Efforts directed towards the preservation of national treasures had been going on for several decades through cooperative community and individual initiatives, which were then taken under the wing of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Archaeological Committee starting in 1858. Their goal was to establish a national commission. The Parliament did not adopt the submitted proposals for a law on historic monuments at that time, and the decree creating the Provisional Commission could only be created in 1872. The rapporteur, or in other words, the professional director, was the archaeologist and art historian Imre Henszlmann; the chairperson was the president of the Royal Advisory Board, Ágoston Szalay; the vice-chairperson was the lawyer Lajos Hegedüs Candid; and the architect was Frigyes Schulek. Their duty, as can be seen in the ministerial notification seen below, was “…the research, categorization, and registration of Hungary’s historic monuments…” In addition to all of this, the organization considered the creation of a drawing archive and library to support the scholarly work to be an important task. These form the essential basis for the collections of the HMA MPDC, professional works in historic preservation, and scholarly research even today. Our selection of images provides a glimpse of the early writings and acquisitions.
Compiled by the Documentation Department of the HMA MPDC