Theodor Ortvay

Theodor Ortvay (born November 19, 1843 in Csíklovabánya , Krassó County , Banat , † July 8, 1916 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian Roman Catholic priest, historian and publicist.

Theodor Ortvay (1843-1916)

Life

Youth and Studies

Theodor Ortvay (originally Theodor Orthmayr ) came from a German family that was settled in the Banat at the time of Maria Theresa . He was the son of Karl Orthmayr and his wife Emilia geb. Jendrássik. As an imperial-royal official, his father was responsible for mining and ore mining. Son Theodor, who felt himself to be a Hungarian patriot, Magyarized his name from Theodor Orthmayr to "Tivadar Ortvay" in 1875. Under this name he has also become known in the professional world and in literature. Although Ortvay had a perfect command of both German and Hungarian, the greater part of his numerous publications appeared in Hungarian.

Ortvay attended high school in Timisoara , where he also studied Catholic theology and was ordained a priest after completing his theology studies . From 1866 he worked in various places as an assistant priest and high school teacher until he became an employee of the Hungarian National Museum in 1873 . In 1872 he earned his first doctorate (book and library). Ortvay then made a steep scientific career. In 1874 he received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Budapest . In 1875 Ortvay was appointed a corresponding member and in 1905 a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences . He is co-editor of various historical and archaeological journals.

Pressburg years

With the decree of June 6th and 27th, 1875, Emperor Franz Joseph I gave the Pressburg Academy of Law greater weight throughout the entire monarchy by adding a chair in philosophy. Ortvay moved to Pressburg , as he was installed on October 12, 1875 by the Kaiser in the position of professor of history at the Law Academy. In the school year 1875/76 he already gave six hours a week of lectures in Hungarian and general history at the academy. In addition to this position, from 1894 Ortvay was appointed director of the institute for the training of female teachers ("female teacher preparation"), which was part of the order of the Pressburg Ursuline Sisters. For more than a decade he was the history teacher of the daughters of Archduke Friedrich von Österreich-Teschen, who lived in Pressburg .

Here in Pressburg he spent the most important and fruitful part of his life. Due to his outstanding achievements, he developed into the most important historian in the city. His historical works concerning the city of Pressburg could not be outbid even by contemporary historians up to the present day. The numerous honorary positions and titles that followed became almost a matter of course. Ortvay was appointed papal chamberlain (1892) and titular abbot of Csanád and St. Georgen (1900). The city of Pressburg also showered him with honorary positions. a. elected Vice-President of the Pressburg Archaeological and Historical Society . In 1906 he was granted honorary citizenship of the city of Pressburg.

Retired and moved to Budapest

In 1906 Ortvay went into retirement. After more than thirty years he left Bratislava and moved to Budapest. First he lived in Pesther Josephstadt and from 1908 in the castle district of Buda . Ortvay suffered a stroke on June 25, 1916, of which he died on July 8, 1916. In accordance with his wishes, his remains were transferred to Pressburg, where he was buried on July 11, 1916 in the Andreas cemetery next to his mother. The city of Pressburg prepared a dignified burial for him. Numerous prominent guests under the direction of Mayor Theodor Brolly took part in the funeral ceremony. The Pressburger Zeitung reported in detail on the funeral ceremonies.

In the 1970s, a wide strip on the east side of the Andreas-Friedhofs (in the area of ​​the former Zsigmondgasse ) was cut off because of an alleged widening of the street. In this area on the cemetery wall were mainly the tombs and graves of many important personalities of historical Pressburg, which were thus lost to posterity. The people's democratic regime in Czechoslovakia had no interest in preserving the old, historical, predominantly German graves. The crypt of Theodor Ortvay also suffered the fate of destruction. The grave was dissolved, the remains were exhumed by the communist rulers of the time and buried in a mass grave without a name. Ortvay's tombstone was preserved and was only re-erected as a memorial stone in the cemetery (but without a grave) after the Velvet Revolution .

Literary work

Ortvay's historical as well as archaeological topics are varied. The bibliography of his extensive work, published in the Eder printing house in Pressburg in 1906, comprises 261 titles. He dealt with ecclesiastical topics just as intensively as z. B. with natural history. His important two-volume work, Magyarország egyházi földleírása a XIV. Század elején , was published in Budapest in 1891 in Hungarian . "The ecclesiastical geography of Hungary at the beginning of the 14th century"].

Between 1878 and 1883 Ortvay dealt with the historical hydrography of Hungary; His book Magyarország régi vizrajza a XIII was published in Timisoara in 1882 . század végeig [ eng . “The old hydrography of Hungary until the end of the 13th century. Century "]. He published his findings about the Danube Islands in the book A magyarországi Duna-szigetek [dt. "The Hungarian Danube Islands"], Temeschburg, 2 episodes, 1878 and 1880. In 1881 and 1883 his two German-written works Die Donau and Lanfranconi 's work on their regulation (1881) and on the question of water consumption in Hungary appeared. A hydrohistorical study , Preßburg 1883 (published as a special edition of the Preßburger Zeitung ). He also worked on a wide variety of topics related to the history of Hungary ; his innumerable contributions and monographs were regularly printed in the leading magazines and specialist periodicals in old Hungary .

He did groundbreaking research into the history of the city of Pressburg. Ortvay was undoubtedly the most renowned publicist in the history of Pressburg at the end of the 19th century. Countless articles by him appeared, including in the Pressburger Zeitung . However, the focus of his scientific work was not only on topics that deal with history, not only of Pressburg, but also of old Hungary before the First World War . He has contributed to the history of Pressburg with the following four groundbreaking works:

• In 1884 he was commissioned by the teaching staff at the Pressburg Law Academy, where he worked as a professor, to write an anniversary publication for the 100th anniversary of the institute. The work was published in Budapest in 1884 under the title: Száz év egyhazai főiskola életéből. A pozsonyi kir. akadémiának 1784-től 1884-ig való fennállása alkalmából. [German “A hundred years from the life of a home university. To the Centenarium of the Royal Hungarian Law Academy in Pressburg 1784-1884 ”].
• Between 1892 and 1900 Ortvay wrote his most important work, in Hungarian: Pozsony város története. This is a monograph divided into four parts, which has appeared in seven volumes over the years (the second volume alone consists of four individual volumes). The occasion for the publication of this extensive work was the 50th anniversary of the existence of the Pressburg First Sparcassa (founded in 1842), which also generously supported the project financially. With this work, Ortvay created the first coherent and systematically processed history of Pressburg, which no historian has been able to surpass until the present day. It ends in 1526 with the battle of Mohács . The last four hundred years - the reign of the Habsburgs - will no longer be discussed. There were numerous handwritten sketches in Ortvay's estate, which were to serve as working material for further volumes. He wanted to dedicate a whole volume to the Wars of Faith and the Counter Reformation , but unfortunately it never came to that. The German translation of the work was done by three translators. The first volume was written by the important and highly educated archivist of the city of Pressburg, Johann Nepomuk Batka the Elder. J. translated. Volumes 2/1 to 2/4 and volume three were translated by the rector of the Preßburg Evangelical Lyceum , Wilhelm Michaelis, and volume 4/1 was translated into German by the then city librarian Emil Kumlik . The work was published in German translation between 1892 and 1912 under the title History of the City of Preßburg . The work is in the kuk Hofbuchhandlung Carl Stampfen, Eder & Comp. printed in Pressburg.
• In 1902 Ortvay was commissioned by the city of Pressburg to create a publication on the fauna of the Pressburg county on the occasion of the Second National Agricultural Exhibition in Pressburg , which opened on September 7th . The book was published in Pressburg under the Hungarian title Pozsonyvármegye és a területén fekvő Pozsony, Nagyszombat, Bazin, Modor s Szentgyörgy városok állatvilága. Állatrajzi és állatgazdaságtörténeti monographia [ Eng . “The animal world of the cities of Preßburg, Tyrnau , Bösing , Modern and St. Georgen in the Preßburger Komitate . A monograph of the animal world and historical animal breeding ”].
• In 1905 Wigand Ortvays published a very informative book on the streets and squares of Bratislava under the Hungarian title Pozsony város utcái és terei [dt. “Preßburger Streets and Squares”], Wigand Könyvnyomdája, Pozsony 1905. This book, which gives exhaustive information about Pressburg's topography in the early 20th century, has not yet been translated into German. The work was published again in 1991 - on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Bratislava - in Budapest by the Püski-Regio Kiadó publishing house as a reprint edition. Some chapters were translated into Slovak at the beginning of this century and were published in several volumes by Albert Marenčin's publishing house in Pressburg.

literature

• Anton Klipp: Pressburg. New views on an old city. Karpatendeutsches Kulturwerk, Karlsruhe 2010, ISBN 978-3-927020-15-3 .
• P. Rainer Rudolf, Eduard Ulreich: Karpatendeutsches Biographisches Lexikon. Working group of the Carpathian Germans from Slovakia, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-927096-00-8 .
• Magyar életrajzi Lexicon, Volume 2. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1982, ISBN 969-05-2499-6 , p. 327.
• The Carpathian Post. Stuttgart 30/1979, No. 4, p. 4.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Theodor Ortvay had two brothers: Max Orthmayr, who was a curial judge in Budapest and Béla (Adalbert) Orthmayr who served in the Imperial and Royal Army in the rank of colonel in Vienna .
2. ↑ Csanád [rum. Cenad] is a small place that lies on the Romanian side close to today's Hungarian border. In the past it was of much greater importance, as an entire county of historical Hungary was named after its castle . From time immemorial, Csanád was important in terms of ecclesiastical politics, since it formed the Roman Catholic diocese "Szeged-Csanád" together with Segedin . Only in 1993 did Pope John Paul II change the territorial division of the diocese that had existed for a thousand years. This meant that the church territory was to be adapted to the change in national territory.
3. ^ Anton Klipp: Pressburg. New views on an old city. Karlsruhe / Stuttgart 2010, p. 186ff.
4. ↑ Pressburger Zeitung of July 12, 1916, p. 3
5. ↑ After the collapse of the Danube Monarchy , when Pressburg was annexed to the newly founded Czecho-Slovakia , the street was renamed. It was named Vuk Karadžič Street in 1921 .
6. ↑ The communist rulers endeavored to completely dissolve the cemetery and to convert the area into a "park".
7. ^ Anton Klipp: Pressburg. New views on an old city. Karlsruhe / Stuttgart 2010, pp. 189f.