Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 2001
Tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
István Kurucz Preface I don’t believe that any museum has enough space to display its collections without having to make some tough choices. Though our own display area has increased steadily over the years, the problem is still acute. Plans to enlarge the Stamp Museum, a hallmark of our foundation and a national treasure, have been lying dormant for years. The vision of establishing a telecom display, which organiser Matáv Hungarian Telecom Corporation has named Teletárház (Telecom Museum) has not moved forward by an iota, while the collection we hope to display someday, currently housed in a cellar, is growing steadily. Museum curators are now seeking transitional solutions. In addition to usual publication methods, such as books and periodicals, they have been employing contemporary tools, such as CD-ROMs and the Internet. Yearbooks, issued regularly by our museums, include both annual events and studies by researchers, which present their findings. Leafing through the substantial number of yearbooks published by the Foundation, it is satisfying to see that they have grown in size, that print quality has improved, and most important, that their content has become richer. With this yearbook, containing an offering of the Postal Museum’s collection of uniforms and textiles, we are slowly concluding our presentation of the museum’s artefacts. In this way, at least, we have been able to alleviate our display constraints. The letters describing events of times gone by are authentic documents of the periods. Though their content clearly reflects the individual thought processes of the writers, they are happily free of any alterations in conceptual approaches brought on by the passage of time. They are locked in their own eras, describing the days in which they were written. Through them we may see how people originally greeted historical events. This volume includes several of the museum’s documents and letters. Reading them, I feel the ultimate truth of the biblical passage: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. ” (Ecclesiastes 1.9) I firmly believe that this is true in countless ways, even in the history of technology. At any rate, I am certain that the implied warning must be taken to heart. The past must not be forgotten. Our task is to build upon it, and to improve, correcting mistakes and adjusting for continuously changing circumstances! I would like to see this yearbook make its own contribution to this! » Mrs. Gergely Kovács: Documents of Károly Reviczky, Imperial and Royal Postmaster Several 19th century documents on the postal station at Nyergesújfalu (NW Hungary), coming from the Reviczky family’s private archives, are now part of the Postal Museum’s document and report collection. The first of them are dated from January and March of 1843, and detail the costs of repairing the postal station after a fire on August 11, 1842. 198
