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Abstract
The paper concentrates on three aspects that played a role in shaping the capital of Slovakia: the importance of a name given to the territory illustrating how renaming came to play a crucial role in creating a capital of Slovakia, an successful example of how to nationalise a place and a past; the second part of the paper describes the barriers in acceptance of Bratislava as the capital city of Slovakia among its citizens; the final part deals with ideological incentives in demolition and construction the town and its monuments. The main argument says that the route of Bratislava to the position of the capital of Slovakia was atypical, the majority of its population did not want this status, the actors of the national revolution—the Slovaks did not regard it as their centre, and it did not even have a definitely fixed Slovak name. Nevertheless, Bratislava succeeded gradually made its own history of ‘all Slovakia’. The democratic revolution of 1989–1993 confirmed the functioning of Bratislava as the centre of Slovakia, both in the actual political revolution and in the creation of democratic institutions. As a matter of fact, Bratislava could not be considered a ‘big city’ especially in comparison to Vienna, Prague or Budapest—with nearly half of million inhabitants belongs to rather small cities in East Central Europe and sometimes is characterised as a ‘provincial large city’.
Notes
1. These developments were strongly stimulated by the city's location at the post-1867 Austro-Hungarian border: Pressburg became a magnet for investments from Austrian firms interested in a foothold in semi-independent Hungary (Lipták, Citation2000, p. 3).
2. The rapid industrialisation brought many Slovak workers to the city, which in the early twentieth century became the centre of the emerging Slovak labour movement.
3. All records of the Parliament's meetings 1918–1920 can be found on the server of today's Czech Parliament (http://www.psp.cz/eknih). The trend in parliamentary debates and in law proposals, resolutions, etc., corresponds to the one met in the city itself. Until January Prešpurk or Prešporok prevails, then Bratislava begins to appear, in particular in debates on the celebration of the Slovak government's arrival to the city on February 4. The first use of Bratislava in parliamentary debates seems to be F. Juriga's speech of January 28, 1919, on the creation of a Slovak university, in which he oscillates between Prešporok (used in neutral, descriptive parts of his speech) and Bratislava (used in historical references to the battle of 907 and when speaking of the future university). From March 1919 onwards Bratislava appears as the official term, Prešpurk occurring only occasionally.
4. In his history of Bratislava from 1992 Ladislav Šášky writes about the situation in 1919 that the German and Magyar inhabitants dominated numerically over ‘the autochthonous Slovak inhabitants’ (Šášky, Citation1992, p. 128). This rather dubious claim serves to add legitimacy to the seizure of the city, and it suggests a more profoundly Slovak past than what seems historically appropriate.
5. In November 1919 the city had 30,221 Germans, 26,964 Czechoslovaks, 24,577 Magyars and 1461 inhabitants of other nationalities (Luther, 1993, p. 17). Salner has the following figures for 1930: Slovaks 29.8%, Magyars 16.2%, Germans 28.1% and others (mostly Czechs, who are here, unlike in contemporary inter-war statistics, registered separately from the Slovaks) 25.9% (Salner Citation2000b: 136).
6. Or, in Salner's language, the ‘Pressburgers’ (the autochthonous, bi- or tri-lingual inhabitants of the city) largely disappeared. The term ‘Prešpurák’ was still used locally to refer to people who had roots in the city and who knew its three main languages, and with time it came to refer also to the older generations of immigrants who had learned to identify with the city, even if knowing only Slovak (Salner, 2000b, p. 141).
7. One may argue that while in the inter-war years most energy was directed at Czecho-Slovakizing the city's present and future, the new conditions after 1945, with national homogeneity obtained, made possible a more focussed effort to Slovakize also its past through nationalist history-writing (Lipták, 2002, pp. 107–108).
8. According to the report of the European Statistical Institute EUROSTAT. The daily newspaper SME published an article on the report: ‘Bratislava ekonomicky nepatrí na Slovensko [Economically, Bratislava does not belong to Slovakia]’ In: SME, 19.04.2000. no. 92.
9. Maximilian II (1527–1576). Holy Emperor, King of Hungary and Bohemia.
10. Maria Theresa (1717–1780). Ruler of the Habsburg Empire 1740–1780.
11. M.R. Štefánik (1880–1919). Astronomer, politician, general in the French army, one of the founders of Czechoslovakia. He died after an aircraft accident while returning to his homeland due to unclear circumstances.
12. Łudovít Štúr (1815–1888). Codifier of written Slovak, journalist, founder of modern Slovak politics, member of Hungarian Parliament.
13. Andrej Hlinka (1864–1938). Politician, founder of the People's Party, which was in power under the name Hlinka's Slovak People Party between 1939 and 1945.
14. Klement Gottwald (1896–1953). Leading personality of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia between 1929 and 1953, President from 1948.