KEŽMAROK / Késmárk / Käsmark lies on the Poprad river in the Zips region. Its was first chartered by King Béla IV (1235-1270) and was given the status of a free royal town by King Louis I the Great (1342-1482). Kežmarok was fortified with bastions and walls under King Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387-1437). Its coat of arms and 'ius gladii' were granted by King Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490). In the mid-16th century the town also became famous for its schools. The Lutheran secondary school was founded in 1530 under the inspiration of George Leudeschit, Lutheran priest of Kežmarok. Its first head-masters included two former students of Luther and Melanchthon, John Sommer and Leonard Stöckel. The school was organised according to pedagogical principles laid down by Melanchthon: not only theology, Latin, and Greek but also rhetoric and mathematics were taught. The training of Lutheran priests began in the 17th century. David Fröhlich, one of the most renowned mathematicians of the era and the foremost explorer of the Tatras, was a teacher and headmaster here. Famous ex-students of the school included the language reformer Ferenc Kazinczy and the great Slovak poet, Pavol Országh-Hviezdoslav. The historian and university professor Martin Schwartner (1759-1823) was born in Kežmarok; he was for a short time a teacher of the Lutheran secondary school.

The most important church of Kežmarok is the parish church of the Holy Cross, which was built in the 13th century in late Romanesque style and rebuilt between 1444-1498 in Gothic style. The rebuilding was financially supported by Imre Zápolya and therefore the coat of arms of the Zápolya family were put together with that of the town above the southwestern portal. The church's high altar dates from ca. 1500. Its cross with the kneeling figure of the Mary Magdalene was probably made in the studio of Veit Stoss; the altarpiece dates from the first half of the 15th century. During the Reformation, the community converted to Protestantism and the church was run by the Protestants between 1531 and 1673. Renaissance campaniles are hallmarks of the Zips towns. The one standing next to the church was built in 1591 and is probably the most beautiful of its kind in Upper Hungary. The wooden Lutheran church of the town was built at the turn of the 17th and 18th century. Kežmarok had 4400, mostly German, inhabitants in the early 1850s. The town, whose weekly markets were the largest in the Zips region, was an important centre of trade; its burghers dealt mostly with fine linen and wine trade. Kežmarok had only two factories in the 1850s: a tannery and a brewery.

Bibliography: Banczik, Dénes Ferenc, Késmárk, Marosi, Myskovszky 1870, Szepesi, Szombathy 1979, Szontagh 1888, Zombory 1859

THE ZIPS REGION / Spiš / Szepesség belonged to the historical territory of Hungary. It lies in a basin in the foreground of the High Tatras in the southeast. Still a wood-covered uninhabited area in the 11th century, it was settled by Hungarians of Gömör and Torna Counties at the turn of the 11th and 12th century. They were followed by two waves of German immigrants. The first group came from inside, from Abaúj County, in the latter half of the 12th century. The second, larger and foreign, group came from German-speaking areas after the Mongol invasion of 1241-1242. That the majority of the newcomers were Saxons is confirmed by the fact that Saxon law was adopted in the region. Later the influx of various Slav groups contributed to the steady increase of the population.

Autonomous institutions of the Saxons date from the 12th century. Their privileges were detailed in a charter issued by King Stephen V of Hungary in 1271. In 1317, King Charles Robert I of Anjou added new privileges to the old ones. The Zips Saxons, or Zipser, formed a mighty organisation, which was headed by a Landgraf, later called Count of the 24 Zips Towns. The Zips law, or Zipser-Willkür, was also effective in the villages that belonged to these towns.

The mortgaging of 13 Zips towns by King Sigismund of Luxemburg to King Władysław Jagiellon II of Poland in 1412 was a turning point in the history of the Zips region. The 11 towns that remained under Hungarian rule lost much of their territorial significance. Although Levoča and Kežmarok were granted the status of royal free towns, other urban settlements were bereaved of their privileges. The mortgaged towns were recovered for Hungary in 1772, after the first division of Poland. The recovered towns plus 3 other settlements were organised into an autonomous municipal authority, the Province of 16 Zips Towns, in 1778. The seat of the Province was Spišská Nová Ves. The autonomous local authorities of the region came to be united and integrated into Szepes County by the statute of 1876:XXXIII.