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.