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The Hungarian book-trade has all the more reason to be proud of its past, having successfully emerged from the struggle for the Hungarian book, and if we consider the 10.000,000 Hungarian inhabitants (meaning the Hungarian-speaking people) it has created a strong phalanx for the Hungarian book which gives it a right to look into the future with hope and confidence. The foundation is laid, the ground has been paved.

I will now turn to the past of the Hungarian book-trade and show the results of our work during the last fifty years. The first thing that strikes me in doing this, is, that most of the pioneers of the Hungarian book-trade were Germans and that the German book, and the German intellect have governed our whole organism during long decades. Most of the institutions of our book-trade, the organisation of our co-operative association, the paragraphs of our statutes are all constructed after the German pattern. I am not ashamed to own this, because at the time when our ancestors looked up to the German pattern, it was also seen that we have found sincere confederates in our German colleagues, who had come into our country, and promoted the interests of the Hungarian book-trade with the noblest intentions.

In the year 1842 there were, as already mentioned hardly more than 30 booksellers in Hungary. But even 50 years ago there were not many more in the whole country. During the two following decades the situation has hardly changed. One can hardly speak of a trade in Hungarian books before the sixties. Of course there were Hungarian booksellers, but even if we take into consideration the conditions then obtaining, only a very small proportion of Hungarian books were published in those days. At the time of the War of Independence of 1848 the movement started by Wigand, Heckenast, Landerer and Emich came to a standstill.

In the midst of the flood of the great political events, which had such influence on the future of the country, the greater part of the cultured people had no time to occupy themselves with books. It was the time of the sword and not of the pen. But in the era of Bach, that time of oppression, the vexations of the censorship to a great extent suppressed the publication and the circulation of books. The Hungarian book-trade, as a propagator of national culture, suffered the most under the oppression of absolutism, because here one soonest had to fear the reawakening of the spirit of liberty and only after the absolutism had come to an end was new life infused into the Hungarian book-trade. Those who had higher literary tastes and who were not content with the almanac and magazine literature were obliged to have resort to foreign and German books. But there were also booksellers and publishers, Gustav Emich for example, who, at first, out of patriotism kept no German books in stock at all and foreign books were only supplied on demand.

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