Museum "haszmann Pal" Cernat

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Another attraction in the village is the Haszmann Pál Museum, named after its founder in 1999. The institution is located in the Damokos Gyula mansion and includes a park respectively a garden. The mansion was built in the 17-19. century and got its neo-classicist exterior in 1831. In the years between 1950-1970 the building had been left totally neglected, deteriorated and abandoned. The actual state and local leaders at that time designated it for the aim of museum foundation and thus it had been consigned. The more than two hectares area gave an opportunity for establishing an open air museum. The museum opened its gates on 25 February 1973.

The basis exhibition occupies six halls in the Damokos mansion, having been completed, changed and rearranged continuously since then. The exhibition plays a very important and instructive role in presenting the cultural-historical personalities of the commune and of the country and the life and works of those who were born in the village.

The rare, 1500 years old mud hut with stone stove, revealed in the courtyard of the museum, also proves that the commune is one of the most well-known area from an archaeological point of view. The tombstones, crosses, stone signs in the open-air department present the ancient Szekler, joint cemetery. The Szekler houses, gates, the watermill, the specific types of the Szekler folk architectural heritage lends the institution a skanzen character. The Szekler houses were built of wood, with pyramid roof, being covered with shingles. These are Szekler house types, with more rooms, corner drips and porch and were moved into the museum garden from different settlements of Háromszék (Three Seats) county. The houses with contemporary furniture, equipment, objects and tools bring back the feeling of the old village-life.

Several watermills were operating in the valley of Nagypatak (Pârâul Mare). The two stone watermill, resettled into the museum and originating from Orosz Simon, was the uppermost mill on the left side of the Csókás-feredő (Csókás-Spa), along the Nagypatak (Pârâul Mare). Many beehives of different shapes and colours draw the visitors' attention to themselves in the museum yard. Among them there are hives standing on shelves, wickered and plastered hives, reed-mace hives, framed beehives with various sizes, very big willow-poplar and lime-churns and rots.

The Szekler gates have their own tradition in Szeklerland. A few old gate types of different characteristics, preserved in the village museum, are considered special museum pieces, taking into consideration their more than bicentenary age and their artistic carving. One of the most interesting sights of the open-air section is the agricultural tool and machine exhibition. The oldest pieces of the collection dating back to the 16-17. century are, as they follow: plough shoes, wood spades, wood forks, wood harrows, wood cylinders, decorated hoes, scythes, stable gears, stirrups, snaffle bits, tinklers and bells. Iron plough shoes, with wood-stilt and cambered ploughshares, sharp rakes, flails were preserved from the 18. century. Diverse types of ploughs, harrows, reels, cultivators, potato diggers were saved for the posterity.

The most precious agricultural piece of the machinery collection of the museum is the iron plough, planned and made by the handyman Végh Antal. The first English, German, Austro-Hungarian steam engine sets arrived in Csernáton in 1887, eliminating the flails and the horse-powered threshers. The village owned three threshers -  also called machine or steam powered threshing machine - between the two world wars and in the 1940s. At the moment the museum possesses ten steam engines and fourteen threshing-machines. These wood-frame, metal threshers had been fabricated by The first Hungarian Agricultural Machinery Factory in Budapest (Első Magyar Gazdasági Gépgyár Rt.), the Hungarian Royal State Railroads'Machine Factory (Magyar Királyi Államvasutak Gépgyár) and by the famous Hofherr and Schrantz Machine Works. Among the curiosities of the exhibition are the different middlings purifiers,- six in the collection - also fabricated in the above mentioned factories, as well as lentil sifters, fertiliser distributors, used between the two world wars, grain cleaners and selectors fabricated by domestic and international manufacturers enrich the collection of the museum.

The other significant section of the collection includes forty-five pieces of single-cylinder, Diesel and gas engines of low-performance, equipped with vertical or horizontal engines, producing two, four, six, eight horsepower.

The museum preserves four contemporary tractors: an American Fordson-tractor from 1922, driven with petroleum, a McCormick-tractor, and two Hofherr-Schrantz-Clayton-Shuttleworth-tractors which are Hungarian products. In the collection there are also iron reels, grass harrows, cultipackers, reapers and cultivators, harvesters, reaper-binders, potato spinners, disk harrows from the beginning of the past century, potato cauldrons, different lentil purifiers, choppers.

The exhibition, concerning the Hungarian castironworks, is a spectacular and valuable part of the exhibition. The collection presenting the products of the former Hungarian foundries was the first exhibition of this kind in the country and got its name "Stove museum" from the visitors. This collection, mostly containing cast iron stoves, is presenting the artistic memories of the flourishing iron founding of the second half of the 19. century, fabricated in the former iron foundries of the historical regions of Hungary. At the exhibition, dealing with the Hungarian and Hungarian-Transylvanian iron founding, the visitors may see beautiful types of round stoves, column stoves, angular stoves, morning stoves, morning cupboard stoves, pipe-stoves, adjustable loading stoves, box stoves, cylinder stoves, stoves with heating plates, mantle-stoves.

Altogether 78 stoves are exhibited in three of the rooms of the arched cellar of the Damokos mansion. The oldest pieces date back to the 17-18. century, most of them deriving from the 19. century, from the heyday of the Hungarian cast iron founding. The radio exhibition of the museum was opened under the denomination of Foretimes of radio listening in Háromszék in 2004, also exhibiting-besides the multitude of radios - Morse telegraphs, small switchboards, a dozen of telephones, six gramophones, four pathephones, several cassette players, televisions and gramophone records.

All countries in Europe, producing wireless sets, are represented by their radio transmitters and receivers. Among the most famous factories we mention the Hungarian Standard, Orion and Videoton or the Dutch Philips, the German Grundig, Telefunken and the Czech Tesla. The oldest pieces are the earphones with crystal detectors, made in the Philips and Orion factories in the years between 1920-30.