Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 15. (Tanulmányok Füzes Endre 70. születésnapja alkalmából. Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2002)
HOFEMANN TAMÁS: „Az én házam, az én váram" - Egy balhiedelemről
"MY HOME IS MY CASTLE" - ABOUT A MISBELIEF I give a short summary in this study about the historic changes in the building practice as carried out by farmers and craftsmen who lived on the European continent before modern times. Linked to the subjects, I made some conclusions referring to the building and functioning of open-air museums. Forms of traditional architecture are due to two main innovations. One typical trend of modernisation is related to the skills of peasants and to the activities of relations and neighbours engaged in handicrafts. The other trend is defined by the knowledge of professionals. The first period ends with the Middle Ages, the second started in the Middle Ages and is finished in modern times. In both, the builders adjust themselves to the available raw materials. Our forerunners created stone architecture in the Mediterranean Southern part, oaken log constructions on the European continent and the culture of pine-pillar architecture in Northern and Eastern Europe as well as in high mountains. People in South-Eastern Europe used to dwell in dug-out houses almost till the modern times because no sufficient and appropriate building material was available and the low level of socialisation of the people forced them to this. At the beginning of the modern times more and more people leave the dug-out houses and erect earth-houses (mud, adobe, brick, etc.) The most typical characteristic of the houses built by professionals is the construction of upper stores, a complicated ground-plan and if possible, they build the living quarters and the farm buildings under the same roof. This practice begins in Southern Europe in the Middle Ages and spreads at the end of the Middle Ages over the Alps, westwards from the river Elbe. It spreads first in the towns, later in the villages. This way, Northern Europe was transformed, with a considerable delay. The old and medieval architecture remained however eastwards from the river Elbe, in the countryside and especially in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Europe is divided: the urbanised part has houses with several stories, reflecting the economic power and the investment intentions of the builders. For Eastern Europe, lacking professional knowledge, backward urbanisation and the low level of socialisation of the population remain typical. The whole story can be written as the chronicle of the developing market mechanisms. The central idea of this is the common saying: "my home is my castle". They hoped in a fiction. Historic changes are results of realistic processes and we should not identify the dividing lines between architectural habits with state borders. In the first part of the 19 lh century, the scientists in the modernising Europe considered the family manufactures and manual work as an example to be followed by the society because they wanted to improve the conditions of the common people. At the end of the century, the first open-air museums were built. These spectacular institutions were created because they thought of the former inhabitants of the relocated houses that they were the trustees of the ethnic past. A kind of romantic nostalgia pervaded these museum institutions. Our museum builder forerunners looked backwards, not forwards. They were more local patriots than experienced researchers of the past. About a half thousand open-air museums have been opened in the continent during the last half century. It was an extraordinary case, when other principles were applied. Those who broke with the habit of looking backwards, stress the important changes in the traditional and modern history. They told about the environmental culture of the globalisation that those people created it, who left the past, the traditions. Modernisation recognised that it is the spiritual performance of those who - as local patriots - are proud of their environment but they also have seen the world (like we experience it now in North-Western Europe). Or who are enchanted by the improving intentions of the paternalistic state and recognise the implementation of the political will as successful, even more, as the only possibility (as it was in the soviet culture-political institutions of the state party). We came to a dividing line in the building and furnishing of open-air museums and in the functioning of the institutions. Whatever the museum colleagues, the "museum guards'" of modern times do, affect the ethnography, the local history and all activities of the profession.
