Hírközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány, Évkönyv, 2005
Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
hidden features on stamps used for identification and also presents never-before-seen stamp designs. All visitors have sung its praises. The new permanent exhibition at the Balatonszemes Postal Museum offers interactive displays and is the only memorial museum to communications in the world. Hundreds of postal workers have been among its guests. The exhibition in the main post office of Pécs has been a major success. It not only offers a glimpse into postal relics used a century ago, but also allowed visitors to learn about the people who worked for the old post office. It also offered irrefutable reasons for naming the small square next to the main post office for Péter Opris, the first manager of the post office in Pécs, under whom the building was constructed. The stamp exhibits in the major cities of China and India and the postal history exhibit in Slovakia show that that it is worthwhile for the museum to organize lightweight travelling exhibitions including ones that can actually be transported through the post, to travel the world and allow other peoples to learn of specifically Hungarian postal and stamp history. The Carpathian Basin could be a main focus for such exhibits. The other significant area in which we have special relations with visitors concerns professional meetings, conferences, and clubs in the Postal Museum auditorium, and the organized philatelic presentations and youth club events held in the Stamp Museum’s exhibition halls. In 2005, such programmes were organized on 217 occasions and were attended by 6,880 people. In the past year, the specialized libraries of the two museums received 246 researchers. The Stamp Museum was the venue for a number of special events, such as the premiere of the Hungarian stamp greeting the centenary of the Rotary Club, and the celebrations marking theatre stamp day. The Postal Museum organized programmes to mark Museum Night both in Budapest and in its Debrecen branch, and both proved a success with visitors. Among the Museum Mayday events, the Postal Museum was the winner of the visitors’ and the professional jury awards, chosen out of a field of 94 participating museums. Over the course of the year, nearly four thousand people attended traditional events and programmes organized by the Museum Assent Association. One outstanding event of 2005 was a Postal Museum contest called Our Lives and the Radio. The contest was run jointly with public radio stations and there were 160 entries. The participating radio stations turned the top entries into several hours of broadcasting and the Tivadar Puskás Telecom Technical School issued a book edited by the Postal Museum containing the entries that had received gold level awards. One event marking the anniversary of the museums and the foundation occurred in July 2005 in the Benczúr House. There, in a celebration to which Foundation staff, and members of the board of directors and of supervisors were invited, Honorarium Fidelita- tis certificates and awards were presented. On December 2, an intimate ceremony was held at the Postal Museum to send off the retiring director of the museum - the author of this article - after 20 years of service to the museum and 15 years at the helm of the foundation. Budapest, January, 2006 241
