A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1980 (Debrecen, 1982)

Természettudomány - Nagy Mihály–Szakáll Sándor: P. Szőnyi’s Collection of Minerals in the Debrecen College

Mihály Nagy—Sándor Szakáll P. SZÖNYI'S COLLECTION OF MINERALS IN THE DEBRECEN COLLEGE This is the first detailed presentation of the wellknown collection of minerals to> be found in the Protestant College of the town. Pál Szőnyi, an eminent student of the College, was born in 1808 in Debrecen. His professor of chemistry and mineralogy was Ferenc Kerekes, a teacher of great renown also beyond the frontiers of the country. As a senior student, he became the head of the students' association as early as the academic year 1834—35. Subsequently he studied for two years at the University of Berlin, travelling widely in Western Europe in the meantime. Between 1839—1849 he acted as a family tutor for the Tisza-family. For his writings in the field of pedagogy and education he was elected a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1846. In 1848, at the time of the Hungarian war of independence, he was employed at the Ministry for Religion and Public Education as a counsellor. After the fall of the war of independence, he founded a school for boys in the capital of the country. For eight years from 1850 onwards he acted as president of the Society for Natural Sciences. Before his death in 1878, in his will he donated his valuable collection of minerals, containing approximately 33.000 pieces, to the Protestant College of Debrecen, some of it to be distributed among the school of the diocese. Of the best pieces of the collection, János Kovács, teacher of the College, made the so-called Szőnyi-collection of minerals in 1888 as well as a catalogue, the only one that we have of it. This enormous collection is the work of one man, mainly the result of his own collection; the rest of the material was acquired through exchange and purchase. The bulk of the collection is made up of the minerals of the Carpathian Basin, but we can also find valuable pieces from the various European coutries and the other continents. During World War II the collection suffered heavy damage, nearly half of the material was destroyed. In accordance with the requirements of present-day scholarship, this description of the collection was made primarily on the basis of the Mineralogy written by KochSztrókay, classifying the pieces into nine classes. A survey of the varius classes is. given below. Class I. Of native elements minerals are represented mainly by copper (20 pieces), silver (15 pieces), gold (43 pieces), meteoric iron (8 pieces), semi-metals by sulphur (25 pieces), and graphite (14 pieces). Class II. The gold and silver telluride-pieces from Offenbánya and Nagyág and the galenites coming from various places (35 pieces) are of especial interest. Class HI. Includes chiefly various types of quartz and hyalite, among them several extremely beautiful and rare pieces. From the Carpathian territory we also find here 38 limonite pieces. Class IV. In Szőnyi's collction, just as in the earth's crust, the various types of silicate-minerals are represented in the greatest, number. What is remarkable about this class is not the great number of the pieces, but much rather their great variety, some very rare items. Class V. In this class 69 pieces of piromorphite and 39 pieces of apatite deserve our attention. Class VI. Owing to the heavy damage caused by the war, we have only 41 pieces of gypsum in this class, the rest were destroyed. Class VII. The class of carbonates is the largest and the most varied, including 94 pieces of calcite, 83 pieces of dolomite (of which 45 came from Selmecbánya, Czechoslovakia). Class VIII. The halogenides are represented by common salt (25 pieces) and fluorite (32 pieces). Class IX. Of organic compounds we find mostly amber (28 pieces). We hope that our paper will be a contribution to P. Szőnyi's purpose, ie., to make his collection from the mid-19th century accessible to the general public. 72