The József Gyönyör collection represents the work of a lawyer and publicist from the time of his work in the Slovak government (beginning in 1969) at the Department of Nationalities. His main task in the government was to promote the Nationalities Bill of 1968, which aimed to establish a committee of nationalities and partial cultural autonomy. This collection therefore gives significant insight into the efforts of cultural minorities to obtain greater recognition. As a publicist, Gyönyör wrote articles for the Új szó newspaper. In his articles he analysed the situation of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia and Slovakia, and these articles are important as first-hand accounts of status of the Hungarian minority.
József Gyönyör was a lawyer and publicist from Šahy (Slovakia). In 1943 he graduated as a lawyer at the Pázmány Péter University in Budapest. Afterwards he worked as a civil servant. During the Second World War he was imprisoned by the Soviets. After that time he was forced to do manual work. From 1969 he worked for the government of the Slovak Socialist Republic at the Department of Nationalities. He focused on the history and the position of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia. As a publicist he wrote articles for the Új szó newspaper since 1968, in which he analysed the situation of the Hungarian minority.
Gyönyör played a major role in solving the problems of the Hungarian minority. The main aim of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia was to shape a homogeneous country of two coequal nations – the Slovaks and the Czechs. The constitution did not mentioned anything about the minorities within these nations, so dealing with these problems was sometimes a difficult, but also a very important, issue. Gyönyör was never persecuted for his activities; therefore, he owned all the documents in this collection until his death.
After Gyönyörs death in 2003, his family donated his legacy to the Forum Minority Research Institute. This legacy includes mostly documents and manuscripts from the time when Gyönyör worked for the Slovak government. The documents deal with the problems of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia. The collection is fully open to the public.
Description of content
The collection contains a large amount of material from the time when Gyönyör worked for the Slovak government at the Department of Nationalities. This includes mostly documents, manuscripts, and articles, all of which deal with the problems of the Hungarian minority in the Slovak State during the Second World War and in the Czechoslovak Republic under the communist regime.
