A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1957 (Debrecen, 1958)

Ötvös János: A debreceni Református Kollégium muzeális gyűjteményei

The Collections of the Protestant College in Debrecen John Ötvös It was relatively late that a municipal museum was established in Debrecen (in 1905), but the idea of a museum was by no means unfamiliar in this city. The local Protestant College established a museum as early as 1858, which grew out of sevaral existing collections serving the educational programme of the College. Opening hours were lo — 12 a. m. every Sunday and archeological as well as ethnographical material, works of art and a collection of natural sciences were on show. The most remarkable objects of the archeological collection of the College are a fragment of a painted Egyptian coffin (Plate XXVI.), the ornament of a Scythian bronze mirror with animal motives found near Debrecen (Plate XXV. picture 1.), a second century A. D. Roman military discharge-document from Pannónia (Mommsen: С I. L. Vol. 3. 2. 869), a Roman bronze vessel from the period of the early empire found in Berettyóújfalu (Plate XXV. picture 2.) and the bronze swords of Hajdúböszörmény (M. Ebert: Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte. Berlin 1926, vol. V. p. 19, Plate 14 — 15.). The most important works of art are Sepulture of Christ by a member of Tiziano's school, Christ before the Pope, a charcoal drawing by Michael Zichy from 1871, a portait of Michael Csokonai Vitéz, the eminent Hungarian poet by Joseph Rippl-Rónai (Plate XXVIII) and several items of church plate (Plate XXVII). The most remarkable object of the collection of natural sciences is the well-known meteor of Kaba. It was by this means that the Protestant College contributed to the cultural life of the city with its small but valuable collections before the establishment of the local museum. 193