Ferenc Pap

I was 25 years old in this picture. I enrolled at Babes University, to the Faculty of History. I finished in 1956. After that I did all kinds of jobs for seven years. My first post was at a daily paper of that period, called Igazsag [the truth]. I translated the Ager Press's (Romanian news agency in Bucharest) incoming news for the foreign affairs column. This lasted about one and a half months at the end of 1956. There was no possibility of confirming me in my post. At the beginning of 1957 I dealt with Romanian - Hungarian translations. Then came the time when I was a pioneer instructor. I was a so-called chief pioneer instructor, which was a paid job at that time. I didn't have to teach them but just to take charge of their activities in all fields. After that, for one or one-and-a-half months again, I stood in for a teacher of History, and I taught in Hungarian. Then my first real post came. In the spring of 1957 I became a proof-reader at the Kolozsvar press, and at the end of summer I got to the Korunk [Our times]. I was a technical editor there for about three years. There were redundancies everywhere; that's how I got out of there. After that, for almost three years again, I worked in the Kolozsvar University Library. From December 1963, I worked in the Museum of History of Kolozsvar, at first as a museologist then as a chief museologist, then as a chief research worker. I completed my Phd in March 1981. I devoted much time to the redaction of the 'Acta Musei Napocensis', the annual publication of the Museum of History of Kolozsvar. [Ferenc sub-edited the annuals of 1984-1988 as an editorial secretary. The name of the museum today is The Transylvanian National Museum of History, in Romanian: Muzeul National de Istorie a Transilvaniei.] Besides this, I translated more than 20 books and excerpts too. At the present time I'm working on a very interesting manuscript from the 17th century.