Parliamentary Museums and Exhibitions in Central Europe

The article focuses on museums and exhibitions that present and promote the history of parliaments in Central European countries. In the Czech and Polish parliaments, there are only shorter exhibitions presenting some elements of their constitutional history. The situation is similar in Slovakia; however, Slovakia has, within the framework of the Slovak National Museum, a separate Museum of Slovak National Councils (1848, 1918, 1944) in Myjava. Although it is not a typical parliamentary museum, it contains important information on Slovak public history. The oldest traditions are held by the Hungarian parliamentary museum in Budapest, which existed in the building of Hungarian Parliament between 1929 and 1949 and then revived in 2014. In the neoclassical building of the Austrian Parliament in Vienna, there is an impressive and interactive exhibition called Demokratikum, which focuses not only on presenting Austrian parliamentarism but also mainly on Austrian origins of democracy and forms of democratic participation. The Austrian, Hungarian, and Slovak models of presenting their legislative and constitutional traditions are therefore different. Austria focuses primarily on presenting its democratic past, Hungary on the history of its parliamentarism, and Slovakia on the Slovak national-emancipation process in 19th century.