Photographic Collection of pre-1526 and post-1526 Documents (1527–20th century)

The post-1526 Records of Section "U" – Post-Mohács

Photographic Collection

Find registry information (e-Archivum) here.

The bases of the Section’s material were laid down by the exploratory work of the historical geography team of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The exploration of documents and charters with historical geographic or local history relevance was started under the leadership of Dezső Csánki in Northern Hungary in the 1930s. To simplify the process the selected material was photographed on the spot and enlarged at home for later treatment. These photographic prints formed the basis of the Photographic Collection of National Archives. Later on photos and prints were made for research projects by Hungarian and foreign archives, but new accessions also include presents and purchased pieces. From the 1970s, the systematic collection development aiming the build-up of a collection as complete as possible of pre-1526 charter prints took priority over the accession carried out to meet research requirements. Now, parallel with acquisition, pre-1526 prints were selected from previous series, too, and were transferred to the so called Charter-cadastre where the starting reference number of the series is U 401.

The post-Mohács series of the Section are arranged by their original place of preservation. Several series deserves special attention. Examples of such special series include the facsimile collection of Gyula Tasnádi Nagy, or the prints of post-Mohács documents from perished family archives once belonged to the holdings of the National Archives. (Unfortunately, only a small fragment of perished documents had prints.) Another special material is the 1.065 piece collection of photos, preserved in Section X – the Microfilm Collection of the National Archives, printed from early 20^th century wet plates which were taken of documents preserved by private individuals.

The Collection is an abundant source for history writing but, as its development shows, most of its pieces were created for previous research projects, therefore it is most useful to further exploit the information hidden in published sources or, in the case of purchased or donated prints, to study privately owned sources.

Finding aids: Since 1956 no printed finding aid has been published for the section. Due to the rearrangements and accessions of the last decades, the old basic inventory of the section has become outdated. It is the summary of records of the National Archives that gives a full picture of the renewed section.