Museum of Ethnography

One of the earliest specialised museums in Europe, the Budapest Museum of Ethnography was born on March 5, 1872, when János Xántus (1825-1894) was appointed to the head of the Ethnography Department of the Hungarian National Museum. Xántus, a lawyer, former officer in the Hungarian War for Independence, and well-known natural historian in emigration in America, owed his appointment to the success of a large-scale exhibition he had organised from over two and a half thousand pieces he, himself, had collected in East Asia.