Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 100. (Budapest 2008)

Korsós, Z.: History of the Herpetological Collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum

THE GOLDEN YEARS After the Austro-Hungarian conciliation in 1867, there came the prosperous period of peace not only as regards the political-economical situation, but as a result of it with respect to the Hungarian culture, too. These times peaked in the millennial celebration in 1896 - commemorating the 1000

c anniversary of the Hungarian conquest, and lasted until World War I broke out in 1914. These golden years enriched our country with many cultural initiatives, institutes, buildings and (as we would say it today) "projects", many of which bear great significance even in today's Hungarian scientific life. By the time of the millennium, most of the collections of the National Museum got their deserved location (Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Applied Arts, Agricultural Museum) or got moved (Museum of Ethnography), but unfortunately the location of the natural history collections remained unchanged along with many other plans waiting for realisation. For commemorating the 1000th anniversary, Hungarian scientists started a book series to enlist the fauna of Hungary, Fauna Regni Hungáriáé. And also these were the times when the three greatest Hungarian herpetologists worked in the herpetological collection: LAJOS MÉHELY, ISTVÁN BOLKAY, and GÉZA FEJÉRVÁRY. LAJOS MÉHELY (1862-1953), the greatest scientist of Hungarian herpetology (Fig. 17), and a determinative one of Hungarian zoology, was born in Bordogkeszi, and got his degree as a secondary school teacher in 1880 in Budapest. He started his scientific career as assistant to JÁNOS KRIESCH ( 1834-1888) in the zoological department of the Technical University, Budapest, for five years, then he taught in a school in Brassó (now Brasov, in Romania) for ten years. There he wrote his famous work which has never been published (except the plates), "Herpetologia Hungarica", which clearly demonstrated his talent and abilities (KRECSÁK et al. 2008). For this book he won the Bézsán-prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was invited to work in the Budapest museum as curator for the Collection of Fish, Amphibians, and Reptiles and the Collection of Mammals as well by GÉZA HORVÁTH in 1896 (certainly this was an attempt to solve the aforementioned problem of the lack of professionals). He accepted the job and led these collections between 1896 and 1912. He was also head of the Department of Zoology from 1912 until 1915, but due to personal opposition, he left the museum and continued his career as a professor of general zoology and comparative anatomy at the Pázmány Péter University, Budapest (1915-1932) (BOROS & DELY 1967,JUHÁSZ-NAGY 1991). After his retirement (1932) he was totally blinded by his racist political views, he resigned from his academic membership, and after World War II he died imprisoned for guilts of war, despised and forgotten in 1953 in a Budapest prison (KORSÓS 2003). The location of his grave remains unknown in one of the cemeteries in Budapest. LAJOS SOÓS wrote about MÉHELY in his autobiographic memorial in 1962: "He was a lean, thin, narrow-faced, great-minded, suggestive, unmatchedly diligent man born to lead. One of the most exceptional Hungarian zoologists, the author of many papers with imperishable values

... but he became a lonely, stray bull

... (who) Loved the whole nation, but he did not love a single member of it, in fact hated many of them, and not a few of them he hated deadly."