Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)

2. Towns in Felvidék (Upper Hungary) before 1918

Towns in Felvidék (Upper Hungary) before 1918

Figure 1. Important towns of Slovak national consciousness in historical Hungary

1 - the Trianon border; 2 - boundary of the counties in the memorandum of 1861; 3 - important towns of the Slovak nation before 1918; 4 - towns of the counties marked out in the memorandum of 1861; 5 - towns beyond the border marked out in the memorandum of 1861

Edited by István Mezei, drawn by Máté Mády

It was the leader of the Slovak national movement, Ľudovít Štúr (1815- 1856), who had the central Slovak dialect accepted by Slovak public opinion as the standard Slovak literary language. This was the first step towards national unification. Štúr became the representative of the town Zólyom (Zvolen) in the Hungarian national assembly. On May 11th 1848 the 14 points called The Wishes of the Slovak Nation were accepted in Liptószentmiklós (Liptovský Mikuláš). Among other things they demanded ethnic equality with the Hungarian ethnicity. The next scene was set in Turócszentmárton (Martin), where the memorandum entitled The Wishes of the National Assembly of the Slavic (Slovak) People in Upper Hungary (1861) was the first to mark out the Slovak national territory. It listed the counties in which they wanted to achieve the exclusive usage of the Slovak language.

21