History

It stands on the main square north of the Lutheran church. In 1531 the old town school was turned into a Lutheran institution with foreign scholars. The representatives of the Lutherans of the Kingdom of Hungary, nobles, priests and emissaries of the free royal towns assembled in Kassa in 1665. They decided to establish a Lutheran college and nearly 100,000 gold was contributed. On October 18, 1667 the college was opened. It consisted of 10 classes and put great emphasis on the education of the mother tongue, the Hungarian. The school focused on the education of natural sciences. In 1671 Emperor Leopold I took the collage from the Lutherans. Thököly Imre, the leader of the kuruc insurgents, gave the collage back to the Lutherans in 1682 but in 1687 it was acquired by the Jesuits again. Thanks to Rákóczi Ferenc ll the college was in the hands of the Lutherans again from 1705 to 1711 during the War of Independence of Hungary. From 1774 it was used as storage for the nourishment of soldiers. Advised by Emperor Joseph II, the Lutherans purchased the building back in 1785 and reopened the school. In 1811 a Law Academy, in 1852 a Theological Academy and in 1873 a Teacher Training Academy was attached to the school, so together with the grammar school it consisted of four institutions. The Czechoslovak invaders marched into Eperjes before Christmas in 1918 and banned Hungarian-Ianguage education. In March 1919 the commissioner of the Czechoslovak government urged the moving of the schools to the unoccupied territory of Hungary. The Law Academy and the Teacher Training Academy moved to Miskolc, while the theological education continued in Budapest. Of all the schools of Sáros County only the primary school of Eperjes could continue teaching in Hungarian language. The last final exam was taken in Hungarian in the grammar school in 1926. Thököly Imre, Kazinczy Ferenc, Kossuth Lajos and Márai Sándor learned in Eperjes among other famous Hungarians.