Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1999-2000
Beszámolók és tervek - Tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
where historical artifacts were fashionable only in auction catalogues, not even the founders fully understood the value of this activity. As one of the few people with intimate knowledge of the museums’ past activity, and a close observer of events of the past ten years, I think I can say that we really had a struggle to convince the three founders to work in concordance to guarantee our operation. In the wealthier half of Europe, the past 20 years were a watershed, not only in telecommunications but in museology as well. The museums ran a race to meet the demands of consumer society, which continuously wanted something new, something different, something more. Some critics compared these museum exhibitions to amusement parks while others saw them as the bearers of miracles. The major museums, of course, remained museums - institutions that offered a historical perspective on humankind, the Earth, and the universe, through the treasures of their specific collections. It was in this world that our two museums had to rejuvenate and, even from the periphery of the profession, to remain faithful to the history of our trades and to archive current performance, which, by tomorrow, will be the new relics of the past. The Yearbooks, which have been published annually since 1990, can help to recall the history of the past ten years, and I have my own personal memories, too. I remember first receiving a letter from the Foundation on Foundation letterhead in February of 1990.1 was surprised to see that they had selected the postal emblem of the past century for their logo, a postal hom adorned with the symbol of the holy crown, and that they had chosen to use the old name of the street on which they were located, Andrássy Avenue, instead of the, then current name, which was Népköztársaság Avenue. Then, by the end of summer, Parliament had adopted the same holy crown as the nation’s official coat-of-arms, and by late autumn Népköztársaság Avenue had been restored to its old name, too. I think the Foundation thought it was worthwhile to anticipate change. Maybe that’s why it organised an information society discussion camp in the town of Sopron in the summer of 1990. I am certain that the impetus it had was able to overcome the acceleration of time, making it possible to open an exhibition site in the town of Hollókő in 1991, and a Museum of Telephony in the Castle of Buda in 1992. This latter was one of the very first tmly modem museums in Hungary, where touching the objects is not only permitted but also absolutely necessary, and where visitors can hear all information in three languages. The first exhibit of the museum presented every single modem piece of telematic equipment in existence at the time, when recounting the MATAV Telecom Corporation’s first two years of existence. The Foundation of the Postal and Telecommunication Museum’s Collection at Sopron was established in 1993, in response to local level demands to preserve museum artifacts. To increase the collection of the Stamp Museum, Julian G. Clive, working together with several Western European collectors, set up a foundation with an equity fund of one million Hungarian forints. The Postal Museum increased it storage space by 300 m2, in one of the buildings of the short wave radio transmitter facility at Diósd, just outside of Budapest, and in one wing of a building on Paulay Ede Street within the city, itself. In 1994, museum history was full of plans. Historians designed plans for a tele-world news report and world postal walkabout, which were to have been set up for a World’s Fair Hungary failed to hold in 1996. Both would have brought the world at large to Budapest and it is sad that the plans never got off the drawing board. In 1994, the 72,000 staff 226
