Košariská is a line of houses along a valley floor with farms scattered on the ridges above, and its name means sheepfolds. It is not documented in writing until 1786. Ninety-four years later the Lutheran pastor's sixth child was born in the parish house here — Milan Rastislav Štefánik, who became an astronomer in Paris, a general of the French army and one of the three founders of Czechoslovakia. The village is where he began; the bare ridge of Bradlo above it is where he was buried.Košariská sú radom domov na dne doliny s usadlosťami rozsypanými po chrbtoch nad ňou a ich meno znamená ohrady pre ovce. V písomných prameňoch sa objavujú až v roku 1786. O deväťdesiatštyri rokov neskôr sa tu na evanjelickej fare narodilo šieste dieťa farára — Milan Rastislav Štefánik, z ktorého sa stal astronóm v Paríži, generál francúzskej armády a jeden z troch zakladateľov Československa. V obci sa začal; na holom hrebeni Bradla nad ňou leží.
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 Ottoman centuryOsmanské storočie
The name records what the place was for: a košiar is a sheepfold. These grassy ridges under the White Carpathians were cleared and grazed during the settlement of the uplands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an age when war on the Ottoman frontier and religious exile were pushing people about the kingdom and hill country that had been left alone began to fill up. What grew here were kopanice — single farmsteads spread over the slopes instead of a village street, each family working the ground it had cleared. There was never good arable land, so the living came from sheep, plums, timber and going away to work, and that last item has never really stopped.Meno hovorí, načo miesto slúžilo: košiar je ohrada pre ovce. Tieto trávnaté chrbty pod Bielymi Karpatmi vyklčovali a spásali pri osídľovaní kopaníc v šestnástom a sedemnástom storočí, v čase, keď vojna na osmanskej hranici aj náboženské vyhnanstvo posúvali ľudí po krajine a hornatý kraj, ktorý dovtedy ležal bokom, sa začal zapĺňať. Vznikali tu kopanice — samoty roztratené po svahoch namiesto dedinskej ulice, každá rodina na pôde, ktorú si sama vyklčovala. Dobrá orná pôda tu nikdy nebola, a tak sa žilo z oviec, sliviek, dreva a z odchodu za prácou — a to posledné sa vlastne nikdy neskončilo.
The kopanice were Lutheran, in a kingdom where Protestants had been allowed no proper churches for a century and a half. That changed with the Toleration Patent of Emperor Joseph II in 1781, which let them build again — without a tower and without a door onto the street, but build. The first written mention of Košariská comes five years after it, in 1786. The oldest object in the present church, a font from the end of the eighteenth century, is older than the building it stands in, which is the trace of that first tolerance-era chapel; in a settlement with no square, the church, the school and the parsonage did the work a town centre does elsewhere.Kopanice boli evanjelické, a to v kráľovstve, kde protestanti poldruha storočia nesmeli mať poriadne kostoly. Zmenil to tolerančný patent cisára Jozefa II. z roku 1781, ktorý im opäť dovolil stavať — bez veže a bez vchodu z ulice, ale stavať. Prvá písomná zmienka o Košariskách je z roku 1786, päť rokov po ňom. Najstarší predmet v dnešnom kostole, krstiteľnica z konca osemnásteho storočia, je starší než stavba, v ktorej stojí — a je stopou po tom prvom tolerančnom chráme. V sídle bez námestia robili kostol, škola a fara to, čo inde mestské centrum.
The congregation built itself a new church between 1871 and 1878, and a new parish house in 1878. Pavol Štefánik was the pastor here, and on 21 July 1880 his sixth child was born in that two-year-old parsonage: Milan Rastislav Štefánik. Nine of the family's children grew up in a house that was also the parish office for farms scattered over several kilometres of ridge. These were the decades of Magyarisation, when Hungarian was forced into schools and offices and the Slovak secondary schools were closed, and when people left these hills for America in large numbers. A clever boy from a poor upland parish had to go away to get anywhere, and he did — first to Prague, then to Paris.Zbor si v rokoch 1871 – 1878 postavil nový kostol a v roku 1878 aj novú faru. Farárom tu bol Pavol Štefánik a 21. júla 1880 sa mu v tej dva roky starej fare narodilo šieste dieťa: Milan Rastislav Štefánik. Deväť detí z rodiny vyrástlo v dome, ktorý bol zároveň farským úradom pre usadlosti roztratené po niekoľkých kilometroch chrbtov. Boli to desaťročia maďarizácie, keď sa maďarčina tlačila do škôl a úradov, slovenské gymnáziá zatvárali a ľudia z týchto kopcov húfne odchádzali do Ameriky. Bystrý chlapec z chudobnej kopaničiarskej fary musel odísť, ak chcel niečo dokázať — a odišiel, najprv do Prahy, potom do Paríža.
Štefánik took his doctorate in Prague in 1904 and moved to Paris the same year, and made his name observing total solar eclipses — Turkestan in 1907, Tahiti in 1910, Vavau in 1911, Brazil in 1912. When war came he trained as a pilot at Chartres, took his flying diploma on 11 April 1915 and flew over the Western Front and in Serbia. In February 1916 he helped found the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris as its vice-chairman, under Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk with Edvard Beneš as secretary; his own job was to turn Czech and Slovak emigrants and prisoners of war into an army, which he did in Serbia, Russia, Romania, Italy and the United States. Those legions were the argument that persuaded the Allies a Czechoslovakia should exist, and Štefánik ended the war a general of the French army.Štefánik získal v roku 1904 v Prahe doktorát, ešte v tom istom roku odišiel do Paríža a meno si urobil pozorovaním úplných zatmení Slnka — v Turkestane roku 1907, na Tahiti roku 1910, na Vavau roku 1911 a v Brazílii roku 1912. Keď prišla vojna, vyučil sa v Chartres za pilota, 11. apríla 1915 dostal letecký diplom a lietal na západnom fronte aj v Srbsku. Vo februári 1916 spoluzakladal v Paríži Československú národnú radu a stal sa jej podpredsedom, popri predsedovi Tomášovi Garriguovi Masarykovi a tajomníkovi Edvardovi Benešovi; jeho vlastnou úlohou bolo urobiť z českých a slovenských vysťahovalcov a zajatcov armádu, a robil to v Srbsku, Rusku, Rumunsku, Taliansku aj v Spojených štátoch. Práve légie boli dôvodom, ktorý spojencov presvedčil, že Československo má vzniknúť, a Štefánik skončil vojnu ako generál francúzskej armády.
Štefánik was made minister of war of the provisional Czechoslovak government on 14 October 1918, two weeks before the republic was declared on 28 October. He barely saw it: on 4 May 1919 the Caproni aircraft bringing him home from Italy crashed on its approach to Vajnory airfield near Bratislava, killing him and his three-man Italian crew. On 7 May 1919 all four were buried on Bradlo, the bare ridge above his native village, and a memorial plaque was placed on the parish house between 1919 and 1922. The mound that stands over the grave today was built to the design of the architect Dušan Jurkovič and unveiled on 23 September 1928, on the tenth anniversary of the state Štefánik had helped to make.Štefánik sa 14. októbra 1918 stal ministrom vojny dočasnej československej vlády, dva týždne pred vyhlásením republiky 28. októbra. Užil si ju sotva: 4. mája 1919 sa lietadlo Caproni, ktoré ho viezlo domov z Talianska, zrútilo pri prílete na letisko Vajnory pri Bratislave a zahynul on aj jeho trojčlenná talianska posádka. Siedmeho mája 1919 pochovali všetkých štyroch na Bradle, na holom hrebeni nad jeho rodnou obcou, a v rokoch 1919 – 1922 osadili na faru pamätnú tabuľu. Mohylu, ktorá dnes nad hrobom stojí, postavili podľa návrhu architekta Dušana Jurkoviča a odhalili ju 23. septembra 1928 pri desiatom výročí štátu, ktorý Štefánik pomáhal vytvoriť.
The Slovak State of 1939-45 kept Štefánik on its own list of national heroes. The partisans who fought in the same hills used his name too: the second partisan brigade of the Slovak National Uprising was called the M. R. Štefánik brigade, and one of its units held out in this country until the end of the war. The front reached the uplands in the first week of April 1945, and Brezová was liberated on 7 April.Slovenský štát rokov 1939 – 1945 si Štefánika ponechal medzi národnými hrdinami. Jeho meno používali aj partizáni, ktorí bojovali v tých istých kopcoch: druhá partizánska brigáda Slovenského národného povstania sa volala brigáda M. R. Štefánika a jeden z jej oddielov sa v tomto kraji udržal až do konca vojny. Front prišiel na kopanice v prvom aprílovom týždni roku 1945 a Brezovú oslobodili 7. apríla.
After 1948 Štefánik became awkward for the communist state. He had been an outspoken anti-Bolshevik, and the legions he built had fought the Red Army across Siberia, so his statues came down in town after town and his name went quiet. The mound on Bradlo was not demolished, but it was left to the weather and decayed badly. It was declared a national cultural monument on 31 January 1968, in the few months when such a thing was possible, and the full restoration only ran from 1988 to 1996.Po roku 1948 sa Štefánik stal pre komunistický štát nepohodlným. Bol otvoreným odporcom boľševizmu a légie, ktoré budoval, bojovali na Sibíri proti Červenej armáde, a tak jeho sochy padali v meste za mestom a jeho meno stíchlo. Mohylu na Bradle nezbúrali, ale nechali ju napospas počasiu a ťažko chátrala. Za národnú kultúrnu pamiatku ju vyhlásili 31. januára 1968, v tých pár mesiacoch, keď to bolo možné, a rozsiahla obnova prebehla až v rokoch 1988 – 1996.
After November 1989 Štefánik returned to public life in the most literal way: statues went back up, his name returned to schools, streets and Bratislava's airport, and the restoration of the Bradlo mound begun in 1988 was carried through to 1996. Two dates now fill the village calendar — the anniversary of his death on 4 May and of his birth on 21 July — and they bring ceremonies, coaches and state officials up onto the ridge. The rest of the year the mound is empty and the wind is the only thing on it.Po novembri 1989 sa Štefánik vrátil na verejnosť doslovne: sochy sa znova postavili, jeho meno sa vrátilo do škôl, na ulice aj na bratislavské letisko a obnova mohyly na Bradle, začatá v roku 1988, sa dotiahla do roku 1996. Dva dátumy dnes zapĺňajú kalendár obce — výročie jeho smrti 4. mája a narodenia 21. júla — a privádzajú na hrebeň pietne slávnosti, autobusy aj štátnych predstaviteľov. Po zvyšok roka je na mohyle prázdno a jediné, čo tam je, je vietor.
Košariská today is a small working village, not a memorial site with a village attached. The parish house is a museum of the family, of the congregation it served and of Štefánik's own life, and it keeps fixed hours and a closed day. The church next to it belongs to a small congregation and is normally locked between services, and the kopanice on the ridges are private farms and weekend cottages. Half a day covers the house, the church and the climb to Bradlo without hurrying.Košariská sú dnes malou fungujúcou obcou, nie pamätným miestom s obcou navyše. Fara je múzeom rodiny, zboru, ktorému slúžila, aj Štefánikovho vlastného života a má pevné otváracie hodiny i deň zatvorenia. Kostol vedľa nej patrí malému zboru a medzi bohoslužbami býva zamknutý, kopanice na chrbtoch sú súkromné gazdovstvá a chalupy. Pol dňa stačí na dom, kostol aj výstup na Bradlo bez zhonu.
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.