The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

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

fond from this period is the ones that gives collection of documents of town inhabitants, especially the collective rights and civil rights (e. g. documents of town. A determinative feature of surviving records and files of the town representative bodies of socialist council period is that the real reasons of were born due to the more complicated town administration and the activity of the administrative machinery. At the beginning, archivists used for- guilds, and of individuals, bourgeois, civil books, wills, different contracts, attestations, certifications). The language of feudal documents was written nearly always in a foreign language up to 1840. This was due to the special national development of our towns. The two most prevalent foreign languages used were German and Latin. The Gothic letters in the case of German - mainly in compositions of the 18

th century - made the job of the researchers more difficult. From the time of the bourgeois to the time of socialism, the collection of town records is more accessible for research because most of the fonds are in Hungarian. On the other hand, written documents were not subject to town law or customs, nor was the council of governor-general, but were to a unified legal regulations. Győr and Székesfehérvár established their self-governments based on law of the government-board of 1870. Budapest followed suit only with a modified version of the law, which made it possible to unify Buda, Pest and Óbuda in 1873. The capital had more freedom than local-governments regarding the character of the authority of the Lord Lieutenant, also known as the Lord Mayor. This official was elected up until 1934 by the self-government from among the three people who were nominated y^^> by the head of the state. The most important part of town written material of modern times, which can be classified by uniform principles, are the documents of the central and local bodies of selfgovernment administration and the documents of different offices and institutions and of the public utility companies. In the case of the 20

lh century documents, for example, the WaterGas and Electricity Company, or the Public Transport Company, the The seal of Royal Free BESZKART. The most frequently used Borough of Székesfehérvár