From Theresa Brunswick’s Garden of Angels to Children Protected by Rákosi
Nursery School Museum in Martonvásár gets new building
MúzeumCafé 44.
The Nursery School Museum re-opened in new premises on 12 September. It moved to 13 Dózsa György Road after being in a building in the Martonvásár mansion park for 20 years. Although all the exhibition items are not yet in place and the lightning lacks the final touches, it is still an enormous pleasure for the managing staff to see this extraordinary collection now in an appropriate location. It is all the result of Mrs Tibor Harcsa’s continuous collecting over 30 years, which began at the Csillag Street Nursery School in Nyiregyáza. The collection turned into a museum and exhibits became collected nationally. Mrs Harcsa travelled all over the country visiting elderly nursery school teachers who had some objects from their young years at home. The museum is a place of pilgrimage for a reason. It is the only museum in the world where nursery school education stretching for 132 years is exhibited chronologically. On the ground floor photographs, objects, toys and period clothes present the history of nursing young children between 1828 and 1960. The exhibition begins with the era of Theresa Brunswick who educated her own nephews and nieces and hence got involved with the education of young children. Theresa, the “angelic woman”, opened Central Europe’s first kindergarten, the so-called Angels’ Garden in her mother’s property in Buda in 1828. The museum has concluded an agreement with the rector of the Apor Vilmos Catholic College and the town’s nursery school about organising a regional further training centre for nursery school teachers in the museum building in the near future. However, unfortunately lacking a museum education specialist, the present director alone shows visitors around.