John Manga

* Pereszlény, June 24, 1906 – † Budapest, September 2, 1977 / ethnographer, teacher, museologist ; ; He graduated from Ipolyság and obtained a teaching diploma from the Bratislava Teacher Training College. He began his teaching career at the elementary school in Szécsénke, later taught in Pozsonyligetfalu, and was the director of the Ógyalla school in 1940–1941. He obtained a doctorate in humanities from the University of Cluj (1941). Between 1941–1949 he was a museologist at the Budapest Museum of Ethnography, and then between 1949–1957 he was the director of the Palóc Museum in Balassagyarmat. After that, he was the director of the Budapest Institute of Folk Culture (1960–1963), and finally, until his retirement, he was a senior scientific associate and head of department of the Ethnographic Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1963–1973). From 1932, he was the first editor of the Hungarian broadcast of the Bratislava Radio and in this capacity he began collecting folk music in Slovak villages in the 1930s. He primarily dealt with festive folk customs, folk instruments, Roman Catholic religious ethnography and pastoral art. He researched the Hungarian regions along the Ipoly and Garam rivers, Zoborvidék and Mátyusföld. He examined the Hungarian-Slovak interethnic aspects of the glorious days. He published studies on the ethnography of Slovaks in Hungary. ; ; His main works: ; The ethnography of the returned Upper Hungarians (In: The database of the returned Upper Hungarians), ; Festive customs in Menyhe, Nyitra County, 1942; Hungarian Catholic folk life in pictures, 1948; A Transdanubian shepherd carver, 1954; Holidays, customs along the Ipoly River, 1968; Hungarian folk songs – folk instruments (also in English and German), 1969; Hungarian shepherd carvers (also in English and German), 1971; Palócföld, 1979.