200 Years of the Technical University Budapest 1782-1982 [antikvár]

We are in debt to ourselves and so are the science and technique historians: the work discussing the bicentennial history of the Technical University, Budapest has not yet got before the professional public. The issue at hand is simply a selection from the matter collected for the monograph. The historical source-material is complete, ready to underlay-sooner or later-a detailed history of this University, profusely quoting original text from the sources. It is to be followed, by a good deal of work on an annals history of the University integrated into the wider frames of Hungarian history, itself fitting into a still more general frame of universal science and technique history. As a matter of fact, through its professors and students, this University has belonged to participants of the great landmarks of our national history, rich in great peripeties but also in regressions. This is why it is important to know the alternative position of the participants in revolution, freedom fight or war, on what side and how they fighted or sacrified themselves. Besides, this University-through its professors and graduates-shared the everyday history, all his members contributed according to their means and abilities to the progress of this country. Even some of them-in this country or anywhere in the world-enriched the universal science with lasting feats worth of being acknowledged by contemporaries and remembered by posteriority. Anyhow, the first question of such an annals history concerns the bicentenary of the Technical University. A denomination is meaningless in itself. Our predecessors were called by ever varying names in the actual deeds of foundation. Not even legal continuity is worth of being scrutinized since it has little to do with the special characteristic development of features of a university. Neither the willingness of the actual Technical University, Budapest to accept its predecessors as its ancestors has any scientific significance. Well, on what criterion can the question about the bicentenary of this University be decided with a historical and actual authenticity, and be certified, primarily to ourselves, that this bicentenary is not simply the boasting result of an arbitrary ancestor research?