The Hungarian Chapter of a Bratislava Reader
As a preamble I would like to briefly present the story of Bratislava’s Coronation Hill. The site played an important part in the coronation ritual of the kings of Hungary. The newly elected king would ride to the hill, dismount, and then take one step in all four cardinal directions with his raised sword in hand to signify his willingness to defend the country. In 1897, a marble monument to Maria Theresa was unveiled on the site, a masterpiece by the Bratislavan sculptor János Fadrusz. In 1920 the monument was blown up by Czech soldiers. After the formation of Czechoslovakian Republic a monument to Milan Rastislav Štefanik flanked by an enormous lion was erected there.
In the time of the so-called “Slovak State” (1938–1944) the lion was considered superfluous. In socialist Czechoslovakia even the general was removed from the site. Today we admire monuments celebrating the Slovak triumvirate of national rebirth from the years 1848/49: Ludovít Štúr, Jozef Miloslav Hurban and Michal Miloslav Hodža.
Not unusually for Europe, certainly for Central Europe, the city has many names. The names – Preßburg, Bratislava and Pozsony – do not merely mark political vicissitudes and underscore the multi-ethnic composition of this city on the banks of the Danube, they also indicate the differing respective memories of the city. Even the use of these names in the 19th and 20th centuries points to certain characteristic traits of Central European nation-states – as modern and tolerant nations. In a recently published collection of essays on the city’s historiography Elena Mannová wrote: “At first glance one could claim that there are many histories of this city, all of which developed as a consequence of political and social changes and of changes of rulers over the different ethnic groups living in the city.”[1] Although in this essay I will be looking at the Hungarian chapter of the city’s history and at Hungarian traditions, I would like to emphasise that I am a committed supporter of a collective, supranational reading of Bratislava.
The most important aspects of the Hungarian contribution to this city will be summarised in five points: Bratislava as the city of royal coronations, as a centre of so-called “Hungarus patriotism”, as the venue of the Hungarian Diet, as “the Hungarian muse in Bratislava”, and as the city of the Kraxelhuber.
In the semiotics of the city, Hungarian memories of the city rest on the following elements: the rectangular castle with its four corner towers where the “Holy Crown of Hungary” – also known as the Crown of St. Stephen – is kept, St. Martin’s Cathedral where the kings of Hungary were crowned, and the palace of the Catholic Primate, where in 1848 Ferdinand V gave his consent to certain reforms as part of a new constitution. In the Hungarian tradition Bratislava was given the attribute “coronation city”. In December 1526 Ferdinand I of Habsburg was elected King of Hungary in the Franciscan monastery and crowned in Stuhlweissenburg/Székesfehérvar. From the middle of the 16th century onwards, Bratislava was, to all intents and purposes, the kingdom’s capital. Its proximity to Vienna played an important role in this decision. According to Hungarian etymological studies, the city’s Hungarian name of Pozsony can be traced back to the personal name of a territory around the castle in the early medieval period.
In Hungarian memory medieval Bratislava was an important border fortification. In his celebrated epic poem “The diver Kund”, published in 1829, the famous Hungarian romantic poet Mihály Vörösmarty (1800–1855) tells the story of a diver who managed to sink the Danube fleet of King Henry III in Preßburg in 1052. In Hungarian eyes the “deputy” capital city of Bratislava was always on the west of the country, on the margins of the country, not merely because of its German-speaking population and its progressiveness, but also because of its political position and its resident aristocracy and citizens.
I use the term “Hungarus patriotism” to describe a mindset which preceded the concept of a modern national identity; its point of origin was loyalty to the whole of the Kingdom of Hungary and it was not dependent on the respective person’s class or native language. The multi-talented scientist and teacher at the Evangelical Lyceum of Preßburg, Matthias/Matej/Mátyás Bél (1684–1749) encapsulates such “Hungarus patriotism”.
The Slovak language area in the north, the Hungarian language area in the south and the German-Austrian language area to the west all formed part of the city’s hinterland. As regards religion, the city was populated by a Roman Catholic majority, a relatively strong Protestant Lutheran minority and a Jewish Diaspora. In his work Mátyás Bél demonstrates his linguistic and religious tolerance, valuing all languages spoken in his country. He was the editor of a multivolume encyclopaedic work, written in Latin, on the Kingdom of Hungary covering all its historical, political, economic and ethnographic aspects.
Bratislava has a long tradition of multilingualism. A citizen or intellectual of Bratislava spoke at least three languages. National historiography narratives tend to ignore or neglect this tradition. An in-depth study of the work of journalists and teachers would be worthwhile, for example the work of Karl Gottlieb von Windisch (1725–1793), founder of the newspaper Preßburger Zeitung, or of Tobias Gottfried Schröer (1791–1850), who referred to himself as a “Hungarus” and who wrote about both Hungarian and Slovak culture, or of Lajos/Ĺudovít Szeberényi (1820–1875), a professor und clergyman of Slovak parentage and a translator of Slovak folk songs into Hungarian.
Between 1825 and 1848 the Hungarian Diet met nine times in Preßburg. It would be only a slight exaggeration to state that the modern state of Hungary originated in Bratislava. Among the members of parliament of those years we can find such extraordinary personalities of Hungarian history as Count István Széchenyi, Ferenc Kölcsey, the poet who wrote the national anthem, Miklós Wesselényi, Lajos Kossuth, Ferenc Deák and, not least, Lajos Batthyány (1807–1849), a native of Preßburg who became the first prime minister of the liberal Hungarian government and was martyred in the revolution of 1848/49.
In his book A Hungarian Nabob Mór Jókai, the foremost Hungarian novelist of the 19th century, described those years as follows: “Big ideas, extensive reforms rise up in front of the public, people read newspapers in the coffee houses (...), during the day the public visits the gallery of the Parliamentary Building with the same zest and curiosity as they would pay a visit to the theatre.”
Protagonists of Hungarian literature such as Mór Jókai (1825–1904) and Sándor Petőfi (1823–1849) lived and worked in the coronation city. Jókai attended the Evangelical Lyceum for three years as an “exchange pupil”. In the former Kingdom of Hungary it was customary in areas where several languages were spoken for parents to send their children for a time into a family which spoke a different language to allow the children to learn the language of their neighbours. The first time Petőfi arrived in Preßburg he came on foot and as a soldier, later he tried his aptitude as an actor in the summer theatre on the other bank of the Danube.
Bratislava has earned for itself the title ‘city of schools’. In 1465 King Matthias Corvinus founded a university, the Academia Istropolitana in Preßburg. 1606 was the year in which the Evangelical Lyceum was founded, an educational establishment which went on to play an extraordinarily important role in German, Slovak and Hungarian culture over the centuries. A Roman Catholic school has existed Bratislava since 1714. Its teachers included the Jesuit György Káldi (1572–1634), who translated the Roman Catholic bible into Hungarian. The Royal Academy of Jurisprudence, founded in 1784, was also very important for Hungarian and Slovak culture.
Bratislava could also be considered as the birthplace of an ungarländische press (Ungarländisch means Hungarian in a political, territorial and historical, but not necessarily ethnic, sense). The newspaper Preßburger Zeitung was first published in 1764, followed in 1780 by the first issue of the Hungarian-language newspaper Magyar Hírmondó [The Hungarian Courier] and in 1783 by the Slovak Prešpurské Noviny (Preßburger Zeitung).
And, finally, who were the Kraxelhuber? In the Hungarian perception the citizens of Preßburg were loyal subjects of the Habsburg monarchy and strongly infiltrated with Viennese culture. The citizens of Preßburg were often referred to with a certain irony as Kraxelhuber by the Hungarians. Originally the name was a play on the work in the vineyards. In 1890 almost 60 percent of the city’s population were ethnically German. A Kraxelhuber was a conservative citizen with an ungarländische identity. He spoke Hungarian but was notable for speaking an accented Hungarian which made him look slightly ridiculous. The Kraxelhuber was a frequently occurring character in humorous Hungarian newspapers in the last third of the 19th century. In the era of the Hungarian illusion of a nation-state at the beginning of the 20th century Preßburg was given a Hungarian appearance including Hungarian street names and inscriptions; the St. Elisabeth University was founded in 1914. After the end of the Habsburg monarchy Pressburg/Bratislava/Pozsony became the capital city of Slovakia in the newly founded state of Czechoslovakia. In the inter-war period the city became a centre of cultural life for the Hungarian minority in the First Czechoslovak Republic.
[1] Mannová, Elena: Pozsony historiográfiája (Egy multietnikus város múltjának differenciált bemutatása a 19. és 20. század politikai fordulatai után) [The Historiography of Bratislava. A differentiated approach to the history of a multiethnic city based on the political changes in the 19th and 20th century] In: Fejezetek Pozsony történetébol magyar és szlovák szemmel. Szerk. Czoch Gábor, továbbá Kocsis Aranka, Tóth Árpád [Pictures of the History of Bratislava through the Eyes of Hungarians and Slovaks, ed. by G. Czoch, in collaboration with A. Kocsis and Á. Tóth]. Kalligram, Pozsony 2005. pp. 47–48.
prof. Csaba Gy. Kiss (born 1945) – Hungarian political scientist, prominent expert on Central European issues. Historian of culture and literature, conducts comparative research studies on literatures of Central Europe and myths and national symbols in literature. Professor of Universities in Budapest and Zagreb. President of Scientific Council of European Network Remembrance and Solidarity.