¹ L'ubomír Lipták lists these names, adding that Slovak patriots also called the city Bratislav, Bretislav, or Bratislava. See Lipták, L'ubomír, “Bratislava as the Capital of Slovakia,” in Changes of Changes: Society and Politics in Slovakia in the 20th Century (Bratislava, 2002), 95Google Scholar. These latter forms were, however, very rare and without resonance in the city itself. By far the most common form among Slovaks in the early twentieth century was undoubtedly Prešporok. The representative Czech encyclopedia of the time titles its entry on the city “Prešpurk,” and follows that name with Břetislav, the Slovak Prešpork or Požúň, the Latin Posonium, the German Pressburg, and the Hungarian Pozsony. Ottův slovník naučný (Otto's encyclopedia), vol. 20 (Prague, 1903), 653.Google Scholar

² For simplicity's sake, the German form will be used in references to the city before it was renamed in March 1919. This does not imply that I consider the city to have been in any way essentially “German.”

³ These developments were strongly stimulated by the city's location at the post-1867 Austro-Hungarian border: Pressburg became a magnet for investments from Austrian firms interested in a foothold in semi-independent Hungary. Lipták, , “Bratislava as Capital,” 96.Google Scholar

⁴ Butvin, Jozef, “Bratislava v slovenskom národnom obrodení a otázka slovenského národného strediska v rokoch 1848–1918” (Bratislava in the Slovak national renascence and the question of a Slovak national center 1848–1918), Historicitý časopis (Historical journal) 21 (1973): 537–41Google Scholar; Dejiny Bratislavy (The history of Bratislava) (Bratislava, 1978), 139–41.Google Scholar

⁵ Ján Stanislav, who has studied the etymology of the earliest written forms of the city's German and Hungarian names, argues that both reveal a (proto)Slovak origin; Pressburg (in the earliest known version, Braslavespurch) being derived from the personal name Brnslavb, and Pozsony (Poson or Bosan in the earliest sources) from the personal name Božan. Stanislav suggests that the two were rulers of the Bratislava castle for some period in the ninth and tenth centuries. He describes the present form Bratislava as the outcome of Šafárik's erroneous etymological reconstruction based on Brecisburg. Stanislav, Ján, “Bratislava—Prešporok—Pressburg—Pozsony (Pôvod stredovekej Bratislavy. Vysvetlenie mien)” (Bratislava—Prešporok—Pressburg—Pozsony [The origin of medieval Bratislava: An explanation of names]), in Slovanská Bratislava (Slavic Bratislava), ed. Fiala, Alojz, vol. 1 (Bratislava, 1948), 22–46Google Scholar; idem, “Názvy Bratislavy” (The names of Bratislava), in Dejiny Bratislavy, 7–8.

⁶ Majtán, Milan, “Ján Kollár, Pavol Jozef Šafárik a Štúrovci—a názov Bratislava” (Ján Kollár, Pavol Jozef Šafárik and the Štúr circle—and the name Bratislava), Slovenská archivistika (Slovak archival studies) 31, no. 2 (1996): 48–60Google Scholar. It would be misleading to interpret these initiatives as a focused policy for the “Slovakization” of Pressburg. For Kollár and Šafárik (the former by pure myth-making, the latter in a more scholarly discourse), the etymological Slavicizing of place names all over Europe served the overarching purpose of equipping the Slavs with a glorious past, establishing them as equal to the Germans. See Pynsent, Robert B., Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest, 1994), 46–72Google Scholar. This “etymological aggressiveness” also characterized the Czech national revival (to which Kollár and Šafárik significantly contributed). Toponymy and etymology in general were crucial instruments in the creation of a Czech/Slavic world in a geographical sense, in the emerging “territorializing” of the idea of a Czech/Slavic national community; Macura, Vladimír, Znamení zrodu (The signs of the birth), rev. and exp. ed. (Jinočany, 1995), 53–56.Google Scholar

⁷ See Majtán, , “Kollár, Šafárik a Štúrovci,”Google Scholar for a very detailed list of examples.

⁸ The absence of an undisputed Slovak national “capital” was brought up in the 1846 Czech-Slovak debate on Štúr's “linguistic separatism.” The Czech side (including Kollár and Šafárik!) used the lack of such a Slovak center as an argument against splitting up what they saw as one national community. Šrúr and his adherents countered that if in the present situation no such city was at hand, the Slovak language itself could have the key integrating function. Some even dismissed city life in general as alien to the Slovak peasant people. See Butvin, , “Bratislava,” 548–55.Google Scholar

⁹ Quoted from ibid., 555.

¹⁰ Pichler, Tibor, “Nationaleiferer oder Bürger: Institutionalisierung als Problem,” in Bürgertum und bürgerliche Gesellschaft in der Slowakei 1900–1989, ed. Mannová, Elena (Bratislava, 1997), 66Google Scholar. Pichler, argues: “Before 1918 Slovakia appears in the shape of an idea in the national literature. It was no territorial entity with firm contours” (64Google Scholar, n. 5).

¹¹ In the key Slovak political declarations of 1848 and 1861, references to the state are mostly indirect. The most explicit passage is found in the so-called Vienna Memorandum of 6 December 1861: “[T]he Hungarian Slovaks created an independent state even before the immigration of the Magyars to Hungary and had a gratifying level of culture.” Such reasoning primarily served as arguments in the spirit of natural law that the Slovaks were the autochthonous nation of the region and hence equipped with primogenitary rights. The memorandum is reprinted in Dokumenty slovenskej národnej identity a štátnosti (Documents of Slovak national identity and statehood), 2 vols. (Bratislava, 1998), 1:344.Google Scholar

The fall of Great Moravia was eventually associated with the name Bratislava in a poem by Bulla, Juraj Zvestoň, “Žalmy tatranského Slovana”Google Scholar (Psalms of a Tatra Slav), published in 1860 in the almanac Lipa (The linden) and set to music soon afterwards: “Bratislava, Bratislava,/tam zapadla Slávov sláva,/tam pohanské hordy sa vztekaly,/Slávsku chasu dorúbaly./Ozvena naša je:/Bratislava, Bratislava,/tam zasvitne Slávov sláva,/ked' slovenské hroby sa otvoria,/a nový život nám utvoria” (Bratislava, Bratislava,/there the glory of the Slavs fell,/there the heathen hordes raged,/cut down the Slavic village youth./Our response is:/Bratislava, Bratislava/there the glory of the Slavs will shine/when the Slovak graves open/and create a new life for us). The poem refers to a battle near today's Bratislava in 907, where a Bavarian(!) army supporting the collapsing Moravian state was defeated by the Magyars.

¹² In its entry Slovensko (Slovakia), Ottův slovník naučný, vol. 23 (Prague, 1905), 454–62Google Scholar, defines the territory of Slovakia in ethnographic terms, illustrating the entry with an “Ethnographic Map of the Hungarian Slovaks.” Pressburg (labeled Prešpurek, with Pozsony in brackets) appears at the very margin of Slovak territory. Only the definition of the southern and eastern borders of Slovakia caused problems, as the northern border with Galicia and the western border with Moravia were also the outer borders of the Kingdom of Hungary.

¹³ The “eccentric” location of Pressburg/Bratislava has been brought up in arguments against making it the capital of Slovakia both before and after 1918. See Butvin, , “Bratislava”Google Scholar; and Lipták, , “Bratislava as Capital.”Google Scholar Since 1860, the small town Turčianský Svätý Martin ranked as the unofficial national center in competition with Banská Bystrica and other towns of central Slovakia.

¹⁴ The first calls for autonomous political organs and for the recognition of a Slovak territory were presented in the Demands of the Slovak Nation issued in Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš on 10 May 1848, and in an Appeal to the Emperor of 19 March 1849. As independent political activities in Austria were again permitted after 1860, Slovak representatives formulated their demands in a memorandum, issued in Turčianský Svätý Martin on 7 June 1861, and in a memorandum to the emperor, issued in Vienna on 6 December 1861. The latter memorandum contained a very detailed proposal for the territorial and organizational structure of the Upper Hungarian Slovak District, including the first specific suggestion of a Slovak capital: Banská Bystrica in central Slovakia (full texts of all mentioned documents in Dokumenty slovenskej národnej identity, vol. 1, esp. 349).

¹⁵ Mannová, Elena, “Die ungarische und die tschechoslowakische Staatsidee: Der Bewuβtseinswandel der slowakischen Gesellschaft,” in Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Beziehungen zwischen Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutschen, ed. Mommsen, Hans et al. (Essen, 2001), 109–20.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The estimate stems from Hoensch, Jörg K., “Tschechoslowakismus oder Autonomie: Die Auseinandersetzungen um die Eingliederung der Slowakei in die Tschechoslowakische Republik,” in Das Jahr 1919 in der Tschechoslowakei und in Ostmitteleuropa, ed. Lemberg, Hans and Heumos, Peter (Munich, 1993), 130Google Scholar. In his memoirs of the years 1918–20, Vavro Šrobár provides a complete list of names of members of the “Slovak movement,” registered district by district by the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior in 1913 and 1917–18. Šrobár sums up: “The district list contains 526 names. This means that out of 20,000 Slovaks there were about five conscious Slovaks.” Šrobár, Vavro, Osvobodené Slovensko: Pomäti z rokov 1918–1920 (Liberated Slovakia: Memoirs from 1918–1920), vol. 1 (Prague, 1928), 183Google Scholar. See also Fichier, , “Nationaleiferer oder Bürger,” 64–65Google Scholar, on the impossibility of speaking of any Slovak national society before the creation of Czechoslovakia.

¹⁷ The program was inspired by Hungarian political achievements, and it also implied the full recognition of the integrity of the Kingdom of Hungary. Only the Czech Social Democrats, who objected to the state rights doctrine and subscribed to the principle of natural law in nationality questions, questioned this political exclusion of the Slovaks (and supported the Slovak Social Democrats politically and financially), though without openly challenging the dualism of Austria-Hungary; see Galandauer, Jan, “Die Slowaken in den tschechischen politischen Programmen,” Österreichische Osthefte, 36 (1994): 728–30.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Even the Slovakophil Czechs considered the Slovaks to be a branch of the Czech nation (sometimes cordially named “Czechoslovak”) and lamented the Slovak “linguistic separatism” of the 1840s—attitudes that could not but alienate the Slovak national elites. See Vo;šahlíková, Pavla, “Vzájemné vztahy Čechů a Slovaků na přelomu 19. a 20. století v zrcadle dobové publicistiky” (The mutual relations of Czechs and Slovaks at the turn of the twentieth century in the mirror of contemporary journalism), Sborník k dějinám 19. a 20. stoleti (Collection on the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) 13 (1993): 47–61Google Scholar. The pivotal roles played in 1918 and later by Masaryk and his Slovak supporters from the so-called Hlas circle—Vavro Šrobár and others—should not make us forget their far less central status before 1914.

¹⁹ Galandauer, Jan, “Jak se slovenská otázka prosazovala do českého politického programu v období přípravy samostamého československého státu (1916–1918)” (How the Slovak question got into the Czech political program at the time of the preparation of an independent Czechoslovak state), Historický časopis 19 (1971): 178–79.Google Scholar

²⁰ The memorandum is printed in R. W. Seton-Watson and His Relations with the Czechs and Slovaks: Documents 1906–1951, vol. 1 (Prague, 1995), 209–15, esp. 212.Google Scholar

²¹ In this text, addressed to a major foreign decision maker, the Slovaks are bluntly said to be Czechs, and it is claimed (without or against evidence) that they strive for independence and accept the program of unification with Bohemia. A major part of the memorandum is devoted to proving that the new state will be big enough to survive, which again points to the strategic advantages of incorporating Slovakia. A Czech translation of the document is found in Beneš, Edvard, Světová válka a naše revoluce (The world war and our revolution), vol. 3, Dokumenty (Documents) (Prague, 1935), 237–56.Google Scholar

The idea of a corridor was possibly of Croatian origin, but Masaryk had already propagated it in December 1914, according to Beneš's summary of his account of his anti-Austrian program. Masaryk first suggested negotiating the corridor with the Slovenes, “then to prepare ethnographic maps,” that is, to find additional evidence for the project's legitimacy. See Beneš, , Dokumenty, 3–9, esp. 5Google Scholar. In his 1915 memorandum to Grey, Masaryk admitted that the corridor's population was mostly German, though with Serbo-Croat minorities. The corridor kept popping up in Masaryk's and Beneš's correspondence and memoranda until the summer of 1919.

²² The Czech Foreign Committee was turned into the Czechoslovak National Council. The roles in this naming game were not always distributed as one would expect. In the summer of 1916, the Slovak Štefánik asked the Czech Beneš to avoid the term Czechoslovak in order not to complicate matters with the French, who could not pronounce the word! See Beneš's letter to Masaryk of 20 June 1916, printed in Radier, Frank, ed., Weg von Österreich! Das Weltkriegsexil von Masaryk und Beneš im Spiegel ihrer Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1918 (Berlin, 1995), 303.Google Scholar

²³ See Švorc, Peter, “Slováci v Amerike a vývin myšlienky česko-slovenskej štátnosri” (The Slovaks in America and the evolution of the idea of Czecho-Slovak statehood), Sborník k dějinám 19. a 20. století 13 (1993): 115–29Google Scholar; Minár, Imrich, Americkí Slováci a Slovensko 1880–1980 (The American Slovaks and Slovakia, 1880–1980) (Bratislava, 1994), 96–128, 193–208Google Scholar; Pekník, Miroslav, “Názory na riešenie slovenskej otázky za prvej svetovej vojny a počatky smerovania slovenskej politiky k vzniku Česko-Slovenska” (Opinions on the solution of the Slovak question during World War I and the beginnings of the orientation of Slovak politics toward the creation of Czecho-Slovakia), in Miroslav Pekník a kolektív, Pohl'ady na slovenskú politiku (Views on Slovak Politics) (Bratislava, 2000), 89–95 and 101–9Google Scholar; Hadler, Frank, “Die Herausbildung der tschechischslowakischen Zusammenarbeit im Exil während des Ersten Weltkrieges,” in Der Erste Weltkrieg, ed. Mommsen et al., 81–92Google Scholar. Masaryk's correspondence with the representatives of the American Slovaks (and with Beneš about them) is very interesting. His usage of “we” and “they” reveals that Masaryk thought of himself as a Czech (and not as the “Czechoslovak” he turned into after 1918), while there were severe limits to how far he would let the Slovaks influence his plans for the future of the country; see numerous examples of this in Hadler, , Weg von Österreich!Google Scholar

²⁴ To be precise, the declaration of the Czech deputies in the Reichsrat of 30 May 1917, in which the demand for a union with the Slovaks was made, spoke of the “Czechoslav” nation (čzeskoslovanský národ; in the German protocol: tschechoslawischer Stamm), and not of “Czechoslovaks.” See Bakke, Elisabeth, Doomed to Failure? The Czechoslovak Nation Project and the Slovak Autonomist Reaction 1918–1938 (Oslo, 1998), 185Google Scholar. In later Czech reprints of the speech, the adjective has been changed to Czechoslovak; see, for instance, Galandauer, , “Jak se slovenská otázka,” 181Google Scholar; or Beneš, , Svétová válka a naše revoluce, 1:449.Google Scholar

²⁵ See Galandauer, , “Die Slowaken”Google Scholar; idem, “Jak se slovenská otázka.”

²⁶ Lipták, , “Bratislava as Capital,” 98.Google Scholar

²⁷ Interpretations of the Hodža-Bartha agreement vary greatly in Slovak and Hungarian sources, the former stressing its tactical and temporary nature in the perception of both sides, the latter seeing in it a sincere attempt from the Hungarian government to define a just border with the new Czechoslovak state. See Hronský, Marián, “Budapeštianske rokovania Milana Hodžu a prvá demarkačná čiara medzi Slovenskom a Mad'arskom” (Milan Hodža's negotiations in Budapest and the first demarcation line between Slovakia and Hungary), in Miroslav Pekník a kolektív, Milan Hodža: štátnik a politik (Milan Hodža: Statesman and politician) (Bratislava, 2002), 157–81Google Scholar; Pastor, Peter, “Hungarian Territorial Losses During the Liberal-Democratic Revolution of 1918–1919,” in War and Society in East Central Europe, vol. 6, Essays on World War I: Total War and Peacemaking, A Case Study on Trianon, ed. Király, Béla K., Pastor, Peter, and Sanders, Ivan (New York, 1982), 261–62Google Scholar; Romsics, Ignác, “Edvard Beneš and the Czechoslovak-Hungarian Border,” The New Hungarian Quarterly 33 (1992): 101.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Hronský, Marián, “Obsadenie Bratislavy čs. vojskom na rozhraní rokov 1918–1919 a postoje mestského obyvatel'stva” (The occupation of Bratislava by the Czechoslovak army around New Year 1918–1919 and the attitude of the city's inhabitants), in Armáda, město, spoločnost' od 15. storočia do roku 1918 (Army, city, society from the fifteenth century until 1918), ed. Dangl, Vojtech and Varga, János J. (Bratislava, 2002)Google Scholar, for a very detailed account of the occupation.

In a memoir of the Czechoslovak occupation/liberation of Slovakia, Lt. Col. František Bartoš gave a wonderful account of the problems involved: “What was the order from Prague? Occupy Slovakia—no more and no less. Surely an enviable freedom, which first of all forced us to stake out our operational goals ourselves. So we took Slovakia in the size in which our patriot Kálal had dreamt of it and professor Niederle scientifically analyzed it.… [T]here is one thing I should not forget here, which may perhaps appear a trifle to any layman, but which has an enormous importance for every warfare, for even the smallest leader and which we missed: a map of Slovakia.” Quoted in Hronský, Marián, Boj o Slovensko a Trianon 1918–1920 (The struggle for Slovakia and Trianon 1918–1920) (Bratislava, 1998), 132.Google Scholar

²⁹ Bratislava is used in references to the city relating to the time after its official renaming on 16 March 1919. In August, Czechoslovakia also obtained Allied acceptance of the creation of a Czechoslovak bridgehead on the right bank of the Danube (the Petržalka area), whereby the borders of the Bratislava area obtained their present shape. The Trianon Peace Treaty of 4 June 1920 brought the final confirmation of the new border.

³⁰ Author's retranslation of the Czech version of the interview. The reference to “Bratislava delegations” (delegací bratislavských) is undoubtedly a mistake. In January 1919, Masaryk did not yet use the term, which would also have made no sense to a British readership. Elsewhere the Czech text has Prěpurk. Masaryk, T. G., Cesta demokracie. Soubor projevů za republiky (The road of democracy: A collection of speeches from the time of the republic), vol. 1, 1918–1920 (Prague, 1939), 66Google Scholar. In the interview with the Deli Hirlap, Masaryk bordered on cynicism: “[W]hat concerns Pressburg, it basically belongs as little to you as to us, it is after all a German city. In spite of this we have more right to it than you do, as its surroundings are Slovak. We need the Danube” (ibid., 69–70). This passage then found its way into the Pressburg Slovak Robotnické noviny (Workers' newspaper) on 14 January. The article is printed in Horváth, Vladimír, Rákoš, Elemír, and Watzka, Jozef, eds., Bratislava, hlavné mesto Slovenska. Pripojenie Bratislavy k československej republike roku 1918–1919. Dokumenty (Bratislava, capital of Slovakia: The attachment of Bratislava to the Czechoslovak Republic 1918–1919. Documents) (Bratislava, 1977), 202.Google Scholar

Masaryk offered the same key arguments for wanting the city—“Presburg proč chceme” (Why we want Pressburg)—in a letter to Beneš of 5 January 1919, making it clear that ethnographic arguments alone would be counterproductive; printed in Šolle, Zdeněk, Masaryk a Beneš ve svých dopisech z doby pařížských mírových jednání v roce 1919 (Masaryk and BeneŠ in their letters from the time of the Paris peace conferences in 1919), vol. 2 (Prague, 1994), 148Google Scholar. In January and February 1919, the Czechoslovak government prepared eleven memoranda for the peace conference, explaining the Czechoslovak demands. In the second memorandum, on the territorial demands of the Czechoslovak Republic, one finds the following description of Pressburg: “First of all, the city of Pressburg (Presbourg in the French original) itself has a special position. The majority of the population is indisputably German, although the city is on Hungarian territory. The Slovaks are in the minority compared to the Magyars and the Germans. But all suburbs and the surrounding countryside are Slovak. The city was for centuries a Slovak city. It has always been regarded as the capital of Slovakia.” Quoted from Raschhofer, Hermann, Die tschechoslowakischen Denkschriften für die Friedenskonferenz von Paris 1919/1920 (Berlin, 1937), 52Google Scholar. Still, in Paris, when asked in February 1919 by representatives of the Great Powers about the ethnic composition of Pressburg, Beneš replied, “Presbourg est une ville entièrement slovaque” (Pressburg is a totally Slovak city). Quoted in Romsics, , “Beneš and the Border,” 100.Google Scholar

³¹ Salner, Peter, “Premenovanie mesta ako katalyzátor vzt'ahov medzi obyvatel'mi (Pozsony/Pressburg versus Bratislava)”Google Scholar (The renaming of the city as a catalyst in the relations between the inhabitants [Pozsony/Pressburg versus Bratislava]), in Slova města (Words of the city), Cahiers du CEFRES No. 18, ed. Uherek, Zdeněk and Bazac-Billaud, Laurent (Prague, 2000), 136–37Google Scholar. Salner writes here: “Without much hesitation or moral reservations the autochthonous inhabitants [of Bratislava] sacrificed their ethnic affiliation on the altar of the ever new and constantly changing values of the present powers that be. But they consistently persevered in their positive relations to the environment in which they had their roots.” The sudden regime change of 1918 thus led to mass conversions in declared nationality all over Slovakia, though less so in Bratislava than elsewhere. Compared with the 1910 census, the number of people declaring themselves to be Magyars fell from the extraordinary 30.3 percent in 1919 to 3.7 percent in Trnava, from 35.5 to 3.7 percent in Trenčín, from 52.8 to 17.7 percent in Nitra, and from 33.9 to 28.9 percent in Bratislava. Data from L'ubomír Lipták, “Elitenwechsel in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft der Slowakei im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts, ,” in Bürgertum und bürgerliche Gesellschaft in der Slowakei 1900–1939, ed. Mannová, Elena (Bratislava, 1997), 76.Google Scholar

³² Jelínek, Ješajahu Andrej, Ždia na Slovensku v 19. a 20. storočí. Zborník statí (The Jews in Slovakia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: A collection of articles), vol. 1 (Bratislava, 1999), 10–15, 25–27, 38Google Scholar; and Salner, Peter, Židia na Slovensku medzi tradíciou a asimiláciou (The Jews in Slovakia between tradition and assimilation) (Bratislava, 2000), 56, 66Google Scholar. Pressburg had a very strong and renowned orthodox community, and according to Salner (62), the city is still known as Pressburg throughout the Orthodox world. Using Yiddish or German, the Jews of Upper Hungary called this region Oberland and themselves Oberländer; see Jelínek, , Židia na Slovensku, 10, 49.Google Scholar

³³ Svetoň, Ján, “Od mad'arizácie k reslovakizácii Bratislavy” (From Magyarization to the re-Slovakization of Bratislava), in Slovanská Bratislava, 1:275Google Scholar. The author notes that the effect of this tremendous ethnic mixing was widespread national indifference, immunity from political nationalism, and a differentiation based on class rather than nationality.

³⁴ See Salner, , “Premenovanie mesta,” 140.Google Scholar

³⁵ Mannová, Elena, “Transformácia identity bratislavských Nemcov v 19. storočí” (The transformation of the identity of the Bratislava Germans in the nineteenth century), Historický časopis 43 (1995): 437–49.Google Scholar

³⁶ Pressburger Zeitung, 10 10 1918Google Scholar; reprinted in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 79–80Google Scholar. The Press-burger Zeitung refers to the city as Pozsony rather than Pressburg (the latter form is used once). One may interpret this as a sign of Hungarian state patriotism, as Pozsony was the city's official name, but also as an expression of the linguistic laxity of the newspaper's correspondents.

³⁷ See Jahn, Egbert K., Die Deutschen in der Slowakei in den Jahren 1918–1929 (Munich, 1971), 35–36Google Scholar, esp. n. 43. According to Jahn, the main motive for refusing the Austrian overtures was economic, a fear of becoming a Viennese backwater.

³⁸ Quoted in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 80Google Scholar, n. 1. Here and in the following account of naming policies and practices, I have in all translations chosen to preserve the forms used in the original.

³⁹ In his long treatise from early November on the strategic challenges of incorporating Slovakia, the Czech writer Alois Chytil consistently used Wilsonovo město, giving Prešpurk in brackets only once. Chytil had great plans for the city but was against making it the administrative and political center of Slovakia due to its eccentric location. The role of capital had to go instead to some central Slovak town. Virulent anti-Semitism (about 12 percent of Pressburg's inhabitants were Jews) and great territorial ambitions marked Chynl's treatise. Like Masaryk before him, Chytil wanted a bridgehead on the right bank of the Danube across Wilsonovo město big enough to link the country to the south Slav state! Quoted in Bratislava, hlamé mesto, 86–115Google Scholar; esp. 87–88, 93–94, 103, 109–10.

⁴⁰ Kle, V.., “Wilsonovo město?” Naše řeě (Our language) 3 (1919): 24–25.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Krěméry, Štefan, “Slovenská rozpomienka na Bratislavu” (A Slovak memoir of Bratislava), in Slovenský prevrat (The Slovak revolution), ed. Medvecký, Karol A., 4 vols. (Trnava, 1931), 4:71.Google Scholar The Slovak National Council in Pressburg was established on 27 October—three days before the main Slovak National Council in Martin. At first, the Hungarian authorities in the city (who, with German and Magyar support, set up their own National Committee for Pressburg on 31 October) tolerated the council, but around 10 November, as national tensions grew, the Slovaks were forced to leave the city. Ibid., 72; see also Zelenák, Peter, “Protichodnost' záujmov. Vplyv politickych srran na osud Bratislavy” (Antagonisms of interests: The influence of the political parties on the fate of Bratislava), Historická revue (Historical review) 7, no. 4 (1996): 18–19Google Scholar; Kropilák, Miroslav, “Úvod” (Introduction), in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 21–22.Google Scholar

⁴² Kropilák, , “Úvod,” 26Google Scholar. Dvorak repeats this information in his popular history of Bratislava, adding that “postcards, maps, and stamps were published, rubber stamps were produced, [the new name] was communicated to Prague and Budapest in petitions, but it didn't catch on.” Dvorak, Pavel, Zlatá kniha Bratislavy (The golden book of Bratislava) (Bratislava, 1993), 475Google Scholar. A visit to the Bratislava City Archive in the summer of 2001 brought no trace of any such postcards or stamps, and so far I have found no primary sources confirming Kropilák's account.

⁴³ See Jahn, , Deutschen in der Slowakei, 39Google Scholar, n. 68. Also, Kováč mentions German plans from November 1918 for the creation of a free city or for some kind of affiliation of the city with an independent Burgenland under the name “Republik Hienzenland”; Kováč, Dušan, “Slovenskí Nemci v ríšskonemeckej a sudetonemeckej politike” (The Slovak Germans in Reichs-German and Sudeten German politics), Historický časopis 37 (1989): 842.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ In January 1919, Šrobár dissolved all Slovak national councils—including the central council in Martin—by decree, thereby securing for his ministry the monopoly of authority in Slovakia on behalf of the Czechoslovak Republic. See Hronský, , Boj o Slovensko, 91.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For a few weeks, the Pressburg district had two heads, Zoch and his Hungarian counterpart. Zoch formally took office in Pressburg on 4 January 1919, but resigned again in the summer of 1919, frustrated by the national conflicts in the city and by accusations that his moderate line was “pro-Hungarian.” For a portrait of Zoch, see Kováč, Dušan a kolektív, Muži deklarácie (The men of the declaration) (Bratislava, 2000), 182–98.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Šrobár, Vavro, “Poznámky o presídlení prvej slovenskej vlády do Bratislavy dňa 4. II. 1919” (Notes on the transfer of the first Slovak government to Bratislava on 4 February 1919), in Pamätný spis na oslavu 15. výročia príchodu československej vlády do Bratislavy (Memorial album for the celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the arrival of the Czechoslovak government to Bratislava), ed. Faust, Ovidius (Bratislava, 1934), 11–14Google Scholar. Zoch first officially announced the city's new status on 4 January (See Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 168Google Scholar), and he immediately began to prepare a big ceremonial reception for the government.

⁴⁷ According to Kropilák (“Úvod,” 23Google Scholar), the Czechoslovak government decided to move Šrobár's ministry to Pressburg on 16 January 1919, but clearly this only confirmed a decision already on its way to being implemented. According to Lipták, the city was officially declared the capital of Slovakia on 18 January. He suggests that on Šrobár's arrival in Žilina, he had already decided to move on to Pressburg at a later stage; Lipták, , “Bratislava as Capital,” 99.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Šrobár, , “Poznámky o presídlení,” 13.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Digital Library of the Czech Parliament, “Národní shromáždění československé 1918–1920” (The Czechoslovak National Assembly 1918–1920). http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1918ns/ps/stenprot/022schuz/s022011.htmGoogle Scholar (accessed 2 October 2003). Also František Tomášek, chairman of the National Assembly, spoke in this vein (and with similar oscillations in the designation of the city) when reporting on 6 February 1919 on the arrival of the Slovak government in Pressburg two days before. Digital Library of the Czech Parliament, “Národní shromáždění československé 1918–1920.” http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1918ns/ps/stenprot/026schuz/s026001.htmGoogle Scholar (accessed 2 October 2003).

⁵⁰ Lipták, , “Bratislava as Capital,” 99Google Scholar. In his monumental history of the making of Czechoslovakia, Peroutka too mentioned practical concerns (Pressburg being the only representative Slovak city) and the wish to demonstrate that the city firmly belonged to Czechoslovakia as the main reason for Šrobár's decision. Peroutka made no attempt to present the city as in any way Slovak, describing the arrival of Šrobár's government in the city on 4 February 1919, as “reminding mostly of a march into a conquered hostile city.” Peroutka, Ferdinand, Budování státu (The building of the state), vol. 2, part 1 (Prague, 1934), 690–91.Google Scholar

⁵¹ The preferred phrase is “this glorious city”; the speech is printed in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 252–53.Google Scholar

⁵² Ibid., 273.

⁵³ Ibid., 253.

⁵⁴ The Slovak Social Democrats were already pro-Czechoslovak in 1918. The party was, however, small in Pressburg, where most workers were organized in the Hungarian party. See Zelenák, , “Prorichodnost' záujmov,”Google Scholar on the gradual shift of attitudes among the Hungarian Social Democrats (many of whom were ethnic Germans) from hostility toward Czechoslovakia to reluctant acceptance of the new state. In an article of 24 January 1919, the Robotnické noviny supported the coming of the Slovak government, writing in a very patriotic tone: “The Prešporok Slovak minority—and this is mostly composed of the working strata—must show that Prešporok is in its core Slovak” (printed in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 223Google Scholar). Showing this in 1919 was by no means an easy task.

⁵⁵ Document printed in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 301.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Pražské noviny (Prague news), 16 02 1919Google Scholar. The newspaper clipping was kept by the Ministry of the Interior in a file found in the Stární ústřední arcniv (State Central Archive; hereafter cited as SÚA), Ministerstvo Vnitra—Stará Registratura, 1919–24, Oddělení spisovny 21, číslo 252/1.

⁵⁷ Document printed in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 314.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid., 317. Šrobár's claim that Bratislava, not Bratislav, is historically correct is, as argued earlier, dubious. All medieval forms were masculine, as were Šafárik's first Slavic reconstructions, so the shift from the masculine to the feminine introduced by Štúr was probably aesthetically or poetically motivated.

⁵⁹ All records of the parliament's meetings from 1918 to 1920 can be found on the web server of today's Czech parliament (http://www.psp.cz/eknih). The trend in parliamentary debates, law proposals, resolutions, and so on, corresponds to the one met in the city itself. Until January, Prešpurk or Prešporok prevail, then Bratislava begins to appear (its declension still subject to many variations), in particular in debates on the celebration of the Slovak government's arrival in the city on 4 February. The first use of Bratislava in parliament seems to have been Juriga's speech of 28 January 1919 (see note 49). From March 1919, Bratislava appears as the standard term, and Prešpurk occurs only occasionally.

⁶⁰ In their correspondence about the Czechoslovak demands at the peace conference in Paris, Masaryk and Beneš used only Prešpurk well into the summer of 1919. Masaryk first has Bratislava in a letter of 14 June, while on 12 July Beneš still uses Prešpurk. The letters show how Masaryk's territorial ambitions in the area grew, first with regard to the bridgehead opposite Pressburg and then to the Žitný Ostrov (Großschütt/Rye Island). See Šolle, , Masaryk a Beneš ve svých dopisech, 193, 214–17, 235, 252, 275, 281, 302.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Kropilák writes: “After a lengthy explanatory and enquiring correspondence between these organs [the Ministry of Defence and the Presidium of the Council of Ministers], the district authorities in Bratislava and Minister Vavro Šrobár from 10 February to 27 March, it was decided … [to call the city Bratislava].” Kropilák, , “Úvod,” 26Google Scholar. The editors of Bratislava, hlavné mesto claim that this correspondence is kept in the State Central Archive in Prague, but my own visit there in January 2003 did not reveal any relevant documents from February and March 1919 not printed in the Bratislava, hlavně mesto volume.

⁶² Kropilák, , “Úvod,” 26.Google Scholar A survey of Czech cultural periodicals from 1919 revealed no debate or information on the name change—the general trend was eventually a remarkably low frequency of reports from Slovakia, which was clearly a very peripheral concern in 1919. The review Naše Doha (Our era)—traditionally close to Masaryk—used Prešpurk in its 20 April issue and Bratislava from 20 May onward, but still with only sporadic Slovak news.

⁶³ Document printed in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 351Google Scholar. On 14 April 1920, the Czechoslovak parliament passed two laws of very similar wording and content (Laws No. 266/1920 and 267/1920), the first stating in sections 1 and 4 that every town and village has one (that is, only one) official name, to be stipulated by the Ministry of the Interior, which must be used “by all courts, state and public authorities, organs, institutes, and factories and also in contact with these.”

⁶⁴ Ripka, Ivor, “Aktivity štátnych orgánov pri premenúvaní bratislavských ulíc a námestí r. 1919–1921” (The activities of the state organs at the renaming of Bratislava streets and squares 1919–1921), in Urbanonyma v kontexte histórie a súčasnosti (Urban names in the context of history and the present time), ed. Odaloš, Pavol and Majtán, Milan (Banská Bystrica, 1996), 91–97Google Scholar. While all street names referring to persons or events of all-Hungarian prominence were removed, Metod Bulla, Zoch's successor as Župan, asked the committee in charge to preserve old designations referring to prominent characters in the city's history. To the great frustration of the city's German inhabitants, this guideline was not always respected. See Lipták, L'ubomír, “Rok 1918 a rekonštrukcia historickej pamäti v mestách na Slovensku” (1918 and the reconstruction of historical memory in the cities of Slovakia), in Acta contemporanea: K pětašedesátínám Viléma Prečana (Acta contemporanee: For Vilém Prečan's sixty-fifth birthday) (Prague, 1998), 186–87.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Lipták, , “Rok 1918 a rekonštrukcia,” 189Google Scholar. Pieces of the monument were, Lipták tells, smuggled to Hungary where they were exhibited in the National Museum; in Bratislava, bits of the marble were used in a new monument to the victims of World War I and also in a new bust of Palacký.

⁶⁶ The Petöfi monument was situated on the central square of the city, originally the Promenade. It was renamed the Kossuth Lajos tér in 1899, Palackého námestie in 1921, and Hviezdoslavovo námestie after 1930. See Lipták, Ľubomír, “Collective Identity and Public Spaces,” in Collective Identities in Central Europe in Modern Times, ed. Csáky, Moritz and Mannová, Elena (Bratislava, 1999), 124–25Google Scholar; Juráková, Zora, ed., Bratislavský topografický lexikon (Topographic dictionary of Bratislava) (Bratislava, 1990), 125–26.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ This was, as Lipták has convincingly shown, a long and in some ways still incomplete process, happening simultaneously with the establishment after 1920 of an understanding of “Slovakia” as a firmly defined territory. The national elites in Martin and elsewhere were skeptical of the choice of a city at the margin of this new territory, with a non-Slovak majority, and without any unequivocally Slovak past. Also, in strict terms the capital of Slovakia, as of all Czechoslovakia, was Prague. This fact and the centralism characterizing both interwar Czechoslovakia and the Communist regime (even after the federalization of the state in 1968, which made Bratislava the capital of the Slovak Socialist Republic) further hampered the establishment of Bratislava as the unconditional Slovak national center. See Lipták, , “Bratislava as Capital,” 102–14.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Salner, Peter a kolektív, Taká bola Bratislava (How Bratislava was) (Bratislava, 1991), 18Google Scholar; Grusková, Anna, “‘The Soul Remained Jewish’: Bratislava Theatre between the Wars, Arthur Schnitzler and the Reflection of Jewish Identity,” in Collective Identities, ed. Csáky and Mannová, 111–13.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See the relevant documents in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 327, 351Google Scholar. In 1930, however, when a census revealed that the number of Magyars in the city had fallen below 20 percent, the text in Hungarian on all street signs was immediately removed. See Lipták, Ľubomír, “Nehlavné hlavné mesto?” (A noncapital capital?), OS—Fórum občianskej spoločnosti (OS—Forum for a civic society) 8 (2000): 5.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ ÚA, Ministerstvo Vnitra—Starà Registratura, 1919–1924Google Scholar, Oddělení spisovny 21, čislo 252/1.

⁷¹ Ibid., file no. 36655/1923. Jahn writes that attempts in 1919 to force the Pressburger Zeitung and the Pressburger Presse to change their titles were abandoned after vehement protests; Jahn, , Deutschen in der Slowakei, 41.Google Scholar

⁷² SÚA, Ministerstvo Vnitra—Starà Registratura, 1919–1924Google Scholar, Oddělení spisovny 21, číslo 252/1, file no. 12427/1924. A complaint from the Slovenská domovina in Trenčín in 1920 about the continued use of Pressburg in two Prague German newspapers was dismissed with similar arguments: these newspapers were private and not communicating with any authorities. File no. 35030/1920.

⁷³ Mannová notices that although collectivist tendencies had been present in the city since the early twentieth century, they attained massive proportions after 1919, reinforced by hitherto unknown forms of ethnic radicalization imported from Bohemia. Mannová, Elena, “Die Entstehung einer neuen Hauptstadt und der Wandel der Vereinsöffentlichkeit: Bratislava 1900–1939,” in Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in Ostmitteleuropa 1900–1939, ed. Hofmann, Andreas R. and Wendland, Anna Veronika (Stuttgart, 2002), 185–87.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Salner, Peter, “Tolerancia a intolerancia vo vel'kých mestách Strednej Európy (model Bratislavy)” (Tolerance and intolerance in the big cities of central Europe [the model of Bratislava]), Slovenský národopis (Slovak ethnography) 41 (1993): 3–13Google Scholar, esp. 7–9; Luther, Daniel, “Spoločenské konflikty v poprevratovej Bratislave (1919–1924)” (Social conflicts in Bratislava after the revolution [1919–1924]), Slovenský národopis 41 (1993): 16–28Google Scholar; idem, “Polarizáda bratislavskej spoločnosti v prevrate roku 1918” (The polarization of Bratislava society during the Revolution of 1918), in Etnicita a mesto (Ethnicity and the city), ed. Salner, Peter and Luther, Daniel (Bratislava, 2001), 11–32.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Salner, , “Premenovanie mesta,” 138Google Scholar; Luther, , “Polarizáda spoločnosti,” 28Google Scholar. The newcomers often talked of themselves as “Republicans” confronting the old “Monarchists.” In 1928, J. J. Skalský portrayed the city's “old established population” in the following way: “In the Kingdom of Hungary, the people of Bratislava were already a special nation by themselves. One historical anecdote says that the Pressburgers once sent a delegation to the Emperor Franz Joseph, who asked whether they were Magyars or Germans. The answer was: Wir sind halt Press-burger. … This anecdote best characterizes the nature and thinking of the old established inhabitants, nationally undefined, benevolent, more frivolous than adventurous.” Quoted from Grusková, , “Bratislava Theatre,” 109.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Luther, , “Polarizácia spoločnosti,” 29Google Scholar. There were thus also Czech-Slovak tensions, as the former tended to speak more with the Germans, the latter more with the Hungarians. A civil servant employed in the Ministry With Full Power to Administer Slovakia noted in a report to Prague of 28 June 1919: the inhabitants of Bratislava are “a nationally unconscious, half-Magyar, half-German international mass, which has no national or political convictions whatsoever.” Quoted from Nurmi, Ismo, Slovakia—a Playground for Nationalism and National Identity (Helsinki, 1999), 90.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Jelínek, , Židia na Slovensku, 54, 66–69, 81–88Google Scholar; Salner, , Židia na Slovensku, 84–89Google Scholar, describes the richly differentiated religious organizational life among the city's Jews. See also Salner, Peter, “Etnická identita jako faktor polarizácie židovskej komunity” (Ethnic identity as a factor in the polarization of the Jewish community), in Etnicita a mesto, 209Google Scholar. Unlike in pre-1918 Hungary, Jews in Czechoslovakia could declare their nationality as Jewish; about 53 percent of the 4.5 percent of the population in Slovakia declaring themselves to be religiously Jewish did so in 1921. Figures from Mannová, Elena, “Entwicklungsbedingungen bürgerlicher Schichten in der Slowakei im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Bürgertum und bürgerliche Gesellschaft in der Slowakei 1900–1989, ed. Mannová, Elena (Bratislava, 1997), 16.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Ernst Schwarz, a Prague German, claimed in a 1928 article on the etymology of Pressburg that the Slovaks in and around the city still used their traditional Prešporok, and argued that Prešporok/Prešpurk were far more natural Slovak and Czech forms than Bratislava. See Schwarz, Ernst, “Die Namen Pressburgs” and “Weiteres zu den Namen Pressburgs,” Karpathenland 1 (1928): 19–25, 80–84Google Scholar. Characteristically, the study of the etymology of the city's names only began in the 1920s, after the renaming. See Stanislav, , “Bratislava—Prešporok—Pressburg—Pozsony,” 22–23Google Scholar for references.

⁷⁹ Luther, , “Polarizácia spoločnosti,” 26Google Scholar. See also Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 352–53Google Scholar, for a similar demand made on 7 July 1919; and Kováč, , “Slovenskí Nemci,” 843Google Scholar. The record of the April meeting is printed in Bratislava, hlavné mesto, 336–37Google Scholar (the French text uses Pressbourg only). See also Lipták, “Bratislava as Capital,” 101, on how the old inhabitants learned to profit economically from Bratislava's new status.

⁸⁰ In November 1919, the city had 30,221 Germans, 26,964 Czechoslovaks, 24,577 Magyars, and 1,461 inhabitants of other nationalities. See Luther, , “Spoločenské konflikty,” 17Google Scholar. Salner has the following figures for 1930: Slovaks 29.8 percent, Magyars 16.2 percent, Germans 28.1 percent, and others (mostly Czechs who are here registered separately from the Slovaks) 25.9 percent; Salner, , “Premenovanie mesta,” 136.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Šrobár, , “Poznámky o presídlení,” 13.Google Scholar

⁸² Lipták, , “Bratislava as Capital,” 106.Google Scholar

⁸³ Lipták, , “Nehlavné hlavné mesto?” 5Google Scholar. See also idem, “Bratislava as Capital,” 106–7Google Scholar. In Salner's terms the “Pressburgers” were the ones who disappeared, even though the term Prešpurák was also used locally after the war to refer to people who had roots in the city and who knew its three main languages; with time it also came to refer to the older generations of immigrants who had learned to identify with the city even if knowing only Slovak. See Salner, , “Premenovanie mesta,” 141.Google Scholar