Ľudovít Štúr (1815 – 1856) was a leading personality of the Slovak national revival, a politician, poet, journalist, publisher, historian, philosopher, pedagogue, linguist, and codifier of standard Slovak. He was well prepared for these roles thanks to his studies in his birth-place (Uhrovec), in the Gymnasium in Győr and in the Evangelic Lyceum in Bratislava. Between 1838 and 1840, he studied general and comparative linguistics and philosophy at the university in Halle. After his return to Slovakia, he lectured in linguistics, Slavic history and aesthetics in the Department of Czechoslovak Language and Literature. However, in 1844 he was discharged from his pedagogical duties because he opposed the efforts of Magyarization. During 1845 – 1848, he published “Slovenskje národnje novini” (Slovak National Newspaper) with the supplement “Orol Tatránski” (The Tatra Eagle). As a Member of Parliament for the town of Zvolen, he fought mostly for the improvement of people’s social situation and to keep the mother tongue as the language for education. He also had a leading role in drafting the Demands of the Slovak Nation (1848) addressed to the Hungarian government. At the Slavic Congress in Prague (1848), he criticised the Austro-Hungarian monarchy against which he was preparing an armed uprising, together with J. M. Hurban. After the failure of the 1848/49 revolution, he lived under police supervision in Modra where he died as a result of an injury inflicted during a hunt.
He started to publish his works in the Czech language. The establishment of Central Slovak as the standard language was approved in the circle of the Štúrian youth in Bratislava in 1843. This standard was officially declared to be the standard language in August 1844 during the meeting of the “Tatrín” (Tatra Society) in Liptovský Mikuláš. Štúr’s linguistic papers “Nárečja Slovenskuo a potreba písaňja v tomto nárečí” (The Slovak Dialect and the Necessity to Write in this Dialect) (1846) and “Náuka reči Slovenskej” (Study of the Slovak Language) (1846) had essential significance for the theoretical basis of standard Slovak.
Štúr’s standard Slovak was becoming established mostly through the Slovak National Newspaper, Tatra Eagle, Hurban’s “Slovenské pohľady” (Slovak Perspectives),  Nitra and also thanks to the Štúrian poets and writers (J. Kráľ, S. Chalupka, J. Kalinčiak and A. Sládkovič). After the revolution, Štúr published “Spevy a piesne” (Singing and Songs) (1853) and an essay “O národních písních a pověstech plemen slovanských” (On National Songs and the Myths of Slavic Kins) (1853) written in Czech. His work “Slovanstvo a svet budúcnosti” (The Slavdom and the World of the Future) remained that time unpublished, only in the form of a manuscript. With his fight for the social and national rights of the Slovak nation and his expert linguistic work, Ľudovít Štúr significantly contributed to the formation of the Slovak nation in the national movement of the 1940s.

Slavomír Ondrejovič