Summary/Abstract |
In the early 19th century, Habsburg Panslavs sought not Russian expansion but instead linguistic and cultural unity between Slavs speaking different “dialects.” To make their vision of literary unity despite political fragmentation more persuasive, Panslavs invoked the examples of Ancient Greece and modern Germany. Greek and German examples feature prominently in the writings of Jernej Kopitar, Josef Šafařík, Jan Kopitar, and Jan Kollár, all of whom posited a single Slavic “language.” The 1848 Revolution, however, transformed Slavic literary activism: Slavs at the Prague Panslav congress understood each other only poorly, and Habsburg authorities showed a sudden willingness to use Slavic in state administration. Some Slav patriots, including Josef Podstránský, Václav Krolmus and Peter Hitzinger, focused on particularist literary work, others, such as Ľudovít Štúr and Imbro Tkalac, took an interest in the Russian literary standard. The Greek and German examples remained popular, but were invoked with different purpose.
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