Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 6. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1990)

SZILÁGYI MIKLÓS: Kovách Aladár népi építészeti kutatásai

RESEARCHES CARRIED OUT BY ALADÁR KO VACH INTO FOLK ARCHITECTURE Aladár KOVÁCH (1860-1930) worked for the Museum of Tolna county in Szekszárd of which he was director from 1908 until his death. In Hungarian history of research he is ranked among the most diligent workers of ethnography which also became institutional in country towns after the capital, Budapest, in the first decades of our century. He published studies, rich in data, first of all of the villages thought to represent the archaic culture of the region along the reaches of the river Danube in Tolna county, the so-called Sárköz. Peasant architecure in which he was most interested he studied carefully in almost every settlement of Tolna county but the monography he planned to write has never been written. However an article in a periodical (Aladár Kovách, 1912) his terse accounts of his collecting trips, illustrations of the volume on folk art by Dezső Malonyai (Dezső Malonyai, 1912) the large number of photographs in archives and a manuscript found in his bequest made it possible for the author to analyze, in comparison to the most characteristic endavours of early researches into Hungarian vernacular architecture, the conceptual essence and lasting values of the works by Aladár Kovách. In the last decades of the 19th century, Hungarian ethnography, just taking shape, set about tackling the most difficult problem, the question of origin, before sufficient material was collected to rely on. The debates about the origin of the „Hungárián house" had calmed down by the first decade of our century and gradually the description of architectural forms became general. Aladár Kovách, a self-educated ethnographer with theoretical aspirations, were however still bent on reopening the debate, and wanted to contribute data to the theory of an „ancient Hungarian house" developed from primitive shepherds' huts, independently from Western European types of houses. This objective motivated him on the one hand to come to conclusions through speculation, to outline an attractive but unprovable scheme of development and, on the other hand, it went together with a characteristically selective practice of data collection. Namely he most carefully documented the forms of architecture he considered archaic and paid little attention to what did not support his conception. By presenting this instance of theory-making intention and data collection practice working in the same direction, the author wants to bring attention to the fact that, however irreplaceable the data recorder may seem, the documents left not only by Aladár Kovách, but also by his contemporaries, cannot be interpreted without carefully analyzing the preconceptions of the research workers.