Dr. Péter Balázs: Guide to the archives of Hungary (Budapest, 1976)

(Introduction)

Prior to 1945 there existed no general regulation of the Hungarian archives, their situation was characterized by organisational dismemberment and the lack of unitary technical direction. The National Archives were subjected to the Minister of Cults and Education, the municipal archives of the counties and cities to the municipalities upkeeping them (and through them to the Minister of Interior). There was no organ of unitary technical supervision for the archives of churches, enterprises, families etc. The National Archives was occupied mainly by the writing of history, while the municipal archivists were bound to devote a considerable part of their time to administrative functions, chiefly to civil registers and passports. Owing to the large-scale economic and social development of our country after World War II, the decree-law No. 29 of 1950 took steps towards the creation of archival management of a socialist type. In order to exercise archival supervision and to promote the planned solution of common tasks, it established the National Center of Archives (the successor of which is the Archival Board of the Ministry of Culture to-day). Besides the mentioned tasks the Center was, in accordance with the cited decree-law, preparing legal rules for archives and registries, elaborated proposals for the Minister of Culture and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in archival relation, collected data pertaining to archival management abroad and represented Hungarian archives in international archival organizations. The mentioned decree-law No. 29 of 1950 comprised the National Archives and the former municipal archives in a uniform archival network. In course of the establishment of the new archival organization the Center united the former municipal county and city archives active in the same city to one single state archives, even in case if the situation of the material did not make the actual unification possible for the time being. In order to make the Hungarian material of the central governmental organs of the former Hapsburg Monarchy accessible, the Ministry renewed the activity of the civil archival delegate in Vienna in 1959 (the post of the Hungarian delegate was vacant from 1949 to 1959). The delegate has to help in the quick management of the loans of material and to search records of Hungarian interest for filming, or loaning, respectively.