Room 13 / Culture and national awareness at the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century
This hall explores national aspirations unfolding at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the period of creation and flourishing of national language and culture. The revival of education and schooling, the language reform movement, the beginnings of Hungarian-language theatre, the development of music and literature reflect this period of prosperity, as does the founding of the National Museum, evoked for the visitors by the relics associated with it. Pest became the centre of Hungarian national culture, where the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the National Theatre and the National Museum, custodians of national development and the establishment of universal European ideals, giving the world geniuses such as Ferenc Liszt in music and Mihály Pollack in architecture.
Fun facts:
- This room displays the child Mozart's portable clavichord, which he used for practice during his long concert tours.
- In the early 19th century, language innovators would have called the kangaroo a "hippety hopper" and the toilet a "spine curving circumsquattery"
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In 1873, after the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of his artistic career, Ferenc Liszt decided to donate his most treasured objects to the National Museum, in a manner befitting a patriot. The most notable object of the Liszt legacy is the piano that Liszt acquired in 1846, and which he himself treated as a relic: the instrument Thomas Broadwood sent to Beethoven to Vienna in 1817.
Johann Andreas Stein's simple little travelling instrument, built in 1762, is not just the only surviving clavichord of the famous Augsburg organ builder (the most notable of his innovations is the so-called Viennese-style mechanism), but also the portable instrument of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The clavichord and all its documents were acquired by the museum in 1965.
Gifted to Mrs. Schodel, Róza Klein, a famous diva of the Reform Era, by the youngsters of the Pozsony Diet in 1840 in memory of her performance in the opera Norma
Gift to Ferenc Liszt by his admirers in Pest in 1840. The composer donated the sabre to the National Museum in his will.
The ornate porter's staff was made for the opening of the National Museum building in 1847. Its maker, József Szentpétery, was one of the most renowned silversmiths of the period.
The box, including one hundred gold florins, was donated to János Hetényi by Count Kázmér Batthyány in 1845 for his work "Robot és dézsmaváltság érdekében" (For the redemption of corvée labour and tithe). János Hetényi, a Reformed pastor, was a member of the Academy of Sciences. His several award winning work was published at the expense of Kázmér Batthyány.
