Jozef Miloslav Hurban (Beckov nr Nové Mesto nad Váhom 1817 – Hlboké 1888) was born as the son of a Lutheran pastor and attended the evangelical lyceum in Pressburg/Bratislava, where he met Ľudovit Štúr, who awakened his interest in the national cause. Hurban went on to become both a champion of the Slovak national cause and a close collaborator and friend of Štúr. His sense of national identity is clear from his participation in the clandestine walking tour, organized by Štúr in 1836, with a small group of Slovak students to the ruined fortress of Devín, close to Bratislava: the young Slovaks performed a ceremonial ritual in which they adopted a second, national (Slovak) name in addition to their Christian names. Hurban chose the name Miloslav, which he continued to use for the rest of his life. In Bratislava, he became involved in the student societies (joining the “Czech-Slovak Society”, and the Vzájomnosť, a secret society modelled on the Polish philological societies). At the Lyceum, he also completed a course in theology, qualifying him to work as a pastor. In contrast to most of his peers, however, he did not continue his theological studies at a German university. Instead, after ordination, he served as a chaplain in the small town of Brezová pod Bradlom and then, for the rest of his life, as a Lutheran pastor in the village of Hlboké in Western Slovakia. During his time at Hlboké, he strove to improve socio-economic conditions for the local population as well as educational standards. He was involved in the temperance movement, established Sunday schools, reading groups and agricultural support organisations, and encouraged amateur dramatics.
Hurban’s activities extended far beyond the locality of Hlboké and he soon became a well-known figure. From his location on the periphery of the erstwhile Kingdom of Hungary, he influenced Slovak ecclesiastical, cultural and political life and maintained contacts with cultural and political representatives of the individual Slavic peoples. In 1845, he married Anna Jurkovičová, an amateur actress and teacher’s daughter, and they raised a large family. This put him at odds with Ľudovít Štúr, who fostered an ethos of self-denial and absolute devotion to the service of the nation among his students at the Bratislava Lyceum. Hurban’s wife supported his national activities, and his numerous descendants became linked through marriage to other families actively involved in the Slovak (and particularly the Protestant) intelligentsia. This social network was to hand down national values and ideals from generation to generation, making an important contribution to the long-term development of the Slovak national cause, which came into being without a significant social power base (there was little or nothing in the way of a Slovak landed aristocracy or influential business class). The newspaper editor, writer and politician Svetozár Hurban Vajanský (1847–1916) was his son.
Slovak protestants in Hungary used Czech as their liturgical language, and Hurban initially preferred to use Czech both for religious and secular purposes, also publishing his literary and journalistic works in Czech. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Ján Kollár and endorsed Kollár’s view of the Slovaks and Czechs forming one (Czechoslovak) tribe within the Slav family, using Czech as their common written language. Along with other Slovak Romantics, however, Hurban gradually came to believe, partly under the influence of the national epic poems of the Slovak poet Ján Hollý, that the Slovaks were a separate tribe, distinct from the Czechs. They should therefore have their own written and literary language and a national culture created in that language.
In July 1843, in Hurban’s parish of Hlboké, a meeting took place between three members of the young Lutheran intelligentsia: Hurban, Štúr and Michal Miloslav Hodža. They discussed the possibility of introducing a new form of the written language, building on an earlier initiative of the Catholic intelligentsia led by the priest Anton Bernolák. Preferring the Central Slovak dialect as a basis for the new written language, they rejected Bernolák’s codification of the Western Slovak variant. In their view, Central Slovak was the most authentic Slovak dialect, least affected by outside influences. In 1844, Hurban published the second volume of the literary almanac Nitra in this form of the language. It was the first book to be written in the new form of Slovak, which came to be known as Štúrovská (after Štúr), and which, with some modifications, constitutes the standardised form of the Slovak language to this day. Over the next few years, Hurban and his friends worked hard to promote the new written language, and, in 1847, they reached a definitive agreement with members of the Catholic intelligentsia regarding its adoption.
During the 1848/1849 revolution, Hurban vindicated Slovaks’ national and social rights. He also attended the Slavic Congress in Prague, where he fought on the barricades and organized military units of Slovak volunteers. In September 1848, he became President of the Slovak National Council, which rejected the authority of the Hungarian government. The volunteer units were largely made up of lightly armed and poorly trained peasants from Western Slovakia. Over the course of two subsequent expeditions, they fought as part of the Habsburg imperial army against the Hungarian government, operating across the entire territory of present-day Slovakia. Even so, Habsburg conservatives suspected him of sedition and anti-imperial sympathies. In the event, Slovakia remained a Hungarian territory. Hurban’s unpopularity among Hungarians prompted him to decline the offered succession to Kollár’s pastoral position in Budapest. In the late 1850s he assisted Daxner in drawing up another document listing Slovak grievances, which in 1861 was addressed to the Viennese Ministry of the Interior as a Memorandum národa slovenského (“Memorandum of the Slovak nation”); it remained a statement of principles for all Slovak nationalists.
In the following decades, Hurban continued to play a prominent role in the Slovak national movement. He was an active participant at the 1861 Slovak National Gathering in Martin (also known as the “Memorandum Assembly”). He was also among the founders of Matica slovenská (1863). The social radicalism of his early years had, however, abated. At the Memorandum Assembly, he advocated reconciliation and cooperation with Slovak-descended Hungarian aristocrats. Given the lack of industrial development in Hungary, the aristocracy would, he judged, remain a powerful force and a possible support for Slovak cultural activities.
Hurban’s literary output encompassed both poetry and prose. Hurban’s best-known literary works include the historical novel Olejkár, set in the Middle Ages. The novel sets out both to entertain and to promote national-revivalist ideas, with motifs and topoi typical of Romantic literature (mystery and plot-twists, intrigues, lovers who tragically discover that they are brother and sister). In the background of the fictional story stands the real historical figure of the medieval oligarch Matúš Čák Trenčianský, whose depiction reflects the historical ideology of the Romantic generation. (Hurban presents the efforts of Matúš to place a member of the Czech royal family on the Hungarian throne, following the extinction of the Arpad dynasty, as a “Slavic” policy.)
From a literary-historical perspective, however, his importance lies more in his work as an editor and publisher. On the pages of his almanacs and journals, he provided space for major Romantic poets and writers. In 1851, a controversy erupted in the pages of the periodical Slovenské pohľady na vedy, umenie a literatúru (“Slovak reflections on science, art and literature”) over a poetry collection by Jonáš Záborský, who wrote in Czech and in a classical style. The controversy asserted the values of Romanticism and vindicated the new form of written Slovak.Hurban wrote and published or influenced the final form of many published works (e.g. the biography of Ľudovít Štúr and the writings of Mikuláš Dohnány on the Slovak uprising of 1848/49), through which he contributed to the creation of a national canon. This is still regarded as the major foundational task of the Romantic generation in Slovak historical and cultural development.
In the ecclesiastical and religious sphere, Hurban remained true to his Lutheran beliefs and sharply criticized ecclesiastical rationalism and liberalism. He spoke out against Magyarizing tendencies in the protestant church (as the co-author of a petition addressed to the Ferdinand V in 1842) and in 1846s opposed the efforts of the inspector general of the protestant church to unify the Lutherans and Calvinists in Hungary. Hurban feared that Slovak Lutherans would be swallowed up by a Magyar Calvinist majority. Following the issuing of the Protestant Patent (1859), which was intended to form the basis for the organization of Protestant churches throughout the Habsburg Empire, the Lutherans in Hungary split into two factions. Although the Patent strengthened state supervision and restricted Church autonomy, Hurban endorsed it since it also weakened the influence of the Magyarizing aristocracy and strengthened the position of the Slovaks. In support of the patent movement, he published the journal Církevní listy (“Church papers”), which became a bastion of conservative opinion (criticizing, among other things, Darwin’s theory of evolution). In 1860, the University of Leipzig awarded him a doctorate in theology, and he was even appointed superintendent of Hungary’s protestants in 1866-67. Hurban’s calling as a clergyman strongly influenced his attitudes and worldview. He gradually became more critical of modernizing trends in society and culture, adopted conservative and moralizing positions, and entered into dispute with members of the younger generation. Even so, Hurban’s protests against Magyar intolerance vis-à-vis Slovak culture led to imprisonments in 1870 and 1876. He died in 1888.
