ARISTOKRATICKÝ SYN CHUDOBNÉHO FARÁRA? STOPY A ZNAKY UHORSKÉHO ZEMIANSTVA A ARISTOKRATIZMU V ŽIVOTNEJ DRÁHE MILANA RASTISLAVA ŠTEFÁNIKA

According to memoirs, Milan Rastislav Štefánik (1880–1919), one of the founding politics of Czechoslovakia, was known for his aristocratic behaviour in the salons of the French elite in Paris. The study attempts to reconstruct this element of Štefánik’s life, since one of the most exciting parts of his personality is how a poor man from a non-noble family could acquire this behaviour. According to the most obvious explanation, the Hungarian nobleman’s behaviour could serve as a model for him, since he lived the first 18 years of his life in Hungary. However, the question arises as to how someone could use such knowledge so actively and effectively, although he could not know it in practice, since he was not part of the noble society, in fact, he could have encountered the negative and dysfunctional features of the behaviour of the Hungarian nobility? The study reveals that the need to integrate into noble society could be registered in the Štefánik family for generations. A good example of this is the relationship with one of the most powerful Hungarian noble families in the area, the Ocskays. After all, the Ocskays represented almost everything that was unacceptable to Štefánik in the Hungarian noble elite. In spite of this, Štefánik had a particularly close, sometimes confidential relationship with them until the First World War.