Hodža, Michal Miloslav

Born Sept. 22, 1811, in Rakŝa; died Mar. 26, 1870. in Tèŝsin. Slovak writer and public figure; an associate of L. Ŝtur.

Hodža was one of the founders and leaders of the Tatrin cultural-enlightenment society, founded in 1844. and a leader of the Slovak Uprising of 1848. Hodža struggled to strengthen the Slovak literary language. In the 1860’s as an evangelical preacher in Liptovsky Mikuláŝ, he resisted the Magyari-zation of the Slovak church, and in 1867 he was forced to leave Slovakia. Hodža was the author of works on Slovak linguistics and of a number of ecclesiastical chants.