Why is there a hole in the centre of the Hungarian flag today? – photos, video

Have you ever asked yourself why there is a hole in the centre of the Hungarian flag on October 23rd? Now we give you the answer.

The Hungarian communists copied even the coat of arms from the Soviet Union

Today, Hungary’s flag is a tricolour (red-white-green) featuring a crowned coat of arms in the centre. In fact, red symbolizes strength, white is for fidelity while green represents hope. In the coat of arms, the Dexter (right side from the bearer’s point) features the so-called Árpád-stripes, four Argent (silver) and four Gules (red) stripes. Allegedly, the four silver stripes represent four rivers: the Danube, the Tisza, the Dráva and the Száva. Furthermore, the Sinister which is the left side from the bearer’s point consists of three hills and an Argent double cross on Gules base. The three green hills represent the Tátra, the Mátra and the Fátra, three mountain ranges of which only the Mátra is now in Hungary.

The first time that the tricolour was used as the official flag of Hungary was during the Revolution of 1848-1849, together with the above-mentioned coat of arms. In the era of the Republic, after WWII, the crown – symbolizing the monarchy – was removed from the coat of arms. However,

because of the Communist takeover,

the country used that only between 1946 and 1949. On August 20, 1949, a new coat of arms was introduced by Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi, without any grounding in Hungarian tradition or history. It featured a hammer and a stalk of wheat to symbolize the workers and peasants, which was topped by a giant red star symbolizing hope in the Socialist movement. In fact, this coat of arms was only

a copy of other Socialist states’ occupied by the Soviet Union.

Interestingly, slavishly copying the coat of arms was not an order from Moscow, it was simply Rákosi’s decision. For example, Communist Poland retained its eagle and so did Czechoslovakia its lion.

People wanted to remove it from the national flag

Of course, people hated the Rákosi coat of arms, not only because it had no connection to the Hungarian historical and cultural heritage but also because an era of terror and unspeakable horrors happened under the dictatorship it symbolised. Unsurprisingly,