Darkó Jenő – Erdősi Péter (szerk.): Történeti tanulmányok - Studia Comitatensia 32. (Szentendre, 2011)
Kovács Annamária: Egy kiállítás margójára. József Attila emlékkiállítás a Dunakanyarban
Abstracts 173 GYULA KOCSIS The administrative tasks of municipal authorities in legal processes concerning orphanhood during the 1860s. A social historical overview In the introductory part of his essay, the author outlines the history of legal processes concerning inheritance and orphanhood during late feudalism in Hungary. The legal affairs of persons having noble status were managed by mid-level administrative units, i.e. the counties, while the probates related to those living in feudal dependence were heavily influenced by their landowners. This situation changed with the legislation of 1848, resulting in the abolishment of landowners’influence. In the next two decades (1850-1870), the bureaucratic system of the orphans’ courts was set up in the counties and their functional rules were worked out. The most important elements of the orphans’ court system were the local administrative officials, the judge and the public trustee on the municipal level. The author studied the extensive source material of the Pest-Pilis-Solt County Central Orphans’ Court documents. The sources analyzed in the essay reveal interesting aspects of everyday life as well as those of collective and individual mentalities. SÁNDORSOÓS The chapels ofDunabogddny The village of Bogdány, situated in the Danube Bend, and first mentioned in a charter from 1285, was a small settlement in the late seventeenth century, with Hungarian, Slovakian and Serbian inhabitants. Its religious and ethnic composition changed when the Zichy, a Hungarian family of Roman Catholic aristocrats invited Catholic families from Germany to settle in the village after the expulsion of the Ottomans from Hungary. While the origin of the Catholic community dates back to the seventeenth century, the ecclesiastical monuments of the village, the parish church, the five chapels and two Ways of the Cross, are of more recent origin and were built during the nineteenth century in late Baroque style. The history of the village, the art historical features of its monuments, and the ethnographic observations on local cults are intertwined in the author’s approach. The results of his research are summed up in an overview of the sacral functions attributed to the ecclesiastical buildings. Saint Roch Chapel protected the village from contagious diseases, alike Saint Sebastian, patron saint of another chapel. Saint Donat, patron of the “new” chapel, protected vineyards and vinedressers. The chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Perpetual Help offered the believers the Holy Mother’s assistance. The Graveyard Chapel symbolized the end of human life and the hope of Salvation. The Way of the Cross, old and new, reminded of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. LÁSZLÓ MÉSZÁROS Parliamentary elections in Nagykörös (1848-1918) The legislation of 1848 which regulated the right of voting in a liberal and democratic way marks a crucial turn in the history of Hungarian parliamentary elections. After Hungary’s defeat in the War oflndependence of 1848/49, the newly established political system came to a halt under Habsburg neo-absolutism and it was not until 1861 that the parliament reassembled. The Compromise of 1867 set up the dual Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The antidemocratic regulation of the electoral system in 1874 limited the number of voters and provided majority for the governing party which preserved the Compromise against the oppositional Independence Party. In Nagykőrös, a town in the south area of Pest County, it was almost always the candidate of the opposition to win at the elections throughout the existence of the dual Monarchy, as a result of the cult of Lajos Kossuth, the former governor of Hungary, and the popularity of the strive for independence from Austria. The most remarkable politicians among the Members of Parliament elected by Nagykőrös voters, were from the ranks of the Independence Party: Sándor Gubody who represented his town for ten years, and Károly Eötvös, an excellent lawyer and journalist, who was elected five times. The author of the present essay gives an account of each election from 1848 to the end of World War I. He shows the local aspects of nationwide political events and characterizes the candidates and their electoral programs, on the basis of a research made into the articles of the local press and archival sources. AKIKO WATANABE József Takács and the society of Cegléd. The "great preacher" in "Kossuth's town" Cegléd, an important market town in the central region of Hungary, between the Danube and the Tisza Rivers, became famous as “Kossuth’s town” among contemporaries all over the country in the second half of the nineteenth century. Lajos Kossuth was the governor of Hungary in the war for freedom of 1849, fought against the Habsburg dynasty. Half of the approximately twenty thousand inhabitants of Cegléd, known for its love of
