Hírközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány, Évkönyv, 2008
Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
Adrienn Kovács: Hermes Ancient religions were bom of people’s fears of the forces of nature and their desires to win them over to their side. The ancient peoples of today’s Mediterranean/Aegean region believed that man was surrounded by benevolent and malevolent spirits from the moment of birth. Respect for them, and sacrifices to them, were part of day-to-day life. Ancient cultures believed that the greatest achievements of humankind had been facilitated by the gods. They linked almost all innovations and inventions allowing development to the actions and ideas of deities. Often these achievements were treated as a favour or gift of the gods. Among ancient peoples, there were separate gods or deified patrons for every part of life from the most mundane of occupations to the most abstract spiritual activity. In the classic Greek world of beliefs, Hermes was the deity responsible for establishing contacts, for bearing oral messages. We find, looking at portrayals of his figure and at documents and artefacts, that he was one of the most popular gods of ancient Greece. A superficial look reveals clearly recognizable features, but if we delve deeper into the person of this god, we find that Hermes was an extremely contradictory and disquieting figure, who was by no means simple. The author focuses on Hermes in mythology, emphasising works of art and postal history in her exploration. Ibolya Bartók: Great Predecessors - Dr. Vilmos Hennyey The author describes how, while collecting data for a temporary exhibit organized in 2006, she suddenly realized how little information we had on the lives of our forbearers, the great personalities of the profession. That included the people who had established our museums and who played major historical roles in the early days. In fact, sometimes we did not even have records of their dates of birth and death. The Postal Museum’s library has been a tremendous help in filling in these gaps. Researchers here have access to all decrees passed between 1867 and today, and all professional journals covering the same period. In them there is information on the authors. In addition, the library contains three books issued in the 1930s, with brief biographies of about 2100 personalities from the telecommunications world. Sadly, this is very little, for no similar work has seen the light of day in the past 69 years, and data in the three works mentioned is often much too meagre. Pointing out the Postal Museum’s responsibility, the author describes stepping outside the museum and seeking out the grandchild of the well-known author of postal history cited in the title. The grandchild had data, had family memorabilia and had anecdotal knowledge, all of which contributed to fleshing out the study of the person of dr. Vilmos Hennyey (1864-1950), who was an assistant minister, professor emeritus at the University of Technology and director-in-chief of the post office and telegraphic service. Jenő Szabó: An unknown Nagymánya misprint One of the best known misprints of 20th century Hungarian philately, known as the Nagymánya stamp, was printed 70 years ago. That the misprint occurred involved more than the usual human error during the printing and post office monitoring process, for national history also played a major role. In 1938, the first Vienna Decision (taken by the 232
