Among the minutes of leading bodies only the digitalized volumes of the minutes of the council meetings of Buda, 1687-1816 and Pest 1688-1786 can be researched by the date of the meetings. All the texts of the minutes of the meetings of the Municipal Board of Budapest, 1873-1949 can be searched.
The database of the minutes of council meetings of Buda and Pest before the unification currently includes the digitalized minutes of the council meetings of Buda, 1687-1816 and Pest 1688-1786, written mostly in German, or, less frequently, in Latin. According to the privileges granted in 1703 and 1711 the two cities were governed by the inner council. This body was led by the mayor (in Buda) and the magistrate (in Pest, but only up till 1773, when the title ’mayor’ was adopted for Pest as well), while its members were elected councillors who filled the office until their death. The council met rarely at first, then since 1767 on 3 times per week, while throughout the 19th century almost on a daily basis, discussing all major issues that had an impact on life of the city, from new regulations created by higher authorities through the admission of new citizens to land registry issues, etc. Initially only the cases considered most crucial were recorded in the minutes, but from the late 18th century it became customary to record all propositions and the procedure dealing with them. Following this, the said collection is one of the most important documental sources on the history of Budapest, providing information on the political and economic life on an almost daily basis.
In the database one can browse or search by the cities and the date of the meetings. The digitalized copies of the minutes are available by the records of the said dates on the Hungaricana Cultural Heritage Portal and the Combined Database of the Hungarian Archival Portal (regarding the later the installation of AAGISView utility software is required).
The database of the minutes of meetings of the Municipal Board of Budapest includes the items of the agendas of the years 1873-1881, and then up to 1949 it refers for their numbers. The transcribed till 1881 then printed minutes have been digitalized into two-layer PDF files. These documents have been digitalized through character recognition process, thus apart from browsing among the items on the agenda one can search in the whole text. This kind of source provides a wide variety of information concerning urban politics, acts of representation, the local enforcement of legislation, the development of the infrastructure of Budapest, city finances, social politics as well as individual, personal issues. Before 1930 all those cases of the municipality of the capital required serious consideration were brought to the meeting. After 1930 the power of the body was reduced, the contents of the minutes changed according to this.
The minutes include a short summary of the items on agenda and the text of the given decision. The proposals and the minutes reflecting for the debate of the meetings had been published in the Fővárosi Közlöny (Capital Bulletin). The digitalized version of that periodical is available currently on the Arcanum Digitheca website and in the research room of the Archives.
One can find and search in the whole text of the minutes of meetings on the Hungaricana Cultural Heritage Portal: the minutes of council meetings of Buda and Pest before the unification and the minutes of meetings of the Municipal Board of Budapest.
