Štefan Butkovič and Technical Museum

Abstract

The presented contribution records the origin and operation of a specialized museum in Košice and its founder Štefan Butkovič, who played a significant role in the crystallization process of technical museology in Slovakia after the Second World War. The establishment of this museum significantly influenced and stimulated the development of knowledge through objects and exhibits of a technical nature. The article analyses the life and work of the founder and first director of the Slovak Technical Museum, who focused his centre of interest on collecting and protecting the monuments of mining and industrial culture. Š. Butkovič was one of the leading authorities in the field of museology and the history of mining, and it is rightly ranked among the top in the Slovak museology. Throughout his life, he lived and worked in Slovakia in the city of Košice, which contributed to its considerable socio-cultural development. One of the reasons for choosing the topic was the fact that the life of this museologist and historian and its clear contribution not only to the establishment of the specialized museum, the first planetarium, but also its contribution to the museum and historical community has not yet been processed.