Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1998

Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven

facilities. The trains are heated in winter, and in summer run with viewing carriages between 9 and 18 hours daily.

The Postal Museum’s exhibition presented the Pioneers’ Post of the last 50 years using colour graphics, photographs and evocative drawings based on the memories of older pioneers, attracting the interest of young and old alike. We also set up a Morse telegraph which had served as a permission-request telegraph for departure and arrival of trains.

Gyöngyi Urbán: Post Horn Gallery

The Post Horn Gallery exhibition hall was set up by the Miskolc Administration of the Hungarian Post Office in the Administration building’s attic, and fitted out by the Postal Museum as its seventh outlying permanent exhibition. Planning was greatly assisted by Dr Miklós Kamody, retired senior Post Office official and postal historian, who has been researching Hungarian aspects of his subject for more than 40 years.

On entry to the museum, the visitor is first faced with Edit Kosa Kapros’ tapestry designs, each showing an era in the history of Hungarian telecommunications. This is followed by the local history part of the exhibition, with original documents or replicas presenting the postal history of Miskolc and surroundings.

On being freed from Turkish rule, and after the death of Michael I, mail in Hungary and Transylvania was gradually integrated under the terms of the Diploma Leopoldinum (1690) into the postal service of the Habsburg Empire. However, the postal developments started by the general postmaster, Duke Károly Paar, were swept away by the War of Independence led by Ferenc Rákóczi II.

Miskolc had a prominent role in the war of independence. It was here that Prince Rákóczi held his Court, and here he wrote his declaration to Europe.

The military post during the war of independence, which also carried private correspondence, operated under regulations issued by Rákóczi in Tokaj (10 November 1703, Léva (1 January 1705) and Eger (4 March 1705). The first postmaster in Hungary was János Szepesi of Miskolc, and the first in Transylvania was Simon Orbán. The staff and official language of the post office were Hungarian. It had 63 postal stations along four main routes and several secondary routes, led by 20 postmasters and 43 “veredarius” - deputy postmasters. In the postal patent issued in Miskolc in 1707, Rákóczi strengthened protection of secrecy of letters, set the obligations of counties to maintain roads, and laid down rules for the use of the post horn.

In 1722, Charles HI, redeeming the Paar family’s feudal rights, took the postal service into state hands. The compulsory use of the German language and the imperial eagle emblem indicated that the post office was “under imperial protection". However, on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, franking privilege for official letters stopped in 1741. The postal law promulgated by Queen Maria Theresa in 1748 enabled the postal stations to be joined by “collecturas", letter-collection offices. This gave the stimulus for the revival of the passenger-carrying postal coach, known from the days of King Matthias. It started up between Vienna and Bratislava in 1752, and was subsequently extended to Buda.

The development of post offices had not yet reached Miskolc, however. The county and the town passed on the costs of official, commercial and private correspondence to the

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