Szablon:BudapestNHM

Brief history of the meteorite collection in the Hungarian Natural History Museum

The main mass (76,5 kg) of the 108,5-kg “Lenarto” iron meteorite fall (Lénártó, now Lenartov, Slovakia), donated by József Kapy, local landlord to the National Museum in 1815, was the first specimen in the collection. In 1838 the museum received the “Gross-Divina” (Nagydivény, now Divina, Slovakia) stone due to the benevolence of Ludovika Lasanszky, widow of the local landholder, Count László Csáky. Later on a number of meteorite specimens from Hungarian falls arrived to the collection thanks to the generosity of individual donors as well. Materials were donated in 1853 by Vilmos Knöpfler, physician at Marosvásárhely (now Târgu Mureş, Romania) from the “Mezö-Madaras” (Mezőmadaras, now Mădăraş, Romania); in 1858 by Prof. József Török of the Debrecen College from the “Kaba”; in 1866 by Jenő Őri, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Ung County from the “Knyahinya” (Csillagfalva, now Knyahynya in the Ukraine); in 1895 by Lajos Kürthy, Lord Lieutenant of Zólyom County from the “Nagy-Borové” (Nagyborove, now Veľké Borové, Szlovákia); in 1900 by Count József Mailáth, local landlord from the “Ofehértó” (Ófehértó) fall.

State and other institutions also contributed to the enrichment of the collection. In 1866 the Locotenential Council purchased a 73-pound (41.3 kg) stone from the “Knyahinya” meteorite shower; in 1868 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences gave seven specimens from foreign falls, obtained in exchange for specimens collected by the commission of the Academy on the site of the “Knyahinya” fall.

67 meteorite specimens were held in the collection in 1876. Subsequent rapid development of the collection was first of all due to the financial aid of the unsurpassable patron of the museum, Andor Semsey (1833–1923). He showed a preference to the financial assistance of the meteorite collection, and increased its holdings altogether with some thousand pieces. Among them 456 specimens from the collection of the Dutch professor Eduard Hendrik von Baumhauer (1820–1885) and 214 specimens from the collection of Baron von Braun, Austrian state councillor. It was Semsey who compiled the first printed catalogue of the collection (1886, title page, first page), and he published a brief review of the collection in the journal Magyar Salon (1888). By the end of the Semsey and Krenner era (1919) the meteorite collection amounted to 1182 specimens. The best specimens were exhibited in four display cabinets.

The collection moderately increased in the next decades, and in 1951, when László Tokody (using the manuscript catalogue taken by Mária Vendl in 1928) published his book on Meteorite collections in Hungary, amounted to 1295 specimens from 484 falls. Click here for the topographical part of the catalogue. Large specimens occupied a prominent place in the new exhibition opened in 1952.

The conflagration of the museum in 1956 had a devastating effect on the meteorite collection, more than half of the specimens were destroyed. Rescued specimens were cleaned, freed from rust, conserved, determined and recatalogued by László Tokody and Mária Rapszky-Hanák between 1959–62. A minor increase of the collection after 1956 was due to a few domestic (Hungarian Geological Survey) and foreign (H. H. Nininger) donations, and occasional exchange. The new printed catalogue of the collection, was published in English by Csaba Ravasz in the first (1969) volume of Fragmenta Mineralogica et Petrographica. This catalogue gave information not only about the specimens themselves (inventory numbers, description, weight, size) but about the falls as well. This electronic catalogue is an amended and updated, bilingual (Hungarian and English) version of this latter catalogue.