Benedek Csaba – H. Bathó Edit – Gulyás Katalin – Horváth László – Kaposvári Gyöngyi szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 14. (2004)

The Establishment of a Museum and its Antecedents in Szolnok from Viktor Hild to Béla Balogh

establishing a library and a museum in Szolnok has been established. It is due to the citizens of the town, who committed themselves to the case of culture with nearly 2000 signatures. It is due to the 8-grader students of the secondary grammar school, my brave learners, who, with the strength of youth, demanded the quick solution of the problem of the museum; and due to the leadership of the town, and in particular to Mayor dr. Tóth, who deals with the question of the museum so fondly and warmly." "The town of Szolnok is organising a collection and a library. The collection will be the basis of a prospective museum, its task will be to collect, preserve, register, manage and exhibit the scattered and dilapidated historical, archaeological, ethnographic, artistic and natural memories and values of the area." Soon after the first assembly of the Szolnok Library and Museum Society, the town council handed over the basement rooms of the town tenement house for the use of the library and museum. So the various efforts resulted in a museum. The most valuable part of the collection of objects was the basically organised and registered HILD collection, which was offered by Elza HILD in 1934 for 6,000 pengős to serve as the core of the collection of the museum. Béla BALOGH kept minute and scrupulously exact records and a diary of the collection. Based upon HILD's above mentioned diary and the remaining register of the numismatic collection, the archaeological and numismatic material could be processed, but unfortunately the remaining parts of the HILD collection, the ethnographic, historical and culture-historical objects could not. They disappeared during the removal and the war; we do not even have drawings or photographs of them. But since Béla BALOGH, "the honorary leader of the town museum and library of Szolnok", kept the administration and records just as organised as his predecessor, Viktor HILD, we know the details of each items getting into the collection year after year. One of the most important developments was the publishing of the subject catalogue of the then preferred library. Next to his job as museum director, Béla BALOGH worked as a secondary school teacher and, after 1934, as a lecturer at the István Tisza University of Debrecen, so he did not have enough time to deal with the museum as he would have wished. He could not produce a similar printed and published account of the material of the museum similar to that of the library. So apart from the inventories, we only have some of his notes about excavations, some newspaper articles and reports regarding his work at the museum. One of his writings, an article called "Until a cup gets there" points out the every day difficulties facing the museum scientist Béla BALOGH. In it, he articulates the general range of tasks for museums, and outlines his plans: "The first task of a museum is to register, preserve and conserve the objects and values of the past: that is, fight expiration. The second task is to make this collected material available for experts and scientific research. The third task is to exhibit the collected items, and in doing so to spread and develop public culture." His last lines are still relevant today: "We must appreciate and get to know the mementos of the past, because a culture torn out of its past is rootless." 439