COURAGE

connecting collections

Vilmos Vajta (1918–1998) was a Hungarian Lutheran theologist. He was born Vilmos Wagner, but after the Anschluss, in protest he chose the Hungarian name Vajta. He studied at the Faculty of Theology in Sopron (1936–1940) and became a Lutheran pastor in 1940. He was an assistant clergyman and teacher in Budapest, Soltvadkert, Pestszentlőrinc, and Újpest. In 1941, he travelled to Sweden with a state scholarship and studied at the Musical Academy in Stockholm. He then studied theology at the universities of Uppsala and Lund. In 1953, he became a docent at the University of Lund. Between 1953 and 1964, he served as the director of the Theological Section of the World Federation of Lutherans. From 1964 to 1981, he was the director of the Oecumenical Research Institute of the World Federation of Lutherans in Strasbourg. Vajta initiated the organization of the Luther Conferences. He was a regular participant in oecumenical dialogues and he delivered lectures at many conferences.

Milko Valent is a Croatian writer and cultural activist born in Zagreb in 1948. He graduated with a degree in philosophy and comparative literature and has worked as a professional writer since 1976. Being active in the field of culture, he is interested in cultural events in Zagreb and had followed Eurokaz program since its beginnings. He published his impressions on Eurokaz in the book Eurokaz-Burning Solstice.

Heiki Valk (b. 1959) is a senior research fellow and head of the Archaeology Centre for Research and Infrastructure at the Institute of History and Archaeology at the University of Tartu. He graduated from the Tartu State University (the name of the University of Tartu from 1940 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1989) as a historian in 1983, specialising in Late Iron Age and Medieval archaeology. He gained his PhD degree in 2001 from the same university. The title of his dissertation was ‘Rural Cemeteries in Southern Estonia 1225-1800 AD'.
He was a founding member and a core activist in the Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) student movement from 1979 to 1984. Today he is one of the owners of the collection of this movement.

Mari Vallikivi is an Estonian art historian, and the curator of exhibitions and a work coordinator at the Kondas Centre of Naive Art. She studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and graduated with a BA in 1998. After that, she worked for Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus (the Estonian Publisher of Encyclopedias). Since 2003, she has been a curator at the Kondas Centre. Her main research interest is amateur art during the Soviet period. As a curator, she has to study a large number of different fields, due to the numerous temporary exhibitions at the Kondas Centre. In her opinion, approximately 300 exhibitions have been held. She has worked at the Kondas Centre since its beginning, and has been engaged in its development. In 2008, she began to research Kondas' person and work more closely. By now, thanks to Kondas’ letters and diaries, she has decoded several of his works. Mari Vallikivi considers the study of cultural opposition important, because it is part of Estonian history. The paintings by Kondas are part of this, which becomes clearer and clearer the more information about him is collected. According to Vallikivi, all art should be cultural opposition, in the sense that an artwork without a message does not move forward, art must address and upset, if not directly, then between the lines and allegorically.

Árpád Varga E. (1952–2011) was a Hungarian librarian, social researcher and statistician. He was born as Árpád Ernszt in Budapest. He studied public education and library sciences at the Teacher Training Institute in Szombathely, where he worked for the municipal library in 1972–1973. He worked at the regional unit of the Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library in Budapest, then at the Library of the Teacher Training Academy in Kaposvár from 1975 to 1978 and at the Library of the Institute of Public Education from 1978 to 1985. He studied at the Training Educational Academy in Eger in 1979 as well. In 1985, he started to do research on the history of the official census surveys of nationalities, the changes in ethno-demographical relations and the questions of population patterns of Hungarians in Transylvania. He published many books and studies on this topic. Beginning in 1985, he was a librarian at the Library of Informational Institute of Public Education, while from 1993 he was the director of the Library of Cultural Innovation Foundation. He was the only person who received the award of the Central Statistical Office as an outsider for his statistical processing of the population history of Transylvania.