Dunaújváros (pronounced[ˈdunɒuːjvaːroʃ]; also known byalternative names) is an industrial city inFejér County, CentralHungary. It is acity with county rights. Situated 70 kilometres (43 miles) south ofBudapest on the Danube, the city is best known for itssteelworks, which is the largest in the country. It was built in the1950s on the site of the former village ofDunapentele and was originally namedSztálinváros, before acquiring its current name in 1961.
The city replaced the village ofDunapentele ("Pantaleon up on the Danube"), named afterSaint Pantaleon.[3] The construction of this new industrial city started in 1949 and the original village was renamedSztálinváros ("Stalin City") in 1951. After theHungarian revolution of 1956, the new government renamed the city the neutralDunaújváros in 1961, which means "Danube New City" (New City on the Danube).
The city is also known by alternative names in other languages:German:Neustadt an der Donau;Latin:Intercisa; andSerbian:Пантелија,romanized: Pantelija.
This sectionneeds expansion with: information on Intercisa, and pre Ottoman period. You can help byadding to it.(January 2013)
Dunaújváros is one of the newest cities in the country. It was built in the 1950s during the industrialization of the country under Socialist rule, as a new city next to an already existing village,Dunapentele.
Dunapentele was not built until the 1950s. The construction started on theDanube's right bank.The area has been inhabited since ancient times. When Western Hungary was aRoman province under the namePannonia, a military camp and a town calledIntercisa stood in this place, at the border of the province. The Hungarians conquered the area in the early 10th century. The village ofPentele, named after the medieval Greek saint,Pantaleon, was founded shortly after.
City hall
Between 1541 and 1688 the village was underOttoman rule, and during the 150-year war, it was destroyed. During the freedom fight led byPrince Ferenc II Rákóczi ofTransylvania, the place was deserted again. In the 18th, century the village began to prosper. In 1830 the village was given the right to hold market days twice a week. In 1831 there was a cholera epidemic which caused a small-scale peasants revolt. In 1833 Pentele was granted town status(oppidum) by Ferdinand V. The citizens took part in the freedom fight in 1848–49.
After theSecond World War the new,Communist government started a major industrialisation programme, in support of its rearmament efforts. In 1949Dunaújváros was chosen as the site of the largest iron and steel works in the country. The focus on steel production had the purpose of arming the socialist territories in fear of a third world war. With a strong steel industry, they could quickly stock up on weaponry and machinery.[4] Originally they were to be built close toMohács, but the Hungarian-Yugoslavian relations worsened, and this new site was chosen, farther away from the Yugoslav border.[5] The city was designed to have 25,000 residents.
The construction of the city began on May 2, 1950, near Dunapentele. Within one year more than 1,000 housing units were built and construction on the factory complex began. The city officially took the name ofJoseph Stalin on April 4, 1952; its name wasSztálinváros 'Stalin City' as a parallel toStalingrad in the USSR.
The metal works (formerly called: Dunai Vasmű, nowISD DUNAFERR) were opened in 1954. The city had a population of 27,772 at this time; 85% of them lived in nice, comfortable apartments, while about 4,200 people still lived in uncomfortable barracks which originally provided "homes" for the construction workers.
In the middle of the 1950s, public transport was organized, with buses carrying 24,000 passengers each day. During the 1950s many cultural and sports facilities were built, the Endre Ságvári Primary School being the largest school in Central Europe in the 1960s. The official and obligatory architectural style and art movement of the communist system wassocialist realism. Per definition the style's meaning was communist, its form was national, and its preferred mode of representation was theallegory. There are several public statues and reliefs in the town, which represent the allegoric union of workers, peasants, and intellectuals, surrounded by traditional folk motifs. Thanks to the inspiration ofBauhaus the buildings and monuments of this era (1949–56), like the forge, the cinema, the theatre, the hospital, and the city's schools were characterized bystructural functionalism, but the ideological function resulted in classicist decorations, like columns, tympanums, and arcades, because of which the informal name of the style became 'Stalin's Baroque'[6].[7]
In 1956, the construction was hindered by an earthquake and a flood, and in October by the start of the1956 Hungarian Revolution. During the revolution, the city used its historical nameDunapentele again. TheRákóczi radio station, which was created by the revolutionaries, was broadcast from Dunapentele (in fact from a bus that was constantly moving around in the city so that it couldn't be located.) Even though the citizens of Dunapentele tried to defend their city, the Soviet army occupied the city on November 7, 1956. The city came under martial law and Soviet tanks were stationed throughout the city.
After the revolution, the city was still the "trademark city" of socialism in Hungary and was presented as such to foreign visitors. Among the visitors wereYuri Gagarin and the Indonesian presidentSukarno. The city also provided a scenic backdrop to popular movies.
In 1960, the ten-year-old city already had 31,000 residents who celebrated its anniversary.
On November 26, 1961, the city's name was changed toDunaújváros (Duna|új|város meaningDanube-new-city; "New City uponDanube". See alsoTiszaújváros) as a consequence of Stalin's death (1953) and theHungarian Revolution (1956).
In 1990 it became a city with county rights—as one of the then four, (now five) cities in the country that have this status but are not county capitals—in accordance with a new law that granted this status to all cities with a population over 50,000. Even though the population of Dunaújváros has been under 50,000 since 2008, it has kept its status as a city with county rights (along withHódmezővásárhely, which is in a similar situation).
The ISD DUNAFERR (formerly: Dunai Vasmű) factory complex is still an important enterprise in the Hungarian steel industry, and a major employer (as of 2020, it has 4,500 employees) in the area.
Today, Dunaújváros is home to many new infrastructures (Pentele Bridge, direct M6-M8 highway link betweenBudapest and Dunaújváros), the newSouth KoreanHankook factory, Europe's biggest tire factory ofHankook, andHamburger Hungaria, one of the largestcontainerboard manufacturers in Europe. This and other projects make Dunaújváros a new Hungarian boomtown.
Thanks to its formal political and economic importance, the communisturban design,[4] the socialist realist architecture, and its unique atmosphere the town is the considerable memento of communism. Many of the half-century-old buildings have received the protection of historic monuments, and the town is the focus of growing touristic interest.[8]
The local Municipal Assembly, elected at the2019 local government elections, is made up of 15 members (1 Mayor, 10 Individual constituencies MEPs, and 4 Compensation List MEPs) divided into political parties and alliances:[12]
^Horváth, Sándor (2017).Stalinism reloaded : everyday life in Stalin-City, Hungary. Sándor Horváth. Bloomington. p. 16.ISBN978-0-253-02686-6.OCLC965120483.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Meek, H A. (1953) Retreat To Moscow, The Architectural Review (Archive : 1896–2005); London Vol. 113, Iss. 675, (Mar 1, 1953): 142–151.
^Kissfazekas, K. (2015). Relationships between politics, cities and architecture based on the examples of two Hungarian New Towns.Cities,48, 99
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