Arrabona - Múzeumi közlemények 37/1-2. (Győr, 1999)

Arcképek - Tóth László: Szabó József (1902–1986)

ARRABONA 37.1999. ARCKÉPEK 1932 and 1948 he edited the national weekly newspaper, Harangszó (The Sound of Bell). He was an autodidact, taught himself English and German. Winning a scholarship in 1933 he travelled to England where he continued preaching. In Balassagyarmat he was appointed the Evangelic Bishop of the Transdanubian church district in 18 March 1948. At the same time he led a delegation to the U.S.A. and China. His motives were to reach a peaceful relationship between the state and the church which was basically running to a stone wall. Therefore, he gave up his position of his own accord in 9 February 1952, and continued serving as a principal pastor in Balassagyarmat. It happened that time that the living cult of Madách in the town called forth great enthusiasm from him. For this reason he decided to collect all kinds of items connected to Madách which could be found. In the end he brought together a large collection of many thousands of pieces including the writer's family documents, Hungarian and foreign language editions of his drama "Az ember tragédiája"(The Human Tragedy), records of theatre performances and objects of fine-art. When he moved to Győr with his family in 1973 he offered his collection to the town and by so doing he was employed by the Xantus János Museum to attend to it as a literary historian. He accomplished critical editions (a resrearch on textology) of four volumes of "Az ember tragédiája" preventing the corruption of the text. He participated in the jubilee edition in 1973 with recorrecting the text at nine points to the writer's original 1860-script which was put into great issue by other specialists. József Szabó died in hospital in 17* October 1986. 374