This is a prayer for those fallen in the battle of Kápolna, a decisive battle during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, written by István Roboz (1826-1916). Translated into numerous languages, the prayer was widely misattributed to enlightened president of Hungary, Lajos Kossuth. An English translation, originally appearing in The New York Tribune was republished in The Occident and American Jewish Advocate (August 1849), p. 60. There, Isaac Leeser echoed the misattribution writing, “The…prayer, offered by Kossuth, will be interesting to our readers. It was offered by him, kneeling amid the multitude, at the graves of the Magyar heroes who fell in the battle of the Kápolna, and was originally published in the Opposition, a journal of Pesth. We translate from the German.” Leeser also noted the unusual ecumenical nature of the prayer. Jewish hopes for the promise of emancipation by an enlightened and independent Hungary helps to explain the widespread Jewish participation in the revolution. According to Lajos Kossuth, approximately 20,000 of his army of 180,000 were Jewish—this at a time when the Jews, numbering 340,000, represented but 3.7 percent of the total Hungarian population of 9.2 million. This prayer, circulated in translation and attributed to Kossuth, helped to cement his popularity among Jews worldwide praying for liberty from despotic regimes inclined for various reasons towards Jew hatred. Concerning the misattribution, Wikipedia’s article on the battle of Kapolyna notes the following:

Ignác Helfy (1830-1897) – politician, Member of the Hungarian Parliament, and Kossuth’s commissioner in Hungary – gave Kossuth a copy of the oil print with the text of the prayer. Kossuth found it beautiful and atmospheric but denied that he had ever written or said a prayer in memory of the heroes of Kápolna. He could not have said a prayer, as the battle was won by the Austrian army, so the battlefield remained in their hands, they buried the dead, and if Kossuth would have been got there, the Austrians would have immediately captured him, as the head of the “rebellion”. We now know that the prayer was written by István Roboz (1828-1916), a former student, lawyer, and publicist from Pápa, secretary to Gáspár Noszlopy, the government commissioner of Somogy County in 1848-49, in the mansion of the landowner Pál Csapody in Ádánd, after reading the description of the battle in the journal Kossuth Hírlapja (Kossuth’s Journal) on 2 March (at least that is what he claimed). After the prayer was written, it was printed in various places in different versions, for example in Kaposvár, Szombathely, Esztergom, Buda, Pest, Szeged, Kolozsvár, and there are also several unprinted editions. On 1 June 1849 it was published in Komáromi Lapok. There are many textual, grammatical, stylistic, phonetic, and word order differences between the prayer versions printed in different places.

The sourcetext for the lines by Roboz were copied from an early edition printed in Kaposvár made available from this site. German translation I transcribed from Geschichte der ungarischen Revolution in den Jahren 1848 und 1849, mit Rückblicken auf die Bewegung in den österreichischen Erbländern, vol. 2 by Julian Feodor Joseph Chownitz (1849).

Source(s)

Prayer by [Lajos] Kossuth (The Occident, August 1849), p. 60 (misattributed.)

“Kossuth imája | Prayer for the Fallen Heroes of the Battle of Kápolna, by István Roboz (1849)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

Unknown Translator(s)

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István Roboz

István Roboz (1826–1916) was a royal councilor and editor, county committee member, chief prosecutor, journalist, poet, and newspaper editor in the Kingdom of Hungary. He was the author of a prayer widely misattributed to Lajos Kossuth after the battle of Kápolna in 1849.

Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

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“Kossuth’s Gebet auf dem Schlachtfelde” (1849) — cropped from original

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17