Adresa

• Budapest Andrássy út 100, Hungary 1062
  Vezi harta

Limbi

• Maghiară

Numele colecției

• Documents of the Bethlen Gábor Foundation

Originea colecției și activitățile culturale reprezentate

• The collection documents the activity of Gábor Bethlen Foundation. The organisation consisted of intellectuals who were concerned with the protection of ethnic Hungarian minority cultures in states neighbouring Hungary. They felt that the communist governments of Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia were hostile to the institutions and culture of Hungarian groups in their countries and threatened the survival of authentic Hungarian culture. These intellectuals in Hungary were critical of the domestic socialist government, which in their view had ignored the needs of Hungarians abroad. The Bethlen Foundation protested in particular against the Romanian leadership’s discriminative ethnic policies, and it tried to press the Hungarian government to support the Hungarians in Transylvania. The Foundation sought to correct these perceived failings of the communist leadership in Hungary and tried to attract attention to the problem of Hungarian minorities abroad. They organised award ceremonies to honour the people who made significant efforts to preserve the traditional cultures in the Carpathian Basin. A professional committee was established in 1987 to deal with the problems of Hungarians in Romania, and in 1988 a declaration was created to support the demonstrators in Brasov/Brassó that had taken place a few month before. The Foundation donated funds to further the spread of the Calvinist periodical ‘Confessio’ in Transylvania in 1989. Many members of the Foundation took part in several oppositional events (conferences in 1985 at Monor and Lakitelek, arguments at the Jurta Theatre, protests against Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s demolition of Transylvanian villages in 1988 etc.). At first, the Hungarian government tried to discourage the establishment of the Bethlen Gábor Foundation (some members were silenced and the authorisation was disbanded), and it then limited the scope of its activities (for instance, making it more difficult to the Foundation to make appearances in the press, etc.).
  
  The collection of the Gábor Bethlen Foundation is primarily the fruit of the personal efforts of István Bakos, one of the initiators of the Bethlen Gábor Foundation, who started an initiative to preserve the Foundation’s documents in the 1980s, because he thought that without conservation efforts the collection might disintegrate. Bakos' primary aim was to keep documents about the Foundation's history and activities for researchers in the future. The documents of prominent populist intellectuals Ferenc Kiss, Gyula Illlyés, János Márton, and Csaba Kiss Gy. were also made part of Bakos’ collection. In 2015, Bakos donated some of the material (3 archival boxes) to the Research Institute and Archives for the History of the Hungarian Regime Change (founded in 2013). Some of the documents are still in his private possession.

Descrierea conținutului

• The 17th box in the Research Institute and Archives of the Hungarian Regime Change contains the manuscripts, memorials, and blueprints of the book ’The Quarter-Century of the Bethlen Gábor Foundation: 1980–2005.’ The 18th box contains documents on the operation of the Foundation: constitution drafts, memoirs, statements of bank accounts, contracts, materials for tenders, regulations etc. The correspondence is found here too, along with the documents of the remunerations (speeches, laudations, invitation cards, programs etc.) and the newspaper articles of the Foundation. The 19th box contains the documents of the Teleki Pál statue, which was set up after the change of regimes. There is only one article from the 1980s. The material is still being organized. It can be studied, but one must first make preliminary arrangements with the Research Institute and Archives of the Hungarian Regime Change.

  In 2017, István Bakos got the documents of János Márton, former president of the Foundation. Many dossiers contain the correspondence of János Márton, the official reports from the secretarial and advisory board meetings, accounts, etc. The documents about relationships with the foreign Hungarian organizations (Japanese-Hungarian Foundation of Lajos Kazár, the Transylvanian World Federation, the European Protestant Hungarian Free University, etc.), and biographies (translated into several languages) of the people who were awarded medals by the Foundation (Péter Domokos Pál, Zbigniew Herbert, Károly Király, Attila Szabó T., Miklós Duray, Bohumil Hrabal, László Tőkés etc.) are also part of the collections. Moreover, there are also many documents in Bakos’ private possession about the Foundation (manuscripts, laudations of the people who were given awards, film materials, photos, etc.).

Conținutul colecției

• documentație juridică și/sau financiară: 1000-
• film: 10-99
• fotografii: 500-999
• manuscrise (memorii, jurnale, note, scrisori, ciorne, etc ): 100-499

Administrator(i)

• Research Institute and Archives for the History of the Hungarian Regime Change

Proprietar(i)

• Research Institute and Archives for the History of the Hungarian Regime Change

Părți interesate din cadrul colecțiilor

• Bethlen Gábor Foundation

Subiecte

• literatură și critică literară
• mișcări naționale

Fondatori

• Bakos, István

Data fondării

• 2015

Locul fondării

• Budapest Andrássy út 100, Hungary
  Vezi harta

Creatori

• Bakos, István
• Kiss Gy., Csaba
• Márton, János
• Nagy, Gáspár

Colecționari

• Bakos, István
• Márton, János

Susținători

• Office of the Hungarian Prime Minister

Evenimente importante în istoria colecției

• Donation of documents of István Bakos to the Research Institute and Archives for the Hungarian Regime Change

Piese remarcabile

• Appeal, "Supporting the Bethlen Gábor Foundation", 1985. Archival document

Tipul de acces

• parțial inaccesibil publicului

Publicații

• Bakos István, Szécsi Árpád, J. Király István. A Bethlen Gábor Alapítvány negyedszázada, 1980-2005. Alapítvány a nemzet javára (Quarter-century of the Bethlen Gábor Foundation, 1980-2005. A Foundation for the Nation), 2005. Book

Autorul(ii) acestui articol

• Pál, Zoltán

Lista referințelor

Bakos, István , interview by Pál, Zoltán, January 23, 2017. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection