Object of the month – Furniture of Gábor Devecseri
Gábor Devecseri (1917–1971), Hungarian poet, writer, literary translator, classical philologist and poet, winner of the Kossuth and two-time Attila József prizes, and his wife Klára Huszár spent their summers in Szombathely as creative artists of the Iseum Games in the 1960s and early 1970s. They were key figures in the cultural life of the town, initially staging the works of Plautus and later Mozart.
After the death of her husband, Klára Devecseriné Huszár wished to donate her library to a Hungarian higher education institution, where teachers of Hungarian language and literature are trained, and the legacy is processed and maintained while preserving the collection in its original form. This is how the Gábor Devecseri Special Collection was established in March 1982, according to the foundation charter, and housed in the Council Hall of the Berzsenyi Dániel Teacher Training College (now ELTE Savaria University Centre), Building B. In 1992, Katalin Tóthné Király edited the library's volume catalogue, which lists the documents in the storage order of the collection, refers to the marginal notes and contains the full text of the various dedications. In the introduction to the catalogue, Klára Huszár wrote of her husband's library: “it is not a scientific collection, nor the legacy of a book collector, but that of a passionate reader and a writer-translator intoxicated by the “workload”, whose working tools and delightful relatives are these volumes”.
A few years later, Gábor Devecseri's son János Devecseri donated a table and chairs from his father's estate to the Savaria Library and Archives of the Eötvös Loránd University Library and Archives, with the intention of placing it with the poet-translator's library of over 4,000 volumes. The gift furniture had been part of the artist couple's home since the early 1950s, “participating” in the creation of their works and “witnessing” conversations between friends.
According to sources and the family, artists, scientists and public figures met regularly around the table: Zoltán Kodály; István Anhalt; Lajos Bárdos; György Somlyó and Mariann Csernus; Ferenc Karinthy, his wife and son Márton; János Vajna, András Bródy and Márta Vajna; Alfréd Rényi and his wife; Vilmos Zolnay; Imre Trencsényi-Waldapfel and Margit Petrolay; Emil Schultheisz; Aladár Dobrovits and Tekla Dömötör; István Polgár Telegdi and Grácia Kerényi; György János Szilágyi; József Szendrő; Klára Antal Szerb Bálint; István Örkény and Zsuzsa Radnóti; Vilmos Zolnay; Magda Csécsy. In addition to them, at the table: Anna Bede; members of the Benedek family; Iván Boldizsár; Tibor Déry; József Fodor; István Eörsi; Róbert Falus; Oszkár Gellért; Géza Hegedüs; Miklós Hubay; Csilla Kárpáty; István Lakatos; Elek Máthé; Zsigmond Ritoók; István Vas; Béla Vihar.
The table and four chairs are now on display in the community space on the second floor of the Savaria Library and Archives building of the ELTE University Library and Archives.
Written by Eszter Molnár