Folia Historica 32. (Budapest, 2017)

II. KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Debreczeni-Droppán Béla: A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum tisztviselői az első világháborúban

A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum első világháborús hősi halottainak visszaállított emléktábláját 2015. december 10-én 16.30-kor kezdődő megemlékezésen avatták újra, amelyen Csorba László főigazgató beszédét követően az intézmény két korábbi főigazgatója, Fodor István és Gedai István leplezték le az emléktáblát számos múzeumi munkatárs jelenlétében.

OFFICERS INT HE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM DURING THE WORLD WAR I.

Summary

The WWI lasting for more than four years had affected the Hungarian National Museum as well. The staff of the institute was primarily affected as about forty employees had to join the forces. Many of them were fighting on the frontline and performed military service during the entire period of the war.

Consequently, it seriously impacted the Museum's operation, as the missing staff could not be replaced and even if so, the temporary personnel lacked the necessary expertise. The leaders of the Museum tried to solve this problem by asking the Ministry of Defense for their employees to be released from military service. In quite a few cases they managed to arrange it before the employee's joining the forces, but it also happened that the staff member was released only after he had served in the army for some months (e.g. Elemér Varjú, Gusztáv Moesz). At the same time it should be noted that it happened mainly in case of the elderly staff (above the age of 40), the young ones they could not bring back from the front. Three of them (Pál Kerekes, Ödön Hupka, Sámuel Bíró) died bravely in the Russian battlefield. After the war, presumably in 1927 the National Museum placed a marble memorial tablet within its building to commemorate them. This was removed sometime after 1945 and kept in the basement of the Museum, in a comer of the storage area enshrouded by other objects. It was discovered in September 2015 and having been restored it was placed on the outside wall of the Museum on December 10th.

The Great War, as they used to call the WWI, also had other sort of affects on the Hungarian National Museum. In the first place it had affected the Museum's aquisitions as the Library of the Museum (today: National Széchényi Library) had methodically collected the war related prints and documents from the very beginning of the WWI. The WWI collection yearly increasing by tens of thousands of items had developed to a seperate department of the Museum by 1916. It is interesting that such an increase of resources did not happened in other departments. It seems that due to lack of funds they postponed the development of those to the period following the war. The systhematic collection similar to that of the library had not been realized because meanwhile (at the end of the War) the Museum of Military History came into being and this new institute started to collect the war relics. The war had an affect on other parts of the National Museum as well. e.g. Safety became a priority issue already in the first month of the war, when 32 chests full with artifacts from the Ethnographic Department of the Museum were shifted to a safe place in the basement of the institute's main building. In April 1917 the director of the Museum sent a circular letter to the heads of departments and

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