Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)

ROOM 13. Culture and National Consciousness at the End of the 18th Century and in the First Half of the 19th Century (Eszter Aczél)

painting and sculpture, architecture, and also music, which was based on the motifs of verbunkos (recruiting) music. Pest became the centre of literary and cultural life. It was in Pest that the majority of writers and artists worked, there that the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was set up, there that the National Theatre opened its doors, and there that the Classicist palace for the Hungarian National Museum was built. "Count Ferenc Széchényi, a man famous in 'both' our Hungarian homelands, has, with exemplary patriotism, offered and presented for the general use of the Hungarian homeland his rare collections, acquired through much effort and expense, consisting of books, manuscripts, pictures, coats of arms, maps, and coins" (Hungarian Herald, Vienna, August 25, 1802). Széchényi turned directly to the king with his offer. He took care to appoint staff to look after the collection; he choose as the director the historian and philologist Jakab Ferdinánd Miller (1749-1823), a professor from Nagyvárad (Oradea). On December 10, 1803, Count Ferenc Széchényi handed over, and showed, his collection to Palatine Joseph (17761847). In 1806, Miller, commissioned to do so by Palatine Joseph, made the following proposal: "The library should be entrusted legislatively to the care of the Estates, and there should be joined to it a cultural institution of the type which, with the inclusion of the library, will be a National Museum, qualified to present not only the nation's intellectual culture, but also its material culture." In 1808 the Diet at Pozsony (Bratislava) decided to call a National Museum into existence, and passed the necessary law. For the promotion of the Hungarian language, Hungarian literature and Hungarian material culture, the Estates considered the establishment of a National Museum to be necessary before the creation of an Academy of Sciences. They called upon the municipal authorities to provide the funds, and entrusted the palatine to take the necessary measures, including the launching of building work. Mihály Pollack, the country's premier architect, was commissioned to design the building (Fig. 43). On July 22, 1837, the foundation stone of the museum was laid, but the Great Flood of 1838 washed away the work done up until then. Construction of the museum was completed in 1847, and the placing of collections in it began in 1846. The new museum building soon came to occupy a central place in Hungarian national history. It was here that a popular meeting was held in spring 1848, and the museum's ceremonial hall became home to Parliament's Upper House. Hungarian women launched a national campaign to equip the museum. Ferenc Liszt (1811-86) (Fig. 44) and Ferenc Erkel (1810-93) (Fig. 64) both conducted in its ceremonial hall. The furniture needed to display the museum's material was purchased from the proceeds of the concerts, as well as the furniture of the Széchényi Memorial Room. As result of praiseworthy efforts, by the mid-19th century the national collection - with its stock of books, manuscripts and treasures, and its highly valuable core material - had reached the European level, and the Classicist museum building had become a worthy home for this rich collection.