Andrej Hlinka

Andrej Hlinka (September 27, 1864 - August 16, 1938) was a Slovak politician and Catholic priest, one of the most important Slovak public activists in the pre-WWII Czechoslovakia, leader of the Slovak People's Party (until his death), papal chamberlain (since 1924), inducted papal protonotary (since 1927), member of the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia (the parliament) and chairman of the St. Vojtech Group (organization publishing religious books).

Austria-Hungary

He graduated in theology from Spišská Kapitula (Szepeskáptalan) and was ordained priest in 1889. In his political views he was a strong defendant of Catholic ethics against all secularizing tendencies connected with economic and political liberalism of the Kingdom of Hungary in the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. This was also the opinion of the Hungarian Katolikus Néppárt (Catholic People's Party), led by Count Zichy, so Hlinka became an activist of this party. Later, when he saw that the party was paying no attention to nationalistic agitation, he founded the Slovak People's Party along with František Skyčák in 1913. His support of Slovak demands collided with the negative opinions of the church hierarchy as well as with the Hungarian regime, which attempted to magyarize non-Magyar ethnic groups (force them to consider themselves Magyars), so Hlinka was persecuted by both the government (by imprisonment) and by the church (by suspending him from his office). Hlinka accepted the opinion that the Slovaks should split from the Kingdom of Hungary and became member of the Slovak National Council. He also signed the "Martin declaration" in 1918, in which the will of Slovak politicians to join politically with the Czech nation was expressed.

Czechoslovakia

In the first Czechoslovak republic, Hlinka was the chairman of the Slovak People's Party, after 1925 called Hlinka's Slovak People's Party. Its main political program was to achieve autonomy of Slovakia within Czechoslovakia on the basis of the "Pittsburgh Agreement" (1918) between American Czechs and Slovaks and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. At the Nuremberg trials, a US prosecutor described the party as "the semi-fascist Catholic Peoples Party of Monsignor Andrew Hlinka."

His leadership was to prove fateful. Hlinka's lack of respect for democracy and his antipathy to "irreligious free-thinking Czechs" made him invaluable to Hitler who was intent on dismembering Czechoslovakia in order quietly to absorb the fragments . As the Nuremberg prosecutor showed, "the higher staff of Father Hlinka's party" were in the pay of the Nazis. Hlinka died in 1938, before he could see that his co-operation with Hitler had helped to launch the war.

Masaryk, who became President of Czechoslovakia, claimed during his presidency that the treaty was a falsification. Slovakia was granted autonomy on October 6, 1938; only when the frontier regions of Bohemia and Moravia were occupied by Germany. This was less than two months after Hlinka's death and 20 years after the establishment of Czechoslovakia.

Opinions on Hlinka after his death

During the first Slovak Republic (1939-1945), Hlinka was considered by the regime as a national hero. In Communist Czechoslovakia he was portrayed as a "clerofascist". After the fall of the regime, Hlinka became again a respected person, mostly to nationalist sympathisers and to Christian democratic organisations/parties, while the rest of current Slovak society seems mostly indifferent towards Hlinka's memory. Hlinka's image can be found on the Slovak 1000 Crown bill.

There is currently a bill passing through the Slovakian parliament to enshrine Hlinka as "father of the nation."

ee also

*Slovak People's Party

References

Links

* [http://www.petericepudding.com/hlinka.htm Talks about the Slovak history and about Andrej Hlinka by Dr. Juraj Kuniak (Agens Banska Bystrica, 1991; ISBN 80-900504-0-9)] translation into English by Dr. H. Reuvers, Maastricht, 2004.