It is almost unbelievable that two major figures of Slovak history – Ľudovít Štúr and Alexander Dubček – were born in the same house in the village of Uhrovec in western Slovakia. The village lies beneath Mount Rokoš, on the border of the Nitra Hills and the Strážov Mountains. Štúr loved the surrounding nature and often returned here.
The house is situated in the center of the village below the manor, which belonged to the Zay family. The father of Ľudovít Štúr was a teacher, and therefore the house also contained a school, attended by children aged 6 to 12. In the past, the entrance to the house was divided – one entrance for the teacher’s family and another for the pupils. In the family’s part of the house, visitors can see two rooms. One room features educational panels about the Štúr family, while the other presents contemporary furniture. In one of these rooms – it is not known which – both Ľudovít Štúr and Alexander Dubček were born. In the schoolroom, visitors can see what desks and slates looked like, the same kind children once wrote on. In the past, the school accomodated as many as 80 children. It was especially crowded in winter when the children did not have to help in the fields. Each pupil had to bring a log during the winter to fuel the stove so that teaching could begin. From here, Ľudovít Štúr left for the Gymnasium in Ráb (today Győr, Hungary). In the courtyard of the house, a cart was prepared in which, along with clothes and food, he also took bedding, and as a 12-year-old boy he set out on a four-day journey. The exhibition in the house brings visitors closer not only to the life and work but also the legacy of Ľudovít Štúr. There is another exhibition denoting the milestones in the life of Alexander Dubček. In 1965 the house was declared a national cultural monument.
Ľudovít Štúr
Ľudovít Štúr was born on October 28, 1815. During his studies in Ráb he began to perceive and experience national oppression and the humiliation of Slovaks. When in September 1829, at the age of 14, he came to study at the Lutheran Lyceum in Bratislava, he found there several Slovak students organized in a self-education association called the Czech-Slovak Society. Its aim was to study the national language and literature. Štúr immediately drew attention with his passionate speeches. Later, he became the society’s secretary and vice-chairman. From this student association emerged a patriotic organization that unsettled the authorities. In 1838–1839 he continued his studies at the University of Halle, focusing primarily on linguistics and history. Later he became a deputy at Palkovič’s department, where he fully developed his abilities and at the same time engaged in intense political activity. The highlight of Štúr’s political and cultural work in this period was the decision, made together with Jozef Miloslav Hurban and Michal Miloslav Hodža in July 1843, to establish a new codified literary language based on the central Slovak dialect. At the end of 1843 Štúr was forcibly dismissed from his deputy post at the department. In the summer of 1844 in Liptovský Mikuláš, together with Hurban and Hodža, he founded the association Tatrín, which published the Slovak National Newspaper with the literary supplement The Tatra Eagle. In 1847, at the age of 32, Ľudovít Štúr became a member of the Hungarian Diet representing the town of Zvolen. He died in 1856 following a hunting accident.
Alexander Dubček
Alexander Dubček was born in the house in Uhrovec in 1921, 106 years after Ľudovít Štúr. Interestingly, his parents, who were both Slovak, had met in America, where they had gone like many others in search of work. They returned from America shortly before Alexander’s birth together with his older brother Július. The family lived in a room in the house offered to them by a family friend, staying there for three years. They moved out in 1925 when his parents, during the economic crisis, enrolled in Interhelpo, a cooperative colony in Kyrgyzstan, where they found a new home. They returned to Slovakia in 1938. At 18, Alexander joined the illegal Communist Party in protest against fascism and took part in the fighting of the Slovak National Uprising. From 1949 he served in various political positions. At the turn of 1967–1968 he became the leader of the reform process in Czechoslovakia, which was violently interrupted by the invasion of the Soviet Union and its allies. For his opposition to this intervention, Dubček was forced out of political and public life. After the fall of the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia in November 1989, he was elected chairman of the Federal Assembly. In the spring of 1992 he became chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia. Even during his lifetime Alexander Dubček became a symbol of the struggle for democracy and humanity. He died in a car accident in 1992.
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