The documents of the Hungarian and Transylvanian diets are the most comprehensibly available in Hungary in the Hungarian Parliamentary Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Parliament. You can find this material on open shelves, arranged in chronological order.

The collection is mainly comprised of source material of the diets – manuscripts in Latin – from the period between 1580 and 1790. Forming an important part of the collection is the legacy of György Gyurikovits (1783–1849), a judge of the Table and delegate to the Diet of Pozsony (today: Bratislava), which can be viewed in the Ignácz Ghyczy Exhibition Hall. In the small reading room you can find material dating from 1790 to 1849, composed of minutes and volumes of papers, while dating from 1861 are journals, papers, minutes, budgets, accounts, indices, almanacs of diets, house rules, rules of procedure, lists of names and residences as well as lists of committee memberships. We have been collecting the minutes of plenary sessions (parliamentary journals) since 1990, and printed documents submitted to the parliament until 2010 are also preserved here. We have collected and made available verbatim minutes of meetings of parliamentary committees since 1953.

Research is facilitated by the reference section holding volumes on parliamentary history, as well as the methodological guides and statistical volumes published by the National Assembly (MPGY KK).

Our specialists are available to help you to find information quickly and accurately for your research. Most of our collection is now available online in the library’s collection on the Hungaricana public collection portal and on the library’s webpage.

The history of the collection

An important moment in the history of the collection was the session of the House of Representatives on 21 January 1893, at which MP Gábor Ugron stated: “Even the journals of the old diets are missing from here... I request that the House instruct the Library Committee that the works which formed the original source of the old Hungarian legislature be procured, in copies if needed, so that they can be placed at the disposal of the legislature here.” In the same year, the Library Committee submitted a proposal for the collection and publication of documents relating to old diets. This decision laid the foundation for the library to regularly collect and preserve the documents of the diets. Sándor Takáts, a Piarist monk as well as an historian and archivist, was employed to carry out this work in early 1903. He researched, collected, copied and purchased the documents of the old diets for decades. Collecting went on until 1917 but came to a halt due to the upheaval in the wake of the war, the events of 1956 and the economic turmoil in the country. Despite this, a significant, valuable and unique parliamentary material found its way to our library. The large quantity of the collected documents as well as the need to make them suitable for professional research resulted in the establishment of a thematic collection (special collection), which was opened on 29 June 1962.

Contact:

Reference Librarian: Judit Villám
Phone: +36 1 441 4658
E-mail: judit.villam(at)parlament.hu

Reference Librarian: Balázs Maltsik
Phone: +36 1 441 4090
E-mail: maltsik.balazs(at)parlament.hu