Varga Benedek szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 141-144. (Budapest, 1993)

Búcsúzunk Antall Józseftől

sioner of refugee affairs, supporter of Polisch, French, British, Dutch etc. refugees, was arrested by the Gestapo in October 15th 1944. After after 1945 he was Minister of Reconstruction of the first two governments and governmental appointee of the Hungarian Red Cross. He lived retired during the dictatorship. It was the esteem that he felt for his father, and the spirit of the gymnasium of the Piarist Order, which determined the younger Antall 's interest in history and politics. The congratulation was rightful to the man who were able to make good use of his political talents even during the years of communist dictatorship and created an institute and form a discipline which could remain a nonpolitical "oasis". Antall's teaching careeer was forced to cease, apparently due to his involvement in the 1956 uprising, and he could carry it on, between 1962-1971, in adult education only. During the 1956 revolution he was a teacher at the József Eötvös Gymnasium and was president of the school's Revolutionary Committee. After the revolution he was transferred to the Ferenc Toldy Gymnasium, where his class of second form, which at the first anniversary of the revolution sang the National Anthem, was forbidden from university education, and Antall himself was expelled from all the secondary schools of the country. Eventually, he applied for a fellowship in the Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum, and occupied his place in May 1st 1964. In the beginning he was a part-time fellow, but soon (October 16th) promoted to a full-time researcher. And three years later, in June 1967 he was posted to the National Medical Historical Library in order to prepare its unification with the Semmelweis Museum. The two institutions were united in January 1st 1968 and Antall became the deputy director of the new and enlarged institute. The director was the noted gynaecologist. Professor Sándor Fekete. The new Parliament Act on Archives gave way for the Semmelweis Museum to collect archival documents and papers of medical history, and in 1974 an archive was added to the Museum and Library, which has been named the Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum, Library and Archives, and was classified an "A" grade national museum in 1980. Antall was a deputy director general from 1972, and from 1974 the managing director general of the institute. Due to his political behaviour, however, and to the fact that he did not join the communist party, his formal nomination as director general, did not come until 1984. As early as at the gymnasium (grammar school) of the Piarist Order (called Endre Ady Gymnasium after its nationalization) he was keenly interested in history, sociology and folklore. One of his early papers delivered in May 5th 1949 in the school literary group was about the system having only one child in Hungarian families. This short essay, which appeared during the process of his maturation, the years of adolescent study, the practice for scholarly work, was related to medical history in a broader sense. At university he took a degree in history and historical auxiliary disciplines (1955), in Hungarian literature and grammar (1957) and in librarianship (1962). He passed exams in muscology at Professor Zoltán Oroszlán's courses, read anthropology under the auspices of Lajos Bartucz, folklore under Gyula Ortutay, and Muslim cultural history under Gyula Germanus. As a result of this studies he wrote several essays concerning medical history: e. g. "The race-components of Hungarians" (1951). Though his interest was mainly focused on political history and the history of education, his various studies explain, how could he—within the limits of dictatorship—in such a specific, peripheral field, as medical and pharmaceutical history develop a complete oeuvre. In this process, he was also helped by some other experience. During his teaching career he contributed in drawing up a project for the introduction of art history into secondary education in 1955/56. Unfortunately, after the 1956 revolution he was forbidden to take part in this draft any longer. His work in the Semmelweis Institute and his researches were closely associated with his organizing and management duties. He worked out the organization of the institute, the structure