“We Show The Man, The Simple Soldier”

In the Institute and Museum of Military History there are temporary and permament exhibitions as well. Which are the most important ones, that were successful this year again?

Let us begin with telling the readers that in the past nine years we have created four permanent exhibitons. The visitor numbers show that all of them are popular, since eight years ago we had 30,000 visitors a year and today this number is 120,000-150,000. Therefore our permanent exhibitions are very attractive. If one enters the museum on the ground floor, walks around, then comes up to the second floor, he can see the past 1000 years and the relics, military history, big battles, documents, and archive materials of this period. What we are proud of at the moment – besides the ‘Sword and Wreath’ exhibit – is the exhibition that shows the history of the Great War, which has been staged on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the end of the First World War. On more than 450 square meters we are showing weapons, relics, clothing and other military articles, equipments, with which we try to flash the fierce war from the side of the human being. We pay great attention to avoid militarizing. We show the man, the simple soldier, the excellent generals, who had done a lot for the country.

Does this mean that we can also see the personal articles of the soldiers?

Not only their articles, but we can also learn a lot about their activities. You must know that there were no total elements in the first war and even though the backcountry was less destroyed, we still had huge losses, for we are the fourth on the global ranking list as regards the losses in both wars – just consider Galicia, the breakthrough at Gorlice, or the North of Italy, the other theater of war we went to in May 1915. We have been exploring WWI trenches near the Plöcken Pass for years. We have set up an open-air museum network and restored the 1915-1917 entrenchments and ditches where our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had fought. There is a story originating from here, and it is a good example that there were and are people who remained human amidst inhumanity: according to the story on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1916, it was already dark when a piece of stone landed in the Hungarian trenches. There was a bar of chocolate and a message tied to the stone with a piece of thread. The text was written in poor Hungarian, but the troops could still read it: "Hungarians! Do not shoot, it is Christmas!". So the Hungarians wrote a reply and threw back two cigarettes: “We will not shoot, it is Christmas, there is peace." War is nothing else but the continuance of politics with other means, but a soldier always respects his opponent, and wants to annihilate him only in the least of the cases. In a war a soldier is only an executor. This is exactly why we try to show this side of the war too, but we talk about even the animals. The exhibition tells about the role of bees, canaries, mules, horses, or dogs in the war. The Institute and Museum of Military History has extensive diplomatic relations, therefore our temporary exhibitions are often related to foreign history as well.

What sort of curiosities could you specifically mention from this year’s temporary exhibitions?

We are in contact with twenty-seven counties, our exhibits are shown from Basel to Stockholm, from Istanbul to Washington. We have staged a NATO exhibition about peacekeepers, and it went to Brussels after Hungary. With our material about 1956 we appeared at the world exhibition in Basel and later in Sweden. Recently we have hosted a two-room exhibit from Istanbul. At the moment there is an Armenian exhibition which was opened by the Armenian and the Hungarian president in the name of the 1000 year-old Armenian-Hungarian relations. This exhibit will travel to Jerevan on January 26. I would like to emphasize that we want to exclude every political factor from diplomacy, this is why we will soon display artefacts and objects from Azerbaijan – among others – with pleasure. A few months ago we have opened a temporary exhibition about the history of sailing, and simultaneously introduced a nice book on the history of sailing. We can learn many things here, for instance what the Hungarian soldiers had done in China, how come we participated in the Boxer Rebellion, or how our soldiers had become prisoners of war in 1901. In addition to the exhibits, the Institute pursues a number of research activities, and just like you have mentioned, we examine and explore theaters of war. Moreover, we are also dealing with the care and attendance of military graves.

How is research carried out?

As far as we know there are Hungarian soldiers buried in fifty-five countries, and the Miliary Grave Care Directorate is dealing with their exploration and the erection of memorials, and is also responsible for the preservation of military graves in Hungary. The directorate has signed a bilateral agreement with seven countries, and two agreements are under ratification. We have checked WWI and WWII military graves, POW camps, and lagers in the first place. We always start out from historic maps, take the operational maps of the area in question, go through the military reports, and study the casualty records in the archives: for instance the number of our WWII casualty records is 650,000.

Did they make records for every soldier?

Yes, they did. And when someone passed away they continued the registry sheet. The dog tag, on the basis of which we can identify the soldiers, has an interesting role here. We have recently returned from the Ukraine: there were huge battles in the area of Kosiv, where our mountain troops were deployed. The locals showed us a defence foothold, which was the foothold of the third company of the mountain troops. We have found the graves of three soldiers and seventeen of them are still missing. We did not want to interfere with the graves of nature. We knew that this company was surrounded back then, everyone died and they were buried in their own trenches. This is a very important task and at the same time, a tribute, because everybody has or will have deceased relatives, and everyone has the right to rest in his motherland or rest in peace deservedly, without regard to where they fell. We have deceased soldiers from Jerusalem through Istanbul to Hawaii. Our Theater Research Department was established six months ago, its main responsibilities are military archeology and the exploration of various theaters of operations. Let me mention an example: in the ‘Tito, the dog on chain’ period the Soviet military command ordered the construction of a very serious fortress system between the town of Makó and the Õrség region. Our southern border had to be reinforced because they thought Tito would attack it. A defence system consisting of several zones was planned – we have opened the plans recently and learned that the system was 650 km long in total, with concrete forts, machine gun shooting stands, cannon pits, tank platforms, and observation posts. Our aim is to have an adventure path or tourist path if you like in this area.

In addition to foreign institutes, you also cooperate with museums in the countryside. What kind of cooperation agreements have been concluded in 2009?

László Vándor, the general director of the Zala county Museums has visited me the other day, with whom we are preparing a cooperation. In Szeged we have signed a triple contract with the Móra Ferenc Museum. Currently we are preparing an exhibition titled ’Famous Border Guard’ in Körmend. We have 10 affiliates in the country, one of them is in Kecel, where more than 2,000 technical equipments (land combat vehicles and aircraft) are exhibited, and we also have a special aviation museum in Szolnok, where we can even find a few old Malév airplanes.

As the director general, what are you the most proud of as regards the exhibitions of the museum?

The fact that in December 2008 we received the Hungarian Heritage Award. Of course, awards always compel one, so we try to develop a very visitor-centered museology, where beyond the exhibitions we also offer a very interesting system, because we address little children and aged visitors as well. We have managed to establish a Museum Pedagogy, Marketing and Media Department the colleagues of which are fanatic and very professional museum pedagogues who are really popular in schools and universities alike. Our central archives are in the Institute and Museum of Military History, where the filed documents of the Hungarian Defence Forces are stored, and we have one of the most famous military archives in Central Europe, where documents – some dating back to 1600 – are collected. There are millions of items in our photo collection, and our map collection is also a curiosity.

The Institute and Museum of Military History has published many documents, studies. If I am correct, the number of new publications was around 35-45 only in 2009.

This year we had 36 book premieres, most of them are our own publications, but we also introduce ’outsider’ books we assisted and supported during the research with intellectual capital. We have published a book about escutcheoned charters, a series with reference to various annals about military graves, and excellent war historians have written books on wars. What sort of novelties can we expect to find in the Institute and Museum of Military History as of January? Our storage rooms are absolutely full, therefore we also have to pay attention to the modernization of storage, because the statue and the treasure storerooms for instance have not been modernized since 1950. This year I have decided to bring out the statues that had been gathering dust there, and for today we have restored 130 statues. I have taken the statues up to the loft and we have created a show-storeroom where these beautiful works of art (statuettes, bronze statues, and famous statues, for example the works of Zsigmond Kisfaludy Strobl) can be seen from January 2010.