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THE CAROLA SZILVÁSSY BEQUEST
The bequest of Baroness Carola Szilvássy provides us with an authentic source allowing us to paint an accurate picture of her and the Cluj-Napoca milieu in which she lived.
After her death in 1948, Dr. Miskolczy Dezsőné placed her correspondence and personal papers in eight packages and after having them sealed these were put in a wooden trunk. The box was kept in the Bornemissza house in Cluj-Napoca, from where it was transferred to the Council Board some time in the 1970s. In 1978, Counsellor Jenő Krizsovánszy labelled the trunk noting that it could be opened and sent to the Archive Collection in 1995. This is how it ended up in the Archive Collection in November 1994, and in January 1995 it was opened. This is when it became apparent from notes written on the packages that under the terms of the will, which was signed in 1948, the packages could only be opened in 2048, although the seals had already been broken. Since the will was not in the bequest and the trunk had been moved to the archive with the packages unsealed, and 47 years had passed since the death of the legator, the bequest was declared researchable.
Among the packages in the trunk there are the personal papers, diaries, calendars, reading diaries and address books of Carola Szilvássy. Among her private correspondence we find material addressed to writers, politicians and artists, correspondence dating from her travels in South Africa from 1908, and wartime memoirs. Manuscripts, drawings, invitations, photographs and reviews of performances all came out of the trunk.
This bequest survived many trials and tribulations, war and historical upsets, just like the person from whom they derive. It came a long way to be with us now, thus allowing her person to be known by the wider public.
Source: Section ‘A’; inventory of the Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár) Reformed Archive Collection. Archives of the national Reformed institutions
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