Dr. Péter Balázs: Guide to the archives of Hungary (Budapest, 1976)

Somogy Megyei Levéltár (Somogy County Archives)

The first archivist of the bourgeois period, Lajos NAGY (1860-1890) won a lasting fame by producing some modern finding aids to the crowded archives (Little Archival Mirror, Archival Inventory, Archival Guide, Archival Index, etc.), but also the catastrophal selections, actually decimating the records of the Archives, are due to his activity. In this period the municipal archives were on the decline. Among its reasons one may find the putting the archivist to administrative work, the transforming of the archivist to a special rapporteur of the sub-prefect, taking up more of his time for birth, marriage and death registers, water conservancy, passport matters, etc. than he could spend in the archives, in his chief vocation. Nevertheless, Somogy County Archives was led by some eminent archivists even in this time, among whom Béla BARANYAI (1905-1913) was outstanding. The successor of Baranyai, making ambitious scientific plans, was István MOLNÁR (1913-1949). During his service the Archives was furnished beautifully, in a manner rare in the country, but thorough scientific work was decreasing. The Archives sufferred no substantial damage in the time of World War II. The selections of the second half of the nineteenth century were more devastating to it than war events and elemental calamities. The archives of the city of Kaposvár, raised to municipal rank in 1942, was almost entirely annihilated partly by the earlier careless management, partly by war events; the fragmentary material, preserved by Somogy County Archives to-day, does not deserve the name of a significant city archives. * The Archives is built on the former archives of the municipality of Somogy county, preserving its general assembly journals from 1715 continuously. It guards the quite fragmentary records of the borough, later municipality Kaposvár, further the records of the boroughs and villages of the county, of the regional administrative and judicial organs, of institutes and institutions, corporations, associations, of various economic and church organs, families and persons, finally various collections. The charters prior to 1526 total 100. The oldest piece of the Archives is dated from 1232. Among the more important archival groups of the Archives one finds the records of the county taxcollectors (1691-1848), containing assessments, a valuable source especially for economic history, social structure and historical