In Di\u00f3sgy\u0151r, in a family home overlooking the peaks of distant mountains\u2014one might almost imagine oneself in Lipt\u00f3\u2014lives Elem\u00e9r Platthy (or Plathy). The view from his glass-walled living room inspires this involuntary thought. His family, too, hails from that wild, bear-haunted land, from which they take their ancient territorial epithet: of Tur\u00f3cdiv\u00e9k and Nagypalugya. <\/p>\n\n
According to the family chronicles, their ancestor Marceus de Gywek held lands in Div\u00e9k (Diviaky), Tur\u00f3c County. On August 20, 1317, his sons received a royal grant from King Charles I of Hungary for the estate of Nagypalugya (Paludza). The land of that once noteworthy village now lies beneath the waters of the Lipt\u00f3szentm\u00e1ria (Liptovsk\u00e1 Mara) reservoir. Of its former buildings, only the famed wooden Evangelical church of Szentkereszt (Sv\u00e4t\u00fd Kr\u00ed\u017e) survives\u2014thanks to the popular movement that arose during the years of state socialism to preserve it\u2014and the reconstructed wooden manor of the related Lehoczky family, now standing in the open-air museum of Pribilina (Pribylina). The Platthy family lived here, as well as in Andah\u00e1za (Andice) and G\u00e1lfalva (Galovany), serving as honorable county gentlemen for centuries before, like many noble Lipt\u00f3 families, they dispersed across the Hungarian lands. <\/p>\n\n
Elem\u00e9r Platthy\u2019s career stands as a remarkable testament to human will and the determination to live. As a university student, he fell beneath a train due to an error by the Hungarian State Railways and lost half a leg in the terrible accident. <\/p>\n\n
After a long recovery, walking with crutches, he rebuilt his life from the ground up\u2014and soon enough, as was his temperament, love entered his days. Together with a former classmate, he built an unusual career: producing and selling animal equipment and plastic goods for aquaristics, they carved out a modest but successful livelihood. Their small business never grew beyond a workshop in scale, yet it provided enough means to indulge an old passion\u2014the rescue and preservation of relics from the past. Thus they became saviors of old artifacts and guardians of the Platthy family heritage. <\/p>\n\n
Among their treasures were the personal belongings of G\u00e1sp\u00e1r Platthy, once a cadet at the Ludovika Military Academy. During the years of the communist regime, he was branded a class enemy, expelled from the academy, and denied a military career. Turning instead to horses, he earned his living for a time as a carter. Then came word of the Platthy family\u2019s expulsion from Lipt\u00f3. Determined to save his relatives\u2019 ancestral valuables, he drove north with a wagon and brought whatever he could to his father Mikl\u00f3s Platthy\u2019s home in K\u00e1zsm\u00e1rk, Borsod County. <\/p>\n\n
Tragically, after G\u00e1sp\u00e1r\u2019s death, these heirlooms once again had to be rescued, for thieves repeatedly broke into the K\u00e1zsm\u00e1rk house, searching for valuables.<\/p>\n\n
While they ripped the brass handles from a two-hundred-year-old tabernacle, they scorned the papers scattered on the floor\u2014among them a letter from Lajos Kossuth himself, lying forgotten in the dust when the family entered the house after their relative\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n\n
Elem\u00e9r Platthy later donated a significant portion of his collection to the Hungarian National Archives through the Hungarian Heritage Archives Foundation. Part of his legacy consists of military photographs\u2014memories of his father, Mikl\u00f3s Platthy, who served on numerous fronts, including the campaigns in Upper Hungary and Transylvania. His photographs capture the daily life of front-line soldiers: the heroic workday of the camp barbers, before whom half the regiment stood in line to receive their vaccinations, and the jubilant scenes of Transylvanian towns and villages adorned with flags and flowers to welcome the returning Hungarian troops. <\/p>\n\n
Another part of the collection leads us back to Lipt\u00f3, the ancient cradle of the Platthy family. Thanks to their extensive kinship network, many original photographs preserve the faces of the Csemiczky, Kubinyi, and Thur\u00e1nszky families, and the places where they lived\u2014including the long-destroyed Bertalanfalva manor, now surviving only through these archival images. <\/p>\n\n
The third segment of the collection unveils the story of the K\u00e1zsm\u00e1rk manor and the struggle of Mikl\u00f3s Platthy against the postwar communist authorities, who used every means at their disposal to ruin the life of the former landowner. Yet thanks to the wonder of photography, fragments of the nineteenth century remain\u2014frozen moments of those who have lain in their graves for more than a hundred years. In one image, a carriage rolls out from a rural manor, bearing ladies to church or perhaps to a social visit; in another, a group relaxes in the garden, or raises glasses at a christening. One photograph shows Pity\u00f3 Guszti, the famed Gypsy violinist of Lipt\u00f3szentmikl\u00f3s; another depicts a young man, Mikl\u00f3s Vereby, who fell heroically on the Galician front on July 5, 1918. It is no exaggeration to say\u2014perhaps this single frame is all that remains of them. <\/p>\n\n
Podhor\u00e1nyi Zsolt<\/p>\n