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

Budapest Főváros Levéltára (Budapest Municipal Archives)

destroyed during the 145 years long Turkish occupation. The management and custody of the records of all the three cities was entrusted to the city notary in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the last quarter of the eighteenth century, however, all of them employed an archivist each, whose only duty was the arrangement and registering of the records. Since then a systematic registering and arrangement was executed in the city archives, continued also in the nineteenth century. At the unification of 1873 an "Archival Office" was organized for the management of the already existing archives of the three cities and of the henceforth produced records of the unified capital. It was only in 1900-1901 that the archival material was united in one locality, when the capital secured adequate premises for the Archives in the Charles Barracks, acquired and transformed to a City Hall. It happened equally in 1901 that the capital, adopting a proposal of the learned chief archivist (elected in 1886) László TOLDY, organized the repository as a self-standing administrative branch, dispensed it from the work of current registering (i.e. the management of records younger than 15 years) and entrusted it with scientific tasks as well, i.e. the search for, the registering and treating of records of historical, legal and administrative interest. From 1911 the archival staff was completed by scientifically qualified specialists. Thus the institution was able to prepare several important historical sources: the privileges of Buda and Pest, the records relating to the unification of the capital,and the mediaeval documents regarding the history of Buda and Pest for the press in the next two decades, and also to publish ten volumes of the bulletin "Studies from the History of Budapest" from 1932 to 1944. Besides significant works of arrangement and selection were executed in the Archives. During World War II the archival material sufferred heavy damages. Though a considerable portion was transferred to a safe place, the caves of the St. Stephen Church (Basilica), the major part of the records left in the City Hall was burnt in January 1945. The oveiwhelming majority of the so-called documents of city rights (contracts etc.), the duplicates of the confessional registers from 1828 to 1895, the municipal statutes and the deeds of foundations, also all the association charters and the collection of pamphlets were annihilated. The liberation meant the beginning of a new age for the Archives. A considerable quantity of archival material, different from the former, has come into archival custody, presenting a huge task of arrangement for the repository. At the initiative of the directing organ of Hungarian archives, the