Heritage

We Hungarians established a state based on Christian culture eleven hundred years ago. It’s no coincidence that many of our kings and queens were canonized by the church. About two hundred years ago, we decided that, in opposition to Vienna’s Germanizing efforts, we would stake out a modern native language culture by joining the ranks of European nations. The intellectual courage of Kazinczy and his contemporaries in the Copernican turn towards the native language was culturally equivalent to a second founding of the state. It was around this time that the Hungarian National Museum was also established.

The reason and purpose of the Hungarian National Museum is quite precisely contained in its name: as the museum of the Hungarian nation, it is primarily a stronghold of Hungarian national culture. Its mission is not only professional but also cultural-political. Even its foundation was a political act. In the more than two hundred years since then, its set task, extending beyond the strictly professional sense, has only gained more weight.

Due to historical turning points, Hungary is today the Central European country that borders itself. The heritage of the detached parts of the nation and the annexed territories is also our heritage. Therefore, the primary museological horizon of the Hungarian National Museum – incidentally, according to the intention of its founder Ferenc Széchényi as well – is not Hungary, but the Carpathian Basin.

The task of the Hungarian National Museum – and indeed of every Hungarian public collection – is to answer the question: what is Hungarian in the 21st century?

Naturally, no final and absolute answer can be given to this fundamental question in the dynamics of reality, but the Hungarian public collection system can and should provide reference points and handholds for formulating attempts at answers. This is its job. Because if the global mainstream wins the interpretation competition, if our historical memory is replaced, we won’t be able to interpret our material heritage either, as our entire reference system will cease to exist. According to the guiding thought of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: “If we saw through the trunk of the tree of life, its root system becomes meaningless, its crown is rolled like tumbleweed by the storm of history.”

The current historical perspective from which we need to rethink the place and role of the Hungarian National Museum is as follows: Hungary has been a member state of the European Union for twenty years, we have been in Europe for eleven hundred years. We arrived here from the East. (It also reveals quite a lot about our attitude that the whole world knows us to be descendants of Attila, and this knowledge is enough for them, only we Hungarians want to prove or disprove this.)

We live in an age of crises. We have lived through similar times before. And our ancestors managed to turn their crisis-proof answers into actions. What makes something crisis-proof? Mostly that it’s not at the mercy of forces over which it has little or no influence. We need to find those internal resources that we have and over which we have control. Moreover, the Hungarian Age of Reform in the broader sense shows that if we think as pioneers in our minds and look at the world in Hungarian, we are capable of world-class performance. Our fundamental goals haven’t changed in two hundred years. Using István Széchenyi’s expression, we want to be a “self-sustaining nation”. And today, the circumstances are far better. We can’t settle for less than Petőfi’s generation.

However, two hundred years ago, not only was the modern Hungarian nation born, but the modern Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, etc. nations also formulated their own cultural identities. Then, it was in opposition to us. The current global situation, however, can make us realize that on the basis of mutual respect, in dialogue with each other, we need to cooperate to strengthen that traditional European way of life that we slowly are the only ones living, in which it’s good to live, and which we could lose.

From this perspective, it’s also a political problem. We need to gain not just time, but a future. From the point of view of culture, the primary question is not who forms a government as a result of elections, but whether there will be Hungarian and European culture in 2224.

Consequently, I am convinced that there is only one Hungarian public collection, of which we can be careful stewards at various endpoints – but we preserve, enrich and make visible the same unified Hungarian cultural heritage, whether we are director generals in Budapest or museologists, librarians, archivists in Sepsiszentgyörgy, Zalaegerszeg or Berehove. It follows that there are no metropolitan and provincial institutions either: there are Hungarian museums, Hungarian public collections, numerous temples of Hungarian creative power.

The work carried out in these public collections is not value-neutral, but value-committed. For us, Hungarian culture comes first. Hungarian cultural heritage is more important to us not because it’s better or worse than the culture of any other nation, but because it’s ours.

In public collections, the logic of holistic vision organizes the collection units together. And that’s why I dare to stand by my other thesis statement: in our public collections, our job is the protection of creation. Our explanations stem from understanding the order of creation. We research, care for, and show in various forms the wonder of divine and human creation. That’s why when you go into a museum, you come out as a better person. And that’s why when you go into a Hungarian museum, you come out as a better Hungarian.

Notes:

The text references several important figures and concepts in Hungarian history, including Ferenc Széchényi (founder of the Hungarian National Museum), Ferenc Kazinczy (a key figure in Hungarian language reform), István Széchenyi (a prominent 19th-century Hungarian statesman), and Sándor Petőfi (a national poet).

The essay touches on sensitive topics related to Hungarian national identity, including Hungary’s relationship with its neighbors and the status of Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries.