Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1998

Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven

István Kurucz

Foreword

We have now celebrated the 150th anniversary of an event that stands out from Hungary’s thousand-year history, an event of pervasive consequence, an enduring example to the country’s people and a source of patriotic pride: the Revolution and War of Independence of 1848. From the distance of a century and a half, do we really have a good view of what happened then?

The difference between Sándor Petőfi’s lines of poetry written in June 1848 and his letter to János Arany in July 1849 is striking: the first exuberates in historical changes on the world scale, the joy of dedication to the struggle for freedom, while the second is weighed down with sadness at human feebleness and cowardice.

Both of these from the same Sándor Petőfi! It is not only up to the reader what message is conveyed by them. The English poet S. Butler was surely correct when he wrote that historians can do what even God cannot: they can change the past, and perhaps be useful to God as a result.

We should therefore be thankful to the curators who have put together the exhibition 1848 letters, because they have given visitors the chance to extend their knowledge of 1848 directly from the pens of forebears who actually made history, from the notes, letters and relics of true witnesses. These will sometimes reinforce and sometimes modify our existing view of the history of that time. I hope that the Foundation’s latest yearbook will be of similar service in enriching our knowledge.

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Mrs Gergely Kovács

Report on the Activity of the Foundation of Postal and Telecommunications Museums and Its Museums in 1998

The first important document of 1998 arrived, dated January 5, from the Historic Monuments Inspectorate of the National Historic Monuments Office. The letter consented to the Foundation leasing flats 22/A and 22/B on the third floor of Andrássy út 3 for use as museum offices. That decision began the process of resolving the overcrowding that had persisted since 1973, causing mounting problems decade after decade. The flats, with a total area of 160 sq.m., provide space for six members of the Postal Museum staff and for the Foundation’s finance department.

The last official document of the year was reproduced on page 32 of the daily paper Magyar Nemzet on December 24, 1998. An announcement by the Ministry of Transport, Telecommunications and Water Management, serial number 19, stated that the Founda233