Location

• Budapest, Hungary
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Languages

• English
• French
• Hungarian

Name of collection

• Gábor Klaniczay's private collection

Provenance and cultural activities

• The private collection of Gábor Klaniczay (1950-) includes written, visual, and audio materials about forms of dissent and the underground and subcultural life of the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in Hungary. This extraordinary collection was built up thanks to his efforts in three roles: anthropological observer, participant, and documentarist.

  Klaniczay was interested in the Paris student movements of 1968, critiques of the socialist system, and works and performances by artists where were subcultural or alternative in their form or content. He played an active role at the time. He attended rock, punk, and New Wave concerts, as well as exhibitions of modern and avantgarde art and performances, all of which were connected to political movements of the time. In addition, Klaniczay signed petitions, organized seminars, and wrote and distributed samizdat brochures.

  His collection contains almost the entire repertoire of contemporary samizdat publications (“Profil,” “Marx a negyedik évtizedben,” “Beszélő,” “AB Hírmondó,” etc.) He had relatively easy access to these materials because he was one of the unofficial distributors of these kinds of materials in the Historical Institute of HAS, at ELTE, and also for a few prominent members of the oppositional movement.

  Among the documents, one finds notes, articles, and an important group of files. When the people who had signed the Charta’ 77 petition were persecuted in 1977 and 1979, Klaniczay started to collect data about those involved. He conducted interviews and published articles.

  The documents, leaflets, and LPs which he collected abroad constitute a third thematic group. Klaniczay first travelled to Paris in 1967, and he spent time there over the course of the next few years as well. He was in New York in 1981 and in 1986. During these trips, he encountered oppositional cultural life in the West. All of these documents were completed by a significant library.

  A great music collection of CDs and tapes consists of songs by alternative, rock, punk, and New Wave performers in the West. It was difficult to obtain these items. They constituted rarities, and people exchanged them among one another. This music collection shows how Western oppositional culture appealed to a Hungarian oppositional person and the kinds of topics in which he was interested.

  In one of his papers, Klaniczay wrote about an exhibition of New Wave posters entitled “Pokoli aranykor,” or “Infernal Golden Ages” (“Pokoli aranykor. New wave koncertplakátok a ‘80-as évekből.” Bp. Szabó György és Szőnyei Tamás gyűjteményeiből. Budapest, Kieselbach, 2017). He observed that the best moments of punk and New Wave trends had not been documented. There seemed to be no interest in doing this. Paradoxically, one can reconstruct the history of the Hungarian New Wave by using the reports of the state security. Because these documents are only partly useful for historical research (given their unreliability), materials like the items found in Gábor Klaniczay’s collection compensate in part for the lack of sources.

  Klaniczay was kept under surveillance by the agents of the secret service. According to the reports about him, one of his university fellows collected information about him. This person even investigated Klaniczay’s flat, looking for samizdat material. Ultimately, however, Klaniczay suffered no repercussions as a consequence.

Description of content

• The geographical scope of the collection extends to Hungary, Paris, and New York. French and American leaflets, posters,  and proclamations reveal information about the oppositional, alternative, subcultural life in the 1970s and 1980s in Paris and in New York. There are a lot of documents about Hungarian New wave music and art performances. One also finds documents and notes connected to the political oppositional movement in Hungary.     

  Important issues of illegal publications were preserved (“Profil”, “Marx a negyedik évtizedben”, “Beszélő”, “AB Hírmondó”) in the large samizdat-collection. In the library there are several rarities, for example, homemade artistic samizdat volumes, including “Szétfolyóirat,” which was edited by Árpád Ajtony, “Sznob internacional,” edited by Tamás Papp, György Petri’s typewritten poetry, etc. Klaniczay owns a copy of György Konrád’s novel (“A városalapító”- “The City Builder”, 1977), parts of the text of which the author personally censored.

  The collection of vinyl LPs includes records from the 1970s and 1980s, including some pirated albums (for example Patti Smith: Canine Teardrop). In addition, Klaniczay collected tapes of music by Hungarian New Wave bands (Trabant, Balaton, Európa Kiadó, Neurotic, Kontroll).

Content

• grey literature (regular archival documents such as brochures, bulletins, leaflets, reports, intelligence files, records, working papers, meeting minutes): 100-499

Operator(s)

• Klaniczay, Gábor

Owner(s)

• Klaniczay, Gábor

Geographical scope of recent operation

• international

Topics

• alternative forms of education (e.g. flying universities)
• alternative lifestyles and resistance of the everydays
• democratic opposition
• music (rock, punk, alternative, classical, etc.)
• samizdat and tamizdat
• underground culture
• youth culture

Founder(s)

• Klaniczay, Gábor

Date of founding

• 1967

Place of founding

• Budapest, Hungary
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Creator(s) of content

• Bread and Puppet Theater
• Klaniczay, Gábor
• Konrád, György
• Kovács, András
• Lukin, Gábor
• Perneczky, Géza
• Smith, Patti

Collector(s)

• Klaniczay, Gábor

Important events in the history of the collection

• Gábor Klaniczay published a book about cultural opposition

Featured items

• Bread and Puppet Theater’ s leaflet
• György Konrád : The City Builder
• Patti Smith: Canine Teardrop pirated disc, 1982.

Access type

• all closed to the public

Publications

• Klaniczay, Gábor. Ellenkultúra a hetvenes-nyolcvanas években. Budapest: Noran, 2003.

Author(s) of this page

• Huhák, Heléna

References

Fonyó, Attila. "A pangás évei. (Klaniczay Gábor: Ellenkultúra a hetvenes–nyolcvanas években; A hetvenes évek kultúrája; Avantgárd: underground: alternatív Popzene, művészet és szubkulturális nyilvánosság Magyarországon)." BUKSZ 16, no. 3 (2004), 195-205. http://epa.oszk.hu/00000/00015/00035/pdf/02fonyo.pdf.

Kisantal, Tamás. "Ziggy Stardust és a flagellánsok. Klaniczay Gábor: Ellenkultúra a hetvenes-nyolcvanas években." Jelenkor 48, no. 2 (2005), 187. http://www.jelenkor.net/archivum/cikk/722/ziggy-stardust-es-a-flagellansok.

Klaniczay, Gábor. "Elgyötört test és megtépett ruha. Két kultúrtörténeti adalék a performance gyökereihez." In A performance-művészet, 145-183. Budapest: Artpool - Balassi Kiadó - Tartóshullám, 2000. http://www.artpool.hu/performance/klaniczay1.html.  Ugyanez angol fordításban: „Tormented body, torn clothes.” http://www.artpool.hu/performance/klaniczay.html

Klaniczay, Gábor. New Wave líra – Trabant és Balaton, in Havasréti József – K. Horváth Zsolt (szerk.): Avantgárd: underground: alternatív. Popzene, művészet és szubkulturális nyilvánosság Magyarországon.  Kijárat Kiadó – Artpool Művészetkutató Központ – PTE Kommunikációs Tanszék, Budapest- Pécs, 2003. 133-142.

Klaniczay, Gábor. "Gondolatok a népi kultúra, a szubkultúra és az ellenkultúra viszonyáról." Beszélő 5, no. 37 (2000). http://beszelo.c3.hu/cikkek/gondolatok-a-nepi-kultura-a-szubkultura-es-az-ellenkultura-viszonyarol.

Klaniczay, Gábor. Ellenkultúra a hetvenes-nyolcvanas években. Budapest: Noran, 2003.

Klaniczay, Gábor. "Egotrip." Korall 2005, no. 3/4 (2005), 197-206. http://epa.oszk.hu/00400/00414/00015/pdf/t_09klaniczay.pdf.

Klaniczay, Gábor. „L’underground politique, artistique, rock (1970-1980)”, Ethnologie française, 36 (2006), 283-297.

Klaniczay, Gábor. „Subkultur und Underground im Jahre 1984 in Ungarn.” in Alexander Pehlemann, Bert Papenfuß, Robert Mießner (eds.), 1984 ! Block an Block. Subkulturen im Orwell-Jahr. Mainz: Ventil Verlag, 2015, 171-182.

Klaniczay, Gábor. „Szubkultúra, ellenkultúra, underground.“ Rubicon, 24 (2013/9-10), 132-144.

Klaniczay, Gábor. "Ellenáramlat az ellenkultúrán belül – az új hullám." In Pokoli aranykor. New wave koncertplakátok a ‘80-as évekből. Bp. Szabó György és Szőnyei Tamás gyűjteményeiből. Szerk. Rieder Gábor. Budapest: Kieselbach, 2017. 27-39.

Klaniczay, Gábor, interview by Huhák, Heléna, October 18, 2017. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection