Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)

ROOM 15. Education, Science and Culture at the End of the 19th Century (Katalin Körmöczi - Eszter Aczél - Annamária T. Németh - Edit Haider)

ROOM 15 Education, Science and Culture at the End of the 19th Century The Monarchy was characterized by a civilized atmosphere, intellectual diversity and by the rapid and free spread of culture. The larger towns, which already had a bourgeois character, were, at one and the same time, parts of the Hungarian state and of the empire. Newspapers, publishing-houses, colleges, theatres, musichalls, picture galleries, artists' colonies, scientific societies, and conservatoires were founded one after the other and were operating at the end of the century. Present side by side were the more conservative Classical-realist trend and the Impressionist and Secessionist trends, the last-mentioned of which also found followers in Berlin and Vienna. EDUCATION AND SCIENCE As a result of the activity of two ministers of religion and public education - Baron József Eötvös (minister 1867-71) (Fig. 61) and Ágoston Trefort (minister 1872-88) -, a system of elementary, secondary and higher education was established (Fig. 62). The 1868 public education law, which is linked with the name of József Eötvös, made schooling compulsory in Hungary and placed it under state supervision; it also introduced free schooling at elementary level. State and Church secondary schools operated, and there were institutions providing higher education, among them the universities of arts and sciences at Buda and Kolozsvár (Cluj). The Hungarian Academy of Sciences worked with new vigour, the specialist sciences developed, and new specialist and scientific journals and periodicals were started. The portrait of Ferenc Pulszky (1814—97), painted by Mór Than, denotes the importance of the Hungarian National Museum after 1867, and the growing role it played in scientific and artistic life (Fig. 63). Minister Eötvös appointed Ferenc Pulszky to head the National Museum in 1869. After his activity in 1848-49 and his return home from emigration, Pulszky represented primarily Hungarian museum interests and scientific life, and, when it had again been permitted in the more liberal post1867 period, he was a member of the freemasonry movement, even grand master. A valuable relic from the history of the museum is the storage cabinet made in 1874, the side of which preserves the names, which have been burned on, of the museum staff at this time. The legal status of the National Museum changed many times during the 19th century. In the first half of the century, the museum's operation was ensured by a fund put together from donations by the counties. After 1849, the National Museum did not lose its status as public foundation, but only after the Compromise of 1867 did it join the ranks of institutions supported by the state. The raising of its standard under the supervision of the Ministry of Religion and Public Education was part of the cultural policy associated with József Eötvös and Ágoston Trefort. The National Museum became the collection point for relics of the national past, and for mementos of great national figures, politicians, statesmen, and artists. Furthermore, with its patronage of the arts, it promoted and supported the 19th-century cult of the artist. It opened the Széchényi Memorial Room, and then, after the Ferenc Deák Room, the Munkácsy Room and the Zichy Room. In the 1870s and 1880s the historical, allegorical and mythological paintings of the Historical Picture Gallery were