Arrabona - Múzeumi közlemények 36/1-2. - Ajánlva a hetven éves Dr. Domonkos Ottónak (Győr, 1998)

Summary

K. CSILLLÉRY Klára: Welcome to Domonkos Ottó This book is a collection of writings of collègues, friends and admirers of Domonkos Ottó. They would like to greet him for his 70th birthday. Due to our shared interests we have been friends and collègues since our university years. I admire him for his work therefore I would like to join the group of people expressing their best wishes to him. It is often said that the life of a scholar starts with the university. I had the opportunity to be able to pay attention to his whole life spent on research. We started our university studies at the same time, in 1947. We were worried about him with my collegemates when due to his long and serious illness he could not be among us. After his recovering and finishing his studies successfully we became collègues when he was working as an apprentice in the Ethnographical Museum. In 1952 he was appointed to a seat in the Liszt Ferenc Museum in Sopron. On the one hand we were happy about his promotion on the other hand we felt sorry for the leaving of this young and talented collègue who was so much interested in old and modern handcrafts. Though the only thing we all agreed in was that the fresh and healthy air of Sopron might bring total recovery to him. With its good air Sopron not only helped him in his Physical strenghtening but the enormous collection of materials on handcraft and guild history of the local museum provided an excellent opportunity to widen his knowledge. Finding his way of specializing and becoming a scholar accepted europewide was greatly supported by Csatkai Endre, the director of the institute. After getting to know his experimental and museological achivements Csatkai offered him the place of the museum director after his retirement. Conclusively Csatkai was the head of the historically important institution for more than 25 years, from 1 963 until 1 989. From 1 990, while being a pensioner, he still worked for the museum as a scientific and research adviser. As well as in the field of museum-works as well as in scientific researches he was always very persistent and determined. He was a person who seemed to be inexhaustible in the eyes of those who did not know about his poor state of health. I had the chance to get to know the method and the strong discipline of his research based on foreign sources when I was pointed out to be the opponent in analysing his study on the Hungarian dyer-in-blue industry in 1983. Although I held the position of "advocatus diaboli" during the discussion it was not easy to find any insufficiency in his work and to add more relevant information to the topic being discussed. In 1991 he won the award of Doctor of Ethnography form the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The number of his works has been growing since then. For instance in 1 997 he published a book titled the Drawings of Hungarian Guild Taylors Between 1630 and 1838. There has always been one topic in the centre of his interest and that is the problems of handcraft industry. As opposed to other scholars in ethnography he realised the importance of this field and its connection to society. He had excellent problem solving abilities that he could use in finding out about sources, in widening the area of study and its prospects while defining tasks not only for a few researchers specialized strictly in the area but for a wide range of scholars. His ability to organize researchers also has to be mentioned. He took an active part in the work committee of Handcraft History of the Veszprém Commission of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which was founded in 1971; in the survey of the ARRABONA ËfiffjË 36/1-2.