Andrej Hlinka
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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), infulled papal protonotary (since 1927), member of the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia (the parliament) and chairman of the St. Vojtech Group (organization publishing religious books).
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[edit] Austria-Hungary
He graduated from theology in Spišská Kapitula and was consecrated a 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 activist of this party. Later, when he saw that the party was paying no attention to nationality requests, he founded the Slovak People's Party along with František Skyčák in 1913. His support of Slovak requests 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 politically join with the Czech nation was expressed.
[edit] Czechoslovakia
In the first Czechoslovak republic, Hlinka was the chairman of the Slovak People's Party, since 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 Pittsburg Treaty (1918) between American Czechs and Slovaks and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Masaryk, who became President of Czechoslovakia, claimed during his presidency that the treaty was a falsificate. Slovakia was granted autonomy on October 6, 1938, that is only when frontier regions of Bohemia and Moravia were occupied by Germany. That was less than two months after Hlinka's death and 20 years after the establishment of Czechoslovakia.
[edit] 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 members and sympatisants of nationalist and Christian democratic organisations/parties, while the rest of the Slovak society seems mostly indifferent to Hlinka. Hlinka's image can be found on the Slovak 1000 crowns bill.
