Time That Erases

Many settings of Bratislava’s remarkable stories have vanished into the depths of time, so we do not list them. One example will stand for all. The sculptor F. X. Messerschmidt, creator of the celebrated collection of 69 “character studies”, bizarre heads with grimacing faces, lived and died in 1783 in Bratislava’s Zuckermandel district, below the castle, which was entirely demolished during redevelopment. When he died, the district’s inhabitants believed the devil had taken his corpse and that the coffin prepared for burial was empty. The local priest therefore refused to bury the sculptor; this happened only on the primate’s orders. He was buried in St Nicholas’s Cemetery beneath the castle moat, but the location of his grave remained unknown. In 1941 his admirers erected a symbolic monument in the cemetery. After the war it too was demolished, as was the entire cemetery, erasing the last trace of Messerschmidt.