Richard Marsina a dejiny Bratislavy
(Richard Marsina and History of Bratislava)
Juraj Šedivý
Download PDFŠEDIVÝ, Juraj. Richard Marsina and History of Bratislava. In Historický zborník, Vol. 33, 2023, No. 2, pp. 173–180.
Abstract: The article focuses on Richard Marsina’s contribution to the knowledge of the history of Bratislava and his attitude to the main themes of contemporary and recent historiography concerning the history of the capital of Slovakia. For his orientation and also due to the fact that at the beginning of his career he was an employee of two most important archives located in Bratislava (Bratislava City Archives and the Land Archive – today the Slovak National Archive), Richard Marsina was a positivist medievalist and tried to stick to the sources. Among other things, he challenged the widely accepted thesis about the consequences of the Mongol invasion (since the sources do not prove the plundering in the city’s surrounding area). He dated back the town-building process in the territory of present-day Slovakia to the thirteenth century, in the case of Bratislava to the period several decades before the granting of privileges. He was the first to formulate the thesis that the first known reeve Jacobus should still be regarded as the king’s (count’s/sheriff’s) man, thus offering a new model for the functioning of the earliest municipal administration. His greatest contribution to the history of the city is the edition of principal sources to 1260 and the organizational contribution – the conference “Städte im Donauraum” organised by him placed the development of the city, as well as Slovak urban historiography, in a broader Central European context.
Keywords: Richard Marsina; Slovak historiography; urban historiography; history of Bratislava.