Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1999-2000
Beszámolók és tervek - Tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
Csősz issued decrees in 1940 and 1941, resulting in a major increase in the size of the collection. Wartime security regulations mandated the placement of the Postal Museum’s collection into transportable crates. The documents were packed into 35 crates and moved to a warehouse next door to Budapest’s No. 13 Post Office (located on Pauler Street). At that time, there were about 2,100 items listed on the inventory. When the war ended, only 15 crates were found in the Pauler Street warehouse, and the contents had been spilled all over the facility. Some of the documents had been eaten by horses stabled there, which the keepers had been unable to properly feed. The material in Lágymányos survived the war in comparative safety, though it had been scattered throughout the building. Reorganisation of the museum began rather swiftly, under the leadership of its manager, Dr. Ferenc Szitányi-Árpássy. In an effort to alleviate the war damage, No. 24/1945 of the Collection of Postal Decrees contained an appeal to all postal affiliates to report any artifacts of museum value they had in their collections. All postal artifacts still at the Museum of Transport, which had been bombed and was in ruins, were moved to a garage in the post office in the Óbuda section of Budapest. Meanwhile, 238 items were added to the inventory in 1945. The unification of the collections began in the 1950s, under the directorship of Dr. Endre Vajda. The first permanent exhibit of the Postal Museum opened on 300 mI. 2 of the Post Office Fleadquarters in 1955, where the collection suffered further damage in 1956. ATransport and Postal Management Ministerial decree was issued on the protection of valuable museum artifacts in 1968. But implementation left much to be desired insofar as few items were reported to exist and taken to protected shelters, and there was no significant increase in the collection. Meanwhile, the space at Post Office Headquarters occupied by the museum was sorely needed for other purposes. The Postal Museum moved to its current location on the first floor of the building at No. 3 Andrássy Avenue in 1972. At that time it owned about 1,700 artifacts, which were kept in basement warehouses in three different sectors of Budapest. In 1985 the Post Office Technological Documentation and Information Centre was closed down and the Postal Museum was transferred to the Postal Educational and Cultural Institute, a combined educational and cultural facility of the Hungarian Post Office. The institute began a reorganisation of the Postal Museum, and offered it the opportunity to catch up to other long-standing professional museums. At that time the museum owned 1,904 artifacts, and a total of 2,454 documents and maps. It had a library of 5,700 volumes and four exhibition sites, one in Budapest and three in other parts of the country (in the towns of Balatonszemes, Nagyvázsony, and Debrecen). (There were other documents, but these were not listed in an itemised log.) A type of new administrative order, designed as part of an overall reorganisation and compiled by Dr. Vince Mészáros, was introduced in 1986. Guidelines on logging and handling the collections were also issued at that time. Today, in 1999, the Postal Museum is responsible for the following collections: I. Collection of Artifacts 1. Operational and administrative postal history memorabilia 2. Postal vehicles 230
