Kaján Imre szerk.: Vásárhelyi Pál és a reformkori mérnökgeneráció (Budapest, 1995)

Dr. Dunka Sándor: Az építészet és a rajz oktatása Debrecenben a XIX. század első felében - Beregszászi Pál munkássága 40

DR. SÁNDOR DUNKA THE ISTRUCTTON OF THE ARCHITECTURE AND DRAWING IN THE FTRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN DEBRECEN - THE ACTTVITY OF PÁL BEREGSZÁSZI The industry of our country began to decline after several centuries flourishing at the end of the eighteenth century. The "craftsmen" having no appropriate vocation and professional knowledge came into the industry having a guild system as well, who deteriorated the quality level of the industry. The sovereign recognizing the danger arising from this situation obliged the local authorities already in 1786 to establish Sunday drawing schools related to the national schools for the sake of the proper preparation of the apprentices dealt in the industry. In spite of the fact that this order was repeated by the Council of Governor-General in 1795 - because of the reluctance of the masters and the negligence os the apprentices, as well as lack of the proper teachers - the schools did not function nationwide for the time being. At the same time the architecture and the drawing were taught already in the first half of the nineteenth century in the Reformed College in Debrecen, and this created the possibility for the extension of the instruction, which afterwards led to the foundation of town " Drawing School." The Drawing School of Debrecen began to function in 1813 and that it did not get to the declining destiny of the similar institutions, this could be thanked in addition to the town will and the support of the College to the fact that an excellent engineer pedagogue - Pál Beregszászi- inspired with the ideas of the reform era took the lead in 1819 of the school, who almost during four decades - till his retirement in 1856 - led the school with a high technical knowledge and excellent pedagogic sense. He had to fight also with the indifference of the masters and the negligence of the apprentices, but he could achieve with his uprightness and with his in the good sense taken severity that the school rose in the line of the highest level among the similar institutions till middle of the century. The preparations of the students were promoted by good text-books, in which he dealt with the arhitecture, the free-hand and perspective drawings. The drawings were produced by himself to his works written in Hungarian languages and those were engraved on copper at a very high level with his own hand. Ins his works, considered as the early masterpiece of our school-book literature he translated the foreign technical terms so good that those have become implanted after him our language. Beregszászi passed after his retirement a well organized and continuously functioning school to his successors, and this school ceased to function - at the starting of the institutional instruction of the apprentices - only in 1877. Though during its more then six decades long existence the Drawing School did not trained artists of highly talented artists, but is educated excellent artisans, out of them particularly the cabinet-makers produced masterpices staying at the level of pieces of fine workmanship. The excellence of the master builders was also proved, however, by several existing beautiful buildings to be found in Debrecen and in its neighborhood. The impotance of the Darwing School of Debrecen was first of all that the period, which passed between the declination of the guild industry at the of the eighteenth century and the start of the institutional education of the apprentices, could fill successfully with increasing the quality level of the industrial work 43