Imperial Commissar Baron Karl Geringer, 1849-1851; Civil Government for Hungary, 1851-1853: General Records

Collection

Holding institution (official language):: Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára

Title:: Imperial Commissar Baron Karl Geringer, 1849-1851; Civil Government for Hungary, 1851-1853: General Records

Title (official language):: Der bevollmächtigte kais. Comissär für die Civil-Angelegenheiten in Ungarn Karl Freiherr von Geringer, 1849-1851; K.k. Statthalterei für Ungarn, 1851-1853: Általános iratok

Creator/accumulator:: Imperial Commissar Baron Karl Geringer; Civil Government for Hungary

Scope and content:: The collection holds the records of the office of Imperial Commissar Baron Karl Geringer and its successor, the civil government for Hungary (Statthalterei für Ungarn). The main task of these bodies was to re-establish the public administration in Hungary after the revolution and independence war of 1848–1849. The subjects of the records include cases of public safety, travel permits, supervision of the press and civil societies, conscription, taxation, regulation of industry, trade and commerce, social aid, education and church matters, harvesting statistical data and many others.

Documents concerning Jews and Jewish communities were not arranged into separate units and these files are scattered throughout the material. Therefore, the collection requires item-based research, even though name indexes are available for a part of the collection. Jewish-related files can be found chiefly in the following archival (thematic) units:

Convoluta I. (special collection for sizeable records or records with large appendices)

Reports on war damage, conscription

Convoluta II.

unit no. 2. supervision of registers of births and deaths, 1851

unit no. 3. supervision of the press

unit no. 7. records on the supply of the army, contracts on supply and cargo

unit no.11. regulation of prices

unit no. 12. chambers and societies of commerce

unit no. 15. taxation matters

unit no.16. tolls: rent of tolls and commercial taxes in Pest, 1851-.

Archival history:: The files of the dissolved Commissariat were handed over to the reorganised Locotenential Council in 1853 and were handed over to the newly established Royal Hungarian Ministry of the Interior in 1867. The material from the years 1849-1860 had been incorporated into the medieval (feudal) section of the archives until 1949, when the National Archives started to re-arrange and systematise the files. The first finding aid was published in 1959. Since then, the collection has been rearranged and selected several times.

Administrative/biographical history:: Imperial Commissar Baron Karl Geringer was appointed by Emperor Franz Joseph I. on 4 June 1849 in order to support the Habsburg army commander Julius Jakob Haynau in pacifying the revolting Hungarian provinces. On 10 April 1851 Geringer’s office was replaced by a civil government (Statthalterei für Ungarn/Helytartóság) that functioned independently from military authorities. The Statthalterei für Ungarn was dissolved on May 15, 1853 and replaced by five territorial departments of civil government (helytartótanácsi osztályok).

Finding aids:: Detailed contemporaneous finding aids are available for the collection, including indexes of names (persons and geographical names) and subjects (volumes 583-603).

Sashegyi Oszkár, ed. Az abszolutizmuskori levéltár. Repertórium. Vol 1. Budapest: MOL, 1984.