Proklamation. / Proklamácia. / Proclamatio. [Three Simultaneous Multilingual Revolutionary Broadsides Imposing Collective Punishment on the Jewish Communities of Buda and Pest].

Description

Conspiratorial Precedents / HUNGARY – 1848 HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION / ANTI-SEMITIC
COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT BROADSIDES:

Field Marshal Alfred I, Prince of WINDISCH-GRÄTZ (1787 – 1862), Commander-in-Chief.

Proklamation. / Proklamácia. / Proclamatio.
[Three Simultaneous Multilingual Revolutionary Broadsides Imposing Collective Punishment on the Jewish Communities of Buda and Pest].

Budapest: Imperial and Royal Field Headquarters, 11 February 1849.

Three matching typographic broadside sheets, in German, Slovak , and Hungarian, each sheet ca 40 x 25 cm(15.8 x 9.7 inches) (Very Good, light creases, small annotations in margins).

 

This rare set of broadsides functions as a volatile primary source from the heights of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–1849. Following the occupation of the revolutionary capital of Buda-Pest by Austrian imperial forces in early January 1849, Field Marshal Prince Windisch-Grätz assumed absolute administrative and military control over the region. While Lajos Kossuth’s insurgent Hungarian government and its Honvédelmi Bizottmány (National Defense Committee) retreated east to Debrecen to regroup, the civilian population left behind faced draconian decrees designed to choke out regional resistance.

Writing from his field headquarters in Buda (Ofen), Windisch-Grätz references his earlier warnings from November, December, and January, declaring that while general order is returning, “malicious agitators” are still subverting imperial peace by distributing rebel letters, newspapers, and orders.

The Postal Blockade & Jus Gladii

To completely isolate the population from the revolutionary capital in Debrecen, the second section of the decree establishes an absolute communication blockade. Windisch-Grätz dictates that all regional troop commanders are armed with the Jus Gladii (the law of the sword / summary execution).
The statutes explicitly target the regional infrastructure:

• Any civilian found harboring, hiding, or transshipping letters, decrees, or newspapers originating from the “Debrecen subversives” will face immediate court-martial and execution by hanging (verfällt dem Strange / kötéllel fog büntettetni).
• Any regional postmaster, postal carrier, or municipal clerk who accepts, logs, or fails to report a package or letter arriving from rebel-held territories is condemned to the same immediate death penalty.

 

Explicit Targeting of the Jewish Communities & Conspiratorial Precedents

The final, most infamous segment of the proclamation specifically targets the Jewish communities of Buda, Pest, and Old Buda (Alt-Ofen). Windisch-Grätz asserts that he has “certain knowledge” that the rebel forces are utilizing local Jewish merchants and individuals as spies and military suppliers (Spionen und Lieferanten / kémekül és szállítókul). Furthermore, he accuses them of deliberately weaponizing information by spreading “false and malicious rumors” concerning fictional rebel victories and sieges to incite panic and distrust among the populace.

To combat this, the decree institutes a policy of collective financial punishment: for every single Jewish individual convicted under martial law of aiding the rebellion, the entire Jewish community (Judengemeinde / zsidó község) to which they belong is forced to pay a punitive fine of 20,000 florins in Convention Coin (C. Münze) directly to the imperial treasury. This landmark anti-semitic decree set a brutal precedent for collective extortion that was later expanded exponentially by Windisch-Grätz’s successor, Julius Jacob von Haynau, following the final defeat of the revolution at Világos.

 

Historical Context Note on Judaica & 19th-Century Populism

This decree stands as a rare, early institutional manifestation of the conspiratorial tropes that saturated mid-to-late 19th-century European politics. By weaponizing accusations of hidden espionage networks and coordinated media manipulation, the Austrian military high command legally codified the idea that all Jewish people belonged to a single, monolithic, conspiratorial entity.

This psychological building block directly predated and previewed the populist myths that later swept across Europe. It laid the exact operational groundwork for text-based panics that populist writers like Hermann Goedsche later fictionalized in his novel Biarritz (1868)—specifically the fictional “Jewish Cemetery in Prague” chapter that was plagiarized into factual history and served as the direct thematic focus for Umberto Eco’s historical novel, The Prague Cemetery. Items of this nature are highly valued because they document the exact moment when text-based paranoia transformed into official state violence.

A Note on Rarity

Ephemeral street broadsides from the 1848–1849 campaign were intended for immediate public display on city walls or tavern doors, meaning their natural survival rate is low. Finding a complete, untorn survival set across all three primary administrative languages—German (for the imperial administration and urban bourgeoisie), Hungarian (for the regional populace), and Slovak (for the northern regiments and laborers)—is exceptional. While individual sheets occasionally appear in regional Hungarian archives, complete multilingual sets in this condition are practically unrecorded on the commercial market.

References: Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 501 (“Hungary: Reaction & Mulcting by Windischgrätz”); cf. G. Gracza, Az 1848-49-iki magyar szabadságharc története.