Ethnology in Hungary [antikvár]

László KosaHUNGÁRIÁN ETHNOGRAPHICAL SOCIETYName: Magyar Néprajzi TársaságAddress: Budapest, Kossuth L. tér 12. Hungary - 1055Phone: (36-1) 269-1272Fax: (36-1) 269-1272E-mail: [email protected]: László Kósa, PresidentHistorical backgroundThe Hungárián Ethnographical Society is one of the oldest scholarly ethnographical associations in Europe. Only three ethnographical societies were founded earlier and have been operating continuously since then.In Hungary in 1881 Hugó Meltzl, professor of Germanistics at the Hungárián university of Kolozsvár (today Cluj, Romania) was the first to propose the foundation of an ethnographical society. Meltzl was an enthusiastic proponent of comparative literature. He published his proposal in the six-language journal unique in the world that he edited (Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum). He took as his model the English Folklore Society which had been recently established (1878) and, seeing the rapid spread of industrial civilisation, he defined its principal task as collecting and studying oral tradition.Because of the protracted work of organisation, the Hungárián Ethnographical Society (to be referred to as Society) was not officially founded until 1889 with its headquarters in Budapest. The establishment was linked to three ideas. The most far-reaching of these aimed to strengthen "imperial patriotism" of the multilingual