President, sections

Short biography

Parádi József, CSc, retired college professor, is a figure who has played a determining role in the teaching and research of Hungarian law enforcement history. He completed his secondary schooling at the Árpád Grammar School in Óbuda in 1968, then obtained an officer's diploma at the Lajos Kossuth Military College in 1972. In 1978 he took a master's degree in political science at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE). He also defended his dissertation at the Faculty of Humanities of ELTE in 1984, under the title “Border Control in Dualist Hungary”. In 1990, within the framework of the official procedure of the Qualifying Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA TMB), he obtained the candidate's degree in military science on the subject of the border control of the Kingdom of Hungary between the two world wars (CSc). He conducted basic research in the subject area of both degree-awarding dissertations.

In the course of his academic career he brought about a significant change in the approach to the history of the maintenance of public order: as a result of his work, the practice of the field, burdened by ideologically influenced interpretations, shifted towards source-based, critical historical methodology. His principal research fields are the organisational development and personnel conditions of the law enforcement bodies of the Kingdom of Hungary (1867–1945), and the regional impact of the Anglo-Saxon and continental law enforcement models in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is the founder and President of the Szemere Bertalan Hungarian Law Enforcement History Scientific Society (SZBMRTT, official court registration number: 01-02-0003324), as well as founder and editor-in-chief of numerous journals and book series. He played a significant role in the nurturing of talent, among other things through his work in doctoral training and as a supervisor and master teacher. At the Department of Hungarian Legal History of the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University and at the Police Officer College he taught subjects based on his own research findings until his retirement.

Relations with international and Hungarian professional and scholarly communities

1. TEMPUS PHARE projects (1998–2001)

Under the leadership of Dr Parádi József, and with the support of the education department of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, the projects “The cooperation experience of European police forces” and “Teaching the experience of the Schengen Agreement” — TEMPUS PHARE INSTITUT BILDUNG JEP 13154-98 and 13165-98, awarded to the Police Officer College — were realised in 1998–2001. These projects also formed the theoretical foundations for the alignment of Hungarian border control, adapted to Eastern European requirements, with Western European expectations.

2. Austrian and French gendarmerie history relations

He established professional cooperation with the former Austrian gendarmerie (Bundesgendarmerie) and with the Historical Service of the French National Gendarmerie (Service historique de la Gendarmerie nationale – SHGN; successor body from 2005: Service historique de la Défense, SHD), culminating in the holding of joint events.

3. National Security Service (NBSZ)

On his initiative, professional scholarly cooperation developed between the SZBMRTT, which he leads, and the Hungarian National Security Service (NBSZ); as a result, Dr Parádi József personally took part as a lecturer in the training providing the replacement of the NBSZ's personnel, and laid the foundations for the strengthening of training in the history of the profession within the organisation. Within the framework of the cooperation, joint scholarly events and exhibitions on the history of the profession within the organisation were created, and several scholarly volumes were published jointly.

In the course of this work the volume entitled “1872 Anleitung zum Kundschatsdienste” was published. The genesis of the 2014 edition is instructive in itself. The volume was produced in cooperation between several organisations — the National Security Service, the Constitution Protection Office, the Hungarian Archives Delegation in Vienna and the Szemere Bertalan Hungarian Law Enforcement History Scientific Society — and the series preface explicitly names the Evidenzbüro as the “parent organisation” of the reconnaissance services of the successor states: after the First World War the experiential core of several European intelligence services grew out of it. This genealogical observation means that the principles codified here are to be read not as a regional curiosity but as the common heritage of the European reconnaissance profession — and that their loss would be not a local but a continental loss of learning. Accordingly, the preface to the edition identifies the preservation of professional memory as its purpose: the instructions are addressed to the generation that can no longer acquire this knowledge from a living master.

4. Relations established with professional historical organisations

4/1. Wiener Kriminalmuseum

On the initiative of Dr Parádi József — in view of the shared past — cooperation was established between the SZBMRTT and the Vienna Wiener Kriminalmuseum, led by Mag. Harald Seyrl, realised in joint events and programmes; the museum operates in the historic Leopoldstadt district, in the Seifensiederhaus, and is one of Austria's oldest law enforcement history collections.

4/2. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Polizeigeschichte

In 1994, developing the professional contacts of previous years, he established cooperation with the German Police History Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Polizeigeschichte), operating in reunified Germany, resulting in joint professional events.

4/3. MKCsBK (Hungarian Royal Gendarme Veterans Association)

A cooperation agreement was concluded with the leadership of the MKCsBK (Hungarian Royal Gendarme Veterans Association), which is registered in the United States but operates across every inhabited continent. The MKCsBK — originally an organisation of gendarmes forced into emigration, which, as the number of surviving gendarmes declined, was transformed into an organisation concerned with the exploration of the history of the force — presents the history of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie on its website with unparalleled thoroughness. The website functions in practice as an archive containing the overwhelming majority of written documents dealing with the history of the force, which, in addition to the general public, offers researchers preparing to defend their dissertations and habilitations in the field a source base arranged to archival standards and in large part not to be found elsewhere.

Publicly published sources relating to the cooperation agreements and professional projects above

• Zachar József: A csendőrség a XIX. században. Első Nemzetközi Csendőrségtörténeti Kollokvium, Párizs, 2000. március 10–11. [The Gendarmerie in the Nineteenth Century. First International Colloquium on Gendarmerie History, Paris, 10–11 March 2000] — Hadtörténelmi Közlemények, vol. CXIV (2001), no. 1, pp. 203–209. HU-ISSN 2732-3676 · ISSN-L 0017-6540 · epa.oszk.hu/00000/00018/00016/08kronika.htm
• Parádi József: « Gendarmerie hongroise : naissance et fonctionnement (1881–1914) » — RGN, n° 202, 4e trim. 2002, pp. 109–114. In: Édouard Ebel – Benoît Haberbusch – Jean-Noël Luc: Bibliographie de l'histoire de la Gendarmerie Nationale. Paris, 2025, CRGN–SHD–Centre d'histoire du XIXe siècle. 212 pp. · force-publique.net — Bibliographie de l'histoire de la gendarmerie (2025)
• Hegyaljai Mátyás: Bemutatkozik az Európai Rendvédelem-történeti Szövetség [The European Law Enforcement History Association presents itself] — Law Enforcement History Newsletter, vols. XIII–XV (2006), nos. 22–26, pp. 168–171. HU-ISSN 1785-3257 · epa.oszk.hu — LEHN, vols. 13–15, nos. 22–26 (PDF)

Cryptographic identifier

• GPG key2E0844B46B3AC477
• GPG fingerprint512A 10A6 83CD DAFA A00C BECF 2E08 44B4 6B3A C477

Institutional director / Signing authority: Dr József Parádi — verified on keys.openpgp.org.

Honours and awards