Pezinok grew on two things that came out of the same hills: gold and wine. The gold ran out and the wine did not — and in between, the town bought its way out of its landlords' hands and became one of the richest places in the Kingdom of Hungary.Pezinok vyrástol na dvoch veciach, ktoré prišli z tých istých kopcov: na zlate a na víne. Zlato sa minulo, víno zostalo — a medzitým sa mesto vykúpilo spod moci zemepánov a stalo sa jedným z najbohatších v Uhorsku.
Drag the bar, or pick a year, to see what was happening here then.Potiahnite lištu alebo vyberte rok a uvidíte, čo sa tu vtedy dialo.
The Kingdom of HungaryUhorské kráľovstvo
The first time this place appears in writing is 1208, in a charter of King Andrew II, where it is called terra Bozin — the land of Bozin. That is a fact about a document, not about when people arrived: the slope under the Little Carpathians had been settled and farmed long before any clerk wrote the name down. The estate went to a nobleman of the king's court, and his family later took its name from its two holdings here, Svätý Jur and Pezinok. Those counts would decide everything that happened in the town for the next three hundred years.Prvý raz sa toto miesto objavuje v písomnostiach v roku 1208, v listine kráľa Ondreja II., kde sa uvádza ako terra Bozin — zem Bozin. Je to však údaj o listine, nie o tom, kedy sem prišli ľudia: svah pod Malými Karpatmi bol obývaný a obrábaný dávno predtým, než niekto to meno prvý raz zapísal. Panstvo dostal kráľov dvoran a jeho rod si neskôr dal meno podľa dvoch tunajších majetkov — Svätého Jura a Pezinka. Títo grófi tu potom rozhodovali o všetkom nasledujúcich tristo rokov.
In 1241 a Mongol army destroyed the Hungarian king's field army at Mohi on the Sajó river and rode across the kingdom, burning what it found. What happened on this exact spot is not something the surviving records tell us, and that is worth saying plainly, because most Slovak stories of the kind that begin "the Mongols destroyed us" were written down centuries later. What is recorded is the answer to the invasion. King Béla IV came back, ordered stone castles built and settlers brought in, and by 1271 Pezinok had a small water castle — a fortified house ringed by two ditches fed from the Cajla stream, entered over drawbridges. The invasion did not ruin Pezinok; it is the reason there was a castle here at all.V roku 1241 rozdrvilo mongolské vojsko uhorskú kráľovskú armádu pri rieke Slaná a prehnalo sa krajinou. Čo sa dialo priamo na tomto mieste, zachované pramene nehovoria — a treba to povedať naplno, lebo väčšina slovenských rozprávaní typu „zničili nás Tatári" vznikla o stáročia neskôr. Isté je až to, čo prišlo po vpáde ako odpoveď. Kráľ Belo IV. sa vrátil, nariadil stavať kamenné hrady a pozývať osadníkov, a Pezinok mal ešte pred rokom 1271 malý vodný hrad — opevnené sídlo obohnané dvoma priekopami napustenými z Cajlanského potoka, do ktorého sa vchádzalo po padacích mostoch. Vpád Pezinok nezničil; je dôvodom, prečo tu vôbec nejaký hrad stál.
From the fourteenth century gold was dug in the hills above the town, and vineyards were planted on the slope below them. Both drew German settlers, who called the place Bösing; German stayed the language of the town for the next six hundred years. The counts of Svätý Jur and Pezinok were by now among the richest families in the kingdom, and in 1401 two of them, George and Nicholas, split the castle and the town between them — a division that took until 1429 to stop being a quarrel. Pezinok won the right to a weekly market before 1376 and to an annual fair in 1466, and without markets a medieval town was not a town at all.Od 14. storočia sa v kopcoch nad mestom dobývalo zlato a na svahu pod nimi pribúdali vinice. Jedno aj druhé lákalo nemeckých osadníkov, ktorí mesto volali Bösing; po nemecky sa tu hovorilo ďalších šesťsto rokov. Grófi zo Svätého Jura a Pezinka vtedy už patrili k najbohatším rodom v Uhorsku a v roku 1401 si dvaja z nich, Juraj a Mikuláš, hrad aj mestečko rozdelili — spory z toho delenia utíchli až v roku 1429. Právo na týždenný trh získal Pezinok pred rokom 1376, na výročný jarmok v roku 1466, a bez trhu by stredoveké mesto nebolo mestom.
The line of the counts died out early in the sixteenth century and the estate fell to the crown, which pledged it from one creditor to the next: Ivan Krušič took it in pledge in 1575 and began repairs, the Illésházy family held it from 1580 to 1615, and in 1609 Stephen Illésházy and his wife Katarína Pálffy rebuilt the old water castle as a four-winged Renaissance chateau. The town, meanwhile, was buying itself. It won town rights in 1615, walled itself in 1643, and on 14 June 1647 Emperor Ferdinand III granted it the charter of a free royal town — from then on it answered to the king alone and to no landlord, elected its own council, judged its own people and, above all, sold its own wine. That charter is why the long main square is lined with deep, solid burgher houses and not with a landlord's village.Rod grófov zo Svätého Jura a Pezinka začiatkom 16. storočia vymrel a panstvo pripadlo kráľovskej komore, ktorá ho dávala do zálohu jednému veriteľovi za druhým: v roku 1575 si ho vzal do zálohu Ivan Krušič a začal opravovať hrad, v rokoch 1580 – 1615 ho držali Ilešháziovci a v roku 1609 dali Štefan Ilešházi s manželkou Katarínou Pálfiovou starý vodný hrad prestavať na štvorkrídlový renesančný zámok. Mesto sa medzitým vykupovalo. V roku 1615 získalo mestské práva, v roku 1643 sa obohnalo hradbami a 14. júna 1647 mu cisár Ferdinand III. udelil výsady slobodného kráľovského mesta — odvtedy sa zodpovedalo priamo kráľovi a nijakému zemepánovi, volilo si vlastnú radu, súdilo si vlastných ľudí a hlavne samo predávalo svoje víno. Práve preto lemujú dlhé hlavné námestie hlboké, solídne meštianske domy a nie panská dedina.
In 1666 a son was born in Pezinok to a weaver whose family had fled Bohemia because they were Protestants at a time when the emperor's men were hunting Protestants. The father wanted the boy at the loom; the boy ran away to paint. Ján Kupecký spent nearly twenty years in Rome, then years in Vienna, then the rest of his life in Nuremberg, and became one of the most sought-after portrait painters in Europe: Emperor Charles VI sat for him, so did Prince Eugene of Savoy, and around 1711 he painted Tsar Peter the Great at the spa in Karlovy Vary. He turned down the post of court painter in Vienna, stayed his own master, and died in Nuremberg in 1740.V roku 1666 sa v Pezinku narodil syn tkáčovi, ktorého rodina utiekla z Čiech preto, že bola evanjelická v čase, keď cisárski úradníci evanjelikov stíhali. Otec ho chcel pri krosnách, chlapec ušiel maľovať. Ján Kupecký strávil takmer dvadsať rokov v Ríme, potom niekoľko rokov vo Viedni a zvyšok života v Norimbergu a stal sa jedným z najžiadanejších portrétistov Európy: sedeli mu cisár Karol VI. aj princ Eugen Savojský a okolo roku 1711 namaľoval v Karlových Varoch cára Petra Veľkého. Miesto cisárskeho dvorného maliara odmietol, zostal sám sebe pánom a v roku 1740 v Norimbergu zomrel.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Pezinok was one of the wealthiest towns in the Kingdom of Hungary, and what paid for it was wine. Gold was still being taken out of the hills into the eighteenth century; then the veins gave out and the miners went over to pyrite and antimony instead — less romantic ore, but there was more of it. The castle stood empty by the early 1700s. What emptied it is not clearly recorded, and it is worth resisting the usual answer: the Ottomans never held this town, though the Rákóczi war of 1703–11 was fought across this countryside. In 1718 Ján Pálffy had the derelict building repaired, and the Pálffy family held it from then on.V 17. a 18. storočí patril Pezinok k najbohatším mestám Uhorska a platilo to všetko víno. Zlato sa z kopcov vozilo ešte v 18. storočí, potom žily vyschli a baníci prešli na pyrit a antimón — menej romantická ruda, zato jej bolo viac. Zámok začiatkom 18. storočia pustol. Čo ho vyprázdnilo, pramene jasne nehovoria a oplatí sa nesiahnuť po obvyklej odpovedi: Osmani toto mesto nikdy nedržali, hoci sa cez tento kraj v rokoch 1703 – 1711 prehnalo Rákociho povstanie. V roku 1718 dal Ján Pálfi spustnutú stavbu opraviť a Pálfiovci ju odvtedy držali v rukách.
In 1840 work began on a railway from Bratislava towards Trnava — the first in the whole Kingdom of Hungary. It was worked by horses, because horses were what its promoters could afford, and it was laid along the flat ground at the foot of the hills, straight past Pezinok. A generation later steam locomotives replaced the horses. A town on a railway can sell its wine in cities it could never have reached by cart, and Pezinok has been on the main line ever since — which is why its trains still reach Bratislava in about half an hour. The revolution of 1848 abolished serfdom across the kingdom; Pezinok's own burghers had been free men since 1647, but the country people around them had not.V roku 1840 sa začala stavať železnica z Bratislavy smerom na Trnavu — prvá v celom Uhorsku. Ťahali ju kone, lebo na viac jej stavitelia nemali, a viedla po rovine pod kopcami, priamo popri Pezinku. O generáciu neskôr kone vystriedali parné rušne. Mesto na železnici predá svoje víno aj tam, kam by ho na voze nikdy nedoviezlo, a Pezinok odvtedy z hlavnej trate nezmizol — aj preto sú z neho dnes vlaky do Bratislavy asi za pol hodiny. Revolúcia roku 1848 zrušila v Uhorsku poddanstvo; pezinskí mešťania boli slobodní už od roku 1647, ľudia z okolitých dedín nie.
Under Austria-Hungary the town added industry to its wine. The first sulphuric acid factory in the Kingdom of Hungary was built here, together with a needle factory and large brickworks that dug the clay of the plain below the town. Mining went on in the hills, now for pyrite and antimony rather than gold. And the town still spoke German — Bösing in German, Bazin in Hungarian — alongside its Slovak and Hungarian neighbours, inside a state that was pressing everyone in it to become Hungarian.Za Rakúsko-Uhorska pribudol k vínu priemysel. Postavili tu prvú továreň na kyselinu sírovú v Uhorsku, továreň na ihly a veľké tehelne, ktoré kopali hlinu na rovine pod mestom. V kopcoch sa ťažilo ďalej, už nie zlato, ale pyrit a antimón. A mesto stále hovorilo po nemecky — Bösing po nemecky, Bazin po maďarsky — popri slovenských a maďarských susedoch, v štáte, ktorý zo všetkých tlačil urobiť Maďarov.
Austria-Hungary broke apart in 1918 and Pezinok woke up in Czechoslovakia. For the German families who had sat on the town council and run the wine trade for centuries this was a reversal: they were suddenly a small minority in a republic whose official languages were Czech and Slovak, and the Hungarian officials above them were gone too. The wine trade began to reorganise itself, with growers selling more and more through co-operatives instead of family by family. The Slovak wine co-operative later took over the castle cellars and fitted them out between 1940 and 1943 — the same cellars under the castle in which visitors are poured wine today.Rakúsko-Uhorsko sa v roku 1918 rozpadlo a Pezinok sa zobudil v Československu. Pre nemecké rodiny, ktoré po stáročia sedeli v mestskej rade a držali obchod s vínom, to bol obrat: zrazu boli malou menšinou v republike, ktorej úradnými jazykmi boli čeština a slovenčina, a maďarskí úradníci nad nimi zmizli tiež. Obchod s vínom sa začal preskupovať, vinohradníci predávali čoraz viac cez družstvá a nie každý sám za seba. Slovenské vinohradnícke družstvo neskôr prevzalo zámocké pivnice a v rokoch 1940 – 1943 ich prispôsobilo svojim potrebám — je to ten istý pivničný systém pod zámkom, v ktorom sa dnes nalieva návštevníkom.
The Slovak National Uprising broke out on 29 August 1944 with its centre at Banská Bystrica, in the mountains far to the east of here; German troops occupied the whole country to put it down, and this corner, an hour from Bratislava, stayed in the regime's hands to the end. The front arrived in the spring of 1945, when the Soviet 2nd Ukrainian Front pushed up the Danube and around the Little Carpathians in the Bratislava–Brno offensive. Bratislava fell on the evening of 4 April 1945, and Pezinok was taken in those same first days of April. When the fighting had passed, the German-speaking families who had made this town for six hundred years were gone — some evacuated by German authorities ahead of the front, the rest expelled after the war under the post-war decrees.Slovenské národné povstanie vypuklo 29. augusta 1944 a jeho stredobodom bola Banská Bystrica, v horách ďaleko na východ odtiaľto; nemecké vojská obsadili celú krajinu, aby ho potlačili, a tento kút hodinu od Bratislavy zostal až do konca v rukách režimu. Front prišiel na jar 1945, keď sovietsky 2. ukrajinský front postupoval po Dunaji a obchádzal Malé Karpaty v bratislavsko-brnianskej operácii. Bratislava padla večer 4. apríla 1945 a Pezinok obsadili v tých istých prvých aprílových dňoch. Keď boje prešli, nemecky hovoriace rodiny, ktoré toto mesto šesťsto rokov robili mestom, tu už neboli — časť evakuovali nemecké úrady ešte pred frontom, zvyšok po vojne vysídlili na základe povojnových dekrétov.
After the communist takeover of February 1948 everything with a payroll became state property: the wine works, the brickworks, the mine. The vineyards were pushed into co-operatives and worked by machine in long blocks instead of narrow family strips. Antimony and pyrite were still coming out of the hills above the town almost to the end of the period. Blocks of flats went up around the old core for the people who worked in all of it, and for the first time the town spread out onto the plain.Po komunistickom prevrate vo februári 1948 sa všetko, čo malo výplatnú listinu, stalo majetkom štátu: vinárske závody, tehelne aj baňa. Vinice zlúčili do družstiev a obrábali ich strojmi v dlhých blokoch namiesto úzkych rodinných pásikov. Antimón a pyrit sa z kopcov nad mestom vozili takmer do konca celého obdobia. Okolo starého jadra vyrástli panelové domy pre ľudí, ktorí v tom všetkom pracovali, a mesto sa prvý raz rozlialo do roviny.
November 1989 ended the rule of one party, and the guaranteed customer ended with it. The mine above Pezinok, where ore of one kind or another had been dug since the fourteenth century, closed in the early 1990s — the antimony was still in the rock, just not at a price anyone would pay for it. The brickworks and the wine works went into private hands, some of them well and some of them badly. What came through best was the one thing nobody had to invent again: the vineyards.November 1989 ukončil vládu jednej strany a s ňou aj istotu odbytu. Baňa nad Pezinkom, v ktorej sa v tej či onej podobe ťažilo od 14. storočia, sa začiatkom 90. rokov zavrela — antimón v skale zostal, len za cenu, ktorú už nikto nechcel platiť. Tehelne aj vinárstvo prešli do súkromných rúk, niektoré dobre, iné zle. Najlepšie prešlo to jediné, čo netreba vymýšľať nanovo: vinice.
Slovakia became independent on 1 January 1993, and in 1996 a redrawing of the administrative map made Pezinok a district seat again — which is why a town of this size has a hospital, a court and a good deal of administration. The castle cellars now hold the national wine salon, the standing collection of the hundred Slovak wines judged best each year, and the September grape-harvest festival is the busiest weekend of the town's year. The biggest change of all, though, cannot be seen: Bratislava is half an hour away by train, and a large part of Pezinok now works there and comes home in the evening.1. januára 1993 vznikla samostatná Slovenská republika a v roku 1996 nové územné členenie znovu urobilo z Pezinka okresné mesto — preto má mesto tejto veľkosti nemocnicu, súd aj poriadny kus úradov. V zámockých pivniciach dnes sídli národný salón vín, stála kolekcia stovky slovenských vín ocenených v danom roku, a septembrové vinobranie je najrušnejším víkendom pezinského roka. Najväčšiu zmenu však vidieť nie je: Bratislava je vlakom za pol hodiny a veľká časť Pezinka v nej dnes pracuje a večer sa vracia domov.
Sources consulted while researching this page. Follow them to read further — and to check us.Zdroje, z ktorých sme pri príprave tejto stránky vychádzali. Kliknite a čítajte ďalej — aj si nás overte.
Sixteen videos for this chapter.Šestnásť videí k tejto kapitole.