COURAGE

povezovanje zbirk

The Mirel Leventer private collection of photographs and films is the richest archive of images from the period of glory of Club A, 1969–1989, when it operated as a (semi-) clandestine and exclusive club, founded and administered by students of the Institute of Architecture in Bucharest (today the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism). Club A was an oasis of freedom created in a basement in the middle of the historic area of the capital of communist Romania for the purpose of being able to organise shows, debates, and concerts that would be an alternative to the officially promoted culture, and to offer young people a place where they could behave as if they were free. In short, the Mirel Leventer private collection preserves the memory of an essential place for the alternative culture of young people in the last two decades of Romanian communism.

Zsuzsanna Erdélyi’s collection was the outcome of an unanticipated event in socialist Hungary. The ethnographer and her colleague Sándor Bálint created a collection of objects pertaining to Catholic folk practices in the mid-1970s with the public support of Cardinal László Lékai and the Catholic press. The survival of a significant number of private religious objects during the communist era demonstratd that many citizens lived active spiritual lives and cultivated the heritage of their parents and grandparents, despite the government prohibition against religion.

Throughout his life, Károly Hetényi Varga has searched for and collected the biographical information of clericals who suffered from persecution by the Nazis and communists. Thanks to his interest and devoted efforts, an impressive body of work has formed. Hetényi Varga didn’t study history at a university, however. He created a unique, specific research system, the results of which remain indispensable to us.