Žilina Gallery :: Fotogaléria mesta Žiliny

34 – Trávniček’s commercial and housing complex

Turistická informačná tabuľka č. 34 s QR kódom na Trávničkovom dome na Ulici Jozefa Vuruma
(Foto: 8. 3. 2014)

Oldřich Trávniček (December 17th 1888, Česká Třebová – December 7th 1945, Žilina) was one of Žilina’s most important figures, helping to promote culture in the town, mainly in his role as publisher and bookseller. Together with his wife Mária, born Matúšková, he settled in Žilina in 1919 with the ambition of setting up a shop selling paper and office goods, but in 1921 he founded his own publishing house and was one of the first Slovak publishers to begin systematically publishing books and theatre plays for young people. Until then there had been no such business in Žilina, and hardly any in Slovakia, and Trávniček’s books were in fact able to meet the demand and desire for Slovak books. He brought together in Žilina almost all available literature, from the publishers Matica slovenská, Tranoscius, Spolok sv. Vojtecha and others, as well as from Czech publishers. He founded a book lending club in Žilina, which was in fact the first public library in the town. The town only opened a public lending library in 1924.
Trávniček cooperated with several Czech publishers, paper and office goods traders and was responsible for translations of Czech literature into Slovak. In Žilina, he became friends with the family of Dr. Ivan Hálek who translated into Slovak for him K. Driml’s puppet play “Bacilinek”. At the beginning of the 1920s, there was a shortage of Slovak school text books. This led O. Trávniček to found the Teacher’s Publishing House in 1922, which published not only text books, but also specialised handbooks and methodological guides. Many authors and translators worked for him in his publishing house.
He had to have the majority of his books printed in Bohemia and Moravia, since apart from Martin, there was a shortage of printing works capable of publishing Slovak literature. He worked with several Slovak artists, as well as Ján Hála, for whom he published two books. In 1922, he published sixteen books, including the “Prvouka” for Slovak schools, Illustrated reader and Slovak language text book for Hungarian schools. He launched the series “Selection from the works by our cultural and national figures”, where the first volume was the book “Kukučín for children” and the book by the native of Bytča, Sidónie Sakalová “My Joy”.
He also established the Rozkvet Theatre Library for Young People, under which seven plays for young people and four plays for amateur dramatists were published. He also published religious literature as well as a series of children’s tales, including two selections of children’s stories by Božena Nemcová and Tichonová’s Russian Animal Tales. Trávniček essentially founded Slovak puppet theatre, for which he opened a library of plays entitled “Drops”. He also procured stage equipment for the puppet theatre: puppets, scenery and other props. He continued in this line by founding the “Gašparkovo divadlo” series.
The Trávniček publishing house had an exceptionally wide range of activities. It not only published full-length plays for amateur drama groups, but also founded the series “Amateur stage”. Many board books by S. Sakalová were published by him, as well as picture books, Matica’s Dobré slovo, adventure novels, novels for young girls and practical guides for Slovak students. In 1931, he published nine text books for teachers, then focused only on publishing young people’s literature. He was also good at promoting his books. He published a newsletter which informed the public of the publisher’s activities. He also published translations of foreign literature such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s travels etc.
From 1941 to 1945 he mainly published story books and plays as well as adventure novels such as Verne’s “Dick Sand, a Captain at Fifteen”. He worked with the artist Vincent Hložník who from 1944 onwards illustrated the most books published by his publishing house. He worked with the resistance movement in Slovakia and was arrested and imprisoned as a result in Ilava. After the war, he published more novels and children’s literature, including Anderson’s fairy-tales with Hložník’s beautiful illustrations. His health was fragile and he died on December 7th 1945 in Žilina, where he is buried. After his death, his wife and two sons carried on the publishing activities until nationalization in 1949.
The plot of land on which Trávniček had his two-storey house built belonged to the neighbours: the family of the cinema owner Rufinus Stejskal; previously there had been an older house on the spot, built before 1850. Trávniček bought the land in 1930 for 40,000 crowns and built a two-storey house on it in 1931, designed by M. M. Scheer, an important functionalist architect working in Žilina. The front part of the prism-shaped corner house is lightened by the addition of columns. Shops were mostly located here, behind the large glass windows. It is edifying for today’s society to note that Trávniček, following a request by the town, shifted his building towards the back of the plot of land to preserve the street’s building line; he did the same for the corner too. The publisher’s workshops and warehouses were located in the house’s yard, employing around fifteen employees. Before building this house, the Trávniček family lived at Komenského street no. 16.
Trávniček had one other house by today’s Grand hotel, which he obtained in 1938 for 50,000 crowns. Before this, however, this is where he had his shop; the building was rented. People in Žilina refer to it as Trávniček’s paper shop and office supplies shop, which continued Trávniček’s activities until the 1990s. At present, the house has been redeveloped and the VIX restaurant stands in its place.

Source: Mgr. Jozef Moravčík, Mgr. Peter Štanský. Text prevzatý z webovej stránky TIK Žilina (kliknite): www.tikzilina.eu.