Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1998
Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
The term “State Post Office ” that had been ordered for the official stamps was also reproduced on the signs. The next room of the exhibition contains the implements of postal carriage and the documents on them. At the centre is a model of the Köpcsény Postal Station in autumn 1848. The carriage charge for a postal packet depended on the service required, either letter, coach or courier post. The postal carriages carried either only letters or letters and coach post. Each carriage had separate rules for carrying passengers and their luggage. The chief postal coach despatchers and the postal coach offices were accountable to the Ministry. From 1848, postal coaches operated in five administrative areas (Buda, Pozsony [Bratislava], Kassa [Kosice], Sopron and Nagyvárad [Oradea]), there were main postal coach despatches in Buda and Nagyszeben [Sibiu], postal coach despatch offices in Pozsony, Kassa, Temesvár (Timisoara), Várasd, Eszék [Osijek] and Zagreb. Documents also mention postal change stations at Zengg and Új-Gradiska. Some letter post offices also provided a coach post service. The Hungarian government inherited a road system in 1848 which was in very bad condition, and this determined the quality of letter and postal-coach services. In an attempt to improve service, manufacturers were called on to produce vehicles suitable for postal carriage. The railway between Vienna and Pozsony, opened on 20 August 1848, was also brought employed for the postal service. A special place in the history of the 1848 War of Hungarian Independence between the outbreak of the armed Serb uprising in Karlóca (12 June 1848) until the evacuation of the Komárom castle (2 October 1849) is occupied by the field post offices. Along the supply routes they adapted to the course of the war, conveying correspondence for the military leadership and the government. The field post offices were linked into existing postal connections. Official letters and despatches were also carried by field couriers. The use of relays was governed by order of the National Defence Committee. The official letters were marked with various levels of urgency and usually franked with post office stamps. At the end of 1848 and beginning of 1849 the pressure of the military situation led to police censorship becoming increasingly common, and to letters and newspaper bundles being appropriated for examination, and occasionally confiscated. Money packages were checked, restrictions were tightened on the handling of packages arriving from or sent abroad, and those sent to or received from hostile armies. The former decree protecting secrecy of correspondence was not repealed. Inspections to enforce private secrecy were carried out by committee and the results of the inspections recorded in minutes. The strictly postal history part of the exhibition is followed in the large hall by a cultural history display. Official and private letters written in 1848^19 by 38 prominent politicians, writers, poets, and public personalities are arranged along with portraits of the writers or their correspondents, accompanied by objects of the time. On the three black-background boards in the last room, we have placed selections of letters written from captivity, condemned cells and exile. All are accompanied by lines of verse. The two Morse-system telegraph tables and the text of telegrams above them announce the arrival in the 1850s of a new kind of communication, the telegraph. 243
