Századok – 2011

KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Simon Attila: Adalékok Pozsony történetéhez. Pozsony kérdése az 1938-as magyar-csehszlovák határvita során VI/1455

POZSONY ÉS AZ 1938-AS MAGYAR-CSEHSZLOVÁK HATÁRVITA 1473 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF PRESSBURG (POZSONY/BRATISLAVA) The Question of Pressburg in the Hungarian-Czechoslovak Border Dispute in 1938 by Attila Simon (Summary) The present study deals with the history of Pressburg in 1938, and examines the reasons and arguments which lay behind the decision to attach the trilingual city neither to Hungary nor to the German Empire, but leave it as part of Slovakia. Having briefly outlined the ethnic transformation of Pressburg in the interwar period, it explores the manifestation in the life of the city of phenomena which characterised the crisis of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1938. It describes the aims of the three nations (Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks) which inhabited the city. Consequently, the intentions of Berlin are examined, which finally exerted a decisive influence on the fate of Pressburg; in fact, by the time the negotiations started at Komárom on 9 October 1938, the decision had been taken to leave the Slovak capital part of Slovakia. Yet after the first Vienna Arbitration, spirits calmed down very slowly in Pressburg. For the local Hungarians it was a great disappointment that their city remained in Slovakia, although the United Hungarian Party, led by János Esterházy, urged them to behave calmly. The Hungarian politician apparently still believed that the Hungarians of Pressburg would eventually receive an identical legal status as the Slovaks and the Germans. It was not to be the case, however. In March 1939 Pressburg became the capital of independent Slovakia; as the political centre of a totalitarian state, it gradually lost the tolerant atmosphere which had previously been one of its dominant features.