“It was a point of prestige to build museums”
Ottó Trogmayer, archaeologist, protohistoric archaeologist, former director of Szeged’s Móra Ferenc Museum
MúzeumCafé 34.
Ottó Trogmayer could be regarded as someone from Szeged, although ‘only’ forty years of his career is connected to the town. That was how long he worked in the Móra Ferenc Museum, where he started out as an archaeologist and retired as the museum’s director. In addition, for more than three decades he taught at the university of Szeged and for the last ten years he was head of department there. As an archaeologist, he explored sites across Csongrád County and as museum director he saw through the implementation of the Ópusztaszer Memorial Park from its inception in 1970 by Ferenc Erdei to its completion in 1995. He popularised the world of excavations and the early periods of art and cultural history with many radio and TV programmes. His academic publications contributed to the development of archaeology, while his educational books brought the subject closer to the public. The interview offers some insight into the life of the provincial museum, which enjoyed significant traditions and had prominence during the Kádár era, though, like others, was in a difficult situation financially. For a long time, it had just a single phone, a typewriter and a bicycle, but the enthusiasm of the town and county enabled the museum to uncover important sites, stage exhibitions and implement one of the largest cultural investments of the last decades of the 20th century. Ottó Trogmayer was born in Budapest in 1934. He attended university in Budapest. He graduated from archaeology and protohistoric archaeology in 1957 and began working at the Móra Ferenc Museum. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1969, his research area being the early Neolithic period of southern Europe and the early Middle Ages of County Csongrád primarily, and of the Carpathian Basin. He was appointed director of the county museum in 1970 and was in charge of the excavations at Ópusztaszer. He edited the museum’s annual from 1969 to 1983. From 1965 he taught at Szeged’s József Attila University, from 2000 as head of department. He retired in 1997, yet continued teaching, from 2000 as professor. He is the author of more than 20 academic and educational volumes. In 1996 he was awarded the Széchenyi Prize for his unique work – as head of department he introduced the practice whereby the university and the museum co-operate in running the archaeology course. Several museums in smaller towns and villages were under the auspices of the Szeged museum at the time when the county museum system was set up in the 60s. It was prestigious for counties to build museums and they competed with one another in what they could show to important people who visited Hungary. Trogmayer was director from 1970 and every ambassador, archbishop and bishop was taken to his museum. Much depended on local leaders – it helped if the vice-president of the council was a teacher, as in Szeged, and was interested in culture, music and contemporary painting. The idea that later many people dared to assert arose in Ferenc Erdei’s book The Town and its Environs – defeats Hungary experienced should not be celebrated and victories should not be a cause for shame. The memorial park was created with this in mind. The excavations revealed that the site had not only been an agricultural town with a huge church even after the Mongol invasion, but also that building a monastery with the same groundplan as that of the famous Sankt Gallen began at the time of Prince Géza and continued during King Stephen’s reign. In 1970 Ferenc Erdei brought a commission together involving representatives of the trade unions, the Patriotic Front and the county council, as well as Gyula László and György Győrffy, experts on the Hungarian Conquest, and Ottó Trogmayer the director of the Szeged museum. It was Gyula László’s idea for the Feszty Cyclorama to be set up in Ópusztaszer. The existence of a park, a memorial and a garden of ruins was discussed at the first meeting and the idea of an open-air ethnographic museum was also raised. The cost of restoring the cyclorama was very high, but the Németh government undertook to guarantee payment. That was carried over by the Antall government, but in the end it was inaugurated during the Horn government. The Szeged museum executed both planned and rescue excavations. Until the end of the 50s the practice was that the museum received notification about getting 400 forints – half the director’s monthly salary – transferred on the day. You could dig and that sum covered the cost of a metre-deep hole the size of half a room. Those were the rescue excavations. The large planned excavations included those at Tác-Gorsium, Zalavár, and Buda and Eger castles. In the 70s somewhat more money could be obtained from the counties. There was not much technical background, but renting a caravan meant some success. After 1956 county museum annuals were published and the one in Szeged has survived best. It is said that a museum’s task is to collect, research and present. Archaeology could satisfy all that – there were excavations and forums where research could be presented.