Matija Majar-Ziljski

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Matija Majar
Bust in the culture park of Suetschach (Carinthia)

Matija Majar-Ziljski , actually Matthias Mayer (born February 7, 1809 , in Wittenig , Slovenian : Vitenče; † July 31, 1892 in Prague ) was a Roman Catholic clergyman, ethnographer, linguist and political publicist and agitator from the Slovenian ethnic group in Carinthia , who was particularly well known as the author of the manifesto for a united Slovenia . His initial pseudonym Ziljski (= "Gailtaler") has become a common part of his name. Hyphenated spelling is becoming more common.

Origin, youth

Majar comes from one of the small villages in the southern Carinthian Gailtal ( Slovenian : Zila), which today belong to the municipality of Hermagor . He grew up in what was then a mixed-language Slovene-German environment, and as was often the case in Carinthia, wealthy farmers of the Slovene ethnic group gave the clever boy the opportunity to go to higher education in Klagenfurt to become a priest. While studying at the Klagenfurt Lyzeum he came into contact with the spiritual at the seminary Anton Martin Slomšek (1800–1862), later the first bishop of Marburg an der Drau (Slov. Maribor), who was responsible for the use of Slovenian in schools, offices and fought in public life.

Pre-march

Majar, who then also studied at the Graz Lyceum , to which the University of Graz was downgraded by Josef II in 1782 , became pastor after his primary school in Carinthian places that were mainly Slovene at the time, first in Rosegg ( Slovene : Rožek), then in Saifnitz ( Slovenian : Žabnice), today's Camporosso , with the much-visited Carinthian Marian pilgrimage church on the Luschariberg in the Canal Valley, which now belongs to Italy . From 1837 he worked in the diocesan administration in Klagenfurt, from 1843 he was Klagenfurt cathedral chaplain of the diocese of Gurk . During this time he made the acquaintance of a number of Slovene ethnographers and publicists who were concerned with the Slovene language and culture such as Urban Jarnik (1784–1844), Anton Janežič (1828–1869), Matthias Achazel ( Slovene : Matija Ahacel; 1779–1845) and Davorin Trstenjak (1817–1890).

Under the influence of Jarnik, a Slovenian priest from the Gail Valley like Majar himself, he became an avid collector of old Slovenian folk goods and thus one of the most important Slovenian ethnographers. He collected legends, fairy tales, riddles, proverbs, especially songs. One could say that Slavs wither away without singing, like blossoms without sunshine , wrote Majar in 1843 about the rich treasure trove of songs by his Slovenian Carinthians, they often sound wistful like a lament for a vanished golden age, often longing like a song of hope to an unknown person better future; But the song always goes to the heart because it comes from the heart. In 1846 he published a collection of religious songs, some of them very old, Pesmarica cerkvena .

Majar also wrote a series of articles for the newspaper Novice in Ljubljana , in which he advocated the cultural issues of the Slovenes - school, popular education, national awareness. In 1844 the Klagenfurt cathedral chaplain praised Novice, to the delight of the editor Janez Bleiweis , for the fact that the style of the paper was beautiful, smooth, easy to understand, in a word: national-Slovenian , but suggested that the editors should not only like themselves, as it was programmatically announced to the “ Carniolan Slovenes”, but to all “Slovenes in the Carniolan , Styrian , Carinthian, Gorizia , Veneto , etc.” regions. In addition, may it also approximate its expression to the dialects of the nearby Slavs in Croatia , Slavonia , Dalmatia , etc.

The Illyrian movement in Croatia and above all the Slovenian-Croatian poet and agitator Stanko Vraz led Majar to his development of Pan-Slavic ideas, so that in 1848 he published the grammar of a South Slavic artificial language, which is " easy to understand for Slovenes and at the same time Croats and Serbs " should be. Unlike Vraz, who was so convinced of the need for a standard South Slavic language that he gave up his Slovene mother tongue completely because of its numerical inferiority and alleged insignificance and wrote in the new Croatian of Ljudevit Gaj , Majar and his successors, like Luka Svetec (1826 –1921/22) or the Viennese professor of Slavic Studies Ritter von Miklosich (Slovene: France Miklošič, 1813–1891) suggested a different path to a common South Slavic literary language: By concentrating on those Slovene dialect forms that were closest to Croatian or Serbian ( and vice versa), the merger should be achieved. Although this never happened, so there was never a “Yugoslavian”, the acceptance of its reforms meant that modern standard Slovenian ultimately became much more similar to Serbo-Croatian than it would otherwise have been.

For the unification of all Slavic languages ​​Majar envisaged a stage plan: First, the South Slavic "dialects" were to merge into an " Illyrian ", as he had designed it, and in the same way the West Slavic into a "Czechoslovakian"; later these should be merged with Polish and Russian. The grammar based on postulated graphemic units should apply to the South Slavic written standard language of the educated Slovenes, Croats and Serbs , but phonemic and morphological tolerances should be permissible for oral communication .

1848

On March 17th of the revolutionary year 1848 , four days after the fall of Metternich , Majar, "the leftist of that time", as Josip Apih, the Slovenian historian of the Slovenes from 1848 calls him, formulated the Slovenian demands in a memorandum that he received from Klagenfurt and published it on March 28th in the Laibacher newspaper Novice under the title “ Praise be to God in the highest and peace on earth to men of good heart ”. In it he wrote about the importance of a revolutionary period for the implementation of national rights and goals - since the sun has shone, there has been no more significant time for all Slovenes - and formulated a political manifesto "What we Slovenes want" ( Kai Slovenci terjamo ) in which he called for the unification of all Slovene-speaking areas of the Austrian monarchy into a politically autonomous administrative unit called "Slovenia". A copy of the petition he presented to the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand can also be found in the materials of the 1st Slavic Congress in Prague. Under the name “United Slovenia” (“ Zedinjena Slovenija ”), this manifesto was then expanded into a detailed program by the Vienna Slovenian Association Društvo Slovenija .

restoration

Such political activities emanating from Klagenfurt did not please the Carinthian diocesan guide; He also came into opposition to the rather cautious Anton Slomšek , which is why Majar was transferred to the distant parish of Göriach / Gorje, today a district of the municipality of Hohenthurn ( Slovenian : Straja vas), where he spent more than a decade and a half in isolation.

Radical late days

The transfer, apparently radicalized in his attitude as in his All-Slavism, broke out in 1867 and went on a four-week trip to Moscow for the 2nd Slav Congress without the approval of the diocese . As the only Slovenian participant in this major Pan-Slavic event, later known as the “Slavic pilgrimage”, he presented his Gail valley in the “Ethnographic Exhibition” using traditional costumes and old parish and school chronicles. The fine imposed on him by the bishop for his unauthorized absence from his parish finally brought about his break with the ecclesiastical authorities of Carinthia, and in 1870 Majar took steps to return to public life.

Now he even pleaded for the introduction of the Cyrillic script for all Slavic utterances, a notion that the “Illyrian” Croats did not approve of as a threatening portent of Serbian hegemony, while the Serbs felt their Cyrillic as “an expression of Serbian identity” and against the intrusion protested by “Croatianisms”; Majar, however, now published in his own “all-Slavic” artificial language in both Latin and Cyrillic script. Above all, his Slovenian compatriots should use this “Slavic” script, for which he published a corresponding textbook with the texts in both scripts.

Retirement

Majar-Ziljski published his ethnographic studies in various Russian magazines, and he had been in correspondence with the Russian Pan-Slavist Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin since the “Slav pilgrimage” to Moscow . In 1870 he promised him a professorship in Odessa , where he could have pursued his Pan-Slavic ideas better than in his home parish, where he felt again and again that he was exposed to harassment from the church authorities. But this was not the case, because since he was still a Roman Catholic priest, the Russian authorities denied him entry. Majar withdrew with his little beneficiary to Klagenfurt Kreuzbergl , did not give up his hopes for a linguistic unification of the Slavs and from 1873 propagated his Pan-Slavic ideas in his own magazine Slavjan ( ie "The Slav"), the success of which, however, was rather moderate and which stopped its publication after two years due to the waning of Pan-Slavic enthusiasm. Resigned and ailing, Majar moved to Prague in 1885, where he remained until the end of his life.

Works

literature

  • Bogo Grafenauer : Ethnic Conditions in Carinthia . Research Institute, Ljubljana 1946.
  • Štefan Pinter: Matija Majar-Ziljski and the year 1848 in Carinthia . Diploma thesis Univ. Vienna. Self-published, Vienna 1974.
  • Andreas Moritsch: The national differentiation in Carinthia in the time of Matija Majar-Ziljski . Slovak Academic Press, Bratislava 1992.
  • Wilhelm Baum: Matija Majar-Ziljski (1809-1892) . Hermagoras, Klagenfurt 1992.
  • Andreas Moritsch (Ed.): The Slavic Idea. Contributions to the Matija Majar Ziljski Symposium from July 6th to 10th, 1992 in Tratten / Pošišče, Carinthia , (= Slovanské štúdie: Zvláštny výtlačok 1) Slovak Acad. Press, Bratislava (Pressburg) 1993 ISBN 80-85665-22-0 .
  • Jurij Fikfak: Matija Majar-Ziljski and the study of folk culture: concepts and problems . In: Andreas Moritsch (Ed.): Matija Majar-ziljski (= Unlimited History, Vol. 2) Hermagoras, Klagenfurt 1995. ISBN 3-85013-342-7 . Pp. 107-121.
  • Avguštin Malle : The journalistic activity of Matija Majar Ziljski . In: Andreas Moritsch (Ed.): Matija Majar-Ziljski (= Unlimited History, Vol. 2) Hermagoras, Klagenfurt 1995, ISBN 3-85013-342-7 . Pp. 147-157.
  • Andreas Moritsch: Matija Majar, the "Slav pilgrimage" 1867 and the church authorities . In: Andreas Moritsch (ed.): Matija Majar-Ziljski (= Unlimited History, Vol. 2) Hermagoras, Klagenfurt 1995 ISBN 3-85013-342-7 . Pp. 217-225.
  • Haselsteiner: The Prague Slav Congress 1848: Slavic identities . (= International Commission for Slavonic Studies (Ed.): East European Monographs 552). Boulder 2000 ISBN 0-88033-450-9 .
  • Elisabeth Seitz: Unhistorical Historicism in the Works of Matija Majar-Ziljski . Center za slovenščino kot drugi / tuji jezik pri Oddelku za slovanske jezike in književnosti Filozofske facultete Univerze v Ljubljani, Ljubljana 2002.
  • Peter Wiesflecker: The unusual trip of the country pastor Matthias Mayer / Matija Majar-Ziljski: The trip to Russia of the Slavic and cleric in the mirror of the correspondence with his superiors. In: Carinthia I, 196 (2006), pp. 453-462.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Wiesflecker: The unusual journey of the country pastor Matthias Mayer / Matija Majar-Ziljski. In: Carinthia I , Volume 196 (2006) Joh. Leon, Klagenfurt 2006, p. 453: "The Slavic Matthias Mayer - he called himself Matija Majar-Ziljski".
  2. ↑ Reginald Vospernik , however, gives Goritschach / Goriče as Majar's place of birth,
    ( The Slovenian word in Carinthia. Literature and poetry from the beginnings to the present / Slovenska beseda na Koroškem . Österr. Bundesverlag, Vienna 1985 ISBN 3-215-04304-1 , P. 27)
    Erich Nussbaumer, however, names Förolach as the place of birth ( Geistiges Kärnten , Kleinmayr, Klagenfurt 1956, p. 447).
    All three places are now districts of Hermagor
  3. ↑ Erich Nussbaumer: Spiritual Carinthia. Ferdinand Kleinmayr, Klagenfurt 1956, p. 70.
  4. ↑ Joachim Hösler: From Krain with Slovenia. The beginnings of the national differentiation processes in Carniola and Lower Styria from the Enlightenment to the Revolution; 1768 to 1848. Habil . -schrift Univ.Marburg 2004 (= Southeast European works 126) Oldenbourg, Munich 2006 ISBN 3-486-57885-5 , p. 254.
  5. ↑ a b Aleksandar Jakir: Dalmatia between the world wars. Agrarian and urban living environment and the failure of Yugoslav integration. Diss.Univ., Erlangen-Nürnberg 1997 (= Southeast European Works 104) Oldenbourg, Munich 1999 ISBN 3-486-56447-1 , p. 57.
  6. ↑ The information varies. One author, Anton Slodnjak, even gives different years of death in various works: 1922 and 1921
  7. ^ Andrew Baruch Wachtel: Making a nation, breaking a nation: Literature and cultural politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford University Press, Stanford, Cal., 1998 ISBN 0-8047-3181-0 , pp. 30f.
  8. ↑ Slavica Pragensia 25 . Univerzita Karlova. Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Philologica. 25 Prague 1982 p. 549.
  9. ^ Henry Kučera, William Edward Harkins (Ed.): American contributions to the sixth International Congress of Slavists Prague, 1968, August 7-13. Mouton, Den Haag 1968. pp. 201, 206.
  10. ^ Grafenauer: Ethnic Conditions in Carinthia . Research Institute, Ljubljana 1946, p. 11
  11. ↑ Josip Apih: Slovenci in 1848 leto. ('Matica slov.') . Laibach 1888, quoted from
    Carole Rogel: The Slovenes and Yugoslavism 1890–1914. (= East European monographs 24) East European Quarterly u. a., Boulder, Colorado, 1977 ISBN 0-914710-17-6 , p. 16.
  12. ↑ Slava Bogu v višavah in na zemlji me ljudem dobrga serca !. in: Novice Jg. 6 (1848), p. 50 , quoted from
    Joachim Hösler: Von Krain zu Slovenia. The beginnings of the national differentiation processes in Carniola and Lower Styria from the Enlightenment to the Revolution; 1768 to 1848. Habil. Writing Univ. Marburg 2004 (= Southeast European Works 126) Oldenbourg, Munich 2006 ISBN 3-486-57885-5 , p. 273.
  13. ^ League of Catholic Slovenian Americans: Studia slovenica . League of CSA, New York a. a. 1958, p. 44.
  14. ^ Haselsteiner: The Prague Slav Congress 1848: Slavic identities. (= International Commission for Slavonic Studies (Ed.): East European Monographs 552). Boulder 2000 ISBN 0-88033-450-9 , p. 75.
  15. ↑ Helmut Rumpler (ed.): History of the Germans in the area of ​​today's Slovenia 1848–1941 / Zgodovina nemcev na območju današnje Slovenije 1848–1941 (=  series of publications by the Austrian Institute for Eastern and South Eastern Europe . Volume 13 ). Verlag für Geschichte u. Politics and a., Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7028-0279-7 , p. 68 ( online [accessed March 18, 2014]).
  16. ↑ Helmut Rumpler (Hrsg.): Kärntens referendum 1920. Scientific controversies and historical-political discussions on the occasion of the international symposium Klagenfurt 1980. Kärntner Druck- u. Verlags-Ges., Klagenfurt 1981 ISBN 3-85391-027-0 , p. 64.
  17. ↑ Michael Boro Petrovich: The Emergence of Russian Panslavism 1856-1870. (Studies of the Russian Institute of Columbia University) Columbia Univ., New York 1956, pp. 239ff.
  18. ^ Society for Slovene Studies (Ed.): Slovene Studies New York 1993, pp. 206f.
  19. ^ Advertisement for “ Sveta brata Ciril i Metod, slavjanska apostola. Tisučletui spoměn na lěto 863 . Spisal / = author / Matija Majar Ziljski. With text next to each other in Slavic-Latin and Cyrillic script. “Schmaler & Pech, Bautzen 1867 in the Centralblatt für Slavische Literatur und Bibliographie 3rd vol. No. 20 BC. May 18, 1867, Verlag Schmaler & Pech, Bautzen (Lausitz) 1867
  20. ↑ Matija Majar: Slovinica ruska za Slovence . G. Blaž, Trgovec v Reki (Fiume), Rijeka 1867.
  21. ↑ Andreas Moritsch (Ed.): The Slavic Idea. Contributions to the Matija Majar-Ziljski-Symposium from July 6th to 10th, 1992 in Tratten / Pošišče, Carinthia (= Slovanské štúdie: Zvláštny výtlačok 1) Slovak Acad. Press Bratislava 1993 ISBN 80-85665-22-0 . P. 137.
  22. ↑ Moritsch, Andreas (ed.): The Slavic Idea. Contribution to the Matija Majar-Ziljski-Symposium from July 6th to 10th, 1992 in Tratten / Pošišče, Carinthia. (= Slovanské štúdie: Zvláštny výtlačok 1) Slovak Acad. Press Bratislava 1993 ISBN 80-85665-22-0 . P. 10.
personal data
SURNAME Majar-Ziljski, Matija
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Majer, Matia; Mayer, Matthias; Ziljski
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-Slovenian priest, Slavist and agitator
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1809
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittenig
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1892
Place of death Prague