Room 18 / Everyday life in the 1920s and 1930s
The recess opening from the previous room shows the shifts in everyday life during this period. The interior of the schoolroom indicates the strategic importance of the public elementary schooling programme of the time and the suppression of illiteracy. The cinema space directs visitors' attention to the emergence of sound cinema and also the birth of a new mass entertainment and propaganda medium. Revolutionary changes in daily life are represented by everyday objects and posters. This was the time when using gas and electricity became widespread. Gas cookers, refrigerators and boilers appeared. Canned goods, pressure cookers and heat-resistant glass became customary in middle-class households, and the use of radios, cameras, bicycles and even cars spread like wildfire. It was then that people got used to weekend holidays, too.
Fun facts:
- Between 1926 and 1930, Kuno Klebelsberg, Minister of Religion and Public Education, within the comprehensive reform of the entire Hungarian schooling system, had 5,000 elementary school classrooms and teachers' apartments built, mainly in the farmsteads of the Great Hungarian Plain. One of the purposes of the programme was the cultural elevation of the weakened country and the strengthening of Hungarian cultural supremacy in the Carpathian Basin after the military defeat of the war..
- Between 1931 and 1938, the post-Trianon Hungarian film industry, slowly recovering, produced 132 sound films. The majority of the films were sentimental comedies reflecting the desires of the audience. Mandatory newsreels screened before feature films, became an effective propaganda medium for the government.
The interior of a classroom evokes Kunó Klebelsberg Minister of Religion and Public Education's biggest undertaking: the establishment of the public elementary school system. The construction of some 5,000 public elementary schools and teachers' dwellings in the 1920s led to a significant reduction of illiteracy in Hungary, even in the countryside.
