The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES - Town, City Archives by András Horváth J.

The hanging seal of Emperor and King Rudolph, 1604 ( The Archives of Győr) 90 mostly the presentations of town life of fundamental importance, of course together with a lot of personal affairs and of second degree can be found. The significance of the records of local authorities appointed during the years of neoabsolutism and provisional state is eased by getting the last decisions out of town. A determinative feature of surviving records and files of the town representative bodies of socialist council period is that the real reason of decisions namely, the political motivation is not documented. If we are discerning we can find the real reasons in the files of party organizations. During the 18

th century newer and newer type of files were born due to the more complicated town administration and the activity of the administrative machinery. At the beginning, archivists used formal criteria to codify material; and later used more functional criteria, (e. g. introducing filing) Dividing different administrative functions led to the establisment of special town offices, committees (orphan, guardianship, building, land, plot and so on). The town was a rather closed economic unit compared to consequently there were more documents on trusteeship and registration, (those of town ownership, chamber, different statement, concession and so on) These can be found in the late-feudal town material. Different town land registers made up a typical file type. We can determine the property ownership of town citizens and their financial, backgrounds as well as extract data from the following: the listing of plots and field books, different contracts, books on obtaining a mortgage and books on land register claims, plot valuation and records of transcription. The third town file groups of feudal period are related to these sources. They are related to taxation, registering, levy, the census and demographic data from the town. Additionally there are different listing on property conditions and the ones that caused a lot of debates (e. g. who could be the ones who belonged to one 'household' at a certain time?) The town as an authority and a representative body at the same time relates directly to its own people in many different ways and to the everyday life of its citizens. So another determinative group of the remaining town