Kemecsi Lajos: A felföldi mezőváros (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2009)
Summary
SUMMARY The permanent exhibitions in the Hungarian Open Air Museum which are arranged in regional units show the characteristic buildings of separate architectural zones of the Hungarian language area as well as the worlds of life of the inhabitants who had lived in the regions during the 19 t h and 20 t h centuries. The exhibitions in open air museums strive for being comprehensive and authentic in the presentation of the life of people in olden times. Not only the objects of the furnishing come from original places and times but even the buildings housing them are mainly dismantled and re-built in the museums, or whenever a building's preservation in situ is required, its exact replica will be erected in the museum. The museum's creator as much as the visitor are in a difficult position: the - mostly already forgotten - objects shown in the original interiors, their use and characteristics as well as the messages to be expressed by the exhibited situations are not obvious to the visitor when he sees merely legends and pictograms. Although we make every effort to use different modern means in our exhibitions in order to convey to the visitor the messages implied in the exhibitions as well as the folk culture's knowledge still possessing present interest, we cannot set aside the exhibition guides which help to interpret the exhibitions in the regional units. Therefore, further to the informative guide book treating the Museum in its entirety, there is a need for information about the culture history and ethnography of the individual regional units as well as about the messages and the complex knowledge hidden in the exhibition. The Hungarian Open Air Museum satisfies this need by launching its new series of monographs dealing with the regional units. Whenever presenting certain phenomena, historic and ethnographic subjects in the books, we wish to refer to the exhibitions as a kind of collection of examples. Hungary's southern wine regions - mainly in Syrmia (Szerémség) - were seriously endangered in the 16th century due to the attacks by the Turkish Empire. After the battle at Mohács in 1526, the area had been occupied by the Turks and the former wine-trading contacts were interrupted. Following these events, wine production and wine-trade begun flourishing in the region of Tokaj-Hegyalj a, which had never been occupied by the Turks. A complex economic system came into existence based on viniculture and wine-trade, being at the same time the basis of a peculiar society and influencing typical ethnic and denominational processes. The market towns used to be the melting pots of different nations (Walloons settled here in the Middle Ages, immigrants from the Balkan called Greeks, furthermore Polish, Russian, Ruthenian, German, Slovakian and Jewish populations) and with them 137
