A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Ethnographica 4. (Szeged, 2003)

Ifj. Lele József: Megállítottam az időt

/ have turned back the clock

... by JÓZSEF LELE, Jr. I spent most of my childhood at my grandparents' place. I would listen to them talking to their contemporaries on Sunday afternoons. They recalled to mind what their grandparents used to talk to them about. Thus I was able to 'store' the memories of four generations, those of my great-great grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and my father, while living my own real-time life. I would often play with old tools and objects stored in the loft of the granary. Over the course of time I developed a strong attachment to them as if they had been mine. I was familiar with old tools, objects and terms. I lived among them. Gradually they became my 'majors', which meant that even though I did not go to university, they enabled me to familiarise myself with every aspect of peasant life and, as a consequence, every detail of village life. Relying on a previous experience like this, I started collecting objects of ethnographic merit in the summer of 1967. At that time I was a butcher's apprentice. In 1968 another storey was built onto the house where I lived so that the collection, of which I had made an inventory upon Sándor Bálint'

s recommendation, could be housed on the ground floor. While doing so, I also got considerable help from Antal Juhász. I also reconstructed traditional interiors like those of kitchens, warehouses, studies and various other rooms. In 1971 the first visitor to the museum arrived: it was Gyula Ortutay, the then chairman of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society, accompanied by Sándor Bálint. It was then that the exhibition was officially opened to the public. The collection today consists of some 7,000 objects, 12,000 black and white and 6,000 colour slides and 1,500 articles and studies of my own. With this collection, I have been able to turn back the clock in Tápé. A reconstructed interior of a traditional peasant house in Tápé, miniature houses with thatched roofs, a miniature model of the old Gothic church, rushwork, fishing tackle, some fine items of apparel, a room in Sándor Bálint'

s memory with photographs of him all over the place, the interior of a pious woman's home and many other objects evoke the Tápé of bygone ages. Every year thousands visit the exhibition and familiarise themselves with the village, of which Sándor Bálint wrote the following, "Tápé is the oldest fishing and matting village in the Greater Szeged Area, whose history dates back to 1138. Its higher-lying hills were, however, inhabited as early as in the Stone Age." In addition to the innumerable exhibits, there is also a large amount of folklore materials, video and sound recordings. 22