ANDREJ HLINKA IN THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF SLOVAK PROTESTANTS

The present paper maps the portrayal of Andrej Hlinka within the Protestant milieu during his lifetime. It also tries to answer the question of Hlinka’s position in the hierarchy of symbols which were and are relevant for the formation of the Slovak Protestants’ identity. Nowadays, ambivalent or expressly negative att itudes towards Hlinka prevail within the Lutheran community, however, similar att itudes prevailed also during the interwar and aft er-war periods.In 1902 at the regional forum, A. Hlinka did not support the rights of the Slovak language which represented a major att ribute of the national identity of Slovaks. Hlinka’s att itude was then reminded in the Lutheran milieu in the situations when an idealized and mythologized portrayal of Hlinka as an uncompromising fi ghter for the national rights spread in particular via offi cial propaganda. In fact, it served as a de-legitimizing instrument of Hlinka cult. During the existence of the Slovak State (1938/1939 – 1945) Slovak Protestants were massively confronted with the phenomenon of Hlinka and denied this historical fi gure in the position of the most signifi cant national symbol. At the religious celebration of the national hero General Milan Rastislav Štefánik in May 1939, General Bishop of the Protestant Church Vladimír Pavel Čobrda compared both personages – Hlinka and Štefánik – and refused the symbolic governmental policy and propaganda which tried to make believe the whole society including Lutherans that Hlinka was a positive social example. He called Štefánik the greatest Slovak who became the symbol of antifascist resistance.

CHANGES IN THE PICTURE OF ‘OCTOBER 28’ IN CZECH HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

Th e study follows the changes in the picture of the circumstances surrounding the origin of the Czechoslovak Republic and the course of the day Oct 28, 1918 in Czech history textbooks from 1920-2013. Th e changes between the texts from the interwar years and those published aft er February 1948 are clear in the degree of att ention paid to the activities of the foreign resistance, the actions of its main representatives, deployment of the Czechoslovak legions, and the personalities of the domestic resistance. While in the older “Eurozone” works these themes were given widespread coverage, in the textbooks from the Socialist period certain facts were reduced to a minimum. Readers were deprived of the names of those who came to the head of the newly created ‘bourgeois’ state, since the ‘working people’ were identifi ed as the creators of independence. The textbooks of the last twenty-fi ve years are marked by the objectivity and balance of the information and themes covered in them; in addition they adopt a multi-perspective approach. Th e empirical research confi rms that since Oct 28, 1918 was the beginning of the evaluated period of Czech history, so the most signifi cant of the creators of our independence hold a dominant place in the Czech national memory. The signifi cance of the national holiday by which we commemorate the birth of the independent state is not given the importance it had in the fi rst twenty years of the existence of the CSR. However, we see as encouraging the fi nding that many young people emphasize the need to remember the democratic tradition of our past, as well as the personalities who belong to it

CULTURAL HERITAGE AS THE HERITAGE OF MEMORY

oai:ojs.pressto.amu.edu.pl:article/5360Wstę

”JAN KILIŃSKI. HISTORIA I PAMIĘĆ” PRACA ZBIOROWA POD RED. VIOLETTY JULKOWSKIEJ, POZNAŃ-TRZEMESZNO 2015

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