Folia historica 23/1

I. Tanulmányok - Körmöczi Katalin: Országgyűlések a Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum épületében

Parliamentary Sessions in the Building of the Hungarian National Museum Summary In addition to their primary duties, national institutions, established for the study of Hungarian language and the research and promotion of national culture and history, also played a great part in organising the society in the initial stage of their activity. The characteristic theory of the first third of the 19

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1 century was professed by Jakab Ferdinánd Miller, the learned director-general of the Hungarian National Museum, too: '...anything exploitable for the national good has its place in the Museum'. The development of the specialised branches of science and the system of national institutions in the second half of the 19'" century had changed the approach and practice alike. One of the firstly established national institutions, the now 200-year-old Hungarian National Museum either served as the parent institution of, or gave room to several scientific, educational, socicty organising and political institutions. The Museum Hungaricum, an embodiment of enlightenment's mentality, and the reform period Classicist palace built to hold it, materialised through the contribution of the Parliament, i.e. Hungarian constitutional legislation. It was founded by an aristocratic donátor and the national, social and political will based on his donation. As early as from 1844, after the removal of the frontal scaffolding, the building made a home for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Kisfaludy Society, the Association of Industry and a series of programs. The museum building and garden became part of the main historical events in 1846, in connection with the industrial exhibition organised on the first and the ground floor. The museum's flight of stairs and its banister have borne symbolic significance ever sincc the revolution in the spring of 1848 in Pest. From July 1848 to the completion of today's Parliament building, throughout more than one and a half centuries, the banquet-hall of the museum palace had served as the scene of Hungarian parliamentary sessions. The demands of the revolution and the Acts of April 1848 appointed Pest, the capital of the country from that year, as the scene of the parliamentary sessions. The town had not fulfilled such a function before and therefore had no building for the purpose. The Parliament was convoked for 2 July 1848. The banquet halls of the National Museum and the Redoute in Pest were pointed out as the locations for the two Houses. Count István Széchenyi, Minister of Works and Transport, reserved the halls for this purpose. 5000 forints had to be spent on the conversion of the Museum's banquet hall, so that it met the requirements of the Upper House. By the convocation of the Parliament the ground plan of the building was published with reference and direction notes. A main and a side entrance, and exclusive communication roads inside the building were provided for the members of the Upper House. The guests of the public gallery and the ticket holders' gallery were shown to their seats through separate side gates and by roundabout routes. The sessions took place in the banquet hall on the second floor, the conferences in the fireplace-halls located on the two sides, while certain sections of the lobbies connectcd to the latter had been transformed into cloakrooms. The Museum scene served as the chamber of the Upper House until 1904, cxccpt of the Parliament in 1861 and the first year of the 1865-1868 sessions when the House of Commons met in the banquet hall before the completion of their temporary building in Sándor Street. 53