Slawistische Aspekte in der Ethnographie und Mythologie der slowakischen Wiedergeburt

Abstract

History of Slavic Ethnology.

In 1953, in the preface to L. Niederle's work "Rukověť slovanských starožitností", academician Jan Eisner expressed a demand that after its publication new works on Slavic issues be published, written by experts at least from the main disciplines, which would specifically deal with the Slavic past from the point of view of archaeology, history, ethnography and philology. Since then, Slovak ethnography, especially folklore studies, has been devoted to Slavic issues.

Already M. Bel (1747) pointed out the continuity of Slovak consciousness, Adam F. Kollár, who came in 1783 with the characteristics of a new discipline - ethnology, J. Ribay (1793) considered "remnants of Slavic antiquities" not only dialects and literary monuments, but also customs, games, folk architecture, clothing and occupations, especially agriculture, to be "remnants of Slavic antiquities". B. Tablic founded the Learned Society of the Mining Area (1809), within which the oldest known ethnographically focused monograph on Slovaks (1815) was created. Its author, O. Braxatoris, proves the autochthonous nature of Slovaks and their Slovak-Slavic cultural affinity. It is based on the works of German and domestic Slavists (J. J. Frisch, J. P. Kohl, L. Müller, J. Pray, etc.). It was only under the influence of the views and works of J. Kollár and P. J. Šafárik that a narrowing of the more broadly conceived interest in folk culture occurred in our country. Questions of ethnogenesis are resolved by studying history and language on the basis of folk literature, especially songs, proverbs, sayings and fairy tales.
The work of J. Kollár (1853) had the greatest influence on our scholars. His views on direct cultural ties between Slovak and Slavic, Indian, ancient Greek and Roman cultures led in the 1970s to efforts to establish mythology as the basis of a new Slovak national science. Only at the end of the 19th century did he criticize the views of J. Kollár and his followers J. Vlček, S. Czambel and K. Chorvát. After that, there was silence among our experts about Slovak and Slavic mythology.