7. Sections
Our sections
Our learned society consists of several sections. The sections are not administrative organisational units but operate as scholarly creative workshops. In addition to the sections we also have regional groups.
Introduction
Szemere Bertalan Hungarian Law Enforcement History Scientific Society
Our Society, founded in 1990 and registered by the Metropolitan Court in 1991, is an independent voluntary association of professionals interested in the history of Hungarian law enforcement. Our motto: Cum historia pro securitate — With history for security.
I. Introduction
Our Society, founded in 1990 and registered by the Metropolitan Court in 1991, is an independent voluntary association of professionals interested in the history of Hungarian law enforcement.
Our members are engaged in historical research and teaching on Hungarian law enforcement history and on the history of the armed bodies related to it. Our membership is drawn predominantly from the personnel of law enforcement agencies, the staff of public collections and the teaching staff of higher education institutions. There are also those among us whose occupation is not connected with the present or the past of law enforcement, but who take an interest in the subject and cultivate it in some form — collectors, for example.
Some forty members hold scholarly or academic degrees, ranging from membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the degree of doctor universitatis to the ranks of professor and assistant lecturer. Most of them are recognised authorities in Hungary's scholarly life and higher education today.
In our view, law enforcement denotes not a discipline but an activity, whose theoretical foundations are formed by the findings of numerous fields of scholarship. We regard law enforcement history as a collective term which comprises — irrespective of time and place — every law enforcement model realised in the course of universal history. The law enforcement models of the various periods and their changes constitute law enforcement history.
Our aim is to contribute to the advancement of Hungarian and universal history through the cultivation of our field and the processing of written sources and material relics, and — through the exploration of our law enforcement history past and the application of the lessons learned — to the development of law enforcement.
Our association holds that by making our national law enforcement history traditions — above all our traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — publicly accessible, and by disseminating the lessons learned, it can promote:
The sections of our learned society operate as intellectual creative workshops.
Our organisation is not profit-oriented: we sustain ourselves from membership fees, donations and the fruits of our research work.
Organisation
7. Sections
Our learned society consists of several sections. The sections are not administrative organisational units but operate as scholarly creative workshops. In addition to the sections we also have regional groups.
8. Governing body
The governing body of the Society is the presidency. The office-holders are elected every five years. In accordance with statutory requirements we convene the general assembly and the meeting of the presidency regularly.
9. Membership
Any natural person who is not under guardianship and has no criminal record may apply for admission to our membership. Following the submission of the completed declaration of admission form, the presidency decides on admission. Membership activity is entirely voluntary.
New members are notified in writing; they receive their membership card and membership badge every autumn — in connection with the event of our annual conference — in a ceremonial setting.
Activities
Our Society also publishes periodicals. Acta Historiae Praesidii Ordinis (Acta Historiae Praesidii Ordinis, HU ISSN 1216-6774) is the only Hungarian-language scholarly periodical publishing scholarly treatments by researchers of law enforcement history. In the periodical we publish peer-reviewed studies which meet the requirements expected of scholarly publications. The periodical appears once or twice a year.
Our association's life and the operational events relating to the cultivation of law enforcement history are reported on by the Law Enforcement History Newsletter (Nuntiotones Historiae Praesidii Ordinis, HU ISSN 1785-3257), which has appeared since 1995, generally twice a year.
Our Society is also the publisher of six scholarly book series on law enforcement history.
Our Society has established scholarly forum series:
Public life and teaching
Our Society takes part in scholarly public activity:
The Society's teaching work:
14. International relations
Since its foundation the Society has been building professional relations with Hungarian and foreign institutions and scholarly organisations pursuing similar fields of research.
Professional relations have been established with the Wiener Kriminalmuseum in Vienna, which operates in the historic Leopoldstadt district, in the Seifensiederhaus, and is one of Austria's oldest law enforcement history collections.
wien.kriminalmuseum.at
In 1994, developing the professional contacts of previous years, our Society joined the German Police History Society, which was founded in 1989 at the Polizei-Führungsakademie in Münster and has since remained the leading professional body for law enforcement history in the German-speaking world.
polizeigeschichte.com · clio-online.de · phsb.eu
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.
csendor.com
Regular working relations have been established with the official historical service of the French Gendarmerie (Service Historique de la Gendarmerie Nationale – SHGN), which operates in Vincennes as part of the Historical Service of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, and with the French Gendarmerie History Foundation.
gendarmerie.interieur.gouv.fr · servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr
Representing the Society, Dr Parádi József took part as an invited speaker in the First International Colloquium on Gendarmerie History, held at the Sorbonne on 10–11 March 2000, organised by the Centre de recherches en histoire du XIXe siècle with the cooperation of the Paris I and Paris IV universities and the SHGN. His paper (“Gendarmerie hongroise: naissance et fonctionnement (1881–1914)”) appeared in the conference proceedings Gendarmerie, État et société au XIXe siècle, edited by Jean-Noël Luc (Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002).
calenda.org · journals.openedition.org
The Society's work is cited as a reference source in the comprehensive bibliography of Édouard Ebel, Benoît Haberbusch and Jean-Noël Luc, published in 2025 by the Historical Service of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces and the CRGN of the Gendarmerie Nationale, entitled Bibliographie de l'histoire de la gendarmerie.
force-publique.net · gendarmerie.interieur.gouv.fr
Hadtörténelmi Közlemények, vol. CXIV (2001), no. 1, pp. 203–209. HU-ISSN 2732-3676 · ISSN-L 0017-6540
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)
Law Enforcement History Newsletter, vols. XIII–XV (2006), nos. 22–26, pp. 168–171. HU-ISSN 1785-3257
Registration
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