The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)
MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES - County Archives (Regional, general public archives) by Csaba Káli
connection with the territory or other historical documents, pictures and sound recordings relating to the given area. The archives did not take over the documents that belonged to the competence of national professional archives (water management, military affairs etc.) or to the church. The mentioned new archival act in 1995 changed the competence of the county archives in a way that it makes possible to take over the documents of companies where there remained permanent state or municipal interests. Arising from the homogeneous character of the mentioned county administration and thanks to the organizations of nearly the same competence and jurisdiction - mainly of public administration - the material of county archives could be classified and registered upon uniform principles. The implementation of chronological and within it the thematic base, registering began in the second half of the 1960s that included the years of great historical events accepted by socialism as caesuras. Nowadays this register aid is exploded both historically and professionally. Its simplification and modernization have already started in each archives upon the principles issued in 2002. All the archives esteem their oldest files - which are usually charters or other documents. There are great differences among county archives considering the number of the owned charters. From this point of view the Archives of Győr-Moson-Sopron County is miles above the others, where there are 5400 charters, documents from before Mohács. Mohács is the place where the Mohács battle was fought against the Turkish army in 1526 and Hungary was defeated and this battle proved to be fatal. Nearly 400 charters belong to the town of Sopron. The other extreme example is the case of the Archives of Békés County, which has only three documents from before the year of 1715, the time of reorganization of the county after the end of Turkish wars. The oldest document of them is originated in 1546. It's understandable that usually a rich collection of medieval material survived in the western counties, which were spared much more from the Turkish invasions. We can hardly mention surviving written documents up to the 16 th century from the counties of the Great Plain (the middle part of the country), which were exposed to the Turkish devastation much more. The situation is somehow the same in connection with the records of the general assembly held by the noblemen of the county and which are also considered the most important sources in county archives. From the beginning of the 18 th century and together with the increasing number of the tasks of local authorities, the net of office structure increased into bigger and more differentiated along the general assembly. The material of certain counties from before the year of 1848 is the following: the documents of the Lord Lieutenant - appointed by the current government - (administrator, royal commissioner), the noble general assembly, the different boards and
