She was from Okružna, where she was born on August 1, 1951. She graduated from the grammar school in Prešov and then studied acting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. For one season she worked at the Theatre for Children and Youth in Trnava. Then she decided to go her own way and devote herself to monodrama. Since 1975 she has been freelancing and writing her own scripts for her travelling one-actor theatre. She has appeared in the monodramas Neveľo nas idze, neveľo nam potrzeb, Sojka, Czas kikiríkania, To len tak naoko, Žniva. She has also shown her considerable acting talent in several television films and productions.
She made her literary debut with the short story collection She Grazed Horses on Concrete. Based on one of them, she also wrote the screenplay for the successful film of the same name, in which she played the main character. She also contributed to the screenplays for the films Horses on Concrete and Easter. When writing short prose, she used her knowledge of the environment of the eastern Slovak countryside, as well as the city, and her experience of travelling by train.
She has published the books So What?, Without Words, So What!, Intercity and Don't Say That! She was authentic in her work thanks to her use of the Sharis dialect, but also her specific sense of humour, while always remaining human, understanding and personal. She lived in Bratislava and regularly returned to Prešov with her performances.
She passed away on May 30, 2023 after a long battle with cancer.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Autor: AngryBiceps – YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tefuevPk0c&ab_channel=Telev%C3%ADziaJOJ – View/save archived versions on archive.org, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119601251
One of the most important personalities who worked in our vicinity was the painter Pavol Szinyei Merse, who was born on 4 July 1845 in Chminianská Nová Ves as the third of eight siblings in a noble family.
His mother Valéria, born Jekelfalussy, was already very well educated artistically and she instilled this in her son from an early age. He received his artistic education by studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His most important work, „Breakfast in Nature“, was misunderstood by his contemporaries and caused a scandal. He offered it free of charge to the National Museum in Budapest, which refused it. Therefore, Merse retired into seclusion and stopped painting for a while. He lived the life of a Hungarian nobleman, sitting in the Hungarian Parliament, where he worked to modernise education. With short interruptions, he lived his whole life on a large estate in Jarovnice in Šariš.
The balm for his psychological trauma from the misunderstanding of his work was the company of his wife Žofie Probstner. However, she eventually left him for love with Imrich Ghilányi, who took her to the Fričovce manor.
The dominant theme of his work was nature and the people of our region. However, it was very difficult for him to get models to paint, because there was a superstition among the villagers that whoever he painted would soon die. He enjoyed success in Paris, Munich, Berlin and friends persuaded him to exhibit Breakfast again in Budapest, where the public received it with enthusiasm. In 1905 he was appointed director of the Fine Arts College in Budapest. In addition to his landscape paintings, Szinyei also painted the altarpiece of St. John the Hermit located in the church in Jarovnice and his only self-portrait of a country householder in a leather coat, the only copy of which hangs in the Fričovce manor house. The author of this painting is the academic painter Štefan Filep. The original adorns one of the halls of the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.
Paul Szinyei Merse dies on 20 February 1920 in the arms of his daughter in Jarovnice. His former wife Žofia lived to be 101 years old.
Source: https://ovcie.info/2014/08/18/pavol-szinyei-merse/
Photo source: CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=223899
He was born on 25 May 1782 in the family of a carpenter from Levoca. Before studying at the university he preferred painting. From the famous painter Stunder, he received valuable lessons in the field of portraits of celebrities, as well as help with his first commissions from the Csáky family and the Prešov merchant Steinhübel.
During the stay of Tsar Alexander I in Bardejov Spa he met Count Iljinsky, who invited him to his estate. In 1805 he travelled to St Petersburg, where he spent 19 years as a painter of portraits of the nobility, intelligentsia and people from high military and political circles. He was a member of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.
In 1817 he married Amalia Bauman, with whom he settled in 1825 in Prešov, where his brothers lived. Here Rombauer painted many realistic portraits of the nobility of Spiš and Šariš and the townspeople of Prešov. In addition to portraits, he also created several religious works for churches in eastern Slovakia and free compositions. His stay in Prešov is commemorated by the oil painting Unbelieving Tomáš in the Evangelical Church of the Holy Trinity, the painting of the electoral coachmen, the veduta View of Prešov or the ceiling painting Amor a Psyché in the house on Hlavná 16. Many of his works are currently in the collections of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava and the Šariš Gallery in Prešov. He lived in Prešov until the end of his life on 12 February 1849. He is buried in the local cemetery.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project. Prešov: Šarišská galéria, 2010.
Photo source: By Janos Rombauer (1782-1849) - Napoleon & Revolution, Free Work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77726326
One of the greatest Czech thinkers, philosophers and writers was born on 28 March 1592 in Moravia. He studied theology and was a priest, later the last bishop of the Unity of Brethren. After the defeat of the Bohemian Estates at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, he became an exile and began his pilgrimage through Europe.
After a stay in Poland and Sweden, he came to Prešov in 1650 and then to Blatný Potok at the invitation of Prince Rákoci. In 1654 he visited Prešov again and was one of the candidates for the post of rector of the town school, but the town council chose another candidate. Comenius went again to Poland and from there to Holland, where he spent the last years of his life. He died on 15 November 1670 in Amsterdam.
During his lifetime, Komenský gained a reputation as an author of pedagogical writings in the field of educational theory and didactics. His ideal was pansofia, i.e. the universal science of the system of all knowledge. Komenský's works that are still recognized today include The Gate of Languages Opened, The World in Pictures, The Great Didactic, and The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. Many of his ideas are timeless, and because of them he is considered not only the founder of modern pedagogy, but also, and rightly, a teacher of nations.
During his visit to Prešov, Komenský stayed in the house of Ondrej Klobušický, later converted into a palace, today the seat of the Regional Court. Komenský's stay in Prešov is commemorated by a commemorative plaque on the facade of the Evangelical College in the city centre.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: By Jürgen Ovens - http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/collectie/SK-A-2161, Free work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34250301
He was born on 1 August 1905 in Trstena, Orava, where he graduated from the gymnasium. After graduation he became a monk of the Franciscan Order and worked in monasteries in Kremnica, Hlohovec, Malacky and Žilina. He studied Catholic theology and became a priest. Subsequently, he worked as a secondary school teacher of religion in several towns, including an evangelical college in Prešov in the second half of the 1930s. After the outbreak of World War II, he volunteered as a field curator on the Eastern Front.
Returning from the front in the autumn of 1944, he spent five months in the Franciscan monastery in Nižná Šebastová near Prešov. After the war he emigrated, first to Rome and from there to Argentina, where from 1947 he was a priest of the Slovak emigrants in Buenos Aires and edited the magazine Slovenské zvesti (Slovak Tidings). From 1965 he lived in a monastery in Pittsburgh, USA, where he was the editor of the Letters of St. Francis, but also an official of the World Congress of Slovaks. In 1969 he visited Slovakia with the intention of staying, but eventually returned to the USA. He died in Pittsburgh on April 7, 1986.
Dilong is one of the leading representatives of Slovak Catholic modernism, whose work includes more than one hundred collections of poetry. His life and work were marked by his „forbidden“ love for a woman of Jewish origin, Vali, during the time of anti-Semitism. He entered literature as a co-founder of the magazine Postup. In his first three collections of poetry, Future People, Gloriously on stilts, Breathe lazy! he portrayed the theme of nature and peasant life through a traditional rustic vision. In the collections Helena Wears a Lily and The Young Bridegroom one can identify the influences of Czech poetism. Later, struck by the horrors of war, Dilong resorted in his collections to the themes of childhood and his native Orava, which he saw as a security in times of war.
His work was of a spiritual meditative character, and his book I, Saint Francis is considered to be its culmination. In exile he published more than 70 collections. A selection of his exiled works was published after 1989 under the title I, Rudolf Dilong, troubadour and bears witness to his bitter plight as an outcast and separated from his homeland. His most recent works include the unfinished prose work Ruža Dagmar.
There is a street named after him in Prešov.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Author Slovak Bookshop, Prague - The Pictures of Slovak Writers Serie, vol. 1 (The Pictures of Slovak Writers Series, Series 1), Free work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10679310
He came from Vyšný Kubín in Orava, where he was born in a peasant family on 2 February 1849. After studies at the grammar school in Miškovec and Kežmarok, he graduated from the law academy of the Evangelical College in Prešov between 1870 and 1872. Together with Koloman Banšell, they founded the Kolo association and published the literary almanac Forward. He passed the bar exam in 1875 in Budapest. He worked as a lawyer and judge in his native Orava. From 1902 he devoted himself only to literary activity. At the end of his life he welcomed the establishment of Czechoslovakia and became one of the presidents of the reopened Slovak Matrix in 1919. He died on 8 November 1921 in Dolný Kubín.
He published his first poems as a student. Later he decided to use the pseudonym Hviezdoslav. He wrote mostly reflective, nature and social lyrics. He is known for his Sonnets, Psalms and Hymns, three cycles of Letorostov, Walks in Spring, Walks in Summer and Blood Sonnets, which have been translated into both French and English. Of the epic works, the epics Ežo Vlkolinský and Gábor Vlkolinský, Hájnik's Wife and the drama Herodes and Herodias still resonate. He has translated the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Pushkin, Lermontov, Mickiewicz and Petöfi into Slovak. Hviezdoslav's work is not only varied in genre, but also unusually rich in motifs and ideas, ranging from intimate and family motifs to national and world problems, deepened by social relations and a desire to achieve a high degree of universality. He is rightly regarded as an exceptional personality of Slovak literature.
In Prešov, a street and the regional library are named after him.
Buildings:
Hlavná 16, Prešov - the house where Hviezdoslav lived as a student, today the seat of the children's library Slniečko
Hlavná 137, Prešov - Evangelical College, where Hviezdoslav studied
Slovenská 18, Prešov - Regional library P. O. Hviezdoslav (formerly Levočská 1)
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Free work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=741471
He was born on 18 October 1874 in Tajov, after which he chose his pseudonym. He graduated from the teachers' institute in Kláštor pod Znievom (1889 - 1893) and worked as a teacher in Banská Bystrica and in villages in the Horehronie and Považie regions. Later he graduated from the Commercial Academy in Prague (1898 - 1900) and worked as a bank clerk in Trnava, Martin, Nadlak. From 1910 to 1912 he was the head of the Tatra Bank branch in Prešov. From 1912 he was the secretary of the Slovak National Party in Martin, where he became the editor of the National Herald after its activities were discontinued. In 1915 he enlisted on the Eastern Front, joined the foreign resistance and joined the Czechoslovak legions. After the war he settled in Martin, but from 1920 he was the head of the legionary office in Bratislava. In 1925 he retired and devoted himself only to literary activities. He died on 20 May 1940 in Bratislava.
Tajovský is one of the top representatives of Slovak literary realism and the founder of realistic drama. His works are connected with current political and social issues, and in addition to criticism, he often used humorous tuning of stories set in a village or small-town environment. He published prose collections Besednice, Smutné nôty, Rozprávky pro folk, Volebné rozprávky, Spod kosy, Tŕpky, Slovenské obrázky, Na fronty a iné rozprávky, Rozprávky o československé leggiách v Rusku, but his best known stories are Maco Mlieč, Mamka Pôstková, Na chlieb, Horký chlieb and Mišo. During his stay in Prešov, he wrote the one-act play Sin, the prose poems Gypsies, Twelve Souls and Heavy Struggle, as well as the autobiographical features When I Was in Prešov, From Prešov to Ujheľ and Behind Záborský's Manuscripts. Tajovský's plays Promises, The Women's Law, Mother, New Life, Sin, In the Service, The Confused Farm, The Death of Ďurka Langsfeld, The Blúznivci and The Hero are still part of the repertoire of Slovak theatres today. In Prešov, a street is named after him.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Author: photo from archive from 100 years ago - own, Free work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8959440
He was born on 30 December 1874 in Martin. After graduating from high school in Kežmarok, he graduated from the law academy at the Evangelical College in Prešov (1893 - 1896). He received his doctorate in law in Cluj, Romania, and passed the bar exam in 1905 in Budapest. He worked as a lawyer in Bánovce nad Bebravou.
After the outbreak of World War I he was on the Russian front, where he joined the Czechoslovak legions. In 1922 he was a mayor in Rimavská Sobota and then a grand-mayor in Nitra. From 1929 he was a government councillor in Bratislava and later vice-president of the Regional Office. From 1930 to 1939 he was vice-president of the Slovak Writers' Association and from 1933 editor-in-chief of the journal Slovenské smery umelecké a kritické (Slovak Directions of Art and Criticism). In November 1945, he was the first Slovak to receive the title of national artist. He died on 27 December 1945 in Bratislava.
He began to devote himself to literary work during his studies in Kežmarok. He was both a poet and a prose writer. During his stay in Prešov he wrote 60 poems, among others Na shohu Torysy, Na rumoch Šariša, Na Kapušianskom hrade, and two hilarious plays, Kisses of Struggle and Medicine Works. Later he also wrote a novella Karol Ketzer. In poetry he came up with themes of personally experienced love emotion and published several collections of Verses.
As an intellectual type of poet, he also responded to social issues in the collections Our Hero, Black Days, and On the Wickedness of the Day. In his prose work, he began with satirical and humorous anecdotal stories from the small-town environment, which he published under the title Small-Town Tales. The culmination of Jesenský's prose work is the extensive novel The Democrats, in which he put his lifelong experience of public engagement in the political-administrative sphere. His works have been published in several languages and some have been the subject of film and television adaptations. He has also translated Russian poetry by Pushkin, Yesenin and Blok, and written literary and cultural journalism. His work made him an important representative of modern Slovak literature.
Jesensky's stay in Prešov is commemorated by a commemorative plaque on the Evangelical College and one of the streets.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Author Slovak Bookshop, Prague - The Pictures of Slovak Writers Serie, vol. 1 (The Pictures of Slovak Writers Series, Series 1), Free Works, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10680412
He was born on 12 May 1901 in the Jewish family of the owner of the Berger Hotel in Prešov. He developed his artistic talent during his studies in Prague, Paris and Berlin, where he was employed by one of the largest daily newspapers. As a journalist, he attended the trial of Hitler in Munich in 1923 after his failed putsch attempt. After Hitler came to power, he had to flee Germany. He stayed briefly in Budapest, Paris and Geneva, where he attended meetings of the League of Nations.
In 1935 he settled in London and began working for the Daily Telegraph. After World War II, he moved to New York, USA, and published in prestigious newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, Life magazine and Le Figaro. In the 1950s, Berger attended United Nations assemblies and drew almost every important leader who appeared there. He portrayed monarchs and famous personalities and film stars in the same idiosyncratic way.
He created caricatures of Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower, Vyacheslav Mikhailov Molotov, Albert Einstein, John Paul II, Thomas S. Elliot, Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Vivien Leigh and many others. He has captured them all with elegant pencil strokes, with an eye for the uniqueness of the person and the characteristic detail. Alongside his cartoons, he was also a cartoonist of political jokes.
His prolific work produced several books such as Famous Faces - From the Cartoonist's Sketchbook (1950), My Victims - How to Make a Cartoon (1952), Presidents - From Washington to the Present (1968). Berger's work is also on permanent display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Berger died on May 15, 1997, in New York City.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: By unknown photographer - Original publication: unknown when, where or how first publishedImmediate source: https://spartacus-educational.com/ARTberger.htm, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76151688
He was born on 10 December 1869 in a peasant family in Okrúhl. He received his primary education in Radom. At the age of sixteen he went to work in America, where he started as a miner in Hazelton, then a peddler in Freedland and spent his free time studying English. In 1893 he and his wife settled in Olyphant, where he conducted a hospitality and wine wholesale business.
In time he established a shipping agency and in 1897 the private Bosak Privat Bank. In 1902 he was a member of the board of directors of the First National Bank in Olyphant, and five years later was its president, with the right to sign the $5, $10, and $20 bills issued by that bank (1907). In 1908 he moved to Scranton, where he opened a private bank and travel agency. Four years later he established the Slavonic Deposits State Bank in Wilkes Barre, the Bosak State Bank in Scranton in 1915, and the American State Bank in Pittsburg.
He was also involved in the movement of the countrymen and during the First World War he initiated a million-dollar collection to agitate for the independence of Slovakia. He was a signatory of the Pittsburgh Agreement, which became the basis for the establishment of Czechoslovakia. In 1920, Bosák visited Slovakia and founded the American-Slovak Bank with headquarters in Bratislava and 12 branches, including Prague and Uzhhorod.
For the needs of the bank's branch in Prešov he had a splendid Art Nouveau building built, known as Bosák's House, the former seat of the P. O. Hviezdoslav Regional Library. After some time, disappointed with developments in the new state, he decided to discontinue his activities in Slovakia, sold the bank in 1927 and returned to the USA, where his successful financial ventures, estimated at 15 million dollars, were hit by the economic crisis. In 1937 he was a member of a delegation of American Slovaks received by President Roosevelt.
Shortly thereafter, on February 18, 1937, he died in Scranton. In 1976, on the occasion of the U.S. bicentennial, Bosák was listed among the fourteen most important Slovaks in American history. The Michal Bosák Society was founded in his honour in 1999 in Prešov.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Author unknown - Public domain - Kramerius Digital Libraryː https://kramerius5.nkp.cz/view/uuid:148383a0-7103-11e2-b9fa-005056827e52?page=uuid:77d2f740-90ae-11e2-a85c-001018b5eb5c, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116473328
He was born on 17 July 1888 in Ruske Pekľany in the family of a Greek-Catholic priest Stefan Gojdič and his wife Anne Gerbery. He studied theology in Prešov and Budapest. In 1911 he was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Prešov. Subsequently, he worked in Cigeľka and Prešov. On July 20, 1922, he entered the Basilian monastery on Černeč Mountain near Mukačevo, where he took the monastic name „Pavel“.
In 1926 he was appointed apostolic administrator of the Prešov eparchy. He was consecrated bishop on 25 March 1927 in the Basilica of St. Clement in Rome by Bishop Dionýz Nyáradi of Križevac, who had been the Apostolic Administrator of Prešov until then. On 8 August 1940, he was enthroned in Prešov as the resident bishop of Prešov, and on 15 January 1946, his jurisdiction over the Greek Catholics in the whole of Czechoslovakia was confirmed.
When after 1948 the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia undertook to abolish the Greek Catholic Church in Slovakia, following the example of the USSR, on April 28, 1950, during the anti-church action called the „Prešov Sobor“, vladyka Gojdič was arrested and interned, and at the same time the Greek Catholic Church was administratively abolished as well. In a fabricated trial, Gojdič was sentenced to life imprisonment along with Bishops Vojtaššák and Buzalek for treason.
He died as a result of torture and ill-treatment in Leopold Prison on 17 July 1960, on his 72nd birthday. He was buried in the prison cemetery and his grave was marked only with the number 681.
On 29 October 1968, his remains were exhumed and taken to Prešov and placed in the Chapel of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Since 1990 they have been kept in a sarcophagus in the chapel of the Greek Catholic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Prešov. On 4 November 2001, Paul Petro Gojdič was beatified by Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. On the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the establishment of independent Slovakia, Bishop Pavol Petro Gojdič was awarded the Pribina Cross of the First Class in memoriam by the Government of the Slovak Republic.
Source: https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavol_Petro_Gojdič
Photo source: Author Unknown - Erzeparchie Prestov - www.grkatpo.sk/historia_biskupi, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8551906
Jozef Gaganec was born on 25 March 1793 in the village of Vyšný Tvarožec (today's district of Bardejov) as the second of ten children in the family of a church cantor. He graduated from primary school in Bardejov, from where he continued his studies at grammar schools in Újhely and Levoča. He began his higher education at the academy in Velka Varadin, where he studied philosophy, and completed his theology studies in Trnava. In addition to his native Ruthenian, he also knew Latin, Hungarian and German.
He was ordained a priest in Velky Varadin on 8 March 1817. He started as a priest in the then village of Ruské Pekľany, later he was a parish priest in Vislav and Hejőkeresztúr and an igumen of Boršod county. Before his ordination he married Anna Kovalicka. In 1837 Jozef Gaganec became the secretary of the Eparch of Prešov, Gregor Tarkovič. In 1835, after Tarkovič's death, he became the capitular vicar of the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Presov. In the same year he was widowed and was soon appointed a canon and a member of the episcopal consistory.
Emperor Ferdinand I appointed Joseph Gaganec as bishop and on 25 June 1843 he was consecrated bishop in the imperial chapel in Vienna in the presence of the imperial court. He was consecrated by Bishop Basil Popovich of Mukachevo.
During his tenure as Eparch of Presov, 36 new churches were built in the eparchy and many churches were rebuilt and restored. During this period he ordained 237 priests (190 for the Prešov diocese, 12 for the Order of St. Basil and 35 for neighbouring eparchies). He addressed his priests frequently and very strongly with admonitions and requests to faithfully preserve and deepen their knowledge of the Eastern Rite.
He was a member of the Slovak Matrix. In 1862, on the initiative of Alexander Duchovič, he founded the Society of St. John the Baptist, aimed at caring for orphans or poor students. The Emperor awarded him the Order of Franz Joseph. In 1868, Pope Pius IX appointed him assistant to the papal throne. He died on December 22, 1875.
Source: https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jozef_Gaganec
Photo source: Author Unknown - Erzeparchie Prestov - www.grkatpo.sk/historia_biskupi, Free work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8551718
Alexander Duchnovich was a Ruthenian national revivalist, writer, educator and Greek Catholic priest, who was born in the family of a Greek Catholic priest on 24 April 1803. He graduated from the gymnasium in Uzhhorod. He studied philosophy in Košice and theology in Uzhhorod. In 1830-1834 he was a teacher in Uzhhorod, a parish priest in the villages of Komlóš (today Chmeľová), Chmeľov, Beloveža. He lived in Belovezha for four years and was sent there by Bishop Gregor Tarkovič. It was during this period that Duchnovich decided to become more involved in the dignified life of the Ruthenians. He began to write in his native language (until then he had used Hungarian and Russian). In Belovezh he wrote or compiled his manuscript collection „Privitatae cogitationes“, which contains works of the 1920s and 1930s and gives an overall picture of his artistic output in this period. In Belovezh he performed mainly church duties (parish priest - svyashchenik). In addition, he taught children and adults. He taught children in their native language and also at school he paid attention to learning the basics of agricultural work, especially gardening and fruit growing.
From 1838 to 1844 he was a bishop's notary in Uzhhorod. From 1844 he was a canon in Prešov; he was also a school inspector. He taught Russian and Latin at the Greek-Catholic gymnasium in Presov. In 1847 he was a representative of the Prešov bishopric at the last Hungarian Estates Council. In the same year he published a syllabary entitled Knyzycja chytaľnaja dla načynajuščych. In it, he also published a short story Obraz zhizni (in Slovak, Obraz zhizni zhizni), written by a mere 12-year-old Anatoly Kralitsky. In 1854 he published Liturgicheskii Katechizis, ili objasenie sv. Liturgii i nekotorych cerkovnych obrjadov.
In 1862 he founded (together with other representatives of the Ruthenian national movement) the Obshchestvo svjatoho Ioanna Krestitelja i Predteči (Society of St. John the Baptist, 1862-1874). The Society was active in 1862-1874; it was renewed in 2003. The Society originally supported poor Ruthenian students in their studies. The program of the restored society is the religious, national and cultural development of Rusyns.
Since 1990, the Alexander Duchnovič Rusyn Theatre in Prešov has been named after him.
Source: https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Duchnovič
Photo source: Author: originally uploaded by DDima in Wikipedia project (English) - http://www.ukrstor.com/ukrstor/dukhn.jpg, Free work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9460987
He was born in the family of a teacher in Zvolenská Slatina on 6 December 1872. Already in his childhood he learned to play the piano and the organ. He graduated from the teacher's institute in Kláštor pod Znievom and passed the state examinations in music at the Hungarian Royal Academy in Budapest. He worked as an organist and professor of music in Jagr, Veľký Varadin, Čurgov and Kláštor pod Znievom.
In 1908 he settled in Prešov and became a professor of music and Slovak at the Hungarian Royal State Teachers' Gymnasium. From 1919 Moyzes was the first Slovak administrator of this school and chairman of the administrative committee of the Šariš County. In 1920 he was one of the founding members of the local branch of the Slovak Matrix. At the same time, he was an administrator and professor at the town music school and in 1921-1929 also its director.
Moyzes established himself as a successful composer, concert artist, choirmaster and conductor of secular and church choirs. He was a pioneer of realistic tendencies in Slovak music and a forerunner of Slovak musical modernism. He composed Missa solemnis in C, Missa in D minor, Little Highland Symphony, Ctibora, Christmas Carol, Orphans, The Forest Maiden, The Devil's River and the orchestral composition Our Slovakia.
He wrote several textbooks for Slovak schools: a music-theoretical music book, a school songbook for Slovak kindergartens and folk schools, and a small school of singing. He arranged Slovak folk songs, especially from the surroundings of his native Zvolen and from Šariš. He died in Prešov on 2 April 1944 and is buried in the local cemetery. One of the elementary art schools is named after him.
Source: Regional Library P. O. Hviezdoslav in Prešov; Micro-project.
Photo source: Author Presov Slovakia 1227.JPG: Ing.Mgr. Mathuzalem - Presov Slovakia 1227.JPG, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16691032
He came from the family of a blacksmith and a richtár from Bardejov. He studied in Košice, Bratislava and from 1530 at the University of Wittenberg under the guidance of representatives of the German Reformation Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. Especially under their influence, his faith and his cultural and educational level were shaped.
After years as rector of the school in Eisleben (1534 - 1539), he returned to his hometown where he took over the management of the Latin town school (except for a year's stay in Kežmarok in 1555 - 1556, he was at its head until his death), which under his leadership reached an excellent level. Its excellent reputation is evidenced by the fact that sons of prominent noble families also studied there.
Leonard Stöckel is the author of several textbooks (including the Leges scholae Bartfensis from 1540, the oldest pedagogical written monument in Slovakia, which contained methodological instructions for the organisation of pupils' extra-curricular work, instructions for the acquisition of the curriculum, but also regulations concerning pupils' duties and disciplinary guidelines) and also a school drama written in German The history of von Susanna (The Story of Susan), published in Wittenberg in 1559. In the field of theology, L. Stöckel was one of the main disseminators of the Reformation doctrine in the northern regions of Upper Hungary, and wrote several important works in defence of Protestantism. Of particular importance are his Notes on the General Principles of the Christian Doctrine of Philip Melanchthon (published in Basel in 1560) and the Confessio Pentapolitana, the confession of faith by which the Pentapolitana, an association of five Upper Highland towns, subscribed to Protestantism in 1549.
Leonard Stöckel has a great merit for the elevation of cultural, spiritual and artistic life in Bardejov in the first half of the 16th century.
Source: showbiz.sk
Photo source: By Anatol Svahilec - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120616683
The composer, violinist and conductor Béla Kéler was born in Bardejov on 13 February 1820. After studies in Levoča, Debrecen and Prešov, he was hired as a violinist in the orchestra of the Vienna Theatre in 1845. A year later he published his first opus out of a total of 139 published compositions.
In 1854, Kéler's conducting career began in Johann Sommer's orchestra in Berlin and continued the following season in the Lanner Orchestra in Vienna. From 1856 to 1860 Kéler held the post of Kapellmeister of Count Mazzuchelli's military music. After a brief stint at the head of his own orchestra in Budapest, he left for Wiesbaden, where he lived and worked for the last twenty years of his life.
From 1863 he led the local orchestra of Duke Adolf I of Nassau and later the Spa Orchestra. From 1873 to 1882 he was guest conductor of orchestras in London, Manchester, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig and Zurich. He died on 20 November 1882 in Wiesbaden, where he is buried.
Source: belakeler.eu
Photo source: By Unknown author, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21597281
Ladislav Pavlovich, nicknamed the „Russian Tsar“, comes from 12 children - he and his two years younger brother Rudolf made it to the first football league. Both of them wore the jersey of the oldest football club in Slovakia (Tatran Prešov) for a total of 22 years. In addition to being an exceptional football player, Laco also played hockey for many years. The football family remembers him as a classic right winger with an excellent appetite for the game, with excellent and devious tackles, speed, tenacity and accurate shooting.
Football skill, genius and, on the other hand, modesty and humility towards sport and life itself make a man a personality that is rarely forgotten. All this constantly abounded one of the unforgettable football legends of Prešov football and the best and most popular Prešov sportsman of the last century.
He played 17 years in the first league, except for his military service in Bratislava Red Star always for Tatran Prešov. In 1960 they took 3rd place in the Nations Cup. In 1961 he shared the title of the king of scorers with Rudolf Kucher, in the following year 1964 with nobody. He wore the Czechoslovakia national jersey 14 times and scored 2 goals. The second one in 1960 in Marseille is memorable and perhaps his most famous one, because Czecho-Slovakia, after the victory over France, finished 3rd in the Nations Cup, which was the unofficial European championship. When the League Cannonballers Club was founded, he was awarded badge number 4, scoring a total of 164 league goals. Although Ladislav Pavlovic officially retired from active service on the pitch on 11 May 1966, this did not close the chapter of his footballing life. Thanks to his wife's understanding, he continued to educate football players and out of 102 adolescents he coached, 30 players played in the 1st Czechoslovak league, others in the 2nd league and in other competitions. He was also the founder of women's football in Prešov.
Among other things, it should be added that Ladislav Pavlovic was a true football knight on the field. During his entire rich career he was not once sent off. He is a proud recipient of the Fair Play Award of the Slovak Olympic Committee and the MUDr. Ivan Chodák Football Fair Play Award. A deserved champion of sport, he is also a holder of the title of Exemplary Coach.
The Prešov football legend was loved by the fans for his devotion to sport and football itself, for his unbreakable will that no ball is lost, for his skill and for his loyalty to Tatran Prešov. Football gave Ladislav Pavlovič love, life filling, he loved it immensely also because it allowed him to travel a part of the world and get to know not only new countries, but especially new people.
Source: presov.sk
Photo source: By Doko - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66054342
Jonáš Záborský was a Slovak novelist, playwright, poet, historian, journalist and priest. He was born in 1812 in a peasant family in the village of Záborie (now Martin district). He studied at grammar schools in Kežmarok and Levoča, graduated in theology at the Evangelical Academy in Prešov and later studied at the University of Halle in Germany. From 1834 to 1839 he was a chaplain in Pozdišovce, in 1840 he became a parish priest in Rankovce. After the fire of his rectory in 1842, he converted to the Catholic Church and worked at the German rectory in Košice.
He disagreed with Ľudovít Štúr and his codification of the written Slovak language and considered his national programme unrealistic. In 1848 he was imprisoned for possession of the Requests of the Slovak Nation, and in 1850 he was appointed professor of Greek at the law faculty in Košice. From 1850 to 1853, he also worked as editor of the government-run Slovak Newspaper in Vienna, from where he had to leave due to conflicts with the censorship. In 1853 he became a parish priest in the eastern Slovak village of Župčany, where he worked until his death, adopted a new form of Slovak and devoted himself mainly to literary activities.
Jonáš Záborský's oeuvre is extensive. It includes classicist poetic compositions (Zehry, The Entry of Christ into Paradise), satirical prose (Faustiáda, The Shofranks, On the Seven Dukes of Hungary, Chruňo and Mandragora, Frndolína), didactic humoresques (Two Days in Chujava, Kulifaj), and autobiographical prose (The Panslavist Parson), historical short stories (Buld, Svätopluk's Betrayal, Mazep's Love), a syllabotonic poetic composition (The Death of Janosik), and many dramas (The Last Days of Great Moravia, The Arpáds, The Resistance of the Danube Slavs, Pansláv, Holub, Batory, Striga, the so-called "The Resistance of the Danube Slavs", the "The Last Days of Great Moravia", the "The Last Days of Great Moravia", the "The Last Days of Great Moravia", the "The Last Days of Great Moravia", the "The Last Days of Great Moravia", the "The Last Days of Great Moravia". Lžedimitrijád, etc.). He wrote an extensive historical work History of the Kingdom of Hungary from the beginning to the times of Sigismund. The main themes of his work are historical facts and autobiographical elements.
Source: csfd.sk
Photo source: By Jonáš Záborský - Jonáš Záborský, Free Work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19141314
