The Administrative Archive preserves the documents generated in the course of the institution’s operation. This extensive body of records constitutes a valuable source for the history of Hungarian scholarship. During the first two centuries of the museum’s existence, its records were managed in a fragmented manner. Accordingly, a central directorate archive existed alongside separate departmental archives. Following the reorganisation of the Hungarian National Museum in 1934, the complete holdings of the central directorate archive (covering the period 1807/1808–1934) were transferred to the building of the Hungarian National Archives at Bécsi kapu tér. There, the material was destroyed in 1945 in a fire caused during the siege of Budapest. A portion of the old registration books, which happened to be in the possession of researchers at the time, survived this destruction; regrettably, however, they later fell victim to the archival fire of 1956.
A unified administrative archive was subsequently established within the Central Archive in the building located at 40 Magyar utca. This is where the post-1934 records of the directorate, as well as the records of the museum’s organisational units, are preserved. Among these, the oldest holdings are those of the Coin and Antiquities Department.
At present, documents of the following units are available for research in the Central Archive: the Directorate General (1934–2016); the Coin and Antiquities Department (1839–1926); the Department of History (1927–1937 and 1945–1953); the Department of Archaeology (1926–2003); the Department of Medieval Studies (1954–1998); and the Archaeological Archive (1953–1978). Other document units that have not yet been transferred to the Central Archive remain accessible for on-site research within the respective museum departments (e.g. the Coin Collection, the Historical Gallery, etc.).
Contact Béla Debreczeni-Droppán, debreczeni.droppan.bela@hnm.hu
Research of the Archives is available by appointment
