The tale of one city – Pressburg, Pozsony, Prešporok
05 February 2025
All three names refer to what we know today as Bratislava. Its multicultural history may be hidden from many, but the first multi-lingual series produced in Slovakia is trying to change that.
Pressburg has been streaming on Netflix since the end of last year. The historical name for the Slovak capital from the beginning of the 20th century foreshadows the core topic – how nations interacted in Slovakia, portrayed through the love story of Slovak Zita and Hungarian Attila.
Besides the main characters working through their differences in ethnic backgrounds, there is a storyline following an underground activist group fighting for their language rights. "Bilingual South Slovakia" [transl.] uses civil disobedience, for example, placing bilingual street signs. The language struggle continues today, as there is still a significant Hungarian minority living in the southern part of Slovakia.
 | Tamara Kanuchova At the beginning of the 20th century, Bratislava was a trilingual city where Slovak, Hungarian, and German would meet, hence the many names of the city, culminating in a trilingual Bratislava dialect. Even in its contemporary form, we use many Hungarian and German words. The necessity emerged from living in the multicultural Austro-Hungarian Empire. To access services or do business, people had to adapt and overcome the language barrier. Additionally, the Jewish community spoke Hebrew and Yiddish. After the Second World War, the deportations of Jewish people, and the displacement of Hungarians and Germans as reprisals, trilingualism was lost. Today's Bratislava could learn much about the coexistence of different cultures from its 20th-century self . |
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