Balázs György (szerk.): The abolition of serfdom and its impact on rural culture, Guide to the Exhibition Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Revolution and War if Independence of 1848-49 (Budapest-Szentendre, Museum of Hungarian Agriculture-Hungarian Open-Air Museum, 1998.)

„Hála Isten, nyughatunk, többet nem robotolunk: dézsma, robot elveszett, mulathatunk eleget." „Thank God, we can rest in peace, we don't have to serve as bondmen any longer: tithe and socage have disappeared, now we can enjoy ourselves as we want." The laws passed at the last feudal diet of 1848 created the opportunity for the abolition of the feudal legal system and the feudal system of ownership. Act IX of 1848 liberated the serfs and opened up new vistas for great masses of the people in Hungary. Those who had formerly been obliged to perform villein socage were now free to rise both economically and socially. The changes that took place in the 1840s and 1850s have been dealt with by historians, agricultural historians, and ethnographers alike. But there has never been an exhibition as large-scale and comprehensive as this in introducing the antecendents of the abolition of the serfdom, the place of this event in the history of the revolution and war of independence, the historical process leading to its coming into force, and the subsequent transformation of peasant culture. As a result of a joint venture of the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture and the Hungarian Open-Air Museum, the Vajdahunyad Castle now houses an exhibition illustrating the changes in the life of the nobility losing their privileges, and of the former serfs and cotters becoming part of a rising modern society. The exhibition covers more than a century from the Urbarial Patent of Queen Maria Theresa to the 1880s, from the point of view of legal history, political history, economic history, the technology of agricultural production, stock-breeding, housing, and the way of life of the social layers concerned. 3