Memorial plaque of József Szentiványi

Born in Budapest in 1817, József Szentiványi (1817-1906) of Gömör and Szentiványi was a landowner in Liptov County, “a ray of the old, good-natured, cavalier Hungarian noble world that has strayed into our time” (MKE yearbook). It is primarily thanks to him that Lake Štrbská still exists today, since around 1870, when the lake was still public property, it was planned to drain it. At that time, Lake Štrbská was still a deserted, inaccessible place, its shores and surrounding valleys overgrown with dense forests. Szentiványi, who also had large landholdings in the Tatra Mountains, had a hunting lodge built next to the lake in 1872, and then in 1875, with the support of the Hungarian Carpathian Association, he built his second High Tatras refuge, which was named the József Refuge after the owner of the area. In 1877, Szentiványi had another villa built on the shore of the lake, which was named Miklós-lak. In 1879, József Szentiványi bought and operated the shelter, which, together with the Rózsa shelter, had the highest turnover among the Tatra shelters in the early 1880s. As one of the founders of the MKE, József Szentiványi was a member of the association's board from 1873 and its president in 1878-1879. ; Part of the land owned by the Szentiványi family, such as Lake Csorba and its surroundings, was purchased by the Hungarian royal treasury in 1901. At that time, an attempt was made to rename Lake Csorba to Lake Szentiványi-Csorba, but the name change was not accepted. The name of József Szentiványi is preserved by Lake Szentiványi (Capie pleso) located in the upper part of the Malompataki Valley.