F. Mentényi Klára szerk.: Műemlékvédelmi Szemle 1992/1. szám Az Országos Műemléki Felügyelőség tájékoztatója (Budapest, 1992)

MŰHELY - Summaries

Edit SZENTES L To the pre-h istory of monument protection in Hungary U. letters to Rudolf von Eitelberger from Michael Haas Rudolf Eitelberger, the first History of Art professor at the University of Vienna, whose vast work has not yet been paid justice to, wrote, in the first volume of the Jahrbuch der Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale (1856), an article on the medieval monuments in Hungary, with special stress laid on the Romanesque period. This article introduced the topic, as well as almost all basic monuments of the Romanesque architecture in Hungary, to the spheres of scientific interest. The theme as well as the excellence that the author shows in his knowledge of Hungarian publications makes one ask after his personal Hungarian connections. The first such contacts must have come from the circle of Joseph Daniel Böhm, the Viennese medailleur and connessieur, coming from Szepesolaszi (today Slovakia, Spisské Vlachy), whom he visited regularly in the 1830ies and 1840ies, together with Imre Henszelmann and Ferenc Pulszky, the founders of art historiography in Hungary. However, both of them had to leave Hungary in 1848, returning there only in the 1860ies. As we know only very little about the 1850ies, the five letters from Michael Haas, a Central-Commission conservator in Buda, survived in the Eitelberger bequest in Vienna (Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, Handschriftensammlungen) are of great importance, as through them we can form an idea, of how Eitelberger

1 s article got written. The same collection also has a file with letters written to Eitelberger from Hungary during the years of 1870 and 1880, among them letters from the Counts János Waldstein and Ödön Zichy, both art loving aristocrats and friends of István Széchenyi, than from Mór Than and Bertalan Székely, leading masters of historical painting of the day, and from Flóris Rómer, archaeologist and art historian.