92 Family legacy (documents, photos, dance shoes)

Nagyvárad (Oradea), 1890s

Paper, photo, shoes: satin, wooden heel, leather sole

Present of Mária Munkácsi, 2013

After his yeshiva studies in Lakompak (today Lackenbach, Austria), Galgóc (today Hlohovec, Slovakia), Nyitra (today Nitra, Slovakia) and Pressburg (Pozsony, today Bratislava, Slovakia), Meir Avraham Munk (1830–1907) lived as a merchant in Nagyvárad (today Oradea, Romania). His son, Bernát Munkácsi (1860–1937) was a linguist researching the Finno-Ugric roots of the Hungarian language, member of the Academy, school-inspector of the Pest Israelite Community. He was widowed early on, and kept his wife’s legacy, each item accurately labelled, in a box made in Nagyvárad. The legacy was passed on to his son, Ernő Munkácsi, the chief prosecutor of the Jewish community, who was also an amateur art historian, and director of the Jewish Museum 1931–1945. Although he donated several valuable items from the Munk–Munkács legacy to the museum, his mother’s dance shoes and the family photographs were donated to the museum only by his daughter, Mária Munkácsi, in 2013.