Teleki Library, Teleki-Bolyai Library
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History
The Teleki-Bolyai Library or Teleki Téka is one of the most important cultural heritage sites in Marosvásárhely. The library was established in 1797 by Count Teleki Sámuel, Chancellor of Transylvania, who was not only a wealthy but also a highly educated man, having studied at several European universities. He spent most of his fortune on the purchase of more than 40 000 volumes, which he used to create the public library that bears his name today. The library has many incunables, many old books, manuscripts and rare books. It is interesting to note that Count Széchényi Ferenc founded his own library in Pest later that year, on 25 November (the National Széchényi Library), which became the ancestor of the Hungarian National Museum.
From 7 November 1759 to 17 November 1763, Teleki Sámuel studied in Switzerland, the Netherlands and France, during which time he studied at the Universities of Basel, Utrecht and Leiden. Jakob Christoph Beck, professor of theology and history and keeper of the Basel public library, provided him with useful advice on how to start collecting books. He visited scholars, booksellers and librarians in the cities he visited on his travels; by the time he returned home he had trained himself as an expert bibliophile and brought back nine crates of books, weighing twenty-six and a half hundred kilograms. Settled on his estate in Sáromberk, he kept in touch by correspondence with the scholars of his day, both at home and abroad, organised his book procurement network and lent books.
In 1778 Teleki moved to Nagyszeben, where he took his books with him and continued to lend them. In 1785 he moved his residence to Nagyvárad, in 1787 to Vienna, but he stored his books in Nagyszeben. It was in Vienna that he met Johannes von Müller, a renowned book expert of the time, who helped him a great deal in identifying and valuing the books. In 1788, the Austro-Turkish mitary operations in Transylvania made Teleki very concerned about the integrity of his library, so he asked his brother-in-law, Jósika Antal, to move the books to Marosvásárhely. In the early 1790s (the exact date is not known) Teleki took the library to Vienna, but in April 1797, due to the war with the French, he moved it again to Marosvásárhely. Here he stored the books in the Wesselényi house, which his wife, Bethlen Zsuzsanna of Iktár, had inherited from her aunt, Baron Wesselényi Kata (widow of Rhédey Zsigmond).
The building, built in the 1770s, was extended by Teleki between 1799 and 1802 according to the plans of the Viennese architect Ernst Koch. Teleki personally directed the arrangement of the books before the opening in the autumn of 1802. The building was a traditional aristocratic palace, almost half of which was occupied by a public library. It was at this time that he hired the first librarian in Marosvásárhely, Szász József, who set up a very modern catalogue system. In his will, he left the collection to his heirs as a testamentary legacy, obliging them to continue the library's operation, while at the same time entrusting its supervision to the Transylvanian Reformed Consistory. He also added to his own collection the collection of his wife, who died in 1799, which consisted of some 2,000 volumes in Hungarian only and was founded by her grandmother, Rhédei Zsuzsanna, and then further enriched by Wesselényi Kata.
After the death of Teleki Sámuel, the regular growth of the Téka began to falter and almost ceased.
In 1864, Récsi Emil's legal library of 800 works was bought for the Téka. From the 1880s onwards, the institution was transformed from a library into a book museum, its acquisitions not keeping pace with the scholarly needs of the time.
The Teleki family archives were moved to Budapest in 1916 and are now in the National Archives. In the years following the Second World War, the Teleki Library was taken over by the state.
In 1955, the Great Library (Bolyai Library) of the Reformed College of Marosvásárhely moved to the Téka building, and in 1962 the two collections were merged under the name of Teleki-Bolyai Library. It was here that Dr. Farczády Elek discovered the 14th century Hungarian language text known as the Marosvásárhely rows or Marosvásárhely glossary.
Also the collection of the dissolved Franciscan monastery of Mikháza, the library of the former Unitarian High School of Székelykeresztúr, the library of the Reformed College of Máramarossziget, and the teachers' library of the Catholic Grammar School of Marosvásárhely were moved here.
In 1993, members of the Teleki family living abroad established a foundation in Basel called Förderstiftung Teleki Téka to support the Teleki-Bolyai Library. In 1999, with the help of this Basel foundation, the Teleki Téka Foundation was established in Marosvásárhely with the same purpose.
The building was built in the Baroque style in the 17th and 18th centuries. Teleki Sámuel extended it with the western wing between 1799 and 1802, where he opened his public library, which still houses the holdings of the former Teleki Library.