Sanitizing Szigetvár: On the post-imperial fashioning of nationalist memory

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I examine an early modern battle between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, the Siege of Szigetvár, and its protagonists, Nikola Šubić Zrinski and Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, as sites of memory in Hungary, Croatia, and Turkey. In relation to recent commemorations of the Siege, I focus on how sanctioned memories of Szigetvár have been sanitized for national(ist) ends, evacuating fraught historical and political questions related to the enmity between the two empires. Concomitantly, I pursue the silences and erasures that hegemonic memories of the battle and its protagonists have produced, both in relation to specific landscapes of memory in Szigetvár and through an analysis of three narratives of the Siege: a Hungarian-language epic poem, a Croatian opera, and a Turkish television serial.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory
• amnesia
• antagonism
• post-imperialism
• Ottoman Empire
• Habsburg Empire

Acknowledgements

Marijan Bobinac, Giulia Carabelli, Karin Doolan, Melinda Harlov, Kataria Ivić-Doolan, Miloš Jovanović, Annika Kirbis, Piro Rexhepi, and Robert Walton generously offered incisive comments on various drafts of this essay. I am also indebted to Melinda Harlov for her gracious assistance with Hungarian language materials and correspondence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The comparative literature on friendship parks is regrettably minimal. For a recent consideration of the heavily policed Friendship Park on the United States-Mexico border separating San Diego, California, and Tijuana, see Holslin (2019). Information on this park is also available at https://www.friendshippark.org/home (accessed 24 February 2019).

2. Zrinski (1508–1566) was a Habsburg nobleman of Croat ancestry and Ban (Viceroy) of Croatia during the latter part of his life. He is known by both the Croatian (Zrinski) and Hungarian (Zrínyi) versions of his name. In Croatian, his also known by the epithet Sigetski (‘of Siget’). Zrinski’s great-grandson, the poet and military figure whom I also discuss in this essay, was also named Nikola Zrinski (1620–1664). For clarity’s sake, I refer to the commander of Szigetvár as ‘Zrinski’ and his scion and chronicler as ‘Zrínyi.’

3. The exact location of Süleyman’s final resting place remains an archaeological mystery. Hungarian archaeologist Norbert Pap has conducted excavations near the park in search of the grave, with support from the Turkish government (Smith 2014).

4. President Erdoğan had planned to attend the events, but was distracted by the aftermath of the coup attempt of 15 July 2016 in Turkey. For background on the coup attempt, see Walton (2017, 35–37).

5. I follow Tatjana Marković’s (2014, 5, n.1) preference for the older Croatian spelling ‘Zrinjski’ in reference to the opera, and the contemporary ‘Zrinski’ in relation to the historical figure.

6. Marijan Bobinac (2001) argues that Körner’s theatrical treatment of the Siege of Szigetvár was a crucial link between earlier literary representations of the battle, particularly those in German, and Croatian nationalist interpretations of the Zrinski in the nineteenth century. See also Bobinac (2010), especially Ch. 4, ‘Povijest i nacija u drami – Theodor Körner.’

7. In the poem, Zrínyi has his great-grandfather kill Süleyman personally. While this is an historical inaccuracy, it is unclear whether Zrínyi himself had access to the facts of the battle, and the final slaying of the Sultan by the Viceroy certainly makes for a more dramatic conclusion to the poem.

8. ‘Vajda,’ a cognate of the Slavic ‘voivode’ is a Hungarian term for ‘warlord’ or ‘war-leader.’

9. A Croatian news report on the performance of ‘U boj, u boj’ by a university choir in Japan is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPpnBhl6rc (accessed 23 January 2019).

10. Scholarship on the Siege and its aftermath is also booming. Early 2019 witnessed the publication of a massive edited volume on history and legacy of the battle, titled The Battle for Central Europe: The Siege of Szigetvár and the Death of Süleyman the Magnificent and Nicholas Zrínyi (1566) (Fodor 2019).

11. The final episode of The Magnificent Century is available on Youtube at http://muhtesemyuzyilenglish.blogspot.de/2014/06/muhtesem-yuzyil-last-episode-translation.html (accessed 21 April 2017).