A Kriza-hagyaték nyomában
On the Trail of the Kriza Legacy

Summary/Abstract: The author was one of those scholars who accepted as truth the myth created by Pál Gergely (1902–1982), the curator of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. As the editor of the second volume of the Vadrózsák, the author felt called upon to summarize the facts and myths connected to the manuscripts believed to be dumped in the basement of the Academy around 1880. This paper states that Gergely’s 1952 paper is likely to be true since it only shares facts, such as: 1st, the manuscripts were kept in the yards of the Academy along with a very large number offinancial and economical documents; and 2nd, indeed none of these documents were marred by mould as he later oftentimes said. This paper reconstructs the role of Ágnes Kovács (1919–1990): in her 1956 paper she created the myth that Kriza’s widow sent all the manuscripts to the Kisfaludy Society, and when László Arany (1844–1898), the editor of the manuscripts, retired, all the manuscripts he had left behind were deposited in the basement of the Academy, Kovács also mentioned that the Kriza-manuscripts were marred. In 1961 she wrote that some workers used manuscripts to make fire. This paper gives a possible reconstruction of the events and facts that led to the thriving myth of the manuscripts troubled fate. In 1875 Pál Gyulai (1826– 1909) might have given the Kriza-manuscripts to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Then, from Gyulai some of the manuscripts wandered to Gyula Sebestyén (1864–1946). But at this point it was already forgotten that in the Sebestyén bequest there were manuscripts from the Kriza folklore collections. During WW II all the Academy’s manuscripts and documents (including the Sebestyén-bequest) were walled into the basement as a precaution.

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