Jozef Cíger-Hronský

Biography

As a boy in a family of carpenters in Zvolen, he dreamed of painting. His parents insisted on a more secure trade, and the future writer, born on 23 February 1896 under the surname Cíger, ended up in a Hungarian teachers’ college in Levice.

There were seven children in the family. Jozef attended primary school in Zvolen from 1902 to 1907, then studied in Krupina, and in 1910 entered the college in Levice, where he stayed until 1914. After graduating he taught in several places in Slovakia, among them Krupina and Kremnica. In 1917–1918 he served as an infantryman on the Italian front of the First World War. After his return he began publishing novellas and short prose; his first collection, “U nás” (“With Us”), appeared in 1923, followed by “Domov” (“Home”) and “Medové srdce” (“Honey Heart”). In 1927 he settled in Martin. He never gave up drawing: later, in emigration, he created a cycle of stained-glass paintings, “The Miraculous Life of Our Lady of Luján”.

Cíger-Hronský’s best-known book is the novel “Jozef Mak” (1933). Its hero is a thoroughly ordinary man with no particular talents or aspirations, and such heroes are typical of the author. Critics place “Jozef Mak”, “Pisár Gráč” and “Andreas Búr Majster” in the core of Slovak realist prose. He himself wrote as a realist, but under the influence of Expressionism. In the 1920s he also wrote several comedies: “Firma Moor”, “Červený trojuholník” (“A Red Triangle”) and “Návrat” (“Comeback”).

He wrote no less for children. The tales “Smelý zajko” (“The Brave Little Hare”, 1930), “Smelý zajko v Afrike” (“The Brave Little Hare in Africa”, 1931), “Budkáčik a Dubkáčik” (1932) and “Tri múdre kozliatka” (“Three Clever Kids”, 1940) are still loved in Slovakia, and the story “Sokoliar Tomáš” (“Tomáš the Falconer”, 1932) is regarded as the first Slovak historical work of fiction for children. From 1928 to 1945 he edited the children’s magazine “Slniečko” (“Little Sun”). His books have been translated into English, German, Polish and Russian.

From 1933 he was secretary of the Matica slovenská, the country’s main cultural organisation, and from 1940 to 1945 he headed it. Under him the Matica expanded its publishing and research work, and in 1935–1936, on his proposal, its staff travelled to the United States to meet Slovak emigrants. He founded the printing house Neografia in Martin, created when a printing house taken from its Jewish owner was transferred to the Matica. In January 1941 he wrote to the authorities that the Matica had applied three months earlier for the transfer of Oskar Horský’s zinc-engraving works in Žilina, that the business was thriving and that the transfer should be carried out as soon as possible. The application was granted; the former owner was later executed by the Nazis for ties with the resistance. Cíger-Hronský supported the regime of the First Slovak Republic, and he required job applicants at the Matica to prove “Aryan origin”. In 1944 he accompanied the interior minister, Alexander Mach, on a propaganda tour of the country.

He regarded the Slovak National Uprising as a senseless revolt against the country’s own state. The insurgents arrested him in 1944 but released him soon afterwards. In March 1945 he accepted the State Prize. Later he published the novel “Svet na trasovisku” (“The World on Quagmire”), in which he described those events from his own side; it came out in 1960, and in Czechoslovakia it was banned until the 1990s. In 1945 he left the country: through Austria, where he lived in the American zone, he made his way to Italy and stayed in Rome until February 1948. After his arrest by the Italian police he managed to escape and left for Argentina, for the town of Luján. At first life was hard, and he earned his living as a draughtsman in a textile factory, continuing to publish in magazines.

In emigration he became chairman of the Slovak National Council Abroad (1956), honorary chairman of the Association of Slovak Writers and Artists Abroad, and in 1959 he founded the Matica slovenská Abroad. He was a friend of the Salesian priest Gorazd Zvonický, a Catholic poet. Cíger-Hronský died in Luján on 13 July 1960, and it was Zvonický who buried him. After 1989 his books began to be published again, and in 1993 his remains were brought to Martin and ceremonially reburied in the National Cemetery.