Additions to the History of the Creation of the „Danube Border” I. Parallels and Differences at Certain Stages in the Lives of Two Central European Geographers

At the Paris peace talks, which ended the First World War, one of the cornerstones of the Czechoslovak delegation’s territorial claims against Hungary was to secure the new state’s „Danube border”. Viktor Dvorský, a geographical expert of the Czechoslovak negotiating delegation, played a key role in the founding of the geographical background of the arguments used to support the claim. Years later, Gyula Prinz evaluated Dvorský’s argument system in a peculiarly original approach. Although the two young geographers, contemporaries, only played the role of propmen in the course of the events of 1918/19, their professional knowledge in some cases, although in different ways, but had a decisive influence on the processes, and both are mentioned in contemporary documents. By presenting and analyzing two such documents in detail, their role in the development of events at that time can be better illuminated and clarified. By comparing the careers of the two leading Czech and Hungarian geographers of the decades after the First World War and presenting in more detail the major stages of their lives, parallels can be drawn that can provide a framework for further necessary analyses that can clarify and specify to what extent and in what way do the positions of Hungarian and Slovak geography differ on the treatment of the problem and its interpretation on this important issue of common history.