Antal Szérb (1901-1945) was a Hungarian writer, literary scholar and translator. In the 1940s he was persecuted because of his Jewish origin. In 1944 he was placed in a labor camp, where he fell ill, was tortured and died on January 27, 1945. The Martian's Guide to Budapest was first published in 1935. The title deceptively promises a tour of the city that has retained the former liveliness of one of the world's pre-war capitals, albeit undermined by war, revolution, and the bitterness of defeat and loss. But in fact, we are looking at memories of the author's youth. Szérb describes the realities of bygone times, gliding like shadows along the embankments and walls of houses, and the irreversibility of the past is strangely reflected in the present day - much of what was still alive at the time of writing the Guide has disappeared over the next almost a hundred years. Each of us in today's Budapest is the same Martian.
Photographs of Budapest and its inhabitants in the 1930s from the digital archive Fortepan allow us to see this familiar and no longer familiar city.