Pre-Dreadnought Preservation
The History of the Leitha

Ex-Austro-Hungarian river monitor Leitha may become the first warship museum in central Europe

She's an old lady and has had an eventful career. Her keel was laid in 1868 in �buda at the lst Hungarian Pest-Fiumaner Schiffbau AG. She was launched 17 May 1871 and was the first Danube monitor of the then k.k. Kriegsmarine. Like all later Austro-Hungarian river monitors, she bears the name of a river, Leitha, which feeds the Danube. In 1893/94 she was rearmed and re-engined. During WW I the Leitha saw active duty at the Danube. After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, the aged monitor, like all other military vessels on the Danube of the �k.u.k. Donauflottille", was handed over to the Kingdom of Hungary.

In spring 1919, she was reactivated as Lajta, with Linienschiffsleutnant (Lt.Cdr) Gustav Kuzma as commanding officer, and took part in the fighting against Czechoslovakia. At the end of 1919, she was at Novisad and finally put under the custody of the European Danube Commission. According to the naval paragraphs of the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon, the four oldest Austro-Hungarian monitors, Leitha, Maros, K�r�s and Szamos, had to be disarmed, while the newer units were distributed under the successor nations and Romania. These actions had to be executed and supervised by the Naval Allied Commission for the Disposal of ex-Enemy Vessels (�NACDEV")'s sub-commission for the Danube. The commission's headquarters was in Vienna, so therefore the members pleaded to carry out these stipulations in Austria so as to have full control and avoid the confusion then so common in the Balkans. (Think, for example, of the short-lived Communist Republic and counter-revolution led by the former Austro-Hungarian Admiral Mikl�s Horthy.)

At the end of January 1921 the Lajta (ex-Leitha) arrived at the DDSG yard at Korneuburg (northwest of Vienna) for demobilization. Later she was sold, together with the hull of the ex-monitor Szamos, to Messrs. Fleischmann, Budapest, and converted into dredgers and renamed Jozsef L�jos and Tivardar respectively. At the end of the thirties, both dredgers were sold to the 'Delmar' company. In this peaceful function, both survived WW II and became property of the state owned Folyamszab�lyoz� �s Kavicskotro V�llalat (�FOKA") in 1948 under the final designations FK 201 and FK 202, respectively, and survived until 1981.

In 1981 the Hungarian historian Dr. K�roly Csonkar�ti promoted the idea of saving one of the two as a museum ship. He preferred to save the Szamos, this unit having had more Communist 'battle stars' in her 1919 operations and finally succeeded in gaining the patronage of the then Communist Youth Organization KISZ for the �monitor of faith." But only speeches were made and no real activity ever started on the ship.

After the fall of Communism in Hungary, it is said that the FOKA was privatized and the dredger became property of the Swiss firm 'Kies und Beton AG,' which sold the FK 202 (ex-Szamos) to Yugoslavia and had no use for the old FK 201 (ex-Lajta). But I can not confirm this and it is unclear if 'Kies und Beton AG' bought all the floating material of the FOKA or only the valuable units. The wreckers' torch seemed to be destined to become the craft's final fate.

As early as in 1984, some naval and patriotic enthusiasts discovered the idle hull at L�gym�nyos and determined it to be the old Leitha with the help of Friedrich Prasky from Vienna. Being an expert naval historian and model builder, Mr. Prasky already had published a set of model plans on this ship. The Budapest dental surgeon Dr med. Andr�s Margitay-Becht came up with another project to save and restore the old monitor as a museum ship. In 1988 he started a nationwide campaign, against the background of the planned mutual world exposition of Budapest and Vienna, and the realization of the project seemed possible. In Summer 1992, LtCol ret. Iv�n M�lnar of the Honv�d Tradition Corps (Honv�d Hagyom�ny�rszt� T�rsasz�g) teamed up with him and on 11 November of that year, the War History Museum of Budapest (Hadt�rt�neti M�zeum) declared the hull to be protected from destruction and a part of the nation's historic heritage. On 27 January 1993 a 'Lajta Committee' was founded at the command building of the Hungarian Honv�d River Flotilla. And on 6 October 1993, the director general of the FOKA, Mr. Ferenc Pal�gy, officially handed over the hull of the FK 201 to become the property of the War History Museum at Budapest. Unfortunately, in the meantime, the projected mutual world exhibition had been canceled after a plebiscite in Austria, and funds proved to be hard to raise in the stressed new economic situation of post-Communist Hungary.

Some 125 years after the ship's launching ceremony, another brief military ceremony took place at the Budapest Danube river bank near the Pet�fi monument on 17 May 1996. Right on the deck of the old Leitha, Dr med. Andr�s Margitay-Becht, the Hungarian historian Dr. K�roly Csonkar�ti and Ing. Friedrich Prasky from Vienna were honored for their efforts to save the old relic, and each man received a plaque of honor.

The monitor was displayed for five days to the public. What one could see was only an empty hull containing a small museum showing the career of the monitor, as well as a number of ship models. There is absolutely no superstructure and no reminder of her armament showing the genuine role of the ship. The interior is absolutely stripped of every item. In fact, the old monitor is a floating box. After that, the Lajta (ex-Leitha) was towed back to the site of her birth, the yard at �buda. There are plans to rebuild her in her old form, most probably the first configuration. This being expensive, only time will tell what the future brings for this only remaining fighting unit of the former k.k/k.u.k. Kriegsmarine that has managed somehow to survive the remarkably long period of 125 years.

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