Historical Archives Senta - Ópusztaszer National Heritage Park
The LIVING ARCHIVES projects

The LIVES project (2018-2020)

Ópusztaszer Senta
Completion date:2018-2020
Status:completed

Collection of data, archival research

The most striking features of our encounters with the past are the objects that allow us to get a glimpse into the everyday life (family life, work etc.) making history feel almost tangible. However, the social image, processes, local and/or personal stories, and fates are shed light upon by written sources.

The documents from the Historical Archives of Subotica and Senta as well as the Csongrád County branch of the Hungarian National Archives (records of the Registry Court and certain economic associations) altogether vitally complete the invaluable records presenting the agriculture of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries kept at the Ópusztaszer Heritage Park. The documentation rich in information about the agricultural companies active throughout the above mentioned period can illustrate the agrarian life at the turn of the century from more than one aspect. These records contain legal documents, financial data, wills, birth certificates, contracts etc. With the help of these and the documents of other administrative bodies it is possible to reconstruct the economic and legal backgrounds of the landowners of that time, the amount of capital they accumulated, how family farms were established and the social composition of farmers.

The collection of data and archival research will take place in the Historical Archives of Subotica and Senta as well as the Csongrád County branch of the Hungarian National.

Local history competition for students

The partner institutions announced a competition with the title Forgotten Past – the Roots of Industrial and Agricultural Production for high school students in April 2018. The works submitted should present the agriculture, industry, economic development and features of the Southern Great Plain at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim of the competition is to promote the historical, ethnographical and local historical research and broaden students’ knowledge of the aforementioned period. The two best works judged by the professional jury will be included in the first volume of the study.

Scientific conferences

The first scientific conference of the project will take place in Ópusztaszer in the autumn of 2019. The completed publications shall be presented at the conference, while the achievements and further tasks are to be summarized.

The closing conference of the project will take place in February 2020 in Senta. The results of the project and the research of the previous two years will be summarized at the conference.

Publications

The first volume of the study (with a summary in Hungarian, Serbian and English) presents the agricultural history of the region. The aim of the book is to provide a complex image (with the help of museum artefacts and documents of historical value) of the peasant and farmer society of the era as well as of their lives. The publication will attempt to address its readers in an easily understandable parlance, thus introducing them to the exciting world of public collections.

The two publications will contain the simplified and edited version of the easily accessible online data base which was compiled based on the research.  The basic data of the companies are presented in a simple, easily comprehensible, tabular form.  The data found in the records of the Hungarian Royal Court in Subotica and Szeged shall be published in two separate publications. Both volumes will contain an introduction that offers a review of the history of the Court, the modus of the research and the publication.

The fourth publication will be presenting specific cases. The records of 6-8 companies, which can be regarded as relatively complete, shall be chosen from the records of the Registry Courts of Szeged and Subotica (that we had been well acquainted with during the preparation of the source publication), to draw an image of the region alongside the industrial and economic features of the period.

Database

The mapping, systematic research and processing of the court documentation found in the archives largely complements the documents concerning companies kept in the Historical Archives of Senta, therefore we can gain information about the operation of companies we haven’t known (about which we do not have documentation in our archives). Through the digitalization of the research material, we are building a web platform available for everyone. The database will provide a great contribution to the work of the archives itself, the individuals interested in historical research and the ones who are interested in researching and writing about local history.   

Youth and children's camp

The students of primary and high schools shall have the opportunity to learn about their shared cultural roots and heritage in a form suitable for their age during the summer camps in the summer of 2019.

The methodical approach of the camps (field trips, visits to various interactive presentations and games held by public institutions and project partners) will hopefully manage to effectively hand over the knowledge gained during the project to the young participants and also attempt to include them as much as possible in the active maintenance of our cultural heritage.  

The children’s camp for primary school pupils will take place in Ópusztaszer, while the youth camp for high school students will be organized in Senta.

Renovation of agricultural machinery

The heritage park is a home to an invaluable collection of agricultural machinery that has significantly deteriorated during the past decades due to the lack of a roofed exhibition place.  

The machines collected from the 1980s, once used in the production of crops, were initially assigned a place at the outskirts of the skanzen (open-air museum), on a large concrete ring created for this purpose, and machines dating from a different period also became part of the collection. After the turn of the millennium, the associates of the Móra Ferenc Museum in Szeged, sensing the inconsistency, initiated the profiling of the machines exhibited.  As a result of their work, a rice harvester and an agricultural aircraft were excluded from the exhibition, and the other devices displayed were classified and assigned.

Although plans about a roofed exhibition place providing shelter from the rain had previously been drawn, due to the lack of financial support and an acceptable solution, the machinery has survived the past period under the open sky.  

Within the project, the machines will be renovated, while the collection will be presented by high-quality description material. 

Building an exhibition building

A roofed exhibition place will be built for the renovated agricultural machinery.

During the preparation of the plans of the exhibition buildings, the architect was inspired by peasant and manorial buildings, mainly the agricultural buildings from the spheres of husbandry, crop and machinery storage.

Since the area of the heritage park, once belonging to the Pallavicini estate, gave home to the machine park from the beginning of the 20th century, the collection already included power machines, threshing machines, tractor-mounted gear and horse-drawn ploughs as well as harrows. Therefore the idea for the future exhibition building was inspired by an old manor house giving home to the machines belonging to its estate.

Travelling exhibition

The bilingual exhibition (Hungarian, Serbian) consisting of ten sections introduces the visitors to the work of the partners who took part in the project, the results they have achieved, the research that goes on in the archives, the characteristic types of documents found, as well as the investments into the heritage park, with a focus on the process of the restoration of the machines.

The exhibition will be first opened in the National Historic Heritage Park in Ópusztaszer in the autumn of 2019. After this, the exhibition shall start its journey and visit all the institutions where research is carried out: the Csongrád County branch of the Hungarian National Archives, the Historical Archives in Subotica and finally Senta.

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