1918–1938 A Hungarian-speaking town in a new stateMaďarsky hovoriace mesto v novom štáte

Czechoslovakia was declared in October 1918 and its troops occupied Gemer over the following months, but the border was not agreed — it was fought over. In the summer of 1919 the northern campaign of the Hungarian Red Army swept back through this region and held the towns for some weeks before withdrawing under Allied pressure. Rožňava then spent twenty years as a largely Hungarian-speaking town inside a Slovak-speaking state: Slovak schools and Slovak officials arrived, and the statue of Kossuth came down off the square. The census of 1930 counted 6,668 people in the town, of more than one language and more than one faith, and the arrangement worked well enough from day to day without ever being accepted by everybody.V októbri 1918 vzniklo Československo a jeho vojsko obsadilo Gemer v nasledujúcich mesiacoch, hranica sa však nedohodla — bojovalo sa o ňu. V lete 1919 sa severnou výpravou maďarskej Červenej armády vrátil do kraja front a mestá zostali niekoľko týždňov v jej rukách, kým sa pod tlakom dohodových mocností nestiahla. Rožňava potom prežila dvadsať rokov ako prevažne maďarsky hovoriace mesto v slovensky hovoriacom štáte: prišli slovenské školy a slovenskí úradníci a Kossuthova socha z námestia zmizla. Sčítanie v roku 1930 napočítalo v meste 6 668 obyvateľov viacerých jazykov a viacerých vierovyznaní; každodenne to fungovalo, prijaté to však nebolo všetkými.