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• The DESTRUCTION OF THE DOCUMENTS OF THE EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY IN THE 1950S

  196-233

  Krisztina Tóth

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  At Eötvös Loránd University, registers have been kept continuously since its foundation in 1635. The storage of these and then the documents and minutes created in the rector’s and dean’s offices posed a challange to the institution at the beginning of the 20th century. From 1948, in accordance with the decrees and instructions issued in the name of paper-saving, as well as the archival decree published in 1950, large-scale document disposition began, and the remaining documents were transferred to the Hungarian National Archives. The documents created between 1635 and 1900 were transported from the university in 1951. From 1952, in addition to the disposition, documents also had to be transferred to the Hungarian Labour Movement Institute, so only a fraction of the documents created after 1900 ended up in the National Archives between 1953 and 1955. In November 1956, a fire broke out in the National Archives as a result of a shot, and all the delivered documents of the university were destroyed. Between 1948 and 1956, the Eötvös Loránd University suffered an irreparable loss, since according to conservative estimates, only 20 meters of documents remained out of approximately 2500 meters of documents, and thus it lost not only its documents, but also a large part of its past.