Margaréta Musilová – Branislav Lesák – Jozef Kováč – Andrej Vrtel – Branislav Resutík
The archaeology of Bratislava Castle
Before the commencement of salvage work had begun at Bratislava Castle in 1953, an archaeological research under the supervision of Alfred Piffl from the Slovak Technical University had taken place. Since 1958, this research had been in the hands of Belo Polla from the Archaeological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Nitra and Tatiana Štefanovičová from the City Museum (today’s Bratislava City Museum). The historian Peter Ratkoš and the art historian Ladislav Šášky were part of the research team, which was to be later joined by the conservationist Andrej Fiala. The research was to be ongoing for about 10 years. During the last two decades, the castle has been subjected to partial researches under the administration of the Slovak National Council Chancellery (Jana Šulcová, Andrej Semanko).
The large reconstruction works that had begun at Bratislava Castle in 2008 demanded archaeological research in places that had not been hitherto explored – the former baroque Winter Riding-School, an orangery and the garden at the northern terrace. The City Archive of Monuments Preservation in Bratislava sponsored this research, which was to yield much new information. As far as the history of Bratislava and indeed of the entire Central European region was concerned, the most significant discoveries were to be those from late La Tene period and the periods at the turn of the centuries.
The research at the former Winter Riding-School aimed at mapping the preserved architecture within the building’s ground plan measuring 18.5 x 43,5 metres. The discovery of stonework masonry with perfectly preserved coatings and mortar floors of the terrazzo type came as a great surprise. This was in the so-called Roman Building I according to the floor type used by the Romans (archaeologist B. Lesák and his co-workers discovered the opus signinum type of the Roman mosaic floor on the castle’s courtyard in the Summer of 2008).
The quality of these constructions and findings have served to verify intensive contact between Italy and the Mediterranean area and this has highlighted the significance and wealth of the Bratislava oppidum as a Celtic trade centre on the Amber Route. Splinters of late La Tene ceramics and a lot of debris from Roman amphoras produced in the 1st century BC were to be found in the filling of this construction. Did the Celtic monarchs have this construction built by the Roman builders? The Celtic Boii tribe had built a strong oppidum in Bratislava with an acropolis at the Bratislava castle hill and surrounding area. They enjoyed military power and they controlled the strategic trade routes leading from the North to the South and from the East to the West and also produced gold and silver coins.
The dating and function of the construction will continue to raise questions for a long time to come, unlike the treasure of Celtic coins that was discovered in a solid mortar layer of an apparently unfinished floor in the middle of the corridor of the Roman construction. Altogether 15 gold staters, 4 silver tetradrachms of the Bratislava type and 3 simmerings were found. Apart from the coins, fragments of a glass vessel and a bronze seal-box were also found. The set of 15 golden and 7 silver coins could have been the “construction sacrifice” in favour of the new building or there may have been some intention to hide the rare treasure in face of any imminent danger.
In 2009, the archaeologists also researched the Bratislava Castle courtyard and its adjoining areas, mainly the garden pavilion – orangery in the eastern part of the northern façade of the castle palace spreading over 250 m2. Most of the findings related to the castle palace’s early baroque reconstruction in 1639 – 1645 and the hole for the bell casting from the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. An exceptional discovery was the filling of a construction hole for masonry stone construction measuring some 10 x 12 metres, which was found in the central part of the courtyard. This mainly contained late La Tene material and the findings of primeval settlement layers from the late Stone Age – Eneolit (middle of the 3rd millennium BC).
The archaeological research of Bratislava Castle’s northern terrace (an area of 6,832 m2 has thus far been researched and the research continues) made an ideal assumption for a close documentation of the castle hill’s settlement from the oldest times up until today. The castle hill was to become the meeting point of the Celtic fates with the economically and politically ambitious Romans shortly before the arrival of the Germanic people who searched for new possibilities regarding the expansion of their tribal settlements. The Roman expansion to the north did not take place and the border of the Empire ended at the Danube. The wariness of the guards of the Roman limit did not allow for any settlement in the abandoned oppidum for several centuries. The castle hill came to life again in the early Middle Ages. Regarding Sigismund’s reconstruction of the castle at the beginning of the 15th century, a heap of stones was used for the construction of the walls and maybe also the palace itself. This would have been from the stone quarry opened in the middle of the terrace, which is visible on the Bratislava castle plan by Giovanni Pieroni from 1642. The turning point in the overall appearance of the northern terrace was the establishment of a French type baroque garden according to the project of architect F. A. Hillebrandt before 1778. These adjustments helped to make the castle residency more comfortable for the needs of Maria Theresa. The garden most probably originated at the place of an existing, simpler garden, captured on the Bratislava plan of M. Marquart from 1765. Its significance declined after the building of the General Seminary. The garden at the northern terrace was to change to accommodate the needs for the educating of priests about the growing of fruit. When the seminary closed, the castle fell into the hands of the army. The garden quickly deteriorated, mainly after the fire of 1811. The city plan from 1895 shows it as a neglected, overgrown place with greenery, most probably used only for military training. This fact is proven by the number of cartridges dating between 1875 and 1937 that were found there, along with other military findings from the First and Second World Wars.
The last significant change took place after the end of the Second World War, when an amphitheatre was built at the northern terrace. The lower part of the auditorium, unfortunately, cut too deeply into the layers of historical cultures and thus fully destroyed them.
The archaeological research at the Bratislava Castle courtyard was not yet completed before the article deadline; therefore our contribution takes the form of an informative rather than an evaluative character.
Dušan Buran
Wall paintings in the Church of St. Stephen in Žilina
The Church of St. Stephen the King in Žilina, the Rudiny district, consists of a low apse with concha, a higher “choir” vaulted into a simple barrel vault and a nave. The last is probably the youngest part of the church and comes from the Middle Ages, as the gothic windows on the southern and western walls suggest. St. Stephen the King is first mentioned as the church patron in 1429, in the Book of Žilina, which is much later than the proposed dating of the building.
The church had been researched several times in the past, mainly from a construction-historical perspective (Mária Smoláková, Štefana Oriško, Monika Škvarnová). Its medieval wall paintings, however, still lack a systematic analysis and evaluation of individual layers. The wall paintings in the apse’s concha come from several periods. Layers from at least two phases, not counting the repaints, could be distinguished there before restoration. The figural decoration had four characters: St. Stephen, St. Ladislaus, St. Imrich and St. Elisabeth of Hungary – a frequent combination of Hungarian dynastic saints, which complies with the traditional patrocinium of the church. Part of the apse’s painting decoration was at least one consecration cross, today only preserved in fragments, as well as an adjustment of the narrow window on the eastern side. The best-preserved layer of the painting is the row of apostles on both sides of the church’s “choir”. Eight figures are depicted on the northern wall and only four on the southern (because of the window).
The vault of the “choir” has preserved remains of a wall painting and its outlines enabled the reliable detection of the original iconography: a dominant figure of Christ The Judge.
Regarding the recent restoration of the wall paintings, the most difficult job was the estimation of the origin of the four figures on the apse’s youngest layer. Repainted several times, lastly in the 1950s, this has significantly changed their authentic appearance. The garments of the male saints (short wide trousers) sporadically appear like a reflection of modern fashion, otherwise they relate to the costumes seen on late-gothic altars. These figures were the main methodical problem during restoration. Regarding their questionable authenticity, the restorers opted for a radical solution and covered them with a neutral painting resulting from the findings of the oldest layer. The apse thus received an archaic look, dominated by vault ribs converging in a painted sectroid with dog heads.
Regarding the proposed dating of the two oldest layers (before 1250, or the second half of the 13th century), the wall paintings in the Church of St. Stephen the King in Žilina are the most precious evidence of medieval painting in Slovakia.
František Gutek
Viktor Myskovszky and the monuments of Bardejov
The pioneer of systematic monument preservation in the then Hungary, art historian, artist, museum ethnographer and pedagogue Viktor Myskovszky died in Košice on November 2 1909. A native of Bardejov (1838), he often returned to his hometown and its monuments. Gradually, he became the most recognized authority in the field. He proved this by publishing a two-volume monograph about the old artistic monuments in Bardejov (Bártfa középkori műemlékei), which earned him membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In addition, he also wrote more than 30 articles and studies about the new information he had gained either from others or based on his own archival research.
In the middle of the 1860s, Myskovszky studied to become a conservationist at the Viennese technical school and mainly at the local Academy of Fine Arts, where the leading restorer and propagator of renovation idea and monument protection, Fridrich Schmidt, influenced him. In that time, he ceased to judge artworks only from their art-historical, aesthetical and style viewpoint and began to focus on their “monument” value, meaning how to preserve a given work. He often indignantly protested against the “violation” of monuments by unprofessional and irresponsible restoration.
In this sense, he drew attention towards the need for an urgent repair to two most significant monuments in Bardejov – the Parish Church and the Town Hall. The catastrophic fire of April 22, 1878, stirred him on to even greater activity. As a correspondent of the temporary Hungarian Monument Commission since 1875, he was not slow to inform them about the Parish Church damage. In his letter, he expressed his hope that the state and the monument commission would soon jointly assist in the renovation of the church, where the commission would prevent incorrect renovation of ancient artistic monuments as was the case in the 1850s. Notwithstanding this, the main early-baroque altar (1650 – 1655) was removed from the Church of St. Egidius during the adjustments in 1887 without any preliminary documentation (drawings or photographs) and replaced by a late-gothic one. Several significant parts from the original altar remain preserved in the museum. Apart from three gothic sculptures, there is the sculpture of the Resurrection of Christ and two tall side-paintings in original frames depicting the Hungarian kings St. Stephen and St. Ladislaus, and above all the central altar’s painting, which is currently undergoing restoration.
Zuzana Janošíková – Miroslav Čovan
Three figural tombs from Šariš
The authors of the article had turned their attention to three sepulchres – the renaissance figural tomb of a knight from the Treskow family from the Church of St. Egidius in Bardejov, the tomb of Konrad Kappler from the Church of St. John the Baptist in Sabinov and the tomb of Stefan Dessöffy from the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in Sabinov.
The Bardejov tomb, which has not been yet identified, led to hypothesis about a possible German, Dutch or Walloon origin of the noble. The key to identification was the embossed family coat of arms, the study of which led the authors to eliminate any possibility of his being a Hungarian noble. The research proved that the coat of arms belonged to the German family of Treskow (Tresckow, Treszkow, Treschkow, Treskau) coming from Saxony. So far, there has been no success in finding a concrete person to identify with the Bardejov knight or the reason for his sojourn in the upper Šariš region (maybe it was military service for the emperor or some local magnate). The details of the sandstone tomb and a thorough analysis of the figure helped to identify the author of the work and his workshop – Santi Gucci († 1582), who came from Florence and worked in nearby Polish Krakow until 1557. The Bardejov renaissance tomb shows clear signs of his work and probably originated between 1580 and 1600.
The tombstone of Konrad Kappler is made of pink marble and was secondarily imbedded in the exterior of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Sabinov. This renaissance sculpture work is sporadically referred to in registers and monument documents, but the presentation is vague and insufficient despite its qualities. The authors identified the German text, where it is mainly the type of the writing which is epigraphically interesting and which is so far the only known example of the use of fracture on a sepulchre monument in this region. The tomb panel depicts a life-size figure of a knight in armour, with helmet on his head and standing astride the pedestal. He holds a spear with a flag in his right hand and the left one rests on his sword. There probably was a lion sculpture underneath his legs, which symbolized the Resurrection. A fully preserved coat of arms of Konrad Kappler can be found in the lower left corner.
The figural tombstone of Stefan Dessöffy in black marble is imbedded in the southern nave’s wall of Sabinov’s Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. So far, the historians referred to it as a late-renaissance epitaph from the end of the 16th century. The noble, to whom the tombstone is dedicated, was successfully identified thanks to the inscription made in capital letters – it is Stefan Desseffy (Dessefy, Dessofy, Dessoffy, Dessewffy) (1667 – 1742), a significant military captain and benefactor of Sabinov’s piarist college.
Daniela Pellová
Pauline Fathers monastery in Trebišov
The archives of noble families would invariably contain rare documentation regarding the exploration of church history and the monument research of church buildings. To take part in the administration process of a parish, church or monastery was a direct result of the patronal rights of the nobles, as well as a manifestation of their faith or societal prestige. Among the more significant of the magnate families, who were generous donors to the church in eastern Slovakia, were the Drugeths, a noble family of French-Neapolitan origin who came to Hungary accompanied by King Charles Robert of Anjou. Brothers Filip and Ján Drugeth were his confidants and co-fighters. When Ján Drugeth returned home after 1312, Filip stayed in Hungary and as a reward for his struggle against Count Matthew Csák of Trenčín and because of his help in getting Charles Robert to the throne, he was given the castle estates of Plaveč, Zemplín and Brekov along with the adjacent villages in 1317. Filip was to also gain significant offices and important functions in the Hungarian state apparatus. When Filip died in 1327 without any heirs, the king donated the properties to his brother Ján, who meanwhile returned to Hungary. The Drugeths soon became the richest feudalists in Zemplín, strengthening their position even more with favourable marriage policies with the richest Hungarian families (Báthory, Esterházy, Révay, Nádasdy, Rozgonyi).
The Drugeths were Catholics, but at the beginning of the 17th century, some members joined the Protestants and sided with the anti-Habsburg rebels. Under the influence of the Jesuits, however, they returned to Catholicism and the Habsburgs supported parishes, built churches and founded monasteries.
They helped the monasteries in Humenné, Vranov, Krásny Brod, Užhorod and Trebišov. The administrative papers of their Trebišov estate contained valuable information for the historical research of the monastery and church of the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit (Pauline Fathers) in Trebišov. Founded by Palatine Imrich Perényi, Pope Julius gave consent to the construction around 1500. The building of the monastery began in 1502 and was finished in 1504. In the course of history, financial statues of the estate changed and so did the monastery in Trebišov, which served various purposes. The Pauline Fathers used the monastery with breaks for some 166 years and it only ceased to be a monastery over 220 years ago. The Andrássy family took over the Trebišov estate in 1838. They owned it until nationalization in 1945 and in the meantime financed several repairs of the church and monastery (1892, 1924, 1933). The last reconstructions were to have taken place in the 1960s and be finished in 1971 but there were in fact even more last minute adjustments carried out a few years ago. The building is still in use today housing a basic art school and Roman-Catholic parish administration.
Veronika Kapišinská
Modernism in school buildings in Ružomberok
Functionalism in general has not been very kind to historical monuments. Ascetic row upon row of modern buildings has invariably interfered with an original municipal building plan and yielded great contrast. A fine illustration of cultivated functionalist intervention into a historical building would be the perceptive reconstruction and completion of the Roman-Catholic Girls’ Intermediate School and dormitory in Ružomberok. The school can still be found in the oldest part of the town, in the vicinity of a built-up area consisting of mainly ground-floor houses of traditional character. The reconstruction and completion of the school was carried out during the first Czechoslovak Republic, which reorganised the education system including the school buildings because they did not comply with the new capacity and hygiene requirements. The man behind the reconstruction was Jozef Švidroň (1907 – 1998), one of the most active Ružomberok architects, who had owned a designing office there in 1928 – 1942. In 1939, he designed a project, in which he kept the street wing but replaced the adjoining building with a new construction having a ground plan in the shape of the letter “T”. The functionalist expression could be seen principally in the façade arrangement, especially in the entrances and in the building’s finer details, such as the railings, doors, handles and ceramic wall tiling, as is documented in the sketches preserved in the State Archive in Bytča. This gave origin to a combination of tradition and modern style of considerable quality.
The Roman-Catholic Boys’ Primary School at Ružomberok’s Námestie A. Hlinku Square was built somewhat earlier. Architects Donner and Makovický designed projects that reflected different architectural opinions in 1932. The current Grammar School of St. Andrej dominates the square area. Despite the fact that this patulous building is located in close proximity to the town’s dominating feature – the Church of St. Ondrej, it does not emerge as its competitor. Mounted into a steeply rising terrain, the school building merges into the system of staircases and terraces, thereby becoming part of the monumental access to the church. The sculpture of Christ – the Teacher with a child ideologically joins both buildings. This was made by local sculptor V. Mydlo and sits in a corner of the school facing the church.
Next to the traditionally designed exterior, which matches the historical environment of Ružomberok’s oldest square, the disposition and premises of the school have been constructed in a very rational and purposeful manner. The tracked arrangement of large windows has secured maximum light for the classrooms. The school moreover has made great use of the modern facilities of school buildings such as terraces, a schoolyard and adjacent green areas. The original paving from cast terrazzo, compartment truss ceilings, as well as window and door panels, can still be found in the interior.
Andrea Jamrichová
Červený Kameň after the Pálffy departure of 1945
The author of the article writes about the unsettled fates of the Červený Kameň Castle mobiliari after the departure of its noble owners in 1945. Until then, half of the castle was inhabited and owned by Karol Pálffy, the second one – uninhabited – belonged to the School Study Endowment of Ján Pálffy. The furnished parts of the castle were de jure in the hands of the REOS stock company, where Karol Pálffy was a majority owner. REOS bought half of the Červený Kameň Castle from Blanka Pálffy, born Batthyány, a widow of Vojtech Pálffy, on August 3, 1936. Karol Pálffy came to live at Červený Kameň from Smolenice, where his father and then older brother owned a manor house and castle. His mother, Lucia Pálffy, and from time to time also his younger brother Peter Pálffy, a famous painter, joined him later. By the end of March 1945 they left to live with their relatives in Austria. They took away only a part of the family property from Červený Kameň and bricked up the more valuable items (historical furniture, carpets, paintings of their ancestors, photographs, etc) in various places of the Červený Kameň Castle in order to save them from the coming front. The thieves did not wait long, arriving in the Easter of 1945. The marauders and local citizens stole, threw out of windows and destroyed just about everything that they possibly could.
This loss of interior equipment of the castle palace was joined with the transfers of movable property to Bratislava, which was carried out five times from September 1945 by the department of the historical-artistic monuments protection of the then Ministry of School and Education. Assisted by the trustee in bankruptcy of the REOS Company, they removed several furniture pieces, 43 artworks of Peter Pálffy and 66 family portraits, as well as the preserved part of the pharmacy that had suffered from plundering, a collection of medals and minerals and various collection curiosities. Inventory control of the preserved items in walled rooms as well as the registration of castle equipment that belonged to Karol Pálffy, was not carried out at that time. This led to a complete interruption of any continuity of use of the castle palace’s rooms and the arrangement of its mobiliari.
After 1948, when the National Cultural Commission had started to assemble items that had survived the plundering of the castles, manor houses and mansions in safe havens, Červený Kameň Castle was to become one of these so-called “storage places”. From the authentic to the non-authentic items, the first post-war administrator of the castle was to create a new installation in its interiors and facilitate access of the castle palace to the public after the carrying out of necessary repairs on October 22nd, 1949.
An exhibition of period photographs, entitled Was it Originally Like That? is to run at the Červený Kameň Castle museum from May to September 2010. The visitor can observe not only how the presently changed or non-existent interiors of this noble residency had looked originally, but also how this institution systematically continues to work at preserving the place’s memory.
Elena Machajdíková
Eighty years of the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava
The new building of the Agricultural Museum (predecessor of the Slovak National Museum) was ceremoniously opened at Vajanského nábrežie on May 4, 1930. It housed expositions of three museums – the Agricultural Museum (established in 1924), the Forestry Museum (1927) and the Slovak Homeland Museum (1923).
The Agricultural Museum in Bratislava was established by the Czechoslovak Agricultural Museum in Prague as its regional branch. The collection items provided a unified picture of agricultural production in Slovakia. The exposition, covering an area of 1,785 m2, was divided into seven parts, and had 14 halls and 50 departments. Miloš Jurkovič, the main administrator and later the director of the Slovak Museum, prepared a printed guide-book about the Agricultural Museum’s collections in 1929. The museum also displayed exhibits on forestry and game keeping, since on 14 December 1927 the newly founded Forestry Museum was to become its autonomous part with its own administration. The organisational board of the Agricultural Museum also freed four (later six) halls on the first and third floor of the residency for displaying the Slovak Homeland Museum’s collections. This museum was founded on March 16, 1924, and from the beginning struggled with spatial and financial problems. It functioned on a societal basis, the main source of income being from the membership fees, a variety of general support functions, donations, entrance fees and subsidies. The Slovak Homeland Museum had four departments – Historical-archaeological with numismatic section, gallery, ethnographical and natural.
Ten halls belonged to the Agricultural and Forestry museums, and the Slovak Homeland Museum had four (later six).
Miloš Jurkovič (1900 – 1987), a significant Slovak museum ethnographer, who studied the history of natural sciences, mainly botany, agriculture, forestry, fruit growing and technical monuments in Slovakia, was the first administrator of the Agricultural Museum (1926 – 1940). After the museum merged with the Forestry and Slovak Homeland Museum in one Slovak-wide institution, he became the director of the Slovak Museum (1940 – 1955) in Bratislava.
Zuzana Zvarová
Industrial buildings from 1918 – 1945 in Nové Mesto nad Váhom
The first manufactories in Nové Mesto nad Váhom were built in the second half of the 19th century. They consisted in the main of factories processing agricultural crops, fruits and vegetables. A factory processing leather was built in 1826,a factory making rum and liqueur in 1842,a factory making soap in 1850 and there was a factory for iron products in 1872. The Coburg factory for mining and metallurgical machines was established in 1900 and the first Hungarian factory for the production of steel forks in 1903. The railway construction of the 1870s and also the later electrification contributed to the industrial development of the town.
The Czech-Moravian Gas and Electrical Corporation supplied the electrification in 1923 – 1925. The town offered it the exclusive rights for 50 years to supply the electricity for its lighting, not to mention its sale and industrial use. The electric power plant, built according to the project of E. Pikler from 1925,on the land behind the town’s gas works, was divided into two parts. The bigger one was a machine room, and the smaller one was used as an office and for utility purposes. Today, only gas-holder, gas works and gas-meter buildings stand there. The electric power plant was destroyed, probably after 1945.
At the beginning of the 1920s, the ASDUS (American-Slovak Woodworking Stock Company) factory, manufacturing furniture and parquet blocks, was built near the railway in Nové Mesto nad Váhom.
The factory region consisted of the main building, elevated tank, machine room with boiler and chimney, drying room and saw mill built by the Trnava firm Pittel and Brausewetter in 1921 – 1922. The buildings of the ADSUS factory were modern ferro-concrete constructions with historicist facades. The Prague firm Techna took over the factory area in 1932, setting up a branch for the manufacturing, repairing and selling of gas masks. It rebuilt the main factory building and installed new machines. In 1940 Techna fell into the hands of WAT, producers of bulb accessories. Out of the original buildings, only the elevated tank and the main factory building with boiler and machine room, which underwent a complete reconstruction at the beginning of the 21st century, have remained until today.
The Považská Factory for Vegetable Oils, later Palma, which was founded in 1933, had also had a significant position in the town’s industrial life. It was to grow considerably in the 1930s, and as well as the production building it also had a storage house and oil press. The building of the boiler plant was added in 1935. The Slovak Chemical Works was to enter the factory in 1939 with the call for the development of a factory building and office rooms as well as the production of glycerine and soap. The famous architect B. Weinwurm projected the building in the spirit of functionalism. The extraction station with petrol station was built around 1941 – 1942. Only the oil press from 1934 has been preserved in the Palma area.
The grain silo and administration building erected in 1934 are also remarkable industrial constructions. They were designed by M. Svitavský from Bratislava and were built using a ferro-concrete framework filled with bricks and Hennebique ferro-concrete ceilings. The silo and administration building have been preserved in the original manner along with the cargo lift and part of the original equipment.
Ivan Žilinčík
Treasure coins from Čadca-Horelica
When digging the fence foundations at his family house in the municipal part of Horelica on March 29 in 2000, the Čadca citizen J. Kubica found a clay jug with 1,658 silver coins. The finder delivered the treasure to the Kysuce Museum in Čadca, where it became part of the collection fund.
The oldest coin is the “denar” of Matthias Corvinus from 1489 – 1490 and the youngest is the “3-kreutzer” of Leopold I from 1677. Based on the dating of the youngest coin we can assume that the treasure was hidden in the last two decades of the 17th century or the first years of the 18th century. The jug with coins was buried quite shallow underground, its bottom reaching a depth of 57 cm. The coins were probably hidden in consequence of a threatening danger from some kind of armed group. The place of discovery was close to the Kysuca river; on the other bank there used to run a quite busy road joining Hungary with Silesia and Poland. The discovery only contains coins of lower nominal value, while more than half of them (845) are Polish. The money had been coined throughout the course of 188 years; there are coins of various monarchs from various countries of Central Europe. The then Hungary is represented with 235 coins, the countries of the Czech “koruna” with 269 coins and from what was then Bohemia 162 coins.
The hidden coins represented quite a large amount of money, sufficient to make it worth a return for the one who hid them, in the case of survival. But because the coins were buried underground for around three centuries, we assume that the one who hid them did not return to collect them because of his/her demise.