carter’s Choice
Carter had been in office less than six months when Vance sent his letter. America had held Hungary’s most important symbols for more than three decades, far longer than had the mud along the Danube. Carter was convinced and announced his decision to return the Crown of St. Stephen to Budapest. Public outcry was immediate.With the world still more than a decade from the end of the Cold War and being a new president, it indeed took political courage for President Carter to make this decision.
A Public Ceremony
In a religious twist, the 1,000-year-old Crown of St. Stephen was presented to the Hungarian government in Budapest on Jan. 6, 1978, the day of the Epiphany, considered the day the magi brought gifts to Jesus in Bethlehem. The crown was presented by an American delegation, which included Kaiser, Sec. Vance, Sen. Adlai Stevenson, Congressman Lee Hamilton, and Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the Hungarian biochemist who had won the Nobel Prize in 1937.
In order to make it appear as though the ceremony was not politically driven, Kaiser requested that Kadar not be present at the ceremony. The request was fulfilled. There was another request that was fulfilled shortly after the ceremony. It was during this week in history, on Jan. 31, 1978, that the Hungarians, complying with one of the stipulations made by the State Department, placed the crown jewels on public display.
In March, Hungary was given Most Favored Nation status, and American-Hungarian diplomatic relations continued to improve. In 1989, communism fell. The following year, Jozsef Antall became Hungary’s first freely elected prime minister in nearly 50 years.
In response, Antall raised his glass and toasted, “We have restored the old Hungarian coat of arms and the holy crown—according to tradition, the crown of King Stephen the Saint was preserved by you. And sometime in the future, historian may find that the return of the crown played a very important role to once again being able to identify ourselves within our own self. … I raise my glass to eternal friendship of the United States of America and Hungary.”
