Ikvainé Sándor Ildikó szerk.: Néprajzi, történeti és múzeumszociológiai tanulmányok a Ferenczy Múzeumból (Szentendrei Múzeumi Füzetek 1. Szentendre, 1996)

Schleininger Tamás: Várospolitikai koncepció dr. Antolik Arnold: „Mi volt Szentendre és mi lehetne” című „célkitűzési kísérlete” nyomán

TAMÁS SCHLESINGER: TOWN DEVELOPING CONCEPTION ON THE BASIS OF THE "PROGRAMME EXPERIMENT" (TITLED WHAT WAS SZENTENDRE AND WHAT COULD IT BE) BY ARNOLD ANTOLIK Dr Arnold Antolik was born in 1885 in Arad. He graduated from high-school in Pozsony, then he matriculated the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. However, on the encouragement of his father, he switched over to the Faculty of Law after one year. Arnold Antolik was elected the mayor of Szentendre in 1914 /apart from a short interruption he held his office up to 1922/. From this time on he lived in Szentendre till his death in I960. His treatise titled What Was Szentendre And What Could It Be was published in 1932 at private expense. The subject matter of the "town developing programme experiment" is focused on two main questions. The first part gives the answer to the following question: "what was Szentendre?" with reference to a major's report about the year 1921. The second part deals with the question "what could Szentendre be?" ten years later, in 1932. The author tries to give the "programme experiment" analysis on the basis of the town managing condition ofthat time. Though the detailed analysis done by Arnold Antolik gives an overall picture of the trying economic situation of the day, the final conclusion is optimistic. It is easy to discover behind this optimism the "social contract" of the French Enlightenment, which had the aim of changing the world for the better, and also its strong influence on the author's way of thinking. But his rationalism is combined with affection the climax of which is the empathy of a man fond of, having fears for and feeling responsible for his town. For the first reading some paragraphs may seem extravagantly romantic or messianistic or even utopistic but there is no denying that this way of thinking does not lack pragmatism. His thoughts on town development and management were created in the spirit of a general and a special kind of praciticism, a good many projects of which could be realizable purposes even today. (Translated by Beatrix Szepesi) 195