A village in a side valley with no railway would normally have no history worth a slider. Uhrovec has one because of a single low building below the manor house: the Lutheran schoolhouse in which Ľudovít Štúr was born in 1815 and Alexander Dubček in 1921. Everything else here — the castle on the ridge, the Zay estate, the partisan war in the hills — is the setting that put those two families in that one house.Obec v bočnej doline bez železnice by za normálnych okolností nemala dejiny, pre ktoré sa oplatí posúvať časovú os. Uhrovec ich má pre jedinú nízku budovu pod kaštieľom: pre evanjelickú školu, v ktorej sa v roku 1815 narodil Ľudovít Štúr a v roku 1921 Alexander Dubček. Všetko ostatné — hrad na hrebeni, zayovské panstvo, partizánska vojna v kopcoch — je len prostredie, ktoré tie dve rodiny do toho jedného domu priviedlo.
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 Mongol invasionVpád Mongolov
The Mongol armies broke the Kingdom of Hungary in 1241 and were gone within a year, but the fright lasted. King Béla IV concluded that the country needed castles of stone rather than forts of earth and timber, and the decades after the invasion are when most Slovak castles went up. Uhrovec is one of them: the village and its castle both first appear in writing in 1258, and the castle on the ridge above the Bebrava was built in the middle of the thirteenth century, in the late Romanesque style, on ground chosen because it was hard to reach. So the ruin above the village should not be read as something the Mongols destroyed — it is something the Mongols are the reason for.Mongolské vojská v roku 1241 rozvrátili Uhorské kráľovstvo a do roka boli preč, ľak však zostal. Kráľ Belo IV. si z toho vzal poučenie, že krajina potrebuje kamenné hrady, nie hlinené a drevené hrádky, a práve v desaťročiach po vpáde vyrástla väčšina slovenských hradov. Uhrovec patrí medzi ne: obec aj hrad sa prvý raz spomínajú v listine z roku 1258 a hrad na hrebeni nad Bebravou postavili v polovici trinásteho storočia, neskororománsky, na mieste vybranom práve pre svoju neprístupnosť. Zrúcaninu nad dedinou teda netreba čítať tak, že ju zničili Mongoli — ale tak, že Mongoli sú dôvod, prečo vôbec vznikla.
The castle passed quickly into the hands of Matúš Čák of Trenčín, the magnate who ran most of what is now western Slovakia as his own country until his death in 1321. After him it belonged to kings and to the men kings favoured: Sigismund of Luxembourg held it, and so did Stibor of Stiborice, a Polish nobleman who was Sigismund's strong arm in the Váh valley. Through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it changed hands again and again, and wealthy families went to law over it. A castle that keeps changing owner is a castle nobody spends money on, and that is part of why it ended as a ruin.Hrad sa čoskoro dostal do rúk Matúša Čáka Trenčianskeho, veľmoža, ktorý až do svojej smrti v roku 1321 spravoval väčšinu dnešného západného Slovenska ako vlastnú krajinu. Po ňom patril kráľom a ich ľuďom: držal ho Žigmund Luxemburský aj Stibor zo Stiboríc, poľský šľachtic, ktorý bol Žigmundovou pravou rukou na Považí. V pätnástom a šestnástom storočí menil majiteľov znova a znova a bohaté rody sa oň súdili. Hrad, ktorý stále mení pána, je hrad, do ktorého nikto neinvestuje — aj preto z neho napokon zostala zrúcanina.
From the middle of the sixteenth century the Uhrovec estate belonged to the Zay family, and stayed theirs until the end of the Kingdom of Hungary — long enough that the village itself was called Zay-Ugróc after them. Under the Zays this was not simply a farming village but a small craft town holding the right to keep markets, which is why it has something like a centre and a memory of guilds. The family ran the estate from the castle at first, then in 1613 built themselves a Renaissance manor house down among the houses and moved into it. Comfort beat defence: from then on the castle was an office and a storehouse, and the manor was home.Od polovice šestnásteho storočia patrilo uhrovské panstvo Zayovcom a zostalo im až do zániku Uhorska — tak dlho, že sama obec sa po nich volala Zay-Ugróc. Za Zayovcov to nebola len poľnohospodárska dedina, ale remeselné mestečko s trhovým právom, a preto má čosi ako centrum a pamäť na cechy. Panstvo najprv riadili z hradu, no v roku 1613 si postavili dolu medzi domami renesančný kaštieľ a presťahovali sa doň. Pohodlie zvíťazilo nad obranou: hrad odvtedy slúžil ako kancelária a sklad, domovom bol kaštieľ.
The manor was rebuilt in Baroque style in 1767 and remodelled once more, in the romantic taste of the time, in 1906. Below it stood something far plainer and, as it turned out, far more important: the Lutheran school, with living quarters for the teacher. Uhrovec was a Lutheran village in a kingdom ruled by Catholic monarchs, and in a Protestant community the church and the school did the work a town hall does elsewhere — they were how people organised themselves. That a teacher's family lived in the long low house below the manor is the entire reason this village is on the map.Kaštieľ prestavali v roku 1767 do barokovej podoby a ešte raz, v romantickom duchu vtedajšej módy, v roku 1906. Pod ním stálo čosi oveľa skromnejšie a — ako sa ukázalo — oveľa dôležitejšie: evanjelická škola s bytom pre učiteľa. Uhrovec bol evanjelickou obcou v kráľovstve s katolíckymi panovníkmi a v protestantskej obci robili kostol a škola to, čo inde radnica — boli spôsobom, ako sa ľudia organizovali. To, že v dlhom nízkom dome pod kaštieľom bývala učiteľská rodina, je jediný dôvod, prečo je táto obec na mape.
Samuel Štúr taught at the Lutheran school here, and on 28 October 1815 his son Ľudovít was born in the school building. On 11 July 1843, at Hlboké, Štúr agreed with Jozef Miloslav Hurban and Michal Miloslav Hodža that written Slovak would be built on central Slovak speech — the codification behind the language Slovaks write today — and from 1 August 1845 he printed it in his own newspaper, Slovenskje národňje noviny. He sat in the Hungarian Diet for the town of Zvolen in 1847-48, and in September 1848 he led the first Slovak National Council together with Hurban and Hodža. The lord of the estate above him, Count Karol Zay, was general inspector of the Lutheran church in Hungary and a determined Magyariser: the schoolmaster's son and his own landlord stood on opposite sides of the same argument. Štúr shot himself in the thigh by accident while hunting near Modra on 22 December 1855 and died there on 12 January 1856, aged forty.Na evanjelickej škole tu učil Samuel Štúr a 28. októbra 1815 sa mu v školskej budove narodil syn Ľudovít. Jedenásteho júla 1843 sa Štúr v Hlbokom dohodol s Jozefom Miloslavom Hurbanom a Michalom Miloslavom Hodžom, že základom spisovnej slovenčiny bude stredoslovenčina — kodifikácia, z ktorej vyrástol jazyk, akým Slováci píšu dodnes — a od 1. augusta 1845 ju tlačil vo vlastných novinách Slovenskje národňje noviny. V rokoch 1847 – 1848 sedel v uhorskom sneme za mesto Zvolen a v septembri 1848 stál spolu s Hurbanom a Hodžom na čele prvej Slovenskej národnej rady. Jeho zemepán, gróf Karol Zay, bol generálnym inšpektorom evanjelickej cirkvi v Uhorsku a presvedčeným maďarizátorom: učiteľov syn a jeho vlastný pán stáli na opačných stranách toho istého sporu. Štúr sa 22. decembra 1855 na poľovačke pri Modre nešťastne postrelil do stehna a 12. januára 1856 tam vo veku štyridsať rokov zomrel.
In July 1848 the castle burned, and it never recovered from that fire. It is worth saying plainly what did not happen: no Ottoman army ever took Uhrovec and no siege brought these walls down. The castle had lost its purpose the moment the Zays moved into the manor, and the family let it go — Slovak accounts say the Zays themselves helped it on its way. What stands on the ridge today is what a large medieval castle looks like when it is abandoned rather than stormed: gate, keep and palace ranges still up, and held up now by volunteers.V júli 1848 hrad zhorel a z toho požiaru sa už nespamätal. Oplatí sa jasne povedať, čo sa nestalo: Uhrovec nikdy nedobyli Turci a jeho múry nezvalilo nijaké obliehanie. Hrad stratil zmysel už vtedy, keď sa Zayovci presťahovali do kaštieľa, a rod ho nechal svojmu osudu — slovenské pramene hovoria, že k jeho deštrukcii prispeli napokon sami Zayovci. To, čo dnes stojí na hrebeni, je obraz veľkého stredovekého hradu, ktorý opustili, nie dobyli: brána, veža aj palácové krídla, dnes držané dobrovoľníkmi.
Under Austria-Hungary the estate village tried its hand at industry. Small works had been opening since the first half of the nineteenth century, and the most important of them was a glassworks that ran from 1874 until 1914. A wood-carving school was founded in 1875 and taught at the level of a secondary school of applied art, which for a village in the hills was remarkable. Neither survived: the glassworks closed as the First World War began and never reopened. These were also the decades of Magyarisation, when Hungarian was pushed into schools and offices — and the village still carried its landlords' name, Zay-Ugróc.Za Rakúska-Uhorska skúsila poddanská obec priemysel. Menšie závody tu vznikali už od prvej polovice devätnásteho storočia a najdôležitejším z nich bola skláreň, ktorá fungovala od roku 1874 do roku 1914. V roku 1875 vznikla rezbárska škola na úrovni umeleckej priemyslovky, čo bolo na dedinu v kopcoch pozoruhodné. Ani jedno nevydržalo: skláreň zanikla so začiatkom prvej svetovej vojny a už sa neotvorila. Boli to zároveň desaťročia maďarizácie, keď sa maďarčina tlačila do škôl a úradov — a obec stále niesla meno svojich zemepánov, Zay-Ugróc.
When Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918 the village dropped its landlords' name and became simply Uhrovec. On 27 November 1921 Alexander Dubček was born in the very building in which Štúr had been born, by then divided into flats. His parents were idealists: in 1925 the family left by train from Žilina with the Interhelpo cooperative, a group of Czechoslovak workers who went to help build socialism in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, and Alexander grew up in Pishpek, today's Bishkek. They moved on to Gorky in Russia and came home only in November 1938 — the month after Munich, so the boy returned to a country that was already coming apart.Keď v roku 1918 vzniklo Československo, obec odložila meno svojich zemepánov a stala sa jednoducho Uhrovcom. Dvadsiateho siedmeho novembra 1921 sa v tej istej budove, v akej sa narodil Štúr, vtedy už rozdelenej na byty, narodil Alexander Dubček. Jeho rodičia boli idealisti: v roku 1925 odišla rodina vlakom zo Žiliny s družstvom Interhelpo, so skupinou československých robotníkov, ktorí šli budovať socializmus do sovietskeho Kirgizska, a Alexander vyrastal v Pišpeku, dnešnom Biškeku. Neskôr sa presťahovali do Gorkého v Rusku a domov sa vrátili až v novembri 1938 — mesiac po Mníchove, takže chlapec sa vracal do krajiny, ktorá sa už rozpadávala.
In March 1939 Slovakia became a separate state under German protection, with one ruling party and a Catholic priest, Jozef Tiso, as its president — and Tiso was the parish priest of Bánovce nad Bebravou, the district town at the foot of this valley, a parish he kept while he governed. Uhrovec lived under that state, as one village of the Bánovce district, until the summer of 1944 — when its own people ended the arrangement in the most direct way there was.V marci 1939 sa Slovensko stalo samostatným štátom pod nemeckou ochranou, s jednou vládnucou stranou a s katolíckym kňazom Jozefom Tisom na čele — a Tiso bol farárom v Bánovciach nad Bebravou, v okresnom meste na konci tejto doliny, a faru si podržal aj ako prezident. Uhrovec žil pod týmto štátom ako jedna z obcí bánovského okresu až do leta 1944 — vtedy jeho vlastní ľudia s tým skoncovali tým najpriamejším možným spôsobom.
On the morning of 30 August 1944, the first day of the Slovak National Uprising, partisans of the Jan Žižka brigade took Uhrovec, armed themselves here and took Bánovce nad Bebravou the same afternoon. Uhrovec became the centre of an insurgent district of twenty-two villages in which the Czechoslovak Republic was declared restored. The German army and the Hlinka Guard emergency units came back for it: from 29 October 1944 they burned and looted the villages under the hills one at a time, beginning with Miezgovce; on 5 November 1944 they burned part of Uhrovec; and on 13 December 1944 they burned seven wounded partisans alive in their bunker. Soviet and Romanian troops reached the village on 4 April 1945. Alexander Dubček, twenty-two years old, fought in the Uprising alongside his brother Julius.Ráno 30. augusta 1944, v prvý deň Slovenského národného povstania, obsadili partizáni brigády Jana Žižku Uhrovec, tu sa vyzbrojili a popoludní obsadili aj Bánovce nad Bebravou. Uhrovec sa stal centrom povstaleckej oblasti dvadsiatich dvoch obcí, v ktorých vyhlásili obnovenie Československej republiky. Nemecká armáda a pohotovostné oddiely Hlinkovej gardy sa vrátili: od 29. októbra 1944 postupne vypaľovali a rabovali podhorské dediny, počnúc Miezgovcami, 5. novembra 1944 čiastočne vypálili Uhrovec a 13. decembra 1944 v bunkri zaživa upálili siedmich ranených partizánov. Sovietska a rumunská armáda prišli do obce 4. apríla 1945. Dvadsaťdvaročný Alexander Dubček bojoval v povstaní spolu so svojím bratom Júliusom.
Between 1946 and 1951 the state built a large memorial to the Uprising on Jankov vŕšok above the village — a mound, a symbolic cemetery, an open-air amphitheatre and the partisan bunkers — designed by the sculptor Jozef Pospíšil and the architect Artur Schlesinger-Slatinský. In 1965 the birth house was restored and opened as a museum, at that point to Štúr alone. Three years later the boy born in that house was running the country: Dubček became first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on 5 January 1968 and began the reforms known as the Prague Spring. Soviet, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops invaded on the night of 20-21 August 1968 and ended them. Dubček was expelled from the party in 1970 and from 1970 to 1985 worked for minimum wage in the West Slovak state forestry service — a man the whole world had heard of, keeping the paperwork of a forestry district.V rokoch 1946 až 1951 postavil štát nad obcou, na Jankovom vŕšku, veľký pamätník Povstania — mohylu, symbolický cintorín, prírodný amfiteáter a areál partizánskych bunkrov — podľa návrhu sochára Jozefa Pospíšila a architekta Artura Schlesingera-Slatinského. V roku 1965 zrekonštruovali rodný dom a otvorili v ňom expozíciu, vtedy ešte venovanú iba Štúrovi. O tri roky neskôr viedol krajinu chlapec, ktorý sa v tom dome narodil: Dubček sa 5. januára 1968 stal prvým tajomníkom Komunistickej strany Československa a začal reformy, ktoré svet pozná ako Pražskú jar. V noci z 20. na 21. augusta 1968 ich ukončil vpád sovietskych, poľských, maďarských a bulharských vojsk. Dubčeka v roku 1970 vylúčili zo strany a v rokoch 1970 až 1985 pracoval za minimálnu mzdu v Západoslovenských štátnych lesoch — muž, o ktorom počul celý svet, viedol papiere lesnej správy.
In November 1989 the crowds in Bratislava and Prague called for Dubček by name, and after twenty years of silence he stepped out onto the balcony. On 28 December 1989 he was elected chairman of the Federal Assembly, the parliament of the country he had led in 1968. He argued to the end for keeping Czechoslovakia together, and he lost that argument. On 1 September 1992 he was badly injured in a road accident near Humpolec in Bohemia and died on 7 November 1992, less than two months before the state he had spent his whole life inside ceased to exist.V novembri 1989 volali davy v Bratislave a v Prahe Dubčekovo meno a on po dvadsiatich rokoch mlčania vyšiel na balkón. Dvadsiateho ôsmeho decembra 1989 ho zvolili za predsedu Federálneho zhromaždenia, parlamentu krajiny, ktorú viedol v roku 1968. Až do konca presadzoval, aby Československo zostalo spolu, a v tomto spore neuspel. Prvého septembra 1992 sa pri Humpolci v Čechách ťažko zranil pri dopravnej nehode a 7. novembra 1992 zomrel — necelé dva mesiace pred zánikom štátu, v ktorom prežil celý život.
The birth house is now a museum of both men, a branch of the Trenčín museum: part of it is furnished as a village teacher's household of about 1815, the rest sets out the two lives. Nothing else like it exists in Slovakia — one ordinary building that produced the man who made the written language and the man who made 1968. Neither is settled history: Štúr's language politics and Dubček's part in what came after August 1968 are still live arguments in Slovak public life. The two-hundredth anniversary of Štúr's birth in 2015 was marked across the country and the village filled up for it; the rest of the year Uhrovec is a quiet place at the top of a valley with no railway.Rodný dom je dnes múzeom oboch mužov a pobočkou Trenčianskeho múzea: časť je zariadená ako domácnosť dedinského učiteľa okolo roku 1815, zvyšok predstavuje dva životy. Nič podobné na Slovensku niet — jedna obyčajná budova, z ktorej vyšiel muž, čo dal národu spisovný jazyk, aj muž, čo dal svetu rok 1968. Ani jedno nie je uzavretá história: Štúrova jazyková politika aj Dubčekov podiel na tom, čo prišlo po auguste 1968, sú stále živé spory. Dvesté výročie Štúrovho narodenia si v roku 2015 pripomínala celá krajina a obec sa vtedy zaplnila; po zvyšok roka je Uhrovec tichým miestom na konci doliny bez železnice.
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.