Contemporary Press of the Negotiations in Komárno and the First Vienna Award

The aim of our study is to briefly summarise the course of the negotiations in Komárno and the First Vienna Award, and to give an insight into how the Hungarian and Slovak press of the time commented on the events. The Hungarian press blamed the Slovak party for the breakdown of the negotiations, saying that the Czechoslovak party was trying to stall for time and that it had not offered Hungary a number of territories with a predominantly Hungarian-speaking population. The Slovak papers, on the contrary, blamed the Hungarian party for the breakdown of the negotiations because of its excessive territorial claims. The Hungarian newspapers reported the outcome of the First Vienna Award with great joy and enthusiasm, while the Slovak press, of course, was negative. Although the First Vienna Award resulted in an ethnically much more equitable borderline between Hungary and Slovakia than it was before, the “Hungarian times” did not last long in the life of the Hungarian minority in southern Slovakia. After the Second World War, the First Vienna Award was annulled, as was the Munich Agreement. The Paris Peace Treaty, signed by Hungary on 10 February 1947, reaffirmed Hungary’s Trianon borders, which once again put the Hungarians in Slovakia in a disadvantaged and minority position.