Archívum - A Heves Megyei Levéltár közleményei 14. (Eger, 1996)

TANULMÁNYOK • KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Szecska Károly: Egri egyetemi tervek az 1945 és az 1948 közötti években • 191

Károly Szecskó Plans for Founding a University in Eger between 1945-1948 The author has worked up a timely topic, which has only been touched upon and neglected up till now, on the basis of archivál sources and the press of that time in his publication, „Plans for founding a university in Eger between 1945-1948." At the beginning of his writing, he gives a short survey of the idea of the plans for founding a university between 1754-1945. The idea was brought up in the middle of the 18th century, and it was preferred to be a catholic educational institution but its realization failed. He proved on the basis of the sources that after 1945, the idea of founding a university in Eger was mentioned first at the meeting of the Heves County Group of the Hungárián National Committee on 22 January, 1945. From 1946 on, Gyula Czapik, Archbishop of Eger, and mainly, József Tóth, Dean of the Archiepiscopal Academy of Law dealt with the plán of a catholic university. The Hungárián Episcopal Board considered the topic first on 14 March, 1946, after Cardinal József Mindszenty and his associates had backed the idea. The formation of the catholic university was alsó supported by Dezső Keresztúry, Minister of Education, and temporarily, for political reasons - the Hungárián Communist Party did not oppose it directly either. The first important step on the way of the organization of the catholic university was that the Episcopal Board passed a motion at its meeting on 20 July, 1946, that the Episcopal Academy of Law will be running at university levél under the name of Faculties of Law and Political Science of the Hungárián Catholic Academy of Law from 1 September. At its meeting in February, 1947, the Episcopal Board stated that „a threefaculty Hungárián University would be established temporarily under the name of St. Stephen University " in Eger. From the spring of 1947, the organization went on with great intensity and enthusiasm. In fact, all the conditions had been provided to open the catholic university in Eger by September, 1948, but in the summer of 1948, the secularization of the church-owned schools liké the Academy of Law in Eger, and the extension of the communist dictatorship, which aimed at autocracy in education, too, made it impossible. But the plán of the Catholic Academic Institute and the North Academic Institute had been finished evén in this difficult situation, which could have been the basis of the realization of the catholic university of Eger in favourable political conditions. 218