Múltat fabrikálni – egy nemesi genealógia a szocializmusból
Patching Up a Past – A Noble Family's Genealogy from the Socialist Era

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the manuscript of the history of a noble family that was written in the socialist era. This work is partly based on the family’s genealogy that was written in 1848 and partly on oral family history and private documents. It aims at reconstructing the damaged identity, at setting up a standard and at keeping up family history as opposed to the current political and social environment. This identity preserving character of writing is present in other family memoirs as well; together they outline a unique space of family history. Talking about the past cannot become objective despite all efforts. Personal recollec-tion, which is extremely subjective, always focused on the present and often shaped by oral tradition and literary fiction (in this case especially the canonical novels of Jókai), both un-dermine the idea of an objective explorability of the past. The examined genealogy is a good example of both aspects of this phenomenon; it even raises doubts concerning the identity of the author with the use of collective family voice. What could have motivated János Bárczay to compile this text in the 1960s? I am look-ing for the answers by comparing the autobiographies in the different versions of family history which were written and re-written over the years. In the different versions the nar-ration sometimes switches from the third person to the first, well indicating the urgent need behind the birth of these texts, namely that the individual, despite the changing con-ditions, has to create the continuity of his or her identity, has to bridge the ambivalence be-tween the present condition and the past.

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