Vilmos Diószegi’s encounters with shamans - compact temporary exhibition

The Museum of Ethnography commemorates Vilmos Diószegi, a former colleague of the Museum, who, as an internationally recognized researcher of shamanism, visited southern Siberia and northern Mongolia four times in the 1950s and 1960s. His aim was, by consistently analyzing the elements of shamanism, to clarify the question of the origin of the ancient Hungarian religion. The accounts of his travelings, the scientific and popular ones, are among the milestone books not only for the former youngmen later scholars but also for the readers in a broader sense interested in kindred peoples of Hungarians living in Southern Siberia and Northern Mongolia.

The Museum of Ethnography’s Photograph Collection holds nearly fifteen thousand eight hundred photographs of Vilmos Diószegi, including one and a half thousand taken in Hungary. A significant part of the total material is documentation of shamanic objects preserved in Siberian collections. His field photographies in Siberia and Mongolia number almost three thousand. 

Text, photo selection: Bata Tímea, Wilhelm Gábor

Graphic design: Hoffmann Tamás Boldizsár