Stephen Batta

* Feled, 27 August 1924 – † Rožňava, 28 July 2011 / mining engineer, museologist, local historian ; ; He completed his primary school education in his native village, graduating from the Rimaszombat gymnasium in 1943. He enrolled in the law faculty of the University of Debrecen, but his university studies were interrupted in 1945 due to the war. After World War II, he took up occasional jobs in the Czech Republic (Teplice, Ostrava), and then received permission to become a student at the Ostrava Mining College. He graduated from the mining department in 1953 and worked as an engineer and plant manager in various Slovak mining plants (Dernő, Rožňava, Dobsina, Alsósajó) for the next 30 years. He contributed to the solution and prevention of serious technical problems with his numerous suggestions and ideas. On his initiative, the concentration of radioactive radon gas began to be measured in mine shafts and caves visited by the general public. In addition to his professional work, he was fond of studying the past of mining in Gömör, so it was no surprise that after his retirement he took up a job at the Rozsnyó Mining Museum. His study entitled The Mining History of Rozsnyó and its Surroundings from the Beginning to 1945, written in 1982, is still in manuscript, but he published details of it in numerous journals and museum publications. One of his greatest merits is that he saved the painting of St. Anne with the Third Core (commonly known as Metercia) that was gathering dust in the chapter chapel storeroom. panel painting, about whose creator we only know that his monogram is L. A. Behind the main figures of the painting, certain phases of mining and metallurgy of the time (presumably the end of the 15th century) can be seen. István Batta was the first to establish that the artist did not depict an idealized landscape in the painting, but the surroundings of Rozsnyó. For years, Czechoslovakia did not allow either the restoration of the painting (due to its religious theme), or the translation and publication of his study written on the work after several years of research into Slovak, so in 1987 the Hungarian text was published in Miskolc, and then in 1988 the 6th issue of Bányászati és Kohászati Lapok published the text of István Batta's lecture on the panel painting, which he gave at a conference. After the change of regime in 1989, the painting was restored and a copy (the work of painter-restorer Anna Svetková) is currently on display in the Mining Museum of Rožňov. István Batta's technical-historical insight into the panel painting is that in the 16th century, primarily silver and copper, not iron ore, were mined and processed in the Rožňov area.