200th anniversary of the birth of Janko Kráľ

€10 silver collector coin

Janko Kráľ (24 April 1822 – 23 May 1876) was a Slovak poet and a leading figure of Slavic Romantic poetry. He wrote ballads and epics, extending the genre with his reflections on himself, the world and current events, as well as with affecting descriptions of nature. Born in Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia, Kráľ studied at the Lutheran Lyceum in Pressburg (now Bratislava) and while there became one of the most radical poets of the ‘Ľudovít Štúr generation’. He welcomed and extolled the 1848 revolution, in which he acted as an agitator and was imprisoned for doing so. Subsequently, he worked as a civil servant, and although he would from time to time come out with a new work, and occasionally be published, he no longer engaged in political activity. Besides experiencing major revolutionary events of 1848 and 1849, he was present at two key events that took place in Turčiansky Svätý Martin in the early 1860s: the adoption of the Memorandum of the Slovak Nation by the Slovak National Assembly, and the founding general meeting of Matica Slovenská. In his poetry, Kráľ captured all these events from the perspective of his direct personal experience. His works, scattered as they were across various magazines of the period, would not be anthologised until after his death. Literary science ranks Janko Kráľ as one of the most important European Romantic poets.