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Summaries of collections in the Voices of the 20th Century Archive
1. Collection of Ilona Liskó
The collection contains 10 series of research conducted between the 1970s and the 1990s. The series are accessible for researchers without any restrictions. Applied methods: interviewing and observation.
(1) Pedagogue interviews: Interviews conducted with pedagogues in various districts of Budapest in the 1970s; (2) Relations of interests within the plate-glass factory in Salgótarján: interviews with factory workers with different positions and areas of work; (3) Congruency and career identification: interviews with vocational workers; (4) Research on school master elections: interviews with old and new school masters and follow-up research; (5) Dropout from high school (1982-1983): interviews with the child, the parent(s) and the former class master; (6) School disciplinal: semi-structured interviews with school masters; (7) Research on the Táncsics College: interviews with former members about their careers and lives after graduation; (8) Research on special vocational school following the liberalization and concomitant specialization of schools; (9) The situation of vocational training in Hungary; (10) Restructuring schools.
Related publications
Liskó Ilona. Kudarcok a középfokú iskolákban. Kutatási zárótanulmány. Kutatás közben sorozat. Budapest: Oktatáskutató Intézet, 2003. www.hier.iif.hu/hu/letoltes.php?fid=kutatas_kozben/196
Liskó Ilona. A közoktatás és a szakképzés illeszkedése. Kutatási zárótanulmány. Kutatás közben sorozat. Budapest: Oktatáskutató Intézet, 2002. www.hier.iif.hu/hu/letoltes.php?fid=kutatas_kozben/157
Andor Mihály - Liskó Ilona. Az utolsó igazgatóválasztás. Társadalom és oktatás. Budapest: Educatio Kiadó, 1994.
Andor Mihály - Liskó Ilona. Igazgatócserék. Közoktatási kutatások. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1991.
Liskó Ilona. Lépéshátrányban. Budapest: Oktatáskutató Intézet, 1989.
Liskó Ilona. Kudarcok középfokon: kutatási beszámoló az OKKFT B/2 2.2 program keretében folytatott "Az oktatási rendszer szelekciós mechanizmusai" c. kutatásról. Budapest: Oktatáskutató Intézet, 1986.
Csákó Mihály - Liskó Ilona. A szakmunkástanulók társadalmi determinációja a hetvenes években. Kandidátusi értekezés. Budapest, 1979
2. Forced Labor 1939–1945
The research entitled Dokumentation Zwangsarbeit was conducted in 26 countries, in cooperation with 32 institutes, between 2005 and 2006. The collection contains 590 life history interviews with forced laborers under the Second World War. The project was led by Alexander von Plato. Its main archive and website is: http://www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/.
The interviews conducted in Hungary and Slovakia (19 interviews, about 2-4 hours long each) and their related documents (such as books, photos etc.) can be found in the Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Group. Interviewees: Pálné Gedeon, Nándor Halper, Éva Harmat, Jenő Hirsch, Judit Kornidesz, Imréné Márkus, Béla Rappaport, György Solt, Mihály Stettner, Ferencné Udvardi, Györgyné Varga, Ede Zádor and 7 anonymous.
Hungarian project leader: Éva Kovács. Locations of the interviews: Budapest and Kosice in Hungary and Slovakia.
Related publications:
3. Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project
In 2002, the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior initiated an international project for the worldwide recording of testimonies given by survivors of the Mauthausen concentration camp and its satellite camps. The Hungarian team recorded 52 audio and five video interviews in Hungarian, using the narrative technique. The Hungarian team, led by Éva Kovács, conducted fifteen interviews in Hungary and four interviews in Slovakia, all of them in Hungarian. Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Group finally got the copyright for these interviews in order to promote further research on the material in Hungary. In 2010-11, the Hungarian sub-collection was prepared for high school and university education with funding by the Active Remembrance’ Programme of the European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). The material focuses on the aspects of liberation and homecoming. The research was financed by: Ministry of Interior, Austria. Members of the research project: Éva Kovács, Zsófia Kovács, Máté Zombory, Júlia Vajda, Zsolt Vitányi. Location of the research: Budapest. Number of documents: approx. 400.
Related publications:
Szász, Anna Lujza - Vajda, Júlia. „Mindig van éhség.” Pillanatképek Mauthausen felszabadításáról. Budapest: Eötvös Kiadó. 2012.
4. Collection of Éva Kovács
(1) The population’s hospitality. Discourses of the ‘stranger’ and the ‘foreigner’ in Hungary. The research focuses on attitudes towards the ‘stranger’ and the ‘foreigner’ in the case of various social groups such as the taxi drivers, hotel staff, interpreters, foreign business partners, refugee camp staff, immigration office staff, detectives, people living in mixed marriages with citizens of the formerly Easter block). During the research there were interviews conducted with people who had never had any relationship with ‘foreigners’ or ‘strangers’.
Related publications:
(2) The social memory of the Kádár-era: how various social groups remember (Germans, Roma, Slovaks, Jews, Homeless, Dissidents, Aristocrats and Cadres) the Kádár-era.
Related publications:
(3) In and Out – Three Times research focuses on strategies of living of various settlements along the border (Old, Mocsa, Bedő, Tiszakerecseny). There is a limited access to the collection. Research period: 2002-2005 and 2009-2011. Head of research: Éva Kovács. Number of documents: 720.
Related publication:
5. Collection of István Kamarás
The documentation deposited in the archive can be divided into 5 thematic unit, reflecting the entire career of István Kamarás:
(1) Judah or Peter: There are 269 interviews and notes under this heading. 60 interviews are about topics like the difficulties of the life of a priest, loneliness, or the reasons and consequences of bailing out. These are part of an investigation that forms part of a larger research project on the religious movements of Catholic youth (1949-1961). The rest of the interviews (about 200) approach the issue of church life using the method of sociography - or 'reliography' as referred to it by Kamarás. The interview material was used in several publications.
(2) Base communities (small communities): This is a collection of group interviews (of min. 3 persons), notes and draft studies belonging to an intermittent research project between 1986 and 1990 that forms the basis of various publication. The thematic unit of 190 items contains mainly unprocessed manuscripts and interview segments, ready for comparison and secondary interpretations.
(3) Spiritual practices is the title of a series of 44 interviews and (partly typed and partly hand-written) notes related to reunions of youth at Nagymaros between 1976 and 1986. These are documents of the preparatory research behind the book Lelkierőmű Nagymaroson (Spiritual Plant at Nagymaros, 1989). In terms of public visibility, this subcollection represents the peak of István Kamarás's professional career - a resource he often used in later years.
(4) Conversion is a subcollection of individual careers, notes on confessions and excerpts on spiritual practices (12 items altogether)
(5) Reception of literary works is a block of 269 items of which 255 interviews are from research conducted among people using libraries, especially to read novels, accompanied by partial studies by István Kamarás. The interviews form an organic part of a representative survey involving 400 persons on librarians' reading habits. Besides the reading of novels, István Kamarás also studied the reception of short stories and the one-minute pieces by istván Örkény.
Related publications:
Tari Örs Lehel. "Kamarás István gyűjteményének bemutatása." socio.hu 2017/1.
6. Collection of Pál Diósi
(1) The research This is no pleasure-trip contains in-depth interviews with prostitutes and their clients. In our database there is only one interview – the one that is missing from the volume titled This is no pleasure-trip.
Related publications:
Diósi, Pál. Ez nem kéjutazás. Interjúk a budapesti prostitúcióról. Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 1990.
(2) The Balaton entrepreneurs research contains 8 interviews conducted with entrepreneurs. The materials are accessible for researchers without any restrictions. Research period: 1988-1992. Location of research: Budapest, and settlements around Lake Balaton. Applied method: interviewing.
Related publications:
Bezsenyi, Tamás. "Egy ötven literes hordóból hatvan liter sört kimérni". A fővárosi és Balaton környéki vendéglátás és turizmus informális világa a Kádár-korban. In: Kötetlen. Az ELTE Angelusz Róbert Társadalomtudományi Szakkollégium tanulmánykötete. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó Kft, 2014. 64-88.
7. Collection of Antal Örkény and Mária Kovács M.
"...[W]hen we started studying the great careers and mobility opportunities offered by the 1950s, we thought all of this was history. However, we soon realized that the memory of vocational graduation still incites extreme reactions in former students. ... How do they see themselves? And how do they see us? We were seeking answers to such questions, when about 10 years ago we asked seven persons with a vocational graduation degree to talk about their lives. Many years have passed since then; their lives just like ours have changed. However, when we listened to the old tapes, the conversations seemed even more intriguing. And today, when we asked some of them to confess again about their past, we were not only interested in history but also in the present and ourselves in it. ..." (excerpt from the Introduction of the book Káderek (Cadres) [page 5.])
The research taking place in Hungary in the 1980s and the early 1990s was summarized in the book Káderek (Cadres) published in 1991. The research was led by Mária Kovács M. and Antal Örkény. Only a small part of the interviews (6 of them) was used in the book. The complete collection kept in the Archive includes 21 interviews and the book itself, also containing unpublished fragments of interviews as well as documents for the book.
8. History of Hungarian sociology: interviews
This collection contains interviews conducted with Hungarian sociologists who favor qualitative research methods in their research. The interviews focus on the professional history of the interviewees, provide a deeper insight into their researches and attempt to outline professional and institutional relations. The research started in 2010, the accessibility of interviews varies.
Related publications:
Zombory, Máté. "A szociológián innen és túl. Interjú Hankiss Elemérrel". socio.hu, 2015/1.
Klopfer, Zsófia. "A Losonczi Ágnes gyűjtemény". socio.hu, 2015/3.
9. Collection of Ágnes Losonczi
Related publications:
Klopfer Zsófia. "A Losonczi Ágnes gyűjtemény". socio.hu 2015/3.
10. Collection of Ágnes Utasi
The documents donated by Ágnes Utasi to the Archive are evidence of how research on the way of life in Hungary was differentiated into professional sociologies (on lifestyle, forms of life, quality of life) using special approaches, and how these relate to the study of the consumption habits and mobility tracks of other social groups (elite, middle class). The collection contains more than 100 interviews on (1) the elite, (2) the middle class, and (3) homelessness in the 1990s, open for new interpretations and comparative studies, as well as (4) draft studies on consumption, lifestyle, family relations and networking.
Related publications:
Tibori Timea. "Utasi Ágnes szociológusról és a gyűjteményről" socio.hu 2017/3.
11. Collection of Péter Somlai
(1) Twenty Years. Changes in family relations in the end of the 20th Century Hungary. The research aims at exploring family relations in Hungary. It was initiated in the 1970s as a one-time survey. Later, in the 1980s and the 1990s the surveys were repeated with the same families whose lives were thus tracked during three decades. Research locations: Budapest, and Nógrád, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok and Baranya counties. Number of documents: 743.
(2) Extegration disorders. The materials are accessible without any restrictions. Research period: 1986-1987, 1997-1998. Participants: János Bolyai, Judit Dávid, Éva Fodor, Zsuzsa Nagy, Zelma Skultéty, Szabó, Györgyi, Marianna Szűcs, Erika Varsányi. Locations: Budapest, Debrecen, Komló, Pécs. Applied methods: fieldwork, interview. Number of documents: 86.
Related publications:
Szabari, Vera. "Történetek. A Somlai Péter gyűjtemény bemutatása." socio.hu, 2015/4.
Somlai Péter. Húsz év. Családi kapcsolatok változásai a 20. század végi Magyarországon. Budapest: Új Mandátum, 2002.
Somlai Péter. Kiilleszkedési zavarok. Budapest: ELTE Szociológiai Intézet, 1989.
12. Collection of Judit H. Sas
(1) Children’s drawings: In 2011, while the institute was moving from one place to another, disorderly documents of various old research projects surfaced from the archives of the Institute of Sociology. Among the 40 boxes that had been saved, we discovered more than 5,000 pieces of A3-sized children’s drawings. What we found was the collection from Baranya County. The research was carried out between 1976 and 1978, the data being collected by the Research Group of Education Research. Children attending grades 5-8 were asked by the researchers to draw pictures about: where they live at the moment / where they will live in 2000 / where they want to live in 2000. The drawings were prepared during home room classes, no researchers being present. Eventually, the children’s works were not elaborated. 30 years later, in honor of Zsuzsa Gerő, Csanádi and Ladányi analyzed a part of the drawings from the point of view of social mobility. Beyond this, nothing has happened so far with the drawings, thus the two – already digitalized - collections await to be researched by someone, some day.
Related publications:
(2) Orion research: the research aims at mapping and exploring the situation of the lifestyle of the working class. The research was restricted to the most productive factory of the socialist industry, the then state-owned Orion factory (today called Orion Electronics Manufacturing Services). 45 workers were requested to participate in the research. The eligibility criteria were the following: is between the ages of 25-35; resident of Budapest; has a family of his/her own. The researchers wished to target the so-called elite of the working class. The research started with a life story interview with both spouses (but separately). Then the researchers conducted monthly interviews with each spouse for a year. Period: 1978 – 1981. The series contain 190 documents, the materials are accessible without any restrictions.
Related publications:
H. Sas, Judit. Szubjektív történelem, 1980-1994. Budapest: MTA Szociológiai Kutató Intézet, Societas Alapítvány, 1995.
Kovács, Kamilla. "Az 1978-1981 közötti Orion kutatásról". socio.hu, 2015/2.
13. Collection of Péter Szuhay
(1) Research on the Roma Holocaust. Following the temporary Holocaust exhibition at the inauguration of the Holocaust Memorial Centre in 2004. a small research team was formed under the leadership of Péter Szuhay in order to find a Roma family who could be documented and visually presented. Based on their previously obtained knowledge, each researcher picked at least two communities and conducted around three unstructured interviews in each settlement in order to unfold the history of the family. The interviewers explored not only the experience of the Roma Genocide but also the history of the family and of the wider community. They also made findings on the relationship between the majority and the minority or the status of Roma on the labor market. By using their texts, the researchers also gave a voice to local historians and teachers. The collection comprises photographs, birth certificates, identification cards, official documents, correspondence as well as in-depth interviews conducted on the settlement as part of the representative Roma survey in 1971.
The collection is accessible for researchers without any restrictions. Research period: 2005. Research participants: Elza Lakatos, Gábor Fleck, Krisztina Balogh, Éva Kalla, Edit Kőszegi, László Endre Hajnal, Gábor Sárközi, Gábor Molnár. Locations of research: Torony, Tata, Szőny, Őriszentpéter, Ozora, Győr, Esztergom, Dormánd, Doboz, Csente, Bogyiszló, Bicsérd. Applied research methods: interviewing, fieldwork, archival work. Number of documents: 376.
Related publications:
Szász, Anna Lujza. "Szuhay Péter gyűjteményének bemutatása". socio.hu, 2015/4.
14. Collection of Ferenc Pataki
(1) Social Integration Disorders. Keywords: social integration, socialization. The materials are accessible without any restrictions. Period: 1986-1993. Locations: Budapest, Hatvan. Applied method: interview. Number of documents: 77.
Related publications:
Kovai, Melinda. "Pataki Ferenc kutatási gyűjteménye". socio.hu, 2016/1.
15. Research on the workers’ ways of life
Under the framework of a so-called life style research, approximately 1,200 blue-collar workers in Budapest were interviewed in the middle of the 1970s. The collection has four different types of documents: 1.) structured life-story interviews which focuses on themes such as every-day life and cultural consumption, 2.) extracts of life-story interviews containing basic information about the interviewees such as their living standards, educational background, degree of culturalization, 3.) questionnaire focusing specifically on the interviewees’ social background, educational background, salary, housing, 4.) comparative analysis of the questionnaire and the interview by the interviewer. The collection is accessible without any restrictions. Financed by: HAS Institute of Sociology. Number of documents: 630.
Related publications:
16. Collection of Ferenc Erős
Ferenc Erős (1946-2020) is a social psychologist, candidate of psychological sciences, doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In addition to his research work at the Psychological Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he taught at the universities of Budapest, Pécs and Szeged. His main research areas are social traumatization, especially concerning the Holocaust, its memory, related identities and transgenerational processes; furthermore, the social psychology of prejudice and discrimination; and the theoretical and historical issues of psychoanalytic social psychology. Erős was editor-in-chief of several professional and public journals (e.g. Thalassa, Imágó Budapest, Magyar Pszichológiai Szemle, BUKSZ, Journal of European Psychoanalysis), and author of numerous books and articles.
Erős’s research collection "Jewish identity among the generation born after the Holocaust" contains in-depth interviews with second-generation Holocaust survivors. The focus of the research conducted between 1980 and 1988 is post-Holocaust Jewish identity and the narratability of Holocaust trauma. This was one of the first investigations in Hungary that dealt with the taboo memory of the Holocaust, the processes of coping and transmission within the family, and the transgenerational aftereffects. The research, which breaks the collective silence surrounding the Holocaust and Jewish identity, was partly inspired by the work of foreign colleagues. Erős encountered scientific approaches to the topic of Jewish identity in 1976, during a six-month American scholarship, where he met the psychologist David Rapaport, whose work on second-generation Holocaust survivors had a great influence on him. He also learned the basics of oral history methodology from American literature. The idea of conducting interviews in their wider circle of acquaintances came up already at the end of the 1970s, when Erős and psychiatrist András Stark were considering such a project, originally not for scientific purposes but purely out of curiosity. The idea eventually resulted in a series of investigations, and the same research topic followed Erős throughout his career; he gave the last lecture of his life on this subject.
Interest in Jewish identity and assimilation processes also stemmed from the personal family background of the researchers. As second-generation Holocaust survivors, Erős and his colleagues wanted to learn more about their own feelings, experiences, and see how common they are. In addition, they were also concerned with the fate of post-war Jews, their social integration, and wanted to gain a better understanding of the coexistence of Jews and non-Jews in Hungary. Moreover, all of this resonated with current trends in the international scientific life of the time, namely, Holocaust research, trauma studies, and discussions about interviewing methodology.
Using the snowball method, the researchers reached out to interviewees from their own circle of acquaintances, asking them what it meant for them to grow up in a family where the parents were Holocaust survivors. More specifically, whether and in what ways persecution, deportation, the loss of family members and acquaintances were remembered in the family, and when and how they themselves became aware of their Jewish origin. In the beginning, the work was carried out without any support, in a hostile institutional environment, with several interruptions due to the suppression of the topic during the socialist era and its classification as belonging to the political opposition. Later on funding was received from several sources (Institute of Psychology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Sociology Institute of Eötvös Loránd University, the J. and O. Winter Fund, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund), which helped the recording of further interviews and the processing of the data.
Lectures on the first results were held in a narrow professional circle at the beginning of the 1980s. Sociologist András Kovács joined the work during this period. The breakthrough to the public was a publication in the journal Medvetánc in 1985 entitled: ‘How did I discover that I was Jewish?’, as a result of which volunteers joined both the groups of interviewers and of interviewees.
The audio recordings have been lost. The interview transcripts and the related personal data sheets were given to the Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Group by Ferenc Erős and András Kovács in 2012, the physical files are kept in the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA).
A total of 150 interviews were conducted as part of the research, of which 122 and nearly the same number of data sheets survived and were added to the archive. The project documentation is no longer available. The interviews were conducted by Ferenc Babusik, Ildikó Bakcsi, Zoltán Csallog, Ferenc Erős, János Gadó, Tibor Gáti, Péter Geltz, Albert Horváth, Judit Keleti, András Kovács, Anna Kovács, Katalin László, Klára László, Katalin Lévai, Mónika Oláh, Mária Rozsnyai and Zsuzsa Vajda. The length of the interviews varies between 30-200 pages, each transcripts containing 2-3 conversations. A detailed quantitative personal questionnaire (data sheet) including basic sociological information is attached to each conversation. The outline of the interviews follows a chronological logic, including family history before, during and after World War II, the main milestones and aspects of personal life history (childhood, school, employment, lifestyle), experiences related to discrimination and anti-Semitism, and experiences and opinions related to Jewish organizations and Israel. The focus of the discussions is the relationship between identity and the Holocaust and inter-generational communication.
The research leaders were Ferenc Erős, András Kovács and András Stark. So far, the systematic processing of the interviews has only been partially accomplished. The researchers used the raw material for studies based on the aspects that most interested them at the moment. Thus the thousands of pages of interview material is a "treasure mine" that awaits further processing.
"...it seems that with this we hit on the question that many people were concerned with at the time. [...] How did he find out that he was Jewish, what did he do with it, what events determined his awakening to Jewish self-awareness. What traumatic experiences he had for not knowing he was Jewish, say, at school, at work, etc. These were very interesting, but not really discussed questions. And [our project] didn't succeed because what we did was so good, but simply because it filled a gap. It tried to fill a gap and broke taboos." (professional history interview with Ferenc Erős, Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Group)
Related publications:
Ferenc Erős. The construction of jewish identity in Hungary in the 1980s. Civilisations 1993 (42) 2.
Studies published based on the research:
Erős F. – Stark A. A társadalmi diszkrimináció hosszantartó hatása a személyiségfejlődésre: A holocaust utáni nemzedékek identitásproblémái. In A Magyar Pszichiátriai Társaság 1. Kongresszusa. 1. Főtéma, Budapest, 1983, 98–99.
Erős F. – Kovács A. – Lévai K. „Hogyan jöttem rá, hogy zsidó vagyok?” Interjúk. Medvetánc, 2–3, 1985, 129–144.
Erős F. Társadalomlélektani szempontok a zsidó identitás kutatásához Magyarországon. OTTKT Főirány. In Várnai Gy. (szerk.) A társadalmi struktúra, az életmód és a tudat alakulása Magyarországon. Információs Bulletin. Budapest: MSZMP KB Társadalomtudományi Intézete, 1985, 40–63.
Erős F. Zsidó identitás a mai Magyarországon. In A Magyar Pszichológiai Társaság VII. Országos Tudományos Konferenciája 2., Tematikus vitaanyagok. Budapest: MPT, 1985, 387–391.
Erős F. Megtörni a hallgatást. In Múlt és Jövő. Zsidó kulturális antológia. Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 1988, 19–27.
Erős F. – Kovács M. M. – Kashti, Y. (szerk.) Zsidóság, identitás, történelem. Budapest: T-Twins, 1992.
Erős F. A zsidó identitás szerkezete Magyarországon a nyolcvanas években. In Erős F. – Kovács M. M. – Kashti, Y. (szerk.) Zsidóság, identitás, történelem. Budapest: T-Twins, 1992, 85–97.
Erős F. – Ehmann B. Az identitásfejlődés tükröződése az önéletrajzi elbeszélésben. In Erős F. (szerk.) Azonosság és különbözőség. Tanulmányok az identitásról és az előítéletről. Budapest: Scientia Humana, 1996, 96–113.
Erős F. Az identitás labirintusai. Narratív konstrukciók és identitásstratégiák. Budapest: Janus – Osiris, 2001.
Erős F. A zsidó identitás „felfedezése” Magyarországon a nyolcvanas években. In Bárdos K. – Erős F. – Kardos P. (szerk.) In memoriam Virág Teréz. Budapest: Animula, 2003, 53–58.
Erős F. – Kovács A. – Lévai K. Comment j’en suis arrivé a apprendre que j’étais juif? Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, No. 56. Mars, 1985, 63–68.
Erős F. The holocaust and its aftermaths: Patterns of Jewish identity in Hungary. In European Association of Experimental Social Psychology. 7th East–West Meeting: Values, norms, expectations and their violation. Abstracts. Graz, 1986
Erős F. – Kovács A. – Lévai K. Wie ich schliesslich gemerkt habe, dass ich Jude bin. Interviews mit ungarischen Juden aus der Nachkrieggeneration. In Babylon. Beitraege zur jüdishen Gegenwart. Frankfurt am Main, Heft 3, 1988, 65–79.
Erős F. – Kovács A. – Lévai K. How did I find out that I was a Jew? Interviews. Soviet Jewish Affairs, vol.17. No.3., 1987, 55–66.
Erős F – Kovács A. The biographical method in study in Jewish identity in Hungary. In Hofer, T. – Niedermüller, P. (szerk.) Life History as Personal Construct (Performance). Budapest: MTA Néprajzi Intézete, 1989, 345–357.
Erős F. After Assimilation. Hungarian Jews today. Jewish Socialist, No. 13, Summer, 1988, 19–21.
Erős F. Narusity molcsanyije. (Problemi evrejszkoj identifikacii poszle „holokauszta”). Vengerszkij Meridián, 1, 1991, 13–24.
Erős F. The Construction of Jewish Identity in Hungary in the 1980s. In Kashti Y. – F. Erős –Schers D. – Zisenwine D. (szerk.) A Quest for Identity. Post War Jewish Identities. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Studies in Jewish Culture, Identity and Community, School of Education, 1996, 51–70.
Erős F. – Vajda J. – Kovács É. Intergenerational responses to social and political changes. Transformation of Jewish identity in Hungary. In Danieli Y. (szerk.) Intergenerational Handbook of Multigenerational Trauma. New York: Plenum Press, 1998, 315–325.
Erős F. – Ehmann B. Jewish identity in Hungary – a narrative model. In László J. – Rogers W. S. (szerk.) Narrative Approaches in Social Psychology. Budapest: New Mandate, 2002, 121–132.
Erős F. Identity discourses and narrative reconstruction after the holocaust. In László J. and Wagner, W. (szerk.) Theories and Controversies in Societal Psychology. Budapest: New Mandate, 2003, 193–206.
Kovács A. Identitás és etnicitás. Zsidó identitásproblémák a háború utáni Magyarországon. In Erős F. – Kovács M. M. – Kashti, Y. (szerk.) Zsidóság, identitás, történelem. Budapest: T- Twins, 1992, 97–113.
Kovács A. Changes in Jewish identity in modern Hungary. In Webber, J. (szerk.) Jewish Identities in the New Europe. London – Washington: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 1994, 150–160.
Kovács A. Anti-Semitism and Jewish Identity in Post-Communist Hungary. In Braham, R. L. (szerk.) Anti-Semitismus and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, 125–142.
17. Collection of Katalin S. Nagy
An art historian and sociologist of art, Katalin S. Nagy used mixed methods from the beginning in research and experiments, exploring museums and their audiences as well as the inner world and assets of homes. "Transforming" artwork (reproductions), she elaborated so-called sociological tests to be used in studies on reception.
The fragmentary collection contains parts of papers, photos, lists and drafts of research projects.
(1) Fine arts, sociology of arts (Holocaust)
(2) Visual communications, culture of architecture, mass communications and the cultural market
(3) Sociology of fashion
(4) Housing culture
(5) Women in Hungarian society
(6) Sociology of the family
(7) Personal Data
Related publications:
S. Nagy Katalin: Csak úgy a munkáról. Arnolfini Szalon. 2022. június 22.
18. Collection of Mária Sági
The collection presents a special field of research in the sociology and psychology of arts: the emblematic documents of studies on creativity and generativity (related to music and the fine arts). These projects started by the Institute of Research in Education (Művelődéskutató Intézet) and later connected with experiments in cognitive psychology conducted in Hungary and abroad have become organic parts of culture studies in Hungary that have aquired international prestige.
19. Collection of Ágnes and Gábor Kapitány
The target group of the research titled Alternative Life-strategies is people who represent an alternative type of thinking or life-strategy compared to the money-, performance-, and success-oriented, individualist social mainstream. The term “alternative” is broadly defined and includes a range of different models and value systems. Period: 2007-2011. Financed by: HAS Institute of Sociology. Participants: students of the Moholy-Nagy university of Art and Design Budapest. Location: Budapest. Applied method: interview. Number of documents: 101.
Related publications:
Kapitány, Ágnes – Kapitány, Gábor. Alternatív életstratégiák. Budapest: Typotex, 2014.
20. Roma Civil Rights Evenings
The Institutionalization of Roma Politics project studies pathways to the institutionalization of Roma politics and is thereby part of a broader academic and policy-oriented endeavour to address the situation of Roma in Hungary from 1989 until the Europe-wide manifestation of a „Roma Strategy” for integration. Firstly, it seeks to gain new insights into the political socialization of those who take part in Roma political participation through national and local initiatives. Secondly, it aims to contribute to a complex understanding of Roma political participation and social integration at micro and macro levels by studying the socioeconomic backgrounds, paths of intra- and inter-generational mobility and histories of the political socialization of key Roma activists. Thirdly, by contextualizing Roma political activism in the broader frameworks of local and national politics and policy-making on Roma the study will to expose the pull and push factors as drives (and impediments) of successful participation in Roma politics toward institutionalization. This collection contains the family and life-history interviews which examine the subtle details of political and ideological socialization of the main Roma actors as well as expose the histories of their inter- and intra-generational mobility and their political socialization along the main research questions. The collection is accessible without any restrictions. Period: 2012 – 2013. Head of research: Angéla Kóczé. Interview subjects: Judit Berki, Jenő Zsigó, István Szentandrássy, Jenő Setét, Ágnes Osztolykán, Anna Orsós, János Orsós, Erzsébet Mohácsi, Ernő Kállai, Rita Izsák, Aladár Horváth, Éva Hegyesiné Orsós, Ágnes Daróczi, József Choli Daróczi, Gábor Bernáth, Anna Csongor, Tibor Derdák, Judit Szőke, Gábor Havas, Gábor Kertesi, Péter Szuhay, Márta Pánczél. Participants: Mária Bogdán, Mária Neményi, Tímea Junghaus, Tibor Rácz, Norbert Szirmai, Gábor Fleck, Dezső Szegedi. Location: Budapest – Roma Parliament. Types of documents: video interview, transcribed interview, photos. Number of documents: 288.
Related publications:
Szász, Anna Lujza. 2016. „Roma Polgárjogi Esték gyűjtemény bemutatása.” socio.hu, 2016/2
21. Szilágyi-Pető Collection
During 1986-1987, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Soros Foundation's Board of Trustees for Social Sciences supported with a grant the research entitled "The effect of long-term and vitally threatening social discrimination on the mental life of the children of survivors", which sought to explore the specific mental problems of second-generation Holocaust survivors and the inherited trauma, primarily from a medical and psychological point of view. The research group was led by psychiatrist Júlia Szilágyi, its members were psychiatrists István Cserne and Katalin Pető, and writer György Szőke. Szilágyi, Pető and Cserne, who had received psychoanalytic training together in the eighties, worked as practicing psychiatrists. It is not mentioned in the available research documentation, yet it is clear from their other communications that the problems they became aware of during their self-analysis were helpful in uncovering and understanding the family history events behind the psychological symptoms of their patients. The motivations could therefore be partly similar to those of Ferenc Erős and András Kovács in their research on Jewish identity ("Jewish identity among the generation born after the Holocaust"): the researchers wanted to come clean about their own Jewishness. At the same time, an important difference is that during their medical practice Szilágyi and her colleagues encountered both people traumatized by the Holocaust and young adults born after the war who inherited family trauma.
As a result of these two kinds of personal experiences, Szilágyi and her fellow researchers came to the decision to prepare a series of scientific interviews focusing on the traumas caused by the Holocaust. The interviews were recorded by the members of the group, who were treated as equals: during the processing of the interviews, everyone received a copy of the transcript and the group analyzed and wrote notes and publications together - this kind of close joint work also fits into the tradition of medical scientific publications. During the investigation, psychiatrist Miklós Kun and sociologist Rudolf Andorka acted as mentors.
Based on the literature and their own experiences, the researchers examined complex family histories: they were interested in life histories, and in addition, they focused on the relationship to Judaism, diseases occurring in the family, and syndromes considered abnormal. Based on their psychotherapy practice and their knowledge of international literature, they assumed that the causes of various psychological complaints could often be hidden, unconscious parental trauma. The interviews were supposed to uncover details about the transmission mechanisms of the mental problems the Holocaust survivors were struggling with. Although the conversations were perceived as non-therapeutic occasions, the medical approach resulted in a kind of preventive intention of the research: "Our study is given special relevance by the fact that this generation is now at the age when its members are raising children. So with their exploration and analysis, it is extremely important to prevent these mental injuries from being passed on to [this second generation]."
Szilágyi and his colleagues planned to conduct what we call today narrative interviews, using open-ended questions, as they deemed closed questions unsuitable for exploring subconscious content: "We did not have targeted questions - letting them know the purpose of the investigation, we asked our interviewees to talk about their lives, their families, past, present, everything that they considered important. The questions we asked during the interviews, while respecting the free flow of emerging thoughts, served to uncover the near-conscious (or to use a professional term, preconscious) content of what was said," says one of their research reports (February 24, 1988). As a matter of fact, contrary to this plan, the transcripts with an average length of 50 typed pages contain quite a few closed questions, while there are scarcely any uninterrupted, long passages.
The interviewees were reached using the snowball method - several of them known from the psychiatric practice of the researchers - and the participants were assured of anonymity. According to research reports, 40 interviews were recorded with first- and second-generation Holocaust survivors, and with one child who was a third-generation survivor. Conversations with parents, children, siblings, and in some cases with entire families were recorded separately or together, usually in two or three sessions. Most, if not all, of the interviews were conducted with people living in Budapest. 40 interviews were completed in a year and a half. No one else but the four named contributors conducted interviews. The transcripts are not supplemented by questionnaires containing personal data, but the texts usually reveal the age, occupation, and family situation of the respondents.
In 2011, 35 interview transcripts were deposited at the 20th Század Hangja Archive and Research Group. These include ten family group discussions, sometimes with two to four people, and several individual interviews recorded independently, i.e. without the involvement of other family members. The total length of the existing transcripts is approx. 1,800 typed pages. In the conversations, family stories are told, usually starting from the parents' youth to the time of the interview, focusing on the war and the Holocaust. In almost all cases, the interviewee's various illnesses are discussed in connection with their personal life history. The transcripts are supplemented by a research plan, scholarship contracts, reports, lecture drafts, study outlines, copies of publications, foreign language articles, bibliographies and other research documentation. Unfortunately, the audio recording of the interviews is not available. The conversations and their analysis were presented by the researchers in a few scientific publications around the time of the regime change, but the collection is awaiting further elaboration.
Related publications:
Studies published based on the research:
Cserne István–Pető Katalin–Szilágyi Júlia–Szőke György: Az elmaradt gyász. Múlt és Jövő (1), 1989, 31–32.
Cserne István–Pető Katalin–Szilágyi Júlia–Szőke György: Psychic Characteristics of Hungarian Holocaust Survivors and Their Children The Analysis. Paper to the Conference of the Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, San Francisco, California, Oct 27–30, 1989.
Cserne István–Pető Katalin–Szilágyi Júlia–Szőke György: Az első és a második generáció. Holocaust-túlélők és gyermekeik. Psychiatria Hungarica (7)2, 1992 április, 117–129.
Cserne István–Pető Katalin–Szilágyi Júlia–Szőke György: The Second and the Third Generation Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. In Randolph L. Braham szerk. Studies on the Holocaust in Hungary. New York, 1990, 238–255.
Cserne István–Pető Katalin–Szilágyi Júlia–Szőke György: A második és a harmadik generáció. Holocaust-túlélők és gyermekeik. Psychiatria Hungarica, 1992. április, VII. évf. 2. sz. 117–129.
Pető Katalin: „Engem az antiszemitizmus sodort a zsidók közé”. In Kovács M. M. – Y. Kashti – Erős F. szerk. Zsidóság, identitás, történelem. Budapest, T-Twins, 1992, 128–140.
Pető Katalin: Identitás és történelem. In Virág Teréz szerk. A társadalmi traumatizáció hatásai és pszichoterápiájának tapasztalatai. (Konferencia,1998. november 13–15.), Budapest, Animula, 1999.
Pető Katalin: A Zelig jelenség, avagy közepesen semmilyen. In Bárdos Katalin és Kardos Péter szerk. Diszkrimináció és üldöztetés: hatások és következmények. (Konferencia, 2000. november 10–12.), Budapest, Animula, 2001.
22. Teleki Square
The Jakab Gláser Memorial Foundation is the civil organisation of the Teleki Tér Shtiebel suitable for prayer and community activities. The research initiated by the Memorial Foundation wants to reach the last ones of the generation that still remembers and can tell the stories about the shul and Teleki square, and then document this outstanding oral history. The project tried to collect all written and printed materials from archives of the local government, the Jewish community and libraries, and create an exceptional collection. During the course of the project books and photo albums were published, a film was made and many conferences, discussions and meetings were organized.
Period: 2012-2014. Financed by: EACEA, HAS, Civil Alap. Head of research: Gábor Mayer. Kutatás résztvevői: Tamás Adler, Tamás Bánki, Orsi Budai, Sándor Feldmájer, Kata Fris E., Dániel Gergely, György Gergely, Szilvia Lelkes, Melinda Lelovics, Nóra Margitta, András Mayer, Noémi Steiner, Vera Pataki, Gergő Pápai, Dóri Szegő, Róbert Székely, Csaba Szikra, Sára Zorándy. Number of documents: 391.
Related publications:
Adler Tamás – Lelkes Szilvia. "A Teleki ’44 Projekt interjús gyűjteménye". socio.hu 2016/3.
23. Collection of János Ladányi
24. Collection of István Síklaki
(1) Besides Síklaki’s dissertations the series titled Language and Social Psychology contains 10 studies which explore various elements of language usage, potentials of textual analysis or the automatisms of communication.
(2) Communication Methods contains studies on methodology. The most significant ones include the following: “Drug prevention”; “Communication and Interaction in Pedagogy”; “The Therapeutic Interview as Verbal Communication;” and “The Language of Deception and Manipulation”. One can find here a thought-provoking study about the communication of a chemical factory’s environmental risks towards the local population, making a case for prevention and for the open communication. Co-author: Andor Marián.
(3) Parties and Values contains 15 texts about political parties, ideological trends and values. The texts introduce as well as analyze the role and social influence of explicit party political aspirations and the social psychology of power. One can read about hidden ideologies, public discourse, corruption, publicity or about the nature of manipulation.
(4) Education contains texts about education, pedagogical trends in relation to the school, internet, conflicts and their resolutions. There is a complete survey here about the knowledge and attitudes of primary school students, the expectations of parents and teachers and the role of money in the lives of younger generations.
26. Collection of István Kemény
In 1971 the Institute of Sociological Research launched a research project under the leadership of István Kemény to map the situation of Hungarian Roma. The state-initiated research aimed to gain deep, accurate and solid knowledge to prepare the successful assimilation of Roma. At the time, there were approximately 320.000 Roma living in Hungary, which made it necessary to unfold basic questions concerning their living conditions, demography, employment situation etc. for policy making. The sampling frame was provided by the local district offices and then the sample size was determined by the head of research (two percent of the Roma population was involved in the research). Interviewers were allowed to conduct life story interviews with one or two Roma or with the relevant local institutes in a given settlement. Among the interviewers there were Gábor Havas, Gabriella Lengyel, Gyula Molnár, Zsolt Csalog, Erika Törzsök, Judit Vásárhelyi, Kálmán Rupp, Magda Matolay, László Szegő, György Göndör and Menyhért Lakatos. The collection is accessible for researchers without any restrictions. Number of documents: 283.
Related publications:
Palkovics M. (szerk.) Beszámoló a magyarországi cigányok helyzetével foglalkozó, 1971-ben végzett kutatásról. Budapest: MTA Szociológiai Kutatóintézet, 1976.
31. Collection of János Köllő
(1) Rába Wagon and Machine Factory: interviews with workers and directors (1976-1979)
(2) RÁBA interviews with workers dismissed in 1979. Edited and unedited (1982-1983)
(3) RÁBATEXT interviews with textile workers (1978-1981)
(4) RÁBA interviews with directors and notes on meetings (with Ede Horváth and Rezső Nyers) (1975-1982)
(5) Party committee and council of Győr-Sopron county: interviews (1982-1985)
(6) Ózd: interviews (1987-1989)
32. Collection of Júlia Szalai
Júlia Szalai's collection has four parts. It contains the interview materials of two research projects: interviews conducted between May 2009 and June 2010 for EDUMIGROM, an international collaboration on ethnic differences in education; and others from 2000-2001 related to the system of social assistance in Hungary. Furthermore, in a somewhat unusual manner, the collection includes notes from the 1970s and curricula from the 1970s. Besides being important blueprintes of sociological research conducted in the given periods, these documents complement the picture one can make of Júlia Szalai based on the materials archived here. More can be learned abour her professional career from the research materials related to a study of entrepreneurs forming part of the Collection of Mihály Laki. This research led by Szalai and Laki together was also based on interviews that were conducted in two waves, in 1998 and 2009.
Amellett, hogy ezek a dokumentumok jelentős lenyomatai az említett időszakok szociológiai kutatásainak, kiegészítik azt a képet, amely a gyűjtemény alapján Szalai Júlia szociológiai munkásságáról látható. További adalékokkal szolgál az archívumban fellelhető Laki Mihály gyűjteményben megtalálható Nagyvállalkozó kutatás, melyet Szalai és Laki közösen vezettek. Az ugyancsak interjú alapú kutatás két hullámban, 1998-ban és 2009-ben zajlott.
33. Collection of András A. Gergely
This collection has four parts. It contains group interviews with determining civil society and political actors of the taxi blocade in October 1990, who were asked to interpret the events and thus the economic and social situation in Hungary about 6 months after the demonstration. The second, third and fourth parts include the documentation of research in villages and country towns led by András A. Gergely. Research in Tapolca conducted in the early 1980s focused on the local intelligentsia. Two studies in this series summarize the research and interpret the interviews. The foundation and the first interviews belonging to the research in Kiskunhalas were prepared between October 1979 and January 1980. Later, András A. Gergely returned to the settlement every now and then to collect the reflections of the intelligentsia on the studies that had already been published. This research documentation includes an important study by András A. Gergely that remained in manuscript (A konok város, 1987). The research materials on Balassagyarmat include interviews and studies made by Ágnes utasi in the early 1990s. All the research the materials of which are deposited here were mainly relying on interview methods.
József Rácz and his fellow university students - Judit Harangozó, Judit Kéthlyi, Dániel Göncz - became interested in the csöves (hobo, bum or dosser) groups at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. Later on he conducted research among other youth subcultures, too, like punks, skinheads and new wave people. Location was also an important aspect in classifying the research material: the popular Deák Square referred to as 'Z' Square in contemporary research; or the Havanna housing estates serving as a research site in the 1990s. The interviews allow insight into a multiplicity of life courses, revealing the diversity of these youth groups.
József Rácz primarily drew on the interview method. In the beginning, he and his collaborators - mostly medical students - tried to learn the foundations of interviewing from books. They realized early on that the survey method widespread in this period was useless when it came to the topics they were interested in, and that the best means to deal with such issues was the biographical interview. They started practicing this on each other, and learned the basics of the method by analyzing the interviews together. At first, they used help when visiting the field: local actors, who introduced them to a couple of people; thus it became gradually known what they did and why they visited the site in question, which bred trust in them. Later on they had recourse to more professional methods (e.g. when conducting participant observation at the Havanna housing estates, or preparing narrative analysis of interviews).
The collection of József Rácz has 6 parts: 5 containing research materials and one including studies as the outcome of research - this latter is an incomplete part of the collection.
(1) Youth subcultures in Hungary in the 1980s: research on Deák Square ('Z' Square) (1979-1980)
(2) Youth subcultures in Hungary in the 1980s: research on hobos and hobo clubs (1980-1984)
(3) Youth subcultures in Hungary in the 1980s: research on CPg and the 'Mosoly' trial (1983)
(4) Youth subcultures in Hungary in the 1980s: research on punk, skinhead and new wave groups (1980-1984)
(5) Havanna housing estates (1993-1994)
(6) Youth subcultures in Hungary in the 1980s: studies
37. Collection of Judit Szapor
38. Collection of Lynn M. Hooker
This collection includes materials of one research project, Lynn M. Hooker started in 2012 supported by Fulbright Fellowship with the title 'Gypsy music' and 'Gypsy musicians' in contemporary Hungarian Society. An interview conducted with Tivadar Fátyol back in 2007, though preceding the research, is also an integral part of the collection, just like other materials produced in 2014. The documents deposited in the archive by the author were not used in her book Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartók published in 2013.
The collection contains interviews with 27 persons (mostly audio recordings and transcripts), occasionally complemented by photos. There are altogether 496 items in the collection.
39. Oral history of Hungarian Insurance
"Oral History of Hungarian Insurance" is an archive of interviews with key actors in the history of the Hungarian insurance trade. The project initiated by the Association of Hungarian Insurance Companies (MABISZ) involves 20 video interviews, each 3 hours long, conducted between 2018 and 2020. The collection includes the audio recording, the transcript and a list of key words for each interview. The respondents, who once occupied leading positions in the Hungarian insurance business, talk about their career as well as the development, important turning points and social context of the insurance trade in Hungary. The interviews contain first-hand information concerning the separation of the National Insurance Company in the late 1980s, the appearance of foreign investors and the emergence of a competitive market, as well as technical issues like product development and marketing or the legal regulation of the field. The personal narratives also present the past decades from the perspective of the insurance business, starting from the last years of state socialism, through privatization and the consolidation of the market, to the financial crisis of 2008 and challenges posed by globalization and digitalization.