COURAGE

connecting collections

UHFS-MEFESZ, which was founded in Vaduz, Lichtenstein in 1957 and dissolved in Bern, Switzerland in 1967 was an organization representing some 7,000 Hungarian émigré students in 16 countries worldwide.
The Union of Free Hungarian Students was a federation of émigré student associations in various countries, with its coordinative central office in Bern, Switzerland: the “International Secretary,” was headed by the annually elected president of UFHS.

The Háttér Society (1995) is one of the largest Hungarian LMBT+ organizations, and it has been active in many fields: advocacy, lobbying, legal aid, and the maintenance of an archive and library, AIDS/HIV prevention, mental help. The organization systematically collects various kinds of materials relating to LMTB+ issues (articles, scientific texts, literature, movies, even the foundational documents of the first Hungarian LMBT+ organization, Homérosz, etc.). Given the absence of an organization or institution dedicated to homosexual issues during the socialist era, most of the materials preserved are from private collections. At the same time, this is also the biggest obstacle the archive faces, because in recent decades many private collections vanished after the owners died. Frequently, the heirs are not able to accept that the deceased, who was often a family member, was homosexual, so the Háttér Society’s requests for materials have been regularly refused.