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

A Békéscsabai Evangélikus Gyülekezet Levéltára (Archives of the Bé-> késcsaba Evangelical Congregation)

Békéscsaba from 1855 to 1891). He had the registers, journals and account books bound, and he arranged the administrative material according to subjects. In the 1920s the congregation let all the archival material be rearranged. The archives are maintained by the Evangelical congregation of Békéscsaba, supervised directly by the presbitery of the congregation. Since it became a special archives in 1970, the repository belongs to the supreme supervision of the Archival Board of the Ministry of Culture, exercised through the National Evangelical Archives. » The archival material totals 77 running metres. The most ancient original records are from the years 1722 and 1728, following the date of foundation (1718). Of the material of the archives the records of the minister's office (1722-1950) are the most important. In this one finds the registers continuously from 1722, the journals preserved from 1813 continuously, the orders of the eighteenth-nineteenth century ecclesiastic and lay authorities, the pre-1942 records arranged according to subject. It is a great defect that the journals from 1718 to 1812 went astray. The material of the warden's office (1728-1950) is the most copious archival group. It contains all sorts of account books, supplementary account books, enclosures, records on church taxation, estimates, final accounts, inventories, accounts of constructions, etc. In 1948, when the schools were taken over by the state, also the bulk of the archival material of the former ecclesiastical schools was removed to state custody, nevertheless, the fragment remaining with the church contains valuable data to the history of Békéscsaba schools and especially to the development of the Evangelical "Rudolf Public School (to-day Ferenc Rózsa State Public School). The Evangelical congregation of Békéscsaba was very active in the social field, it has maintained several charitable institutions (an orphanage, two homes for the old, a diaconissa institute). Their, alas, fragmentary records are in archival custody. The archives of the congregation preserve the protocol of the town of Békéscsaba from 1768 to 1804. # Research in the archives is possible on previous application. Gyula DEDINSZKY