A lowland village that was for centuries the working settlement of a large estate: what its landlords did — a manor, a park, potatoes, merino sheep, a market — is most of what happened here. It has only been Mojmírovce since 1948; for the eight centuries before that it was Urmín.Nížinná dedina, ktorá po stáročia žila ako pracovné zázemie veľkého panstva: čo urobili jej zemepáni – kaštieľ, park, zemiaky, merinky, jarmok – to sú aj jej dejiny. Mojmírovcami je až od roku 1948, osem storočí predtým bola Urmínom.
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 village first appears in writing in 1156 as Ylmer, again in 1275 as Ilmur, and in 1277 a charter calls it land belonging to a royal castle district — the way much of this lowland was administered before the great private estates formed. The name kept changing: Urmín in Slovak and German, Ürmény in Hungarian, and the noble family that held the village carried the same name. Vines are recorded here as early as 1290. There was nowhere here to put a castle: this is flat, open, exceptionally good arable land south of Nitra, and its history is the history of who owned that soil and who worked it.Prvý raz sa dedina spomína v roku 1156 ako Ylmer, v roku 1275 ako Ilmur a v roku 1277 ju listina označuje za pôdu patriacu ku kráľovskému hradnému obvodu – tak sa spravovala veľká časť tejto nížiny, kým sa sformovali veľké panstvá. Meno sa menilo ďalej: Urmín po slovensky aj po nemecky, Ürmény po maďarsky, a šľachtický rod, ktorý dedinu držal, nosil rovnaké meno. Vinice sa tu spomínajú už v roku 1290. Hrad nemal kde stáť: je to rovina, otvorená a mimoriadne úrodná pôda južne od Nitry, a jej dejiny sú dejinami toho, komu patrila a kto na nej robil.
After the Ottomans destroyed the Hungarian army at Mohács in 1526 the kingdom fell apart, and the lowland south of Nitra ended up close to the frontier — above all after the Ottomans took the great fortress of Nové Zámky in 1663 and ran a province from it for twenty-two years. The village's own history says the little Cabaj stream just outside was reckoned the edge of Ottoman-held country, and that people dug passages linking the farmsteads, coming out to the north by the vineyards. The families holding the village in these years were the Ghyczy and the Révay. For a settlement with no walls and no hill, a hole in the ground was the only defence on offer.Keď Osmani roku 1526 pri Moháči rozdrvili uhorské vojsko, kráľovstvo sa rozpadlo a nížina južne od Nitry sa ocitla blízko hranice – najmä po tom, čo Turci roku 1663 dobyli pevnosť Nové Zámky a dvadsaťdva rokov odtiaľ spravovali celú provinciu. Vlastná história obce hovorí, že za hranicu osmanského územia sa pokladal neveľký Cabajský potok hneď za dedinou a že ľudia si vykopali chodby spájajúce jednotlivé usadlosti, ktoré na severe ústili pri vinohradoch. V týchto rokoch držali dedinu Ghyczyovci a Révayovci. Pre obec bez hradieb a bez kopca bola diera v zemi jedinou obranou, akú mala.
In 1694 a boy was born in this village who ended up one of the most powerful men in the kingdom: Anton Grassalkovich, Maria Theresa's man of business and the builder of the palace in Bratislava that is now the residence of the Slovak president. In 1698 the village won the right to hold markets, which made it a small market town rather than an ordinary settlement. Then, in the eighteenth century, the Hunyady family made it the centre of their estates, built the manor house whose core is dated 1721, and paid for the parish church of St Ladislaus, bringing craftsmen from Vienna to build it. The Hunyadys farmed seriously too: potatoes and merino sheep were introduced on these fields while both were still novelties.V roku 1694 sa tu narodil chlapec, z ktorého sa stal jeden z najmocnejších mužov kráľovstva: Anton Grasalkovič, hospodársky človek Márie Terézie a stavebník paláca v Bratislave, v ktorom dnes sídli prezident Slovenskej republiky. Roku 1698 získala obec jarmočné právo, čím sa z nej stalo mestečko. V 18. storočí si z nej Huňadyovci urobili stredisko svojich panstiev, postavili kaštieľ, ktorého jadro sa datuje rokom 1721, a dali postaviť aj farský kostol svätého Ladislava – majstrov naň priviedli až z Viedne. Huňadyovci gazdovali vážne: na tunajších poliach zaviedli pestovanie zemiakov a chov merinových oviec v čase, keď bolo oboje ešte novinkou.
By 1871 there were 44 craftsmen at work here, most of them bootmakers, and the village had a brickworks, a brewery and a sparkling-wine works — small industry serving the estate and the market rather than a railway. In 1899 the teaching order known as the School Brothers arrived and took over the schooling of the village's children. This is what a well-off lowland village looked like in the last decades of Austria-Hungary: no longer a peasant village, not yet a town, something in between.V roku 1871 tu pracovalo 44 remeselníkov, najviac čižmárov, a dedina mala tehelňu, pivovar aj výrobňu šumivého vína – malý priemysel, ktorý slúžil panstvu a jarmoku, nie železnici. Roku 1899 prišli školskí bratia a prevzali vyučovanie detí. Takto vyzerala zámožná nížinná obec v posledných desaťročiach Rakúsko-Uhorska: už nie sedliacka dedina, ešte nie mesto, čosi medzi tým.
Austria-Hungary collapsed in 1918 and the village found itself in Czechoslovakia, a republic with Czech and Slovak as its state languages, in which the county administration it had lived under all its life was wound up within a few years. Officially it was still Urmín; the new name was twenty years away. The Czechoslovak land reform of the 1920s set a ceiling on how much land a single owner could keep, and in estate villages like this one that mattered more than almost anywhere else. What did not change was the work: beet, wheat and maize on some of the best soil in the country.Rakúsko-Uhorsko sa v roku 1918 rozpadlo a obec sa ocitla v Československu, republike so slovenčinou a češtinou ako štátnymi jazykmi, kde do niekoľkých rokov zanikla stoličná správa, na akú bola zvyknutá po celý svoj vek. Úradne sa stále volala Urmín – na nové meno si počkala ešte dvadsať rokov. Československá pozemková reforma dvadsiatych rokov určila strop, koľko pôdy smie jeden vlastník podržať, a práve v panských dedinách, ako bola táto, to bolo cítiť najviac. Práca sa nezmenila: repa, pšenica a kukurica na jednej z najlepších pôd v krajine.
On 2 November 1938 the First Vienna Award handed southern Slovakia to Hungary — about 12,000 square kilometres and roughly a million people. The new border was drawn only a short way south of here: Mojmírovce stayed on the Slovak side, the towns down towards Nové Zámky did not. On 14 March 1939 the wartime Slovak State was declared, an ally of Nazi Germany. German occupation ended here on 29 March 1945, and Marshal Malinovsky's troops took Nitra the next day.2. novembra 1938 pripadlo Viedenskou arbitrážou južné Slovensko Maďarsku – asi 12 000 km² a zhruba milión obyvateľov. Nová hranica viedla len kúsok južne odtiaľto: Mojmírovce zostali na slovenskej strane, mestá smerom na Nové Zámky už nie. 14. marca 1939 vznikol vojnový Slovenský štát, spojenec nacistického Nemecka. Nemecká okupácia sa tu skončila 29. marca 1945 a nasledujúci deň obsadili vojská maršala Malinovského Nitru.
In 1948 the village lost the name Urmín and became Mojmírovce, after Mojmír, the first ruler of Moravia known to us by name; several villages in the Nitra district were renamed in the same wave, giving this lowland a set of Great Moravian names it had never had before. The state that made that gesture also closed the School Brothers' school in 1950, the year it suppressed the male religious orders across the country. The estate had already been confiscated; through the 1950s the fields were merged into a collective farm, which is why the land around the village is still worked in very large blocks.V roku 1948 prišla obec o meno Urmín a stala sa Mojmírovcami – po Mojmírovi, prvom menom známom moravskom kniežati; v tej istej vlne premenovali viacero obcí v nitrianskom okrese a nížina dostala veľkomoravské názvy, aké dovtedy nikdy nemala. Ten istý štát, ktorý toto gesto urobil, zrušil roku 1950 aj školu školských bratov – v roku, keď na celom Slovensku potlačil mužské rehole. Panstvo bolo skonfiškované už predtým; počas päťdesiatych rokov splynuli polia do jednotného roľníckeho družstva, a preto sa pôda okolo obce dodnes obrába vo veľkých blokoch.
The manor and its English park are still the centre of the village, but they are a business rather than a museum: the house works as a hotel, restaurant and events venue, so the outside and much of the park are easy to see while the interiors belong to whoever has booked them. A wedding or a conference can close the grounds for a day, so it is worth ringing ahead. The agricultural co-operative that farms these fields is still one of the larger employers, and much of the village commutes the fifteen kilometres into Nitra. It is a well-off, entirely ordinary lowland village that happens to have a count's house in the middle of it.Kaštieľ a jeho anglický park sú stále stredobodom obce, sú to však skôr podnik než múzeum: dom slúži ako hotel, reštaurácia a miesto na podujatia, takže exteriér a veľká časť parku sú prístupné, kým interiéry patria tomu, kto si ich objednal. Svadba alebo konferencia vie areál na deň zavrieť, preto sa oplatí zavolať vopred. Poľnohospodárske družstvo, ktoré obrába tieto polia, je stále jedným z väčších zamestnávateľov a veľká časť dediny dochádza pätnásť kilometrov do Nitry. Je to zámožná, celkom obyčajná nížinná obec, ktorá má uprostred grófsky dom.
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.