A Hajdú-Bihar Megyei Levéltár évkönyve 27. 2000 (Debrecen, 2000)

Tanulmányok - Antal Tamás: Debrecen szabad királyi város közgyűlése 1849-ben és 1861-ben

Ebben az évben a képviselői jelenlét jelentősebbnek és állandóbbnak tűnt a jegyzőkönyv alapján, pontosabban szólva nincs nyoma az 1848-ból ismert „40 fős szabály” alkalmazásának. Az 1848/49-ben kialakult gyakorlatot egyebekben következetesen akceptálták, így az ott ismertetett eljárási rend 1861-ben is irányadó.

Hajdú-Bihar Megyei Levéltár Évkönyve XXVII 173

The General Assembly of the Free Royal Town of Debrecen in

1849 and 1861

Tamás Antal

The present study continues to discuss the topic commenced in the previous issue of the yearbook, i.e., that of the transformation of Debrecen’s public administration in 1848. In addition to the discussion of the 1849 events, based on the principle of institutional succession, it also sums up the events of 1861, while devoting some attention to the critique of the functioning of the general assembly.

The author examined separately the 1848 and 1849 tasks and achievements of the new general assembly and town management which was partly transformed yet retained quite a number of well- known figures from the previous years’ public life. The reason for this is the fact that the stay of the government and the parliament in Debrecen placed an individual emphasis in between the respective events. In the spring of 1849, the control over public life in Debrecen was transferred partly into the hands of the government, which fact induced quite an amount of tension in between the general assembly, the local “public officials” and the OHB (approximately, National Commission on Defense). It was among these focal points that the author carried out his selection of events also coherent from an aspect of legal history, or their summaries, to be examined. At the same time, he did not discuss anew events occurring during the Debrecen stay of the government that had been noted and analyzed before by many (e.g., the drafting and the evaluation of the Declaration of Independence).

The literature on the 1861 history of Debrecen is rather poor, What’s more, the legal historical approach to this period is almost totally missing, although the “minor revolution” fought in public law