Ľudovít Kossár

* 1965

  • Well, it was very bad. To tell the truth, it was very scalding at that time, because it basically happened. To the introduction we should say, how long you and your partner are together twenty. Not even fifteen years now. Fifteen. Now, fifteen. But that was much earlier, because basically. Well, well, it's usually from birth, right. Yes, that's additionally when you think about it that way, yes. I had all those symptoms, as they say, then you identify. But, in high school and early adolescence, you defend against it. You just don't know what's happening now, you're just evolving, you have all sorts of orientations. You are at a loss, you don't know what's going on, you don't know why it's happening. It's so controversial, but if I would come back, yes, I didn't have a male role model, although I had a stepfather, but I didn't like him. Like, I felt that he took it. We left out the topic of family a bit, but I know that. I said that in the seventies they divorced, my two siblings and I stayed with my mom, but then my mother got married again, and I had three more siblings. So I had a stepfather, then in the meantime my brother went to his original father, so we stayed five. It's needed to know that it was not because I was different, because at that time I did not know that I was like this. At the age of fourteen, I left because my mother did not tolerate, not tolerate, but she just wasn't interested in me. I became independent. I also went to high school, that I chose of my own free will, and all the time I had excellent school results, including college. So, your mom didn't care about you, really. Yes, yes, because I was independent. During elementary school, she would be able to leave me alone with her little children. I think she went with my stepfather somewhere,she disappeared for a week. So I had to cook, so I didn't go. I was, for example, the funny thing is that in elementary school, I had the highest number of missed hours, but it was absence with leave and in spite of this I was the best student. Everyone knew why that was, I was always a responsible student.

  • This is exactly how I lived. I will return to the Pezinok thing, because it is basically related to viticulture and then also to gastronomy. Because, for example, we did balls there, we did big balls there every year, every year, in the house of culture, as it was like over knees, but simply. There were winemakers, I basically learned to drink wine at that time, how to taste wine at all, I went to competitions, to everything. And it was beautiful, I lived there. When I was there I was thirty years old, and a lot of people whom I loved died that year. Basically, I was completely down in the dumps. And the only thing that basically helped a person like this, was a workaholism, that you broached into the work and thought of nothing. I lived in the house of culture, I slept there. I was simply immured for three years in Pezinok. I worked there from morning till evening, I did, I did, we did projects, everything. I was happy, satisfied. Many looked at us and said that we could not do a second Bratislava. We landed Hegerová, there. Things like this have already been blamed on us by the people of Pezinok, some of them, the stubborn ones, that we are, that we are doing culture for the people of Bratislava in Pezinok. Well, they paid, so of course, people of Pezinok did not come. For example, there was a problem when, for example, after the Carnival, when there was carnival time, they did not go to culture, I don't know why, but they didn't. It wasn't celebrated, it wasn't celebrated, but we had Hegerová there, at that time, she did not perform everywhere, only in stone ones, for example. Thankfully, it was one of the largest communist buildings. Yes, yes. A huge cinema hall was there, also a small hall, a large hall, you know.

  • But the funny thing was that, for example, after the first year I am already, I already felt that this is not quite good as well. They were already there, for example, those national clubs were being formed in the university. For example, JAJIK was there, and this is Attila József's club, which works today. And where is it? The club is still located there and it still works to this day. It is a youth club of living and studying Hungarians, mainly from philosophy, but also from other departments. So I went there, I got involved, lectures were there, but already in those years, in the eighty-seven,they already started. Duraj appeared in politics, basically they were starting to get stronger, they felt something in the air, that there would be a revolution, that there would be some bigger change. Hungarians needed much more autonomy, they needed schools, they needed names, they needed to show themselves. I mean, not to assimilate, but just to show up. And this basically appeared in college. Do you mean their identity? Yes. As part of the identity, right. But in the meantime, the second Slovak one also appeared, basically Štúr's company was founded, or as it was called exactly, which published “doštvár”, as a change, as a magazine and other things. Basically these two, two political camps, but also feelings, were meeting there. So we read the change, we got upset, and then they got upset, basically. But I know they have already started. Like, like that in college, I didn't like it very much, I tried to avoid both groups and I knew that a lot of more normal people were there. Things like this, you found out, for example, during collective activities, when, for example, we had a rafting trip, the obligatory rafting of Hron. Forty, fifty people from all over the department were going to come together, there. They were archivists, historians, they were basically from Banská Bystrica, they were from Trenčín. And there, for example, it was mixed. And there, basically, one has already found a best friend for all his life, that they had the same opinions, rather we had opinions, let's say about the whole system.

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    Bratislava, 24.09.2020

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„Not to provoke, simply to live with that system, but to be proud of it, to cultivate the Hungarian language, to cultivate Hungarian culture, not to forget who we are, and so on.“

The memorial, Ľudovít Kossár was born on May 5, 1965, at five o‘clock in the morning, under very unflattering conditions of the flood, in Komárno. Due to the evacuation, after his birth, he was taken to Bratislava with his whole family. Ľudovít mother‘s name was Kokošová as a single woman and she came from a Slovak-Hungarian couple. His father, Štefan Kossár, was of hungarian nationality and his family‘s roots go back to the fifteenth century. Ľudovít is from six siblings, three of them are from his mother‘s second marriage. As he attended just hungarian institutions, he learned the slovak language only thanks to exchange stays between the north and south of Slovakia, during which he visited, for example, Duchonka or Banská Bystrica. During his childhood, he has never expressively felt the pressure of the Slovak part, because of his hungarian nationality. The first signs of Slovak chauvinism were discovered in the age of puberty, in the years 1974-1975. The memorial as a small child has never attended kindergarten. For the first time he attended an educational institution as far as the Hungarian primary school in Komárno, where he also successfully graduated from grammar school. Later he decided for the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava, for the department dealing with historiography. He was accepted for the second time in 1984, due to lack of space. At the beginning, he registered two language problems, the teaching of Slovak and Hungarian historiography, which were different, but due to random checks they had to deal with both. During his university studies, Ľudovít also met with teachers who described themselves as racists towards Hungarians. Before graduating from university, in 1989 he did not miss the writing of a diploma work on the topic, Freemasonry. In 1990, he successfully graduated from university. After college, he worked as an editor for the daily NAP. Later, in 1994, he became the deputy director of the Slovak Film Institute in Bratislava, where he first experienced discrimination and due to his Hungarian nationality, could not become the director of the institute. Approximately at three-year intervals, jobs followed as deputy director of the cultural house in Pezinok, the position of director of the area Štrkovecké lake and the interesting position, the director of the publishing house, Kalligram. In 2010, he started a business in gastronomy. Ľudovít Kossár has publicly admitted to homosexuality. His current relationship lasts fifteen years. Public admission during the communist era was very demanding, because he could be prosecuted or taken to treatment. He considered himself a minority in the minority because he was of hungarian nationality and had an affection for the same sex. Despite the fact that there was a woman in his life, he could not stand it and he officially admitted only after the revolution. The memorial lives in Bratislava for 37 years, so because of this he is considered a Bratislava citizen with Hungarian roots. Nevertheless, he still has a large part of his family in Hungary, so frequent visits are a matter of course.