Technikatörténeti szemle 22. (1996)

Papers from the Second International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Eger, Hungary, 16–19 August, 1995) - Vámos, Éva Katalin: Contributions to the History of the Association of Hungarian Chemical Industrials

wording - a "ministerial background institution".

8 It closely co-operated with the central military organs brought into being during the war, such as the Sulfuric Acid Share Company or the Hungarian Central Share Company of the Oil and Fat Industries. The special commission existing from 1917 on for the apportionment of sodium carbonate and caustic lye was brought into being and operated by the Association. The Association was, however, definitely opposed to the setting up of the National Central Commission for Price Control and, although taking part in it, received the foundation of the Hungarian Chemical and Foreign Trade Share Company in 1918 with aversion. From autumn 1917 on plans were devised within the Association for switching from war economy to peace economy. Thus the Association participated in the work of the Interim Economic Council. According to the wording of a contemporary, in the first days of April 1919 "we were confidentially given to understand that the organisation of our body should be urgently dissolved as our premises would be occupied by the chemical department of the commissariat for social production, which intended to direct the production of the socialized chemical factories from there. On April 8,1919 the presidium of our body declared the dissolution of the Association at an extempore meeting and immediately handed over the premises to the appointed delegates of the people's commissariat. However, previously confident that the Commune would soon come to an end - we saved all our files and precious furnishings to a safe place. After the fall of the Commune, on August 7,1919 we instantly re-occupied our rooms found wide open and in a state of complete disorder. ...Declaring the fictitious dissolution of April 8 as null and void, our presidium immediately took over the direction of the affairs of our body."

9 Following the General Assembly held in November 1917, the General Assembly was convened for the first time in 1921. On this occasion Baron Dr. Adolf Kohner stressed the necessitiy of undaunted work. As the chemical industry that remained within the new borders of the country had lost its market, the most important questions of the promotion of industry consisted, in the first years after the war, in regulating state contracts and restricting unnecessary imports.

10 A means of the latter was, of course, customs policy, which had formed an important part of the Association's work also during the epoch of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Maintaining or abolishing the union of customs areas had been a question widely discussed in the 1910s. As far back as before the outbreak of World War I the contemporaries had thought that on the occasion of the Economic Compromise to be renewed next time in 1917, there would be a possibility and also a necessity to bring into being the inde-