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Ferenc Hopp (b. 1833, d. 1919) was an optician, globetrotter, art collector, patron of the arts, and founder of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts. He was born in Moravia. He came to Pest to become an apprentice at the Calderoni Company manufacturing optical appliances. Having received his journeyman's certificate, he spent two years in Vienna and four years in the United States to conduct apprentice training. After his return to Hungary, he became partner in the company, which he took over in 1864 (keeping the name Calderoni and Co.) and made further improvements to it. During the period of the educational reforms carried out by Count József Eötvös (around 1870), Hopp, besides pursuing optics as a special line, was the first to manufacture educational appliances and aids in Hungary. It was due to his accomplishments in this field that on the 50th anniversary of his professional activity he received the medal of the Ferenc József Order of Knighthood (1895). Hopp also sold and propagated various kinds of equipment and material needed in photography, recently invented and rapidly developing in his time.
Due to the company's financial success, after the age of 50 he had the means to travel for pleasure. He visited the World Fairs and, in addition to greater or lesser trips (for instance, a tour of the Mediterranean Sea, a journey to West Africa to visit to the Congo railway), between 1882 and 1914 he travelled five times around the world (1882–83, 1893–94, 1903, 1905, 1913–14). It was the period of the construction of transcontinental railways; regular steam lines were operating on the seas. Travel became a leisure activity for well-to-do citizens. In many parts of the world, an actual industry came into existence to serve these travellers; such services included selling souvenir photographs. Hopp gave accounts of his travels in the sessions of the Hungarian Geographical Society; some of these were published, illustrated with pictures that he purchased and photos of his own making.
At first he bought souvenirs; later he began to collect works of art. In his will he left to the state his predominantly Oriental art collection of more than 4,500 pieces, along with his villa and garden (under 103 Andrássy út, in the 6th district of Budapest) so that a museum of Eastern Asiatic arts could be established.
His activity as an art patron was many-sided; for instance, he donated a collection of Carthaginian (Pun) ceramics to the Department of Antiquity of the Hungarian National Museum. The collection is currently exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts. He gave regular support to several scientific and social organizations in his home town, Fulnek, as well as in his chosen homeland, Hungary.
Ferenc Hopp did not keep a diary while travelling, but did provide accounts of his experiences to his friends and colleagues in his letters. Some of his letters have survived; they are currently preserved in the Documentation Department of the Museum. In the course of his journeys Hopp collected photographs wherever he had the opportunity, so that once home he could illustrate the things he had written about. From the beginning of the 1890s, he took photos himself, experimenting with the technological innovations of photography that his company put into circulation. He accurately labelled his photos and organised them into albums. In the first years of the 20th century he participated in several exhibitions with his stereo slides.
He left his collection of photographs (which had grown to several thousands of items) to the Hungarian Geographical Society. However, the Society's building, along with its archives, was destroyed during World War II. Our Museum is in the possession of some 350 photos and scattered documents preserved in the Documentation Department. Our virtual exhibition shows a selection of this -collection.
Dr. Mária Ferenczy
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