Ioan Drăgan: A Report on the Archives of Oradea in 1949 (p. 305-315)

1949 was a special year in the history of the Transylvanian archives: it brought revitalization to the field after an entire decade of great deprivation and destruction, which started with the Vienna Treaty of August 1940. Revitalization was closely connected to the activity of the Archives and Documentation Department of the recently reorganized Historical and Philosophical Institute of Cluj, an institution functioning under the command of the Academy of the People's Republic of Romania and having David Prodan as its director and Zsigmond Jakó as Head of Department Deputy, both well-known specialists in the field of Transylvanian archives. In the period 1949-1950, the State Archives, coordinated directly by the Historical and Philosophical Institute managed to recover all funds evacuated in 1940, to recommence developing the documentary fund with new acquisitions, to hire new staff and to begin, once again to function normally. At the same time, receipt of historical funds in the territory still within the jurisdiction of the Head Department for Region Cluj was recommenced. Coordinated by the Cluj Branch of the Academy a huge archive recovery campaign was started. The campaign had as its objective to rescue archives whose founding institutions were abolished and which were managed at that moment by interim directors and also to concentrate these to the Head Department for Region Cluj.

This is the context in which the author of this study places the presented and annexed documents. In what follows, Drăgan, based on the latter, gives a picture of Zsigmond Jakó, the man who had the greatest contribution to the promotion of the already-mentioned revitalization campaign. These documents are reports drawn up after the inspection of various archives in Oradea in the period 12-17 August, a task delegated to Jakó by the Historical and Philosophical Institute of Cluj. The author of the study shows that although these documents belong to the so-called „field reports", they contain far more than administrative information. Besides the precise and detailed description of the on-the-spot findings, they also contain elements of the history of the institutions and archives inspected, suggestions for document recovery and organization and also arguments to support the suggestions, other data of cultural and general interest. In other words, through these reports the author presents one of the most brilliant Romanian archivists of the period who created an important chapter in the scientific study of the Transylvanian archives. In his conclusions, Drăgan highlighted that the annexed reports show once again clearly the passionate and competent implication of Professor Zsigmond Jakó in a very important period dedicated to the rescue of the Transylvanian archives in the period 1949-1950.