Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski

Croatian historian, writer, bibliographer and politician (Varaždin, 29 May 1816 – Puhakovec, Hrvatsko Zagorje, 1 August 1889). He attended high school in Varaždin and Zagreb, studied philosophy in Zagreb, interrupted his studies in 1833 and transferred to the cadet school in Krems (now Kromeříž). From 1835 he served in the palace guard in Vienna, in 1836 he became an officer, and in 1840 he was transferred to Milan. During his studies, he began to write in German. In 1837, he became an associate of Lj. Gaja, wrote in Danica and was one of the leading figures of the Croatian national revival. He left the army in 1842 and worked as a judge in Zagreb and Varaždin Counties. On May 2, 1843, he gave his first speech in the Croatian Parliament in the Croatian Parliament demanding that it be introduced as an official language in schools and offices in Croatia. After his speech on October 23, 1847, in which he repeated the same request, the Parliament introduced the Croatian language as "diplomatic". In 1848, he encouraged the convening of the Slavonic Congress in Prague. He is one of the drafters of the Demands of the People, a member of the Bansko Council and head of the Department for Homeland Defense and the Department of Education and Clergy. As a member of the closest leadership and a person of Jelačić's trust, he traveled to neighboring countries in order to agree on the cooperation of the Croatian national movement with national movements in those countries. After the collapse of the revolution in 1848/49. retired from politics. Until 1860, he was the land archivist; he founded the modern archive service and compiled its rules. He founded the Society for the History of Yugoslavia (1850), in which he was secretary and president. Started the magazine Arkiv for the Yugoslav chronicle (12 volumes, 1851–75). He served as the first land conservator for cultural monuments (since 1855). He returned to politics in 1860, becoming a member of the Ban Conference. From 1861 to 1867 he was the grand prefect of the Zagreb County, and from 1865 to 1867 and the governor of Bansko. He was one of the founders of the Independent People's Party (1863), in which he agreed with the politics of I. Mažuranić and began publishing the newspaper Domobran (1874). From 1886 he was an honorary member of JAZU (now HAZU). He was the president of Matica Hrvatska (from 1874 until his death), head and founder of the Croatian Archaeological Society.

Kukuljević Sakcinski was also engaged in literary work: dramas with historical content (Juran and Sofija, 1839), the tragedy Marula (1879) and poems (Slavjanke, 1848; Historical Poems, 1874). He traveled around Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Albania, Greece and Italy (1854, 1856–57 and 1873) and collected materials for history, copied epigraphic monuments and collected other antiquities. He published the first artistic biographical lexicon of the South Slavs in five volumes (incomplete, letters A–S) Slovnik artistinah yugoslavenskih (1859–60), with which he founded Croatian art history as a scientific discipline. He wrote expert discussions, monographs and articles about Croatian artists, old cities and artistic monuments (Julije Klovio, 1847; Events in Medvedgrad, 1854; Andrija Medulić, painter and coppersmith – Andreas Medulić Schiavone, Maler und Kupferstecher, 1863; Some castles and cities in kingdoms of Croatia, I–III, 1869–70; Zrin grad and its lords, 1883). He is also the author of the first Croatian scientific bibliography, Bibliografija hrvatska I. Tiskane knjige (1860–63), in which he included about 3,000 bibliographic items (books, magazines, newspapers, articles) published in the period from 1483 to 1860 and classified into three series: books in Glagolitic, Cyrillic and Latin. He published several collections of sources for Croatian history: Rights of the Kingdom of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia (Iura regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, 1861–62), Croatian Monuments (Acta Croatica, 1863), Diplomatic Collection of the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia (Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Slavoniae et Dalmatiae, 1874–75). As the first book in the Academy's Old Writers Croatian series, he prepared for publication the Poems of Marko Marulić (1869) and wrote a study about it. With his fruitful and varied activity, he significantly influenced the development of Croatian politics, culture and science, especially historical sciences. The highest award for achievements in the librarian profession, the Kukuljević Charter, awarded by the Croatian Library Association since 1968, is named after him.