Authors

István Kollai¹;  ¹ Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia

Discussion

In Slovakia, the Monuments Board has registered 434 chateaux in Slovakia, while there are many other protected or unprotected mansions or ruins throughout the country. The aim of the research was to map and compare the current conditions (renovation and utilization) of these chateaux sites, since vast majority of them had a period within the 20th century when they were unused, depopulated and became more dilapidated; 133 remained in ruined conditions even by this date. The research addressed the question, along what general concepts has the renewal of these chateaux taken place in recent decades, and what impact have these initiatives had on the local 'memoryscape', the memory represented through the landscape. This question was inspired by the finding that the institutionalized canon of Slovak national memory is strongly plebeian-peasant, where bygone castle residents of non-Slovak ethnicity have no stable place in principle. The research has revealed that at the local level - especially in smaller or remote rural settlements, where the chateau as an object represents an outstanding artistic value in terms of architecture - the imagined world of the castle dwellers is not remembered today as oppressive and alien, but rather as a cultural bridge to the outside world, through which the village itself was one step closer to royal courts, and to European cultural currents. Thus, local memorial rites and discursive practices - independently of each other, as a general pattern of remebrance - highlight their cosmopolitanism, eccentricity, and surprisingly, good-naturedness. The memory of the good-natured castle-dweller can be considered at once a post-feudal reflex - the embodiment of nostalgic 'old morals' into local historical personalities - and a way of embedding, 'appropriating' the heritage sites into the local Slovak ethnic landscape. A further conclusion is the strongly de-ethnicized image of local past: speaking about a 'foreign Hungarian lord' is quiet rare. In contrast, they are stereotyped as 'our own strangers', without whom the landscape would be incomplete. This storytelling can formulate 'genius loci' significantly if the chateau as heritage object exist. The countless local publications, Facebook pages and amateur programs dealing with the chateaux unfold that renovated or dilapidated but aesthetically exciting and accessible ruins can really inspire locals to resonate memory fragments and tell them further. Stories from the archives can not be echoed if at least ruined walls do not stand; but this echoing implies a kind of banalization of memory and fantasizing the past, too, and highlights the crucial role of new castle-owners, what manner they renovate the ruins