Fekete Gézáné (szerk.): Örökségünk, élő múltunk. Gyűjtemények a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtárában (A MTAK közleményei 37. Budapest, 2001)

ROZSONDAI BÉLA: A Waldstein-gyűjtemény és az adományozó Waldstein János

190 Rozsondai Béla ROZSOND AI, BÉLA The Waldslein Collection and its Donátor, János Waldslein The Library of the Hungarian Academy preserves 220 water-colours painted by Thomas Ender (1793—1875) in Upper Hungary during the 1860s. The artist depicted with minute realism castles, mansions, towns, villages, stream valleys, rocky mountainous landscapes and tarns along the river Váh, in the Zips Region, in the High Tatras and in the north-eastern part of Hungary. His travels and these late master-pieces are hardly mentioned in the art literature. We have recently catalogued and described the items in this collection. The landscapes, with explanations about the history of towns and buildings, with bibliography, maps and a list of place-names, are available on the internet in Hungarian, Slovak, German and English (http://ender.mtak.hu). The collection was presented to the Academy in 1868 by Count János Waldstein-Wartenberg (1809—76). His family was of Bohemian origin, but this branch had become naturalized and had a number of relatives among Hungarian aristocrats. János Waldstein studied philosophy and obtained a doctoral degree in law. He was a conservative aristocrat and as a young man an intimate friend of István Széchenyi. Up to 1849 he worked as a civil servant. He took an active part in economic life (regulation of inland waterways, railway construction), in the management of the Academy, and especially in the art world. He was himself an amateur painter. The memoirs of one of his ancestors, Countess Eleonora Christina Ulfeld (a daughter of King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway), describing her imprisonment in Copenhagen between 1663 and 1683, were published from a manuscript owned by him. Hungarian bibliographies — those by Géza Petrik and József Szinnyei — record three works by János Waldstein. The first two of them were allegedly published when he was 10 and 11 years old (!) but I could not detect a single copy of either. The third (published in 1829) is his thesis submitted to obtain his law doctorate. On the other hand, I could identify two works by Waldsteins not so far recorded. The first (published in 1820) is the judicial theses of József Waldstein, János's brother; the second (1824) is János Waldstein's own theses in Latin and Hungarian compiled for his examination in philosophy at the age of 15. The ideas about „literature" contained therein reflect the spirit of the age and the aspirations of the Hungarian reform era. János Waldstein and the water-colours in his collection deserve wider publicity and commemoration.