Utólag – Teleki Sámuelről
Sámuel Teleki – in Hindsight

Summary/Abstract: Based on his personal relationship with Sámuel Teleki, as he worked for nearly 40 years in the Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mures library founded by SámuelTeleki (1739-1822), the author feels that he developed an intimate working relationship with this versatile and educated Transylvanian aristocrat of the Enlightenment period. He treats it as a fact that within half a century after the change of regime and empire in 1690, by the middle of the 18th century, the Transylvanian nobility had been incorporated into the Habsburg Empire, becoming dependent of the Court. It is in this atmosphere that the official, who has always been faithful to his Protestant roots and upbringing, grows up and works his way up the official ladder: to archbishop, governor’s councillor, vice-chancellor and then chancellor of Transylvania, based in Vienna. He amassed a vast multilingual library, the encyclopaedic nature of which was clear to his contemporaries. Not only did he acquire the legal and state documents, historical and geographical works necessary for the exercise of his profession, but he was also interested in mathematics and physics, the methods of bibliophilia, and the publications of the scientific academies. Unfortunately, his library did not grow for a good half century after his death, and its museal character became more and more apparent.

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