COURAGE

savienojot kolekcijas

The Cornel Irimie Collection illustrates how ethnographers managed to negotiate the autonomy of their research activity with the communist state institutions and to conduct ethnographic research in contradiction with some of the official cultural policies. The collection includes more than 300 files of personal documents, student notes, field research notes and reports, drafts of academic works, acquisition reports, and exhibition drafts.

The collection contains documents from the holdings of the largest cultural organisation for ethinc Hungarians in Slovakia. This organisation was one of the few in Czechoslovakia dedicated to issues affecting an ethnic minority, and its holdings therefore offer valuable insight into the status of minority cultures. The society organised cultural events and lectures, and it supported theater, song, and dance groups. It also offered a platform for maintaining cultural identity, and it provided a place for discussion.
During The Hungarian revolution in 1956 CSEMADOK supported the position of the Czechoslovak government on the events. During the Prague Spring CSEMADOK supported the liberalisation policies, tried to change itself into a political interest group, and asked for more rights and privileges for ethnic Hungarians. After the suppression of the Prague Spring the political leadership of CSEMADOK was purged.
The collection includes documents from the CSEMADOK Central Committee and documents related to the organisation of national festivals (Gombaszög/Gombasek festival, Jókai Napok/Days, etc). Publications are also a very important part of the collection.

The Ethnographic Research in Dobrogea Ad-Hoc Collection at the ASTRA Museum (Colecţia Ad-Hoc Cercetarea Dobrogeană) reflects the activities carried out between 1964 and 1989 by collaborative teams of ethnographers, photographers, and architects to rescue and recover the cultural heritage of villages in the region of Dobrogea, which were affected by forced collectivisation and the building of the Danube–Black Sea Canal.

The Ethnological Archives was created in 1938. It is the central archives of Hungarian ethnography and gives insight into both the shaping of an intellectual, alternative tradition to the official ideology of the party-state, and into the practices of preserving the pre-communist cultural heritage. The history of the Archives aptly illustrates the difficulty in sharply distinguishing the roles of cultural opposition and cooperation in the socialist period as it also contains ethnographical collections created by research projects serving contemporary political and ideological goals.

The founder of the Folk Dance House Movement was Béla Halmos. Halmos, as a musician, a folklorist, an instructor, an organizer and the leader of the Hungarian revival movement, supported the Hungarian folk culture and Dance House Movement. The Folk Dance House Archives started to function in 1999. The root of the Archives was the private collection of Béla Halmos, and it continuosly grew thanks to gifts and donations.