Arrabona - Múzeumi közlemények 31-33. (Győr, 1994)
Timaffy László köszöntése
His career started with teaching in various secondary schools. In 1943 he was appointed to the Academy [College] of Economy (which became later a part of the University of Agriculture), one of the oldest agricultural colleges of the continent. He played a considerable role in the development of that school by introducing a socially more open and pedagogically more modern education. He also organized a "people's academy", courses for farmers, and a "people's college" (i.e. a boarding house for students of peasant origin). Between 1945 and 1948 he organized a group and later a chair for the study of individual farming. In 1948, after the sovietization of the country including its higher education structure, Prof. Timaffy was ousted from his post (he was then head of department). He was even banished from education. For 15 years he could not get a decent job. In this period of his life he was sorely tried: in some periods he was a simple forestry worker. For a long time he was kept far from schools: the only educational activity he was allowed to do was teaching small children to play on the Hungarian flute, the furulya. Since he organized some actions in humanitarian aid during the 1956 revolution, he was arrested and imprisoned. It was only after 1960 that he could teach in a music school and later in a vocational school of agriculture. Nevertheless he kept on working in his ethnographical topics in the hard years of trials, neglect and privation. He sustained his contact with the János Xantus Museum in Győr and the Ethnographical Museum in Budapest. He steadily published his irreplaceable papers, and later books (published by local and nationwide publishing houses). His activity proved to be extraordinarily important because the research of Kisalföld was not solved for decades. All those who started to do research of this region were driven far away by fate or were hindered in some way or other in taking part in the local projects of scholarly exploration. Dr. Timaffy performed his work with fidelity and perseverance. His research activity can be characterized with great deal of inventiveness. He possessed a many-sided and extensive knowledge in the fields of material culture, mode of life, social life, social habits; but he solved excellently problems in the fields of folklore and folk musicology. His comprehensive monography, republished several times, and his book which we are now introducing, are proofs of his integrating vision in which all the details found their right place. The profession of ethnography in Hungary, its leading bodies and institutions also recognized the activity of Dr. Timaffy by decorating him with prices and medals and by subsequently inviting him to nationwide scholarly projects. The oeuvre of Dr. Timaffy has already a historical perspective though he is a very active scholar in our days. The uniterrupted development of Hungarian ethnography in the last 120 years was founded on the cooperation with anthropo-geography. He has been one of the last représentants of this cooperation between ethnography and geography with a , systematic preparation: meanwhile other social sciences acquired orienting role for ethnography as linguistics, literary science, history, sociology and (cultural) anthropology.
