Documents of the Bethlen Gábor Foundation

http://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/individual/n4633

The collection of the Bethlen Gábor Foundation provides insights into the concerns and the institutionalisation of the national-populist dissent groups in the 1970s and 1980s. The Gábor Bethlen Foundation was officially registered in 1985, though it was in fact active since 1980. The organisation tried to press the Hungarian government to take action in Hungary and in states neighbouring Hungary to foster what it perceived as authentic ethnic Hungarian culture. The efforts to call public attention to the cultural discrimination against Hungarians in the neighbouring socialist countries produced civic networks and initiatives, which were seen as crucial to addressing the failures of the communist government. Furthermore, these civic initiatives generated culture-based criticism of official politics, which was accused of ignoring this important issue.

Location

Budapest Andrássy út 100, Hungary 1062
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Languages

Hungarian

Name of collection

Documents of the Bethlen Gábor Foundation

Provenance and cultural activities

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.

Description of content

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.).

Content

film: 10-99
legal and/or financial documentation: 1000-
manuscripts (ego-documents, diaries, notes, letters, drafts, etc.): 100-499
photos: 500-999

Topics

Founder(s)

Bakos, István

Date of founding

2015

Place of founding

Budapest Andrássy út 100, Hungary
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Creator(s) of content

Collector(s)

Supporters

Office of the Hungarian Prime Minister

Important events in the history of the collection

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

Access type

parts are closed to the public

Publications

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

Author(s) of this page

Pál, Zoltán

References

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

Last edited on: 2018-01-18 11:16:12

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