Erzsébet királyné a Vasárnapi Újság tükrében
Queen Elizabeth in the Vasárnapi Újság Newspaper

Summary/Abstract: This case study examines the image of Queen Elizabeth in the popular family weekly Vasárnapi Újság. During the neo-absolutist era, the paper deliberately avoided political topics. Exceptions to this were, of course, the representative events of the imperial family, but the focus was not on the Empress herself, but only on her status. This indifference changed suddenly in 1866, during her stay in Buda. The Empress’s confident command of Hungarian played an important role in this, as the staff of the paper was aware that Elizabeth’s interest in Hungarian language and literature had considerable advertising value. After the coronation of 1867, the authors of the Vasárnapi Újság, despite their distrust of the Compromise, were enthusiastic about the Queen. In addition to her gestures to the Hungarian nation, her approachability, her abstinence from princely allure and her physical beauty played a role in their image of Elizabeth. At the same time, in the spirit of idealisation, they overlooked her shortcomings and even endowed her with imaginary virtues such as maternal devotion, puritanism and religious fervour. In 1898, after the Queen’s assassination, the authors of the newspaper could not escape the influence of the national imagination, which shaped the image of the Queen according to collective desires and assumed of her a Hungarian nationalist sentiment of independence. However, the careful blending of elements of the cult of Elizabeth with the memory of the War of Independence remained a one-off occasion, and the two traditions continued to live in parallel in the weekly.

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