Crown of St. Stephen of Hungary (1000)

This crown, supposedly sent to St. Stephen I by Pope Sylvester III, became more than an emblem of monarchy. It has its own rights, juristiction, officers, guard, land and palace. In 1848 when the revolutionary tides reached Hungary, the population, under the leadership of the poet Louis Kossuth, rode against the Austrians and the oppressive domination of the Hapsburgs. But the Russians crushed the revolt. Kossuth ran away with the crown and buried it under a tree. A traitor sold the information to the Austrians, who extracted the crown and brought it back to the Royal Castle of Buda. In its tribulations the crown had suffered and the cross surmounting it had been twisted and bent. It was never righted, perhaps in order to symbolise the freedom of Hungary.

Bela Kim, the communist who seized power at the end of the First World War, wanted to sell, or even dismantle it. Luckily he was overthrown before he could carry out his plans. At the end of the Second World War, while the Soviet armies laid seige to Budapest, the crown was smuggled out by train and was hidden in Austria. Towards the end of the war the Hungarian Crown guard transferred it to U.S. Army officers to prevent it from falling into the hands of the approaching Soviet army. Cold War tensions, especially the violently suppressed Hungarian uprising of 1956, prevented the return of the crown to the

communist government of Hungary. American authorities designated it "property of special status held in trust and safe keeping" and deposited it in the U.S. Gold Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

In 1977 President Jimmy Carter determined that the time was right to return the Crown to Hungary. The ceremony for the return of the crown was held on January 6th, 1978 in the rotunda of the Hungarian Parliament. The U.S. delegation was lead by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Since then the crown has been on display at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest.