Minisztertanácsi jegyzőkönyvek

The Council of Ministers was the most important executive authority in Hungary before and during the Holocaust. It was composed of Ministers who could be substituted by leading Ministry officials. It was presided by the Head of State (Regent Horthy until 1944) or, in his absence, the Prime Minister. The Council of Ministers tended to hold its sessions once a week but occasionally more often than that. After 1920, proposals were pre-circulated, the Ministers only added their remarks at the meetings and debates could ensue. The Council of Ministers, originally established in the year of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 based on a Hungarian law from 1848 (law 1848:III.), had two main functions. It debated the political direction of the government, issues that concerned several ministers or may even have impacted the state in its entirety. It took decisions in cases of competence conflicts between various ministers. Second, as a body it made decisions in individual cases that were submitted to it or brought up by individual ministers. Its mandate covered a host of important areas. It discussed the appointment of high Church functionaries, the naming of the president and members of the Upper House, cases of clemency, the granting of titles, including that of nobility, the appointment, pensioning, release and dismissal of state functionaries as well as their special rewarding, the sale and rent of state property as well as the agreements and contracts signed in the name of the state. Large construction projects also needed its approval. The Council of Ministers also received the proposed laws and reports of the Parliament, the establishment of new state bureaus and the hiring of their personnel, cases of name change, adoption and legalization of children, the so called entailment of estates (hitbizomány), and even the foundation of certain companies. After 1920, the Council of Ministers also discussed the appointments made to the Foreign Service, exemptions from educational qualifications, changes in customs payments, the granting of estates to the members of the Vitézi Rend, the support of persons physically damaged in war as well as war widows and orphans, data collection of the Statistical Office beyond its plans, etc.

The protocals of the Council of Ministers were arranged into two series. On the one hand, there are proposals and rough minutes of the meetings. On the other, there are clear authorized protocals. There are contemporary guides to the protocols of the Council of Ministers, though some of these were destroyed. The protocols have lists of their subjects on their back pages.