Skip to content
VitrineRoyal Houses of Europe
Sign in

Tibor Cservenyák

b. 1948

Born
8 Aug 1948, Szolnok
Country of birth
Second Hungarian Republic, today Hungary

Living person. The family sees only the name, dates and photo; everything else stays private unless they choose to share it.

facts
3
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

  • Birth8 Aug 1948, SzolnokProbable1 source

A life in time

  1. Born · Szolnok

    Birth, Szolnok

  2. Child born: Princess Viktória de Bourbon de Parme

    Birth, Budapest

What was it like?

The world around Szolnok, 1948: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Tibor was born the same year as Ozzy Osbourne, Samuel L. Jackson, and Ichirō Mizuki.

Born the same year

  • Ozzy Osbourne

    English musician and television personality (1948–2025)

  • Samuel L. Jackson

    American actor (born 1948)

  • Ichirō Mizuki

    Japanese singer, voice actor (1948-2022)

  • Luiz Felipe Scolari

    Brazilian association football player and manager

  • Charles III

    King of the United Kingdom since 2022 (born 1948)

  • Al Gore

    Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 (born 1948)

Fashion
Around 1950–1959

Mackó nadrág, or bear pants

In the 1950s, women often wore mackó nadrág, or bear pants, which were loose pull-on trousers made with a woolly inside that were typically worn for farm work or housework.

Around 1955–1955

Severe shoe shortages

In 1955, one-fifth of Hungarian women owned only a single pair of shoes, as shoe production was minimal and restricted to few available sizes.

Music
Around 1950–1959

Vernacular sacred songs in religious life

Vernacular sacred songs (népénekek) were sung by congregations in churches and during religious folk customs like wakes and greeting ceremonies.

Staged folk festivals and dances

The Gyöngyösbokréta movement staged folk dance and song performances for Budapest audiences annually on August 20th, featuring groups from across Hungary in traditional costumes. These performances included a variety of regional customs such as the bride dance, bottle dance, and harvest festivals.

Getting around

Horse-drawn carriages remained common for local travel

For short-distance and local travel, ordinary people still frequently used horse-drawn carriages or coaches instead of motorized transport.

Loading produce could delay trains significantly

In 1936, a morning train to the Kecskemét market town stopped for 22 minutes at Jakabszállás just to load produce from local farmers.

Daily life

Limited home bathing facilities

In the 1940s and 1950s, many urban families lacked bathrooms, often bathing in the kitchen using basins because heating water was time-consuming.

Heating and cooking methods

While gas and electricity became widespread in middle-class homes, many working-class and rural dwellings relied on coal or wood stoves for heating and cooking.

Food

Post-War Food Shortages in Budapest

Following World War II, food shortages were so severe that many students in Budapest ate only broth thickened with roux and black coffee or tea for breakfast.

Around 1950–1959

Limited Diets in the Early 1950s

In the early 1950s, worker families often ate bread with fat, bacon, cheap sausages, or jam for breakfast and dinner. Meat was scarce and typically reserved for Sunday meals, while dishes made of potatoes or pasta were common during the week.

Prices and wages
Around 1945–1946

Bread cost billions during hyperinflation

During the 1946 hyperinflation, the price of one kilogram of bread skyrocketed from 6 pengő in August 1945 to 5.85 billion pengő by the end of June 1946.

Around 1953–1953

1953 food prices in Hungary

In 1953, the price of bread in state-run stores was 2.80 forints per kilogram for brown bread and 3.60 forints for white bread. Meanwhile, one egg cost between 2.30 and three forints, and a kilogram of meat cost between 22 and 34 forints.

Work
Around 1950–1955

Desperate measures for supplementary income

To supplement their low incomes, some impoverished workers resorted to selling their blood every six weeks. Others frequently searched Budapest's rubbish dumps for scraps of food or items to sell.

Child labor for pick and shovel men

Pick and shovel men worked in teams, often using their own tools like spades and hand barrows, and sometimes hitched their 10 to 14-year-old sons to help push the barrows up hills.

News and letters
Around 1953–1956

State surveillance of mail

During the 1950s, the Hungarian state actively monitored correspondence, utilizing a specialized department to intercept and check private and official letters for intelligence purposes.

Around 1955–1956

Postal delivery goals and delays

In the mid-1950s, the official goal for the Hungarian postal service was to deliver mail sent on day A by day B. Despite this, diplomatic mail and foreign newspapers often suffered delays of at least three days.

During their lifetime

  1. 1950

    Forced industrialization began in 1950

    The Communist Party initiated a policy of forced industrialization, which severely strained resources and made obtaining basic survival goods extremely difficult for ordinary people.

  2. 1957

    New consumer services launched in 1957

    Following the suppression of the 1956 Revolution, the state launched a national television service and the National Lottery in 1957 to help pacify public discontent.

  3. 1968

    New Economic Mechanism introduced in 1968

    The regime introduced the New Economic Mechanism, a major reform that incorporated market elements into the centrally planned economy to support socialist consumerism.

  4. 1973

    Economic crisis initiated in 1973

    Following global energy price hikes starting in 1973, Hungary entered a period of economic decline, accumulating significant foreign debt that eventually forced a reduction in living standards.

Family

Children

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.