South America Raised Relief Map

Author: Viliam Hrabovec, a typhlopedagogue at Czechoslovak State Institute for the Blind in Levoča

The year of production:  1933-1934

Dimensions: 73 x 120 cm

Material: wood, wire, plaster

Scale: 1: 8 million

Donor and the last user: United Boarding School for the Blind in Levoča

Viliam Hrabovec (14 June 1901 – 3 April 1938), a Čadca man, had four siblings: brothers Ján and Jozef, sisters Mária (called Marishka) and Valéria (Škrabáková). He was probably the youngest one. His father’s name was Ján Hrabovec, his mother’s name Alžbeta Hiršová.

He signed up with the Institute for the Blind in Levoča in 1923 as the second teacher in a sequence. Hrabovec had some experience with the blind at that time because he had worked at a curatorium of a private institution that was founded by moving workshops for the blind from Prešov to Levoča.

Exactly this experience and moreover, his outstanding modelmaking skills made Adolf Fryc, the headteacher, to offer a teacher post to Hrabovec.

Viliam Hrabovec was an eminent personality not only in Levoča’s, but also in Slovak typhlopedagogy in the first half of the 20th century.

Hrabovec conduced to the establishment of a magazine A Slovak Blind Man which was printed in Prague.

Unfortunatelly, he left very young. He died at an accident, the crash of a personal car in which he was and a passenger train near Kežmarok.