Antal Tamás: Hódmezővásárhely törvényhatósága 1919–1944. Fejezetek a magyar városigazgatás történetéből - Dél-Alföldi évszázadok 27. (Szeged, 2010)

HÓDMEZŐVÁSÁRHELY FŐBB TISZTSÉGVISELŐINEK ARCHON-TOLÓGIÁJA (1919-1944)

THE MUNICIPALITY OF HÓDMEZŐVÁSÁRHELY (1919-1944) CHAPTERS FROM THE HISTORY OF CITY ADMINISTRATION

IN HUNGARY (SUMMARY)

The research of the history of Hungary between the first and the second world wars is quite extensive in the several topics of the political, economic and cultural conditions of the era mentioned. Meanwhile, the deep scientific investigations on the history of its public administration are still missing or are fragmented. The author of this book tries to make up for this deficit when he aims to examine the legal institutions of the public administration of Hódmezővásárhely, city of county rank, in the south-eastern territory of Hungary in the given decades.

The first chapter summarizes the general conditions of the legal status of the municipalities of that age. The author presents a short introduction to the development of the science of administration after World War I. He focuses his study on the most determinative experts of Hungarian administrative law, for instance István Ereky, Ede Márffy, Károly Kmety and Zoltán Magyary. Magyary’s scientific activity is the most stressed one in the chapter because of his serious efforts on the rationalisation of the Hungarian public administration and its legal institutions and practice. His literary works and those of his colleagues represented the most significant results of the science mentioned in the examined Hungarian historical period.

The author also gives a summary of the legislation of Act XXX of 1929, which act was the third one on the legal institutions of the administration of the municipalities since the compromise between Austria and Hungary (1867). Although it is a complicated task to show all the details of the debates on this bill in the Hungarian National Assembly, the author tries to picture the most important political and legal contrast of the members of these negotiations. He calls attention to the decrees of the government and several ministers which followed the implementation of the proclaimed act, too. It is also interesting to notice the opinion of the cities of county rank about these legal reforms, which in fact led towards the increase of political centralisation in Hungary.

The second chapter presents some of the interesting details of the general administrative history of Hódmezővásárhely form the end of World War I to the end of World War II. These facts are discussed in three parts: the first ten years after peace, the enforcement of Act XXX of 1929 and finally, the most important relevant events of the last fifteen years of the era until 1944. It is useful to read the local opinion on the conditions of the period called ‘Horthy Era’ for short, because the citizens of Hódmezővásárhely had a decided oppositional standpoint against the central governmental policy. It can be seen in the fights inside the general assembly of the

163