Dr. Péter Balázs: Guide to the archives of Hungary (Budapest, 1976)
Budapest Főváros Levéltára (Budapest Municipal Archives)
Section IV (collecting interest) keeps evidence of the organs belonging to the collecting interest of the Archives, controls their record management and selection, gives opinion on their rules of record management, prepares the taking over of their papers ripe for archival custody, helps the professional instruction of their registrars, besides receives the clients of the Archives, given information and copies to them. The scientific secretary draws up the subject plan of researches on the history of Budapest and comparative city history, closely linked to the Archives and the local history movement, in unison with the competent institutions and universities; he is also responsible for the researches. The specialized library aims at securing the information necessary for the staff and research workers of the Archives, therefore it collects regularly the whole scientific literature on the history and actual life of Budapest, together with the basic works on Hungarian and international city history and on Hungarian and universal history. Secretariat. Finance Department. * Budapest Municipal Archives preserves a material totalling nearly 15,000 running metres. Its larger part has been produced by the organs of selfgovernment of the royal free cities Buda and Pest, of Óbuda borough, or from 1873 of the united capital, Budapest, respectively, it is therefore an urban material in the strict sense. Both in Buda and Pest only the urban material produced after the cessation of the Turkish rule (1686) is preserved; the earlier records have perished almost entirely. Buda city regained only two sixteenth century privileges later. Beside these only five precious documents of 1602 and 1603 are preserved in the Buda city archives. The records of Óbuda borough exist only from 1720, though the organized resettlement is testified in 1697 already. In the records of Buda city (totalling 878 running metres) and Pest city (totalling 1077 running metres) we may follow the participation and activity of the civic deputies in the diet, the annual magistratual elections, the social tensions in the city, the directing role and ordinances of the supervising organs: the Hungarian Chamber and the Locotenential Council, the administration of the public burdens weighing on the cities, the enlisting of soldiers, the city measures in feeding, cleanliness, canalisation, paving, public lighting, hygiene, fire-protection, public security, limitation of prices and
