COMMENTARY TO VILIAM PAULINY-TÓTH’S ESSAY VIENNA, OR PEST?
COMMENTARY TO VILIAM PAULINY-TÓTH’S ESSAY VIENNA, OR PEST?

Summary/Abstract: Viliam Pauliny-Tóth (1826–77) ranks among the major representatives of the Slovak nineteenth-century elite. However, he has till this day remained in the shadows of the most famous Slovak national activists, cultural animators, and politicians, among whom Ľudovít Štúr (1815–56) is considered to have been the most charismatic and foreground figure. The fact that Slovak historian František Bokes presented Pauliny-Tóth, in the first half of the twentieth century, as Štúr’s successor did not change much in this respect. The symbolic authority that Pauliny-Tóth managed to accumulate, measured in terms of respect and recognition expressed in the numerous public functions entrusted to him and his role in the process of consolidation and institutionalisation of the Slovak national movement which made the Slovak elite visible beyond the local level, should have ensured for him a no less dominant position in historiography than those held by Štúr or Jozef Miloslav Hurban (1817–88).

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