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Ament-Kovács Bence – Eitler Ágnes (szerk.): Örökségképzés, kulturális emlékezet, identitás. 193–232. Budapest: BTK Néprajztudományi Intézet, 2023 |
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Bence Ament-Kovács: Rose Garden under a Lucky Star. Ethnic Alliances, Ethnographic Aspirations, and Local Efforts (Rhe Example of the Painted Furniture of Harta) |
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Abstract: The Germans who remained in Hungary after the Second World War had to overcome complex political, economic, and social difficulties. In cultural terms, the self-definitions of Germans living in our country at that time did not ensure the national cohesion of those defined as ‘German’ by the authorities, who were bound together primarily by a shared trauma. Individuals and communities alike were searching for their place in the changed circumstances, and the Democratic Association of Germans in Hungary (Magyarországi Németek Demokratikus Szövetsége) sought to bring them together as an umbrella organisation. Only in the 1970s did the association begin to professionalize its activities, conducting ethnographic research in cooperation with qualified specialists. It was in this process that Harta, already famous for its folk art, came into their sights. It was the specific economic potential of the Bács-Kiskun County settlement and its ethnic and confessional enclave character that laid the foundations for the unified set of objects and motifs of the local center of furniture painting. After the Second World War, this furniture-making tradition met with a relatively accepting cultural policy on the part of the county administration, and the local intelligentsia’s supportive attitude towards German heritage. By the 1970s, there still lived a furniture painter in Harta who picked up the brush once again, and won the highest folk art award, regularly participated in exhibitions and gala events, and even made painted furniture in the cooperative’s subsidiary branch at the initiative of the local council president. This process ensured that the painted furniture of Harta became representative of both the traditionalist aspirations of the German association and the cultural representation of national policy, and elevated it to the most emblematic style of painted furniture and the common heritage of the German community in Hungary. |
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Kulcsszavak: festett bútor, magyarországi németek, nemzetiségpolitika, lokális örökség, kultúrareprezentáció |
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Keywords: painted furniture, Germans of Hungary, nationality policy, local heritage, cultural representation |
