Szabó István szerk.: Városi polgárok a századelőn (A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Kiállításvezetői, 1999)

Katalin Gulyás: Civil home - civil way of life at the turn of the century

Katalin Gulyás Civil home - civil way of life at the turn of the century The objects of a typical home of the middle class presented in the permanent historic exhibition Urban citizens at the turn of the century do not represent specific artistic value in themselves. When designing this exhibition we did not keep the aesthetic value in view. However, we tried to exhibit and document the life style and the taste in interior design of the middle classes. Their way of life, dressing, social behaviour, the way they organised and ran their household, and the objects that they used were considered worthy of imitation and a goal to achieve for those who were emerging to the middle classes at the beginning of the 20

th century. In Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county the last third of the 19

th century was the great era of the achievement of bourgeois status. Among other things this manifests itself in the transformation of visual view of towns and villages, and the change of the structure of settlements. What we consider now typical elements of a traditional country town in our region, arose almost without exception during this period, around the turn of the century. (These rare instances are now in fragments, in most of the cases they have been reconstructed, and are under protection now.) An average civil family could not have less than a three-room house, but due to cheap domestic labour that helped run the home and cheap prices, they could often afford to live in bigger houses. The rooms of the house were differentiated according to their functions. The drawing room was equipped with the most expensive furniture and fixtures; this was where they received their most honoured guests. The dining room, as the name suggests, served as the scene of family meals, but the family spent most of their time here during the day. The bedroom was the sleeping accommodation for the parents and small children. In addition to these three rooms, some people had a nursery, a parlour or a study for the head of the family, or if one of the grandparents lived with the family he or she was entitled to an own room. The majority of the textiles, ornaments, the porcelain fancy goods and glass-ware exhibited in the display case, the „treasure-house" of the exhibition, come from the estate duty of the late Dr Károly Kontsek, the evangelistic priest of Nagyrév. These objects represent the pretension to taste and traditions of a group of transmigrant people who came from more urbanised and civilised parts of Hungary, where the traditions of the civil state rooted deeper. These citizens arrived here to practise their professions, or they were transferred here in their jobs, or came to launch forth an enterprise due to favourable business conditions. They formed probably the slightest group in number of the new nascent flat middle classes in the region, but their impact on civil life in the area must be considered a lot more important than their number 46