Hungarian builders of the Corinth Canal

  • 2024. June 28.

5 August 2013.

László Lőrinc

We seek fabulous origins and warrior forebears, while forgetting our creative ancestors. The Corinth Canal, inaugurated 120 years ago, was built on Hungarian initiative, designed and implemented by Hungarian engineers.

It’s well known that Ferdinand de Lesseps, who initiated the construction of the Panama Canal, became the main character of the most sensational corruption case in history, while actually only losing money on the project. It is less known that there were two significant Hungarian actors in the Panama Canal project who, on the contrary, remained free from any suspicion of corruption, yet benefited from the project. Indeed, István Türr, a former general of Garibaldi’s, became a vice-director of the canal-building company at the very beginning. In one of his café sketches from 1882, Kálmán Mikszáth captured the former revolutionary’s passion for all things canal: ‘old Pista (a commonly used nickname for ‘István’) Türr arrived, with his big mushroom hat and his bayonet-like beard. He’s talking about the Isthmus of Panama. He explains with great fervour to Frigyes Podmaniczky how to drill the boreholes.”

The other “Panamanian” Hungarian was Béla Gerster (1850-1923), an engineer from Kassa (now Košice) and a participant of one of the early expeditions to map the canal route. After Gerster saw that the Panamanian plans, as finally accepted, were technically unfeasible, he convinced Türr, who in turn sold his share to Lesseps at a profit of three thousand times the price before the failure occurred. However, the general did not give up on canal constructions as such, but set out to find a smaller and more realistic project.

The Roman emperor Nero was the first to try and cut through the small isthmus (named Isthmos) connecting the Peloponnese peninsula with the rest of the Balkans, but failed to complete the project. Türr revived the idea and after being granted by the young Greek state the rights to build and operate the canal for 99 years, he founded the Corinth Canal Company. Subsequently, he commissioned Gerster and other Hungarian engineers to draw up the plans; while it was Gerster’s duty to supervise the implementation works as well.

But the construction of this canal was not without its problems either: the costs were underestimated, and Türr’s company, which operated with French capital, eventually went bankrupt. The general himself was forced to sell his castle built at one of the canal’s mouths. Nevertheless, the original ideas and plans were successfully completed by a Greek company under the direction of Gerster. At the official opening ceremony on 6 August 1893, King George I of Greece was joined by King Franz Joseph of Hungary.

In May 2009, the Hungarian government erected a monument at the canal with the words in Greek, Hungarian and English: ‘In grateful memory of the natives of Hungary! The Corinth Canal, one of the engineering masterpieces of the 19th century, was designed and built by István Türr and Béla Gerster. This successful undertaking is an eternal monument to Hungarian-Greek relations and an example for future generations. With sincere respect and appreciation we pay tribute to all those who participated in the construction work between 1881 and 1893.”

Gerster also planned and managed the construction of thirteen railway lines and the Danube-Tisza canal in Hungary. It was 80 years ago on 3 August that he passed away.

The work of Türr, Gerster et al. is not usually listed on patriotic websites that pride themselves on Attila the Terrible, the fearsome “Hungarian” empire builder, and the dreaded arrows of the raiding Magyars. Well, of course, Türr was a real, existing Hungarian, a modern man, a capitalist, an entrepreneur, and – may God take mercy – a Masonic Grand Master, and as such a generous benefactor. On top of all this, he not only fought, but also built. These are, at best, uninteresting things in our traditional, adolescently fanciful and belligerent historical memory.

The Corinth Canal today
The 2009 monument to the Hungarian builders on the Loutrak (north) side of the canal

 

István Türr