The research group was established on 01.09.2021 at the Department of Hungarian Legal History of the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the University of Szeged with the support of the Ministry of Innovation and Technology from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund. The purpose of the resarch group is analysing the private law institutions between the two world wars through archival sources and communicating our results to the domestic and international scientific community through conferences and publications, and to the wider public as well.

The economic downturn caused by the First World War exposed some of the shortcomings of free-market capitalism and led to a paradigm shift in economic policy. Consequently an increased state intervention occured in the economy. The changed economic policy induced new legislative processes, and the new legislative tendencies led to substantial changes in the private law system: restrictions of the property system in the Horthy era, the introduction of competition law, the establishment of state supervision of cartels, and bankruptcy law reforms became important factors.

Our goal is to examine each of these private law institutions in the context of public history and economic history, since this will help us to understand the purpose of the legislator and see clearly that these purposes have been transferred into the judicial practice or not.