“In a couple of years foreign antique dealers plundered Transylvania and Moldova”
Ferenc Pozsony on ethnographic research in Transylvania and the local folk museum in Zabola
MúzeumCafé 47.
As a founder 25 years ago of the Kriza János Ethnographic Society, Ferenc Pozsony was able to rear a new generation of ethnographers at the university in Cluj-Napoca. He has been researching and writing for over 40 years and he was involved in establishing a Sekler folk museum and a Csángó museum in the village where he was born. In the 1970s he was obliged to serve as a soldier in forced labour in a part of Romania far from his native soil. He believes that ethnographers cannot cut themselves off from the challenges of modern life, but he is sorry that since the 1989-90 changes very many valuable Transylvanian objects have ended up in the West. Pozsony was born in Zabola in eastern Transylvania. In the majority of Sekler families it was customary for one child in each generation to be provided with some further education. He acquired knowledge of village life and the culture of the community almost imperceptibly, since his parents gradually introduced him to agricultural work. After 1968 there was an ideological easing, new museums, memorial houses and publications devoted to knowledge of the homeland were established and Kriterion Publishers in Bucharest issued outstanding works about ethnography and cultural history. At secondary school in Covasna, Pozsony was taught by excellent teachers, and at university in Cluj-Napoca he had great professors such as Zoltán Kallós and Pál Binder. He developed a love of Csángó culture from the former and Saxon culture from the latter. After university he was sent to Târgu Secuiesc, then after 1989-90 the Kriza János Ethnographic Society was founded. Meanwhile, in autumn 1990 ethnography began to be taught at the university in Cluj-Napoca. He was prominent in both.