The massive increase in the consumption of spirits in the first half of the 19th century sparked a temperance movement in Upper Hungary (present-day Slovakia). Many pastors, teachers, doctors, mayors, officials and businessmen discouraged drinking. Temperance societies (or sobriety associations) became a part of the Štúr concept of nation-building. In the 1840s, the Slovak national activists associated with the person of Ľudovít Štúr (1815–1856) attempted to create a network of cultural institutions, with a particular preference for three types of association, sometimes combined with one another – temperance societies, mutual provident societies and Sunday schools for the training of artisans.
The struggle against the excessive use of alcohol invoked the example of the Irish “Apostle of Temperance”, Theobald Mathew. The first temperance society was established in Liptov in 1840. The movement’s main organizer in Slovakia was the Catholic priest Štefan Závodník (1813–1885), who had encountered abstinence programmes during his travels in Silesia and Galicia and disseminated these ideas through regular priestly meetings, sermons and the press. According to an estimate made by the Lutheran priest Jozef Miloslav Hurban, author of Slovo o spolkách mjernosti a školách ňeďeľních (“A word on temperance societies and Sunday schools”, 1846), there were c.500 such associations in Slovakia. Their members would swear in church that they would henceforth abstain from spirits. However, these societies were short-lived; after two or three years, their members’ vows of fidelity would expire and would generally not be renewed. They mostly originated in rural areas, but there were some in the towns and cities, for example Bardejov, and amongst the Slovak Lutheran students in Levoča, Kežmarok and Prešov. The Tatrín association, the first Slovak cultural institution with nationwide ambitions (1844-48), was also involved in the organization of a temperance movement. It was thanks to these associations that representatives of the national movement were able to overcome their confessional and ideological divides.
In August 1847, the founders of temperance associations from 10 counties in Upper Hungary met at the Catholic parish church in Veselé pri Piešťanoch and founded the Central Temperance Association. Those present from both confessions held discussions in Slovak, Hungarian and Latin; the minutes were written in Latin. A petition against the distilling of spirits and drunkenness was presented to a parliamentary committee, but never discussed by the Hungarian parliament. Its agenda was overtaken by the revolutionary events of 1848.
The expansion and authority of temperance societies in Slovakia grew as a result of natural disasters – floods, crop failures in the hilly areas and the 1845-47 famines caused by the potato blight. The German- and Hungarian-speaking communities in the region, based primarily in the cities and in the more fertile areas, were less affected by the movement. Although in the majority of temperance societies in Upper Hungary communication was done in Slovak, most of them were linked to the Church (Catholic or Lutheran) rather than with the Slovak national movement. In the sporadic statistics kept by state authorities and in later periods, they appear only occasionally – it is probable that only a few of them had statutes. They disappeared during the revolution.
In 1851, the movement was boosted by a papal decree approving these associations and their activities; but stagnation set in again after 1853, although some activists continued writing theatrical plays, songs and articles warning against drunkenness. After the relaxation of neo-absolutism, new organizations were rejuvenated or created among Hungary’s various national movements. Slovak activists established choirs, some casinos, student associations, and a few temperance societies, Sunday schools and cooperatives, and attempted to form a central economic association. Their efforts culminated in the establishment of a central cultural institution, the Matica Slovenská, and three Slovak grammar schools. In this context, the temperance movement saw a temporary revival from 1863-64.
After the political changes due to the Austro-Hungarian settlement (1867), the scope for the development of non-Hungarian ethnic societies was greatly restricted. In the early 1870s, the existing temperance societies started to affiliate with the Catholic Confraternities of the Rosary. As in 1874-75, lay temperance societies were prohibited in Upper Hungary on the suspicion of engaging in Pan-Slavism; in response, temperance movements developed into “Rosarian Sobriety Associations”. By 1885, they had 65,000 members, but they were unrelated to the Slovak national movement.
With advancing industrialization and urbanization, the possibilities for alcohol abuse increased. National activists seized on this issue to engage on a media campaign against Jewish innkeepers. Although a few nationally-minded doctors, priests and journalists argued that the source of “Slovak poverty” was widespread and persistent alcoholism, the leaders of the national movement liberally toasted “the health of the nation” at national celebrations and in everyday life. Nationalist Slovak temperance societies were not high on their agenda, despite the establishment of a few short-lived groups such as the Združenie Abstinentov (Association of Abstainers) in Martin, 1913.
