COURAGE

connecting collections

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.

This collection contains lectures and papers prepared and organized by the Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), a prominent organization in exile which brought together scientists and artists originally from Czechoslovakia. It contains unique manuscripts and publications from 1957 to 1977, including the series entitled “The Czechoslovak State Idea 1938-1948”. The authors of these papers were important representatives from the Czech and Slovak community in exile –  former politicians and diplomats from before the Communist coup of 1948.

The extensive Czechoslovak Writer Publishing House Collection deposited in the Museum of Czech Literature illustrates the publishing activities of one of the most important postwar Czech publishers from its establishment in 1949 until its end in 1997. The materials allow for the reconstruction of the negotiations between authors, editors and publishing managers, and it frequently provides the only evidence of literary works that were never published. This collection provides a picture of censorship in socialist Czechoslovakia and how the publishing industry functioned under a Soviet-style communist dictatorship.

The aim of the C³ video archive is the complete compilation, preservation, cataloguing, archiving and digital transfer of Hungarian video art. Primarily, it was visual artists who began to experiment with this difficult-to-access (due to state control) medium in the second half of the 1970s. Their endeavours were not institutionally supported, with the exception of a few independent workshops. The archive aims to preserve these technologically unstable materials (earlier considered radical approaches to the moving image) in digital format, and, based on research, to make them available in their historical and international context.