Hogyan indult a magyar műemléki topográfia?

Abstract

The inventorying of historical monuments [Kunsttopographie / Denkmaltopographie] is the first major collective and joint undertaking of Hungarian art history and monument protection. Within this project, monuments in four and a half of Hungary’s 19 counties and the Buda districts of Budapest were processed and published in 12 volumes between 1953 and 1987, by adopting the conception of the Austrian inventory of monuments (Österreichische Kunsttopographie) published from 1907. Sufficient conditions for systematic work for this fundamentally important project for both art history and monument conservation were only given in the period specified above. In connection with the radical institutional changes brought about by the building out of a Soviet-type state administration from 1948, the paper reconstructs the series of events which made it possible – based on the excellent professional legacy and human resource and thanks to the keen judgement of some specialists in key positions – that this grand project could be launched with great zeal and survived – at a decelerating pace but at unchanged professional level – for three decades to come. The professional contents of the program is illumined by three documents and a conference paper read in November 1950 on the conception of the inventory of Hungarian historical monuments, which are enclosed in the supplement. The scholar to present the project was the art historian Dezső Dercsényi, who became the supreme professional guide of Hungarian monument protection until his retirement by virtue of his professional competence and exceptional diplomatic skills. The inventory was being elaborated under the aegis of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences reorganized upon the Soviet model in late 1949. Against this background did that unique intellectual constellation evolve in which the cooperation of the Marxist philosopher György Lukács, who had returned from emigration in Moscow in 1945 and played an active role in the Sovietization of culture including scholarship; of the Christian philosopher Lajos Fülep, a youthful intellectual comrade of Lukács in internal exile in this period whom Lukács asked to head the art historical community; of Dercsényi and the excellent specialists promoted the cause of the registration of Hungarian historical monuments to success. In this way the major break in history did not entail the interruption of so-far achieved results and up-to-date strategic endeavours in the studied area of culture and science but resulted in an unprecedented consolidation of the positions of Hungarian monument protection and art history at an elevated level.