The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES - County Archives (Regional, general public archives) by Csaba Káli

BY CSABA KÁLI COUNTY ARCHIVES (REGIONAL, GENERAL PUBLIC ARCHIVES) C

ounty as the middle level of Hungarian administration is nearly as old as the foundation of the state. King Saint Stephen, the founder of Hungarian Kingdom established the system of counties nearly a thousand year ago on the pattern of Western European ones. Unfortunately the county archives as institutions don't go back as far. Even more, under their present organic frames and comparing with the thousand years of the counties they can be considered new. During the some hundred years of Middle Ages there were only several efforts to preserve at least the documents of the most important county authorities, the bailiffness then of the general assembly which were judiciaries at the same time. The domestic warfares, then the Turkish rule for one hundred and fifty years neglected the results of these movements nearly totally. Systematic collection of the surviving and newly created documents and perhaps their classification at county level was really started from the beginning of the 18

th century. It happened after finishing the Turkish wars at the same time with the reorganization of administration of the country. The absolutist state governed by the Hapsburg dynasty put much more bigger emphasis to the use of written records comparing with former times. The use of written records meant at the time the only way of getting, delivering and preserving information. That's the explanation why the quantity of documents kept in county archives began to increase in a great extent from this time as we can see it later on. But still we are not able to speak about county archives from the present point of view. Rather they used to work as document stores of the county halls supporting public administration up to the middle of 20

th century After World War II Hungary just like other Middle-European states that got under the sphere of Soviet interests began to build dictatorial state power from the end of the 1940s and it wanted to centralize the control of life of the country to the fullest. Interesting enough just before culmination of the centralization, right after the war in 1947 an act was called into being - in modern times for the first time - about domestic archives. The conception of Legislative Act XXI. of 1947 was already created before the year of 1945, but it could be codified just at this time. But because of the political changes only a