In October 1940, the director if the Herend Porcelain Factory Ltd. travelled to the northern Transylvanian territories, which had been re-annexed to Hungary only a couple of weeks earlier. The purpose of his trip was to gather information about sales opportunities in person. As the time-honoured company had sev­eral distributors in the region between 1920 and 1940, their renowned products were far from unfamiliar in the Romanian market at the time. In 1940, by the decrees of the Second Vienna Resolution this territory became domestic mar­ket again. The study discusses the company’s strategies to restructure or restore business connections. Business correspondence and commission records found in the company archives helps tracing in which towns Herend products were popular, and what patterns were the most coveted by the customers. Depend­ing on the local situation, the sales of porcelain items did not fail to achieve the expected results, sometimes did even better until the last trimester of 1943. Even though these businesses did not significantly improve the financial indicators of the Herend Porcelain Factory on the whole, Northern Transylvania came to be a small, but predictable domestic market for the company during these years of the so-called ‘small Hungarian world’.

Nincs absztrakt.

In connection with the consequences of the Treaty of Trianon, until recently, little has been known about the nearly 430 000 people who repatriated in Hungary from beyond the new borders. Their arrival and integration fundamentally influenced everyday life in Hungary, and especially in their host settlements. This study examines the first phase of integration, the process of acquiring living quarters in one specific city. Between 1916 and 1921 tens of thousands of refugees passed through Miskolc, one of the major traffic hubs of Northeast Hungary. About 3500-4000 of them settled here, and their accommodation and provision created serious challenges for local authorities. Due to the dire shortage of flats, they were forced to wait for the outcome of their housing application in railway wagons, storehouses and other non-residential buildings unfit for human dwelling. The supervision of housing was officially the remit of the Housing Bureau, which was established in 1917. However, due to the dearth of available flats, insufficient capacity, suspicious corruption cases, and the continuous attacks on their operation, the office was not able to perform this duty satisfactorily. As a result, the local housing market increasingly relied on informal channels and illegal ways. Naturally, this created serious tension not only between the refugees and residents, but also between various groups. Besides the authorities using their influence in these conflicts, most cases were characterised by personal attacks and deeprooted prejudices. The acute shortage of flats and the resulting tension were only relieved, albeit only to some extent, by the new building campaigns in the second half of the decade.