COURAGE

connecting collections

László Lajtha first travelled to Szék (Romania), in December 1940, and collected folk music there until January 10, 1941.  His interest in folk music, however, started years earlier, in the 1910s, with his folk music collecting trips to Transylvania. After 30 years he began to focus on instrumental music, which was less well known, and in February of 1941 he organized travel for local singers from Szék, to Budapest, Hungary, in order to record their traditional music.  On 17–22 February 1941, Gyula Ortutay helped Lajtha record the Szék performers in the Magyar Rádió (Hungarian Radio) studio. These records were published through Patria Audio. Lajtha, from the outset of his collecting work, emphasized that when documenting folk music, transcribing lyrics or scores is not enough—the original voices and sound recordings are essential. The Szék Collection contains every document in connection with these recordings: letters, documents etc., which also demonstrate the circumstances of traveling in 1940–1941. This important collection reflects the life of Hungarian minorities living in Transylvania. After collecting and recording these works Lajtha also dealt with the Szék Collection by writing academic analysis of its content, but he could no longer travel there.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Ferenc Sebő and Béla Halmos, the main figures of the dance house movement, rediscovered the Patria recordings and learned the folk songs and music. During the Kádár era, the dance house movement offered an alternative form of rebellion; instead of the communist-approved folk culture, the dance house movement was based on a different interpretation of folk traditions and culture.

The leaders of the Hungarian émigré scouting movement have always seen their primary mission as "patriotic education" of young people, teaching and promoting the use of their mother tongue and imparting knowledge regarding Hungarian history and folk and religious traditions. As they could, for obvious reasons, not rely on support from either their native or host countries, Hungarian scout leaders and teachers established weekend schools and published books on their own, built tests measuring language skill and knowledge about Hungary into scout training and have for many decades successfully conducted a Hungarian language high-school graduation examination system in around a dozen countries on four continents. The few pages of documents shown here provide an insight into the latter practice. From 1955 to 1984, more than 1,000 Hungarian students managed to pass their high-school graduation exams in the subjects of Hungarian language and literature, history, geography, ethnography and the arts.

The main part of the  Sándor Varga collection is related to youth organisations in Czechoslovakia. It contains a large variety of documents, including notes, suggestions, and recaps from the organisation’s meetings. A few documents are from the time when Varga participated in some youth organisations as a student, but the main part is related to the Hungarian youth organization, which Varga established in 1968. 
The foundation document of the Hungarian youth organization is preserved in the collection. The organization played an important role in defendig the rights of the Hungarian minority.  It was established in 1968 in Bratislava as a response to the political situation following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. The main purpose was to create an independent youth organisation.

Commonpress was a Mail Art magazine founded by the Polish artist Pawel Petasz. Each issue was compiled by another mail artist who circulated a call in the network specifying a theme for the coming issue. The topic “Hungary” was inspired by the imaginary “Italian boots” of the Italian poet Adriano Spatola’s “Italy issue.” Galántai organized an exhibition out of the incoming material in the Young Artists’ Club in 1984. However, the show was immediately banned, as the authorities considered it an expression of opposition to the regime. At the vernissage, Radio Artpool’s 6^th program, Hungary, was “broadcasted.” As a result of the exhibition, Galántai suffered intensified reprisals; the secret service started openly observing and restricting his activities. They confiscated the next issue of AL (Artpool Letter), a samizdat art periodical edited by Galántai, and took other measures. The exhibition could only be held again on the eve of the regime change (Young Artists’ Club, 1989), and it included a roundtable discussion involving the banned artists and the individuals/officials who banned the exhibition. The catalog of the exhibition (Commonpress No. 51) could be published in wider circulation at the time. When the secret documents became available for research, Artpool received the report about the opening of the exhibition. Using this secret report, Galántai reconstructed the original exhibition a couple of times (Artpool P60, 2000; Centrális Galéria, 2002; Area 51, Kapolcs, 2018).

The picture of Hydajet Hyseni addressing the protesters and some of the information presented in this article are from the archival fond. 

Hydajet Hyseni was one of the organizers of the student demonstrations of 1981, a former political prisoner, and a founder and well-known member of the illegal “Revolutionary Group”. In 2017, 36 years after the demonstrations, Mr. Hyseni provided additional details about his speech and student slogans during the demonstrations in an interview given to the online newspaper Telegrafi. 

In 1981, due to the lack of stage or even a specific location for the protest, Hyseni addressed the students from a tree. In this interview, Mr. Hyseni describes how some of the slogans of the demonstrations of 1981 were not necessarily planned by the organizers, but rather that the main slogans and chants began spontaneously, from the protesters themselves, for instance: “Self-determination, constitution, either peacefully or through war” (Vetëvendosje, Kushtetutë, ja me Paqe, ja me Luftë) and “We are Albanian, not Yugoslavian” (Jemi Shqiptarë, jo Jugosllavë), among others. 

In this interview, Hyseni explains how in essence, the student demands were patriotic but not antagonistic towards other ethnic groups. He considers how the demonstrations and slogans of 1981 did not intended to take from the liberty of others, but instead through these movements the students demanded equal rights for all ethnicities living in Kosovo/SFRY.