After a gap of two generations
Parliament can again boast of its own museum
MúzeumCafé 48.
“As one of the final steps in the process of making laws during the last parliamentary cycle, the idea of modifying the law on Parliament was raised, in the framework of which a Parliament Museum was established by law as a national specialist museum.” Thus wrote Gyula Kedves, head of the museum, in A Nemzet Főtere. However, the idea of establishing a collection is not new. The notion of a Parliament Museum appeared in 1922 and, on the initiative of Speaker of the House Béla Scitovszky, 100,000 crowns were allocated for its foundation. According to István Bellavics, who heads the Office of the National Assembly’s Directorate for Public Collections and Public Education, as well as the current director of the museum, it is remarkable that leading politicians of the time were prepared to establish the institute in the period after World War I and the Trianon Treaty, despite the fact that the then government had to cope with a serious budget deficit. Finally, the Parliament Museum – Europe’s first – opened on 24 January 1929 in seven rooms of Parliament’s north-eastern wing. On 28 September 1949 the Presidential Council of the People’s Republic liquidated the institute with the stroke of a pen. The staff were transferred to the National Museum and the collection, comprising 16,000 items, was divided among several museums, libraries and archives. The first part of the new exhibition deals with the parliaments of feudal times. The second unit will recall the birth of the modern Parliament, from the Reform Assembly to “parliamentary consolidation and development based on new principles”, while the final section will cover the period between 1918 and 1990. The museum’s long-term plans include the establishment of a digital data base relating to all objects and documents connected with the parliamentary system.